John Creasey - The Toff and The Sleepy Cowboy

“Watch her!” Hindle ordered the man by the door.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy!” Pamela cried, and she ran downstairs through two of the shafts of sunlight, a beautiful vision. She flung herself by the side of the man on the floor, and began to talk to him, urgently, fiercely. “Don’t die, oh, please don’t die.” She had his head in her lap and her forefinger was on his wrist. “He needs a doctor,” she cried. “You must send for a doctor!”

Hindle rasped: “Shut up.” He was looking at the Toff, when he went on: “Come on, tell me. What have we got to talk about?”

“The split,” Rollison said.

“The split,” breathed Pamela in a horrified voice.

“Are you crazy?” Hindle rasped.

“Not yet,” Rollison said. “There are several of you, including your wife. I’ll go sixty-forty. You have the sixty.”

“You are crazy!” cried Hindle.

“It doesn’t matter whether I’m crazy or not,” Rollison said. “If I’m not out and about, free as the air, at eight o’clock this evening, the Globe will know where to find Alec George King.”

Hindle drew in his breath, as if something hurt him. “He’s not here, no one could find him.”

“After what’s happened this morning, no plea of innocence will help you. If King isn’t here you know where he is.” Rollison paused before going on: “For a forty per cent cut I’ll keep my information to myself, but always with a ‘to be opened on my death’ letter with my bank manager. You’ll have to pray that I live long enough for you to enjoy your share.”

From behind Rollison the younger man breathed: “Who would believe this?”

From her father’s side, Pamela Brown said in a whispering tone which held horror tinged with unbelief : “Oh, no, no, no. Not you.” She was staring at the Toff, her eyes filling with tears. The new shock had superseded even that caused by her father’s crumpled body.

Rollison said in a brisk voice : “Don’t be silly, Pamela. You’re a big girl now. If you want to help your father, ‘straighten his body and his arms and legs and check for broken bones. You needn’t worry, all you and your precious family have to do is keep quiet.”

“Oh, dear God,” Pamela said huskily; but at least she began to do as she was told, easing her father’s head from her lap and gradually straightening his body. He lay limp, and did not open his eyes or utter a sound.

Hindle breathed : “Was I wrong about you, Toff.”

“A lot of people are wrong about me,” Rollison said, off-handedly. “You can get away with this and sixty per cent of the Clayhanger inheritance, or you can get away with nothing. Even the satisfaction of killing me won’t help.”

“You can’t have known we were involved,” said Hindle, with a catch in his voice.

“Of course I knew,” Rollison replied testily. “If you weren’t pretty certain that I realised what you’d done, why should you be so intent on killing me? The bombing was as effective a way as you could think of, and dis-tracted the police who thought I was involved with a terrorist organisation.”

“They did!”

“They did. Tell me,” said Rollison. “How did you get hold of the motor-cyclist?”

“He’s a friend of my son.”

“Your son? This chap?” For the first time, Rollison turned to look at the man who had been behind the door and who was still covering him with a gun. “You really meant to keep it in the family, didn’t you?”

“That’s where it belongs,” Hindle said, waspishly.

“Pop,” said young Hindle, “he’s talking too much.”

“I don’t know, Derek,” said Hindle, slowly. “If he’s telling the truth —”

“I’m telling the truth,” Rollison interrupted.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw young Brown move. He did not know whether the Hindles saw it, and waited, watching Hindle and seeing the girl who was now beyond him. She was smoothing her father’s forehead, and there was no way for Rollison to know how the man was. But when she glanced up the loathing in her eyes, at sight of him, showed just how she felt towards the man whom she had virtually hero-worshipped.

So, he had convinced her.

He thought he had convinced the Hindles. If he had, then he still had a chance in spite of the two guns. But if young Brown leapt at Derek Hindle he, Rollison, would not have a chance; shooting would start.

He caught a glimpse of young Brown, face turned towards him. That face resembled Pamela’s even more, perhaps because the expression of loathing for him, the Toff, was exactly the same. And young Brown was beginning to tense himself, to make some move.

Rollison said roughly: “Watch Brown!”

Derek swung round as the other tried to scramble to his feet, but Brown did not have a chance. For an awful moment Rollison thought Derek would shoot him; instead, he took two long strides and kicked him, savagely. Pamela cried out. Her brother fell back, in agony, Derek Hindle grinned as if the act of causing pain had given him pleasure.

Then Pamela flung herself on Hindle.

He was taken so much by surprise that she was able to grip his gun arm and twist. He yelped with pain and the gun flew from his grasp. Pamela darted towards it, and at that moment Rollison could have dealt with Derek, could have turned the tables completely. Instead, he moved with startling speed across the room and reached the gun, kicked it out of Pamela’s reach, and, when she turned and flew at him, eyes blazing, trying to scratch his face, gripped her so tightly that the breath actually hissed out of her body. For a split-second his lips were close to hers and he whispered:

“Keep this up. I need half an hour.”

For a scarcely perceptible moment she went still; then suddenly she became a screaming, writhing shrew of a woman, kicking, kneeing, clawing, scratching, until at last Derek Hindle pulled and flung her away.

Rollison dabbed a cut in his cheek, watching Derek frogmarch the girl to a cupboard under the stairs and the father force young Brown to the same place. There was a vicious streak in Derek Hindle; he slammed the door to try to catch young Brown’s fingers, but Brown snatched them away in time. All the men now in the hall were breathing hard — except Brown senior, who lay so still. Rollison went down on one knee and felt his pulse.

“Forget the old fool,” Derek rasped. “He hasn’t long to live, anyhow.”

“Someone ought to tell your son Derek that you can buy silence, you don’t have to kill,” Rollison said.

“You couldn’t buy the Browns,” retorted Hindle.

“They’d keep quiet if their daughter was married to Thomas G. Loman of Tucson, Arizona, heir to a million-plus-pounds, not dollars.” Rollison infused some light-ness into his tone. “Everyone involved will keep quiet. You two have to get out of the country soon — presum-ably you have false passports?”

“We’ve got it all arranged,” said Hindle.

“How much do the Browns know?”

“Nothing that matters, except that we took their house over, and what’s happened today,” Hindle answered.

“What made you come here?” asked Rollison.

“We didn’t know how much Pamela Brown knew and had to find out. And knowing you, we thought you would probably come to see her in your great hero act.” Hindle gave a cackle of laughter.

“What about —?” began Rollison.

“To hell with your questions!” rasped Derek Hindle. “Pop, I say he’s lying.”

“I shouldn’t put it to the test,” Rollison warned.

They stood in silence for a few moments which seemed to drag out into minutes, and when a sound came it surprised Rollison but did not trouble the others. It was a woman’s voice, from upstairs. Rollison glanced up to see Hindle’s wife at one side of the landing leading to the staircase. She looked as meek and frail now as she had at Rubicon House, but what puzzled Rollison was the pair of field-glasses which dangled from her neck on to her flat chest.