John Creasey - The Toff and The Sleepy Cowboy

“I’m sure Mr. Rollison will explain why,” Pamela retorted. She was radiant as she turned to Rollison, and bent over and kissed him warmly on both cheeks. “Richard, you’ve been an absolute darling. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

She was gripping his hands tightly when Tommy said:

“I echo them there sentiments, Richard.”

He slid his arm through Pamela’s and they went off; Jolly, with his uncanny ability to see everything that went on in the flat at once, was at the door to show them out. Grice leaned against the big desk, his back to the trophies, and looked at Rollison with a smile in his eyes and on his lips.

“And a matchmaker too,” he teased.

“That young man is a much faster worker than he looks,” Rollison said. “So you know the Browns.”

“Very well. It’s a family team and they specialise in tracing ancestors, family trees and that kind of research although they have taken on divorce work and searched for missing persons.” Grice looked up as Jolly came in with coffee, cheese and biscuits on a tray — and the trifle, which looked most attractive in a cut glass bowl. “Rolly,” Grice went on. “I am told you were magnificent.”

Rollison waved his hands in silent disclaimer.

“And so will the newspapers, in the morning,” went on Grice. “My men tell me they’ve never known such a change in the attitude of the Press. At first they thought you’d gone too far and scared Effie King into the premature delivery and they half-thought you’d caused the fire at her place. Now —” He spread his hands. “Are you up to talking.”

“Not too long, sir, I beg you,” pleaded Jolly. “No, not too long,” Grice promised.

“Thank you. Will you have some trifle, sir?”

“Do you know, it looks so tempting I believe I will,” decided Grice, who had a notoriously sweet tooth despite his lean figure. “A little of that Cheshire cheese first, if I may.”

Jolly ministered. Rollison stuck to coffee, and Grice simply asked : “Tell me all you know, Rolly. And if Jolly could tape it — ?”

Rollison leaned back, eyes half-closed, and remem-bered from the beginning, so short a time and yet so long ago. Everything that had happened was vivid in his mind, and he related the story with great lucidity while Jolly sat at the big desk with two small transistor tape recorders taking down every word. When the story was told, up to the moment when he had come back here and nearly collapsed, the second recorder tape had been used up. There was a sharp click! as Jolly switched the machine off.

Grice, who had finished eating, poured himself another cup of coffee as he remarked:

“The Browns were ill, and I suppose they can’t be blamed for not coming to us about the old man’s fears. We would have thought it a cock-and-bull story until Loman arrived at Heath Row and trouble really began. Taken at its face value, someone was planning to have Loman impersonated by King, who has now disappeared.”

“That’s how it seems to be,” Rollison said. “And how it seemed once I knew the whole story.”

“And you suspect this man Hindle, the man who expected to inherit?”

“He’s an obvious suspect,” Rollison said. “Do you know where he is?”

“I know he was supposed to have moved to a hotel, as his flat was uninhabitable after the firemen had finished with it,” Grice said. “I’ll check. And I know that King’s wife Effiie has a son who is doing well. At seven pounds some ounces it doesn’t seem very premature! She hasn’t said a word and the doctor who attended her says she’s suffering from shock as well as natural after-birth weakness, but she could be putting on an act so as to avoid being asked to tell us where her husband is.”

“Yes,” Rollison agreed warmly. “Have you a police-woman with her?”

“No, but I shall have, after this. Rolly — one thing above all puzzles me.”

“I think I know what you mean,” said Rollison. “Why go on with these murderous attacks now that the cat’s out of the bag? No one could possibly hope to pull off the impersonation now. The first attempt at Kennedy Airport was viable, so was the one at Heath Row and even the attack on Rubicon House, because that destroyed the evidence that there is a planned impersonation. But tonight’s attack seemed motivated by sheer malice. Has the prisoner talked?” he asked Grice.

“He simply says he was paid to make all three attacks by a man he’s never seen — he gets his orders by telephone and knows the man only as A.M. There could be truth in this, and it will be difficult to prove he’s lying. He’s an ex-bomb disposal unit man who’s lived by blowing safes for a long time, one of the psychopathic bad ones, I’m afraid. We’ll keep trying but I doubt if we’ll get much more from him. Well!” Grice stood up, briskly. “I’ll go after Hindle and King, and if there are any results —”

“Let me know in the morning,” pleaded Rollison.

Grice laughed : “I won’t disturb you unless with epoch-making news! If I did, Jolly would never speak to me again, would you, Jolly?”

“No, sir,” said Jolly with quiet vehemence. “Shall I make a copy of these tapes and let you have them?”

“Please. I —”

Grice broke off when the telephone bell rang, and Jolly, nearest to the instrument on the big desk, picked up the receiver and announced: “This is Mr. Richard Rollison’s residence.”

There was a moment’s pause before he turned to Grice. “You are wanted back at the Station immediately, sir,” he said gravely. “No, sir, the sergeant didn’t say what for — only that it was a matter of utmost importance.”

15

Attack

PAMELA BROWN HAD NEVER been so happy.

She knew that ‘happy’ was the right word, although what she felt was a kind of exaltation; euphoria. When-ever she felt Tommy’s hands on her, it was as if an electric shock ran through her whole body. No one’s touch had affected her in anything like the same way. She had known there was something different about the American when she had first seen him, and within an hour knew that he mattered. She even had time to try to rationalise. It was because of the excitement, the nerve-racking things that had happened, the fact that everything and everyone involved seemed so much larger than life.

Rollison, for instance: the Toff.

And that incredible scene when the bomb had been thrown.

Everything.

In spite of what had happened, and the known dangers surrounding them, so much had seemed funny. Persuading the police to let them pass the cordon to get her car, for instance! Dozens of firemen were directing water on the flames, and the fire was under control, but steam and smoke and the fat, snaking hoses made a kind of Bedlam. Then Tommy had tried to get at the wheel of the little car, and could not get his knees under it! So she had had to drive and he had to squat on the back of his seat, long legs stretched out. They said silly things; laughed; even giggled. She drove carefully to avoid making him bump his head, and kept her wits about her enough to know that they were followed by two cars.

It was half-past eleven when she turned into the drive of her house.

She had been born here, in a room in the shade of the trees of Clapham Common. It was a big, Victorian house standing on a corner, overlooking the Common on one side and the corner house across the street on the other. One of her father’s prides was the shrubbery in the middle of the driveway; he, himself, clipped each laurel, rhododendron, privet and bush of every variety. Eric — her brother — took over only in emergency. Eric kept the grass trim and she looked after the flowers while her father was in sole charge of the small but fruitful vegetable garden behind the house.