John Creasey - The Toff and The Sleepy Cowboy

Inside was a small, pearl-handled automatic.

“Ah,” he breathed.

“I live alone,” she answered. “And I often travel alone.”

“And that pistol keeps you safe and so fills you with confidence, no doubt,” he said. “May I see it?” He took it out of the pocket of the bag and it fitted snugly on the

5

Motor-Cyclist

THERE WAS NO POINT in lying.

Even had he been tempted to, Rollison doubted whether a lie would fool this girl, for his start of surprise had actually made him swing the wheel a fraction, enough to scare a driver who was passing at furious speed on the inside. This man wrenched his wheel and pressed his horn in a long and desperate wail. Rollison straightened out, watched only the road ahead, and said:

“I don’t know.”

“Really, Mr. Rollison!”

“I don’t know,” repeated Rollison. “I am going to see a man at London airport who is said to be a Thomas G. Loman, but whether he is or not I can’t possibly say.”

After a few moments of silence, the girl responded: “I don’t understand you at all.”

“I’ve never seen and before this morning never heard of any Thomas G. Loman. So whether the man I’m going to see is Thomas G. Loman I can’t say.” When she didn’t reply to that immediately he asked: “Don’t you understand that, either?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I understand. I’m in the same boat.”

“Fascinating,” retorted Rollison. “How?”

The traffic lights at the turn off into the airport were looming up, and he was already in the right lane. In the distance great jet engines were roaring, in the sky half a dozen aircraft flew at different levels, while one monster took off, dark fumes streaming from its jets and fading slowly into the contaminated air.

“I represent the other claimants,” she stated at last. “Claimants to what?” asked Rollison, turning left on a green light.

“Goodness!” Pamela Brown exclaimed. “You really don’t know, do you?”

She sounded amazed. He was aware that she was staring at him and could imagine how huge her starry eyes had become, could imagine that her lips were parted so that her teeth glinted. He was sure that this pose was as artificial as much else about her, although she might have practised for so long that it seemed natural to her. He veered towards the nearside of the road, looking for a place to pull in — how was it one could be so familiar with a roadway and yet know so little about it?

There was no pull off; he would have to drive on, under the tunnel which led to the airport proper, and find a spot there. He looked in his mirror to make sure he could pull out again, and saw a motor-cyclist, not far behind catching up slowly. The rider wore a tall white crash helmet and goggles, a leather jacket and leggings; and he was small on a mini-machine.

He was guiding the motor-cycle with one hand.

He was looking at the Bristol, not beyond it and along the road.

Quite suddenly, Rollison shot out his left arm and flung it round Pamela Brown’s shoulders, thrust her down beneath the level of the window, and bent as low over the steering wheel as he dared. The roar of the motorcycle suddenly became deafening. He twisted his head round so that he could see the driving mirror, and managed to jam on the brakes. The car jolted to a stand-still, the motor-cycle roared past, the car struck the concrete road verge, bumped on to the grass, and shuddered.

Rollison heard cars passing, followed suddenly by a sharp explosion, like the back-fire of a car.

But it wasn’t a back-fire.

Fragments of metal struck the windscreen, the sides of the car and the bonnet, clods of earth and turf smacked on to the metal and into the road. As they did so, Rollison peered ahead. Through a gap between two pieces of soil, saw the motor-cyclist disappearing at the roundabout. He heard brakes squealing and a car horn wailing, and heard Pamela Brown ask in a strangled voice:

“What — what was that?”

At the same moment a young man put his head through the window, and asked tensely :

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Rollison said, straightening up and letting Pamela go. “Thanks to the grace of God, and —”

“Thanks to your speed of action,” contradicted the young man, who had dark, wavy and attractive hair and a pleasant face. “I’ve never seen anyone jam on brakes so fast. Did you know what he was going to do?”

“I had an idea he was up to no good when I saw the way he was behaving,” Rollison replied. “Were you behind?”

“Fifty yards or so, yes. I saw everything. The motor-cyclist put on a fantastic burst of speed and tossed something into the car — well, at the car. The way you stopped made him miss.” He withdrew his head from the car as if to peer over the top, and said in a voice which sounded farther away: “My God, look at that hole!” He bobbed down again. “You know,” he went on in a bewildered voice. “I think he meant to kill you.”

“It looks very much like that to me, too,” Rollison conceded gravely, and he smiled up into the young man’s eyes. “Do you know the airport well?”

“Pretty well,” answered the other. “I’m on building maintenance here.”

“Can you go to the Airport Police and tell them what happened and give them this?” Rollison handed the other a visiting card which simply gave his name and address. “Ask for Chief Inspector Paterson, he’s expecting me.”

The young man glanced at the card, and then stared back at Rollison in stupefaction :

“You — you’re the Toff?”

“Some call me that,” Rollison agreed.

“Good Lord!” The young man still looked dumbstruck, but he wasn’t and before Rollison could urge him to hurry, he said : “Now I know how you came to act so quickly. You’re as good as your reputation. Yes, stay here, I’ll go and get the Inspector.”

He turned and ran back to his car. A moment later he passed them in a green mini Morris, going like a streak of lightning. No one else had stopped, but dozens of drivers had passed the be-spattered car and the hole in the ground and the smoke still rising from it.

Throughout all this, Pamela Brown had sat very still. Rollison did not even know whether she had looked at the young man, or at the hole, or whether she was dazed from shock. Now, he turned towards her, and as he did so she shifted round in her seat, placed her hands on his cheeks and drew his head towards her, then quite deliberately kissed him on the lips. When she drew back, she said:

“I shall never be able to thank you.”

“Just do that regularly and you’d be surprised,”

Rollison retorted.

“Please don’t make light of it,” she pleaded, and tears were close to her eyes. “You saved my life.”

“If I did, I also saved mine.”

“I would never have believed anyone could have acted so quickly. It wasn’t until Baby Blue Eyes explained that I realised what had happened. The motor-cyclist actually threw a bomb.”

“Which makes him a bad man.”

“And if it had come into the car —”

“It didn’t,” Rollison interrupted. “Pamela Brown, we’ve no time to brood on might have beens. He certainly meant to kill the pair of us and whether he was after one or the other or both we’ll soon find out. Do you know why anyone should want to kill me?”

In a subdued voice, Pamela answered: “No.”

“That makes two of us. Do you want to be interviewed by the Airport Police and then by the men from the Yard?”

Slowly, she shook her head.

“Not really,” she said.

“Then now is your only chance to avoid it,” Rollison told her. “If you take all the short cuts you’ll see —”

“Oh, I know where the taxis are,” she interrupted.