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up to the flat, closed the door and went straight to the telephone. He dialled an East End number, and after a long pause, a man answered in a sleepy voice.
    â€œWhossat?”
    â€œBill,” said Rollison, “I’m sorry to worry you now, but could you send a couple of men to Throgmorton Square for me?”
    There was a pause.
    Ebbutt, the man at the other end of the line, was an old friend of the Toff, a man of influence in the East End, and of many parts. He had often done such things as this – but now his hesitation seemed very marked.
    Then: “What’s the trouble, Mr. Ar?”
    â€œI just want a house watched—there’s a possible baby-snatch in the offing.”
    â€œOh,” said Ebbutt. “Sure, okay, Mr. Ar. I’ll fix it. What’s the number of the ’ouse?”
    He did not sound as enthusiastic as he often had in the past, but Rollison put that down to his being, woken out of .a heavy sleep.
    Rollison pushed the telephone away, lit a cigarette and poured himself another brandy and soda. He sat back in an armchair facing the trophy wall, and closed his eyes, but he had seldom been further from sleep at four o’clock in the morning.
    The Doc was putting on the black again – so much seemed obvious, but that wasn’t the matter of first importance. The man who had forced these locks held pride of place.
    Rollison knew that strata of London known as the ‘underworld’ almost as well as the most knowledgeable officials at Scotland Yard; and one by one he conjured up mental images of men who could force locks as expertly as his had been forced.
    He narrowed the number down to seven. Two of these he ruled out because they were old, and not likely to have a vested interest in a baby and certainly not likely to ride about on a motor-cycle. Two more he ruled out because he knew that they were in jail. That left him with three.
    Suddenly, he opened his eyes wide, finished his drink, and jumped up.
    â€œI’ll check with the Yard in the morning,” he told himself, “and then get busy. There probably isn’t more than one motor-cycling safe breaker.”
    He was humming to himself as he went into the bathroom – and then he stopped abruptly. In the bath were damp-looking babies’ napkins, and from the towel rail a towel was missing.
    â€œAnd practical too,” he said, laughed, spread another towel over the heap of soggy napkins, and began to brush his teeth.
    He was on the point of getting into bed, at twenty minutes to five, when the telephone bell rang.
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Chapter Five
Fear By Phone
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    There was a telephone at the side of Rollison’s bed, but he was so awkwardly placed that he could not get at it quickly, and it gave four more sharp bursts of ringing before he could lift the receiver. By then he was sitting on the side of the bed, in front of a large dressing-table mirror, which showed his hair standing on end after the scramble to answer the call.
    â€œRichard Rollison here,” he said.
    There was no answer.
    â€œHallo, there. This is Richard Rollison.”
    There was no answer, but there were sounds, a kind of hissing noise, one that he associated with someone out of breath. It seemed close to the mouthpiece, and came very clearly.
    â€œHallo,” he said, very distinctly and sharply.
    Then, a woman’s voice came.
    â€œIs—is that—is that the Toff?”
    The voice was very faint, but unmistakably a woman’s. There was nothing special about it, except a trace of Cockney in the last word, making ‘Toff’ sound almost ‘Torf’. Yet the manner of her speaking told him much more than the words, for it spoke of fear. Fear and a breathless woman and a call so early in the morning.
    â€œYes,” he said carefully, “this is the Toff. Can I help you?”
    Silence.
    This time, there was not even the hiss of agitated breathing, only the stillness. He had heard no