John Creasey - The Toff and The Sleepy Cowboy

The gun fell.

“Stay down there!” Rollison roared. “Stay there!”

“Effie!” the man cried from behind the mask. “Effie!”

Rollison heard a cry from below, and turned his head to look towards the stairs. It was his first mistake, for the masked man, still gasping, backed into the room and disappeared. The door slammed. Rollison snatched at the handle, but the girl below began to cry out:

“Help, help! I’m being robbed.”

Rollison stood absolutely still, to try to collect himself.

The man would get away through the window and there was little chance of catching him; if he, Rollison, forced this door and went in he would be breaking and entering, very much on the wrong side of the law.

A man spoke downstairs and the woman whom the masked man had thought was Effie was screaming: he could just distinguish the words :

“Up there, up there!”

Rollison could run down the stairs and out of the house, or more wisely, go down and reason. He had what he wanted. The girl was now alarmed, and the wise thing was to have the police here as soon as possible. He could take them to King’s room, and the evidence of the plot to impersonate Tommy Loman would be indisputable.

So he called: “No one’s robbing anybody,” and he went to the head of the stairs.

The pregnant young woman was standing in the hall, a middle-aged man stood with his arm round her, a scared-looking woman was in the doorway of one of the flats. Effie was sobbing and screaming in a magnificent show of pretended hysterics, and of course she was trad-ing on her condition. She caught sight of him and pointed, screaming even more loudly :

“There he is, there he is!”

Rollison began to walk down the stairs. It was useless attempting to stop the girl, who was undoubtedly trying desperately to give the masked man time to get away. The middle-aged man looked as scared as the woman in the doorway.

“Now, don’t upset yourself, my dear, don’t upset yourself.”

“We — we ought to send for the police,” called the middle-aged woman, staring at Rollison defiantly. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

“I certainly should,” urged Rollison, forcing a smile.

“I—”

His voice was drowned by the roar of an explosion above their heads. The floor shook, a picture crashed down, the roar went on and pieces of the ceiling fell in, a door banged, then another. There was a split second of uncanny silence followed by a roaring sound.

“Oh, my God!” cried the woman in the doorway.

“He did it, he did it,” gasped Effie, still pointing at Rollison. “He’s blown the place up!”

Someone had obviously blown the flat up, and the roaring sound was unmistakable; that of fire. Rollison turned and ran upstairs, for the evidence he so badly needed was there, but he saw a red glow at the foot of the door and knew that the Kings’ rooms were an inferno. If he opened the door the fire would get out of control so he went back, calling to the man :

“Telephone the police and the fire service. Hurry!” He ran through the hall and out of the house, for unless a delayed action bomb had been used the man was still nearby. Rollison raced to the corner, but as he reached it, he saw a motor-cyclist swing out of the rear entrance and roar away, towards the Embankment.

Flames were showing at a window of Rubicon House, people were already in the street, a police siren sounded not far off. Rollison could make himself scarce, or stay and talk; he ‘decided that the sensible course was to stay and talk. That way, he would be less likely to anger the police.

* * *

He told part of his story to a divisional detective-sergeant, who telephoned the Division, who telephoned Grice at the Yard, who asked Rollison to go and see him.

“Gladly,” Rollison said, the ringing of fire engine bells almost drowning his words. “If one of your chaps can give me a lift. My car —”

“I’ve heard what happened to your car,” said Grice, grimly.

His office was high in the new building at Broadway and Victoria Street, not far from its old site. Rollison had not quite got used to the acres of glass and the similarity of each floor plan. Grice, a tall, spare and angular man with a sallow complexion, was good-looking in a rather severe way. The bridge of his nose was sharp so that the skin at it showed white. On one side of his face was a large, discoloured scar, the aftermath of an explosion which had nearly killed him. At the time he had been opening a box addressed to the Toff. They never referred to that, these days, but it had forged a bond between them which was often strained to breaking point, but never actually snapped.

“Well,” Grice said as they shook hands, “it looks as if they mean to get you, Rolly.”

“Even I’m beginning to think that,” Rollison confessed.

“Did this bomb thrower think you were in the flat?”

“No,” Rollison answered. “I think I was an incidental — he wanted to destroy the evidence.”

“Oh,” said Grice heavily. “What evidence did you find?”

“Notes and tapes which show that a certain actor, Alec George King, has been learning the part of Thomas G. Loman, with a view to impersonating him,” answered Rollison. “It was there, Bill.”

“How do you know?”

“Must I incriminate myself ?” demanded Rollison, and Grice smiled faintly:

“Did you actually see it?” he demanded.

“Yes,” answered Rollison. “And if I really had to I’d say so in court. The certain thing is that we need to talk to the actor named King and to his wife Effie. Is the fact that their flat was set on fire enough to justify a search for them?”

“We don’t need to search for the woman,” Grice told him. “I’ve just had a telephone call from Chelsea. Appar-ently labour pains started just after you left and she was rushed to Chelsea Hospital to have her baby. There was a rumour that it might be a miscarriage, another that the child was born dead. And in either case a lot of people are going to say that it was your visit to her home which really brought things on.”

11

Whitemail

AFTER A LONG PAUSE, Rollison said: “That’s what they’re going to say, are they Bill?”

“You know perfectly well that they are.”

“Some of them may but you know as well as I do that most of them won’t,” Rollison said with forced lightness.

“Was the house destroyed?”

“The upper part was gutted, and the downstairs flats are uninhabitable.”

“Are your chaps searching the wreckage?”

“The place is still burning.”

“One tape from a bundle in the front room would be enough to prove my point,” Rollison said.

“There isn’t likely to be even the remains of a tape,” Grice told him. “They say the upper part went up in no time, and the roof has fallen in.”

“Is there a call out for King?”

“To come and see his wife at the hospital, yes. Rolly, we’ve nothing on King, and you know it.”

“Bill,” said Rollison, “these people are killers. I think King’s life is in grave danger because he could tell us —all right, you — what’s been going on. If I were you I wouldn’t simply try to find him to soothe his wife down, I’d try to find him because his life is in acute danger. There’s nothing in the world to stop you from putting out a general call.”

Slowly, Grice, conceded: “He could be in danger, I suppose. I’ll have a general call put out for him.” He lifted one of three receivers on his desk, and gave instructions, put down the telephone and went on to Rollison almost in the same breath. “The description of the motor-cyclist who attacked you and this motor-cyclist is identical. Green helmet, black goggles, on the big side, and splay-footed.”