John Creasey: The Toff and the Fallen Angels

“You think I’m a what?” asked Rollison, and stared open-mouthed.

“You see, you can hardly believe your ears,” she said sardonically. “You’re so accustomed to your special kind of inherited divine right that when anyone tells you the truth about yourself, you don’t even recognise it. You are a parasite, Mr. Rollison. You feed off the lives of others. You put on a cloak of altruism but in fact you’re a—”

“Parasite,” interjected Rollison, recovering.

“That time I was going to say, an anachronism.”

“Oh. Out of date, you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean. And when I heard you were at Packham House I couldn’t get there soon enough. I’ve been waiting for a chance to put you under the searchlights. You have no right to usurp the duties of the police, for your own self-aggrandisement. Tell me—have you ever done a full day’s work in your life?”

“Er—” began Rollison.

“Have you?”

“Er—”

“You know perfectly well that you haven’t. You live off inherited money, you dabble in a few good deeds and make a few donations to good causes, you employ a fully able-bodied man who has pampered you all your life. You are a—”

“I cooked my own supper tonight,” stated Rollison, defensively.

“As I was about to say, you are an anachronism and a parasite in today’s world.”

“Until you told me, I didn’t realise it,” Rollison assured her. “Tell me, do you always interview your victims this way? And do you always gather your evidence from hearsay and unreliable sources and then add a few fancy touches and consider the subject damned?”

“In the two years since I left university,” said Gwendoline Fell, with great deliberatio, “I have done more work and helped society—people, human beings—more than you have done in your whole life. And you must be in the middle forties.”

“Do you know,” said Rollison. “You’ve actually got one thing right. Don’t forget to include that in your column, will you?”

“You no doubt think that’s funny,” said Gwendoline, in an acid voice. “I don’t. Any man who seizes upon the murder of a friend to help him win more cheap popularity with people whom he has fooled for years is incapable of amusing me. I—what are you doing?”

“Proving how funny I can be,” said Rollison, con-trolling his sudden anger. He slid one arm at the back of Gwendoline’s waist, and bent her double over his knee: and then six times in slow, deliberate succession, he spanked her with the flat of his hand—hard enough, he knew, to sting but not hard enough to hurt. She was taken so much by surprise that not until the fifth spank did she begin to wriggle, and at the sixth he picked her up and placed her on her feet again.

“But that in your column, Gwendoline,” he said. “And if you ever sneak up on me again, I’ll repeat the dose!

“My God!” she breathed in a voice choked with rage, “I’ll make you pay for this. I’ll make you pay!”

She spun round and almost ran out of the foyer, and he stood staring after her, smiling, half-glad that he had acted so; but already half-sorry.

Then it came to his mind that for ten minutes or more she had made him forget all about Angela.

At least she hadn’t been able to follow him to Smith Hall.

CHAPTER 7

Smith Hall

ROLLISON drove more slowly than usual back to town, keeping a very sharp lookout, giving every car which appeared to stay behind him every chance to overtake. Satisfied that he had not been followed again he drove along Bloomdale Street, one of the few in the district where large single houses were still safe from the clan-gour of the demolition machines. Most of them were now used for business, university or hostel purposes; Rollison believed only one was still used as a private residence. There was some echo in his mind of a story about the owner, Sir Douglas Slaker—no, Slesser—no, but something like it. One of the old school, he had re-fused to sell any of the considerable properties he had in central London—oh, that was it! Sir Douglas Slatter, twice compelled by the law to give way to town planning schemes, more often successful in holding up what some called progress and he called vandalism.

Rollison had more than a sneaking admiration for him.

But he, Slatter, was an anachronism, too!

For the first time, he laughed at his treatment of Gwendoline Fell. Then he recalled that he had not remembered who she was, at first; his memory was failing.

“Don’t be a damned fool,” he said sotto voce.

The big corner house, Number 31, was Smith Hall, the name and the number written on the fanlight over the front door, very clearly. There was no board in the grounds, nothing he could see to announce the fact that it was a hostel.

The house next door to it was Slatter’s. He drove past, parking fifty or sixty yards away, then walked back to the hostel, glancing behind him all the time, still on edge because of Gwendoline. He had to step into the roadway at a spot cordoned off by flickering lamps outside a plot of land where builders were working but he hardly noticed it. He was about to turn into the gateway when he saw a shadow, thrown from a front room window light, on the ground. It looked like a man’s head and shoulders. He walked on, without slackening his pace even for a moment. But he did not go far, just turned round and walked back towards Smith Hall very softly.

He could still see the shadow.

There was a low brick wall between the two gardens, and between the wall and each house perhaps ten feet. He turned softly into the garden of Number 29, thankful for the grass underfoot, which deadened the sound of his approach. He went along by the wall, and slowly the figure of a man materialised, waiting in the shadows and watching Smith Hall.

The nearer Rollison drew, the bigger and more powerful the man seemed to be.

Rollison, making no sound at all on the grass, drew level; only about four feet and the stone wall—no more than four feet high—were between him and the lurking man. Rollison watched and waited, just as the other was doing.

The man was obviously watching the front door of Smith Hall.

Anyone who came out of the Hall would not see him, and he would need to take only two or three quick steps forward to reach the flagged path. He was so still that if it were not for his breathing he might have been mistaken for a statue.

Had he a weapon in his right hand?

Rollison could not be sure, for the whole of the man’s right side was in darkness, no light reached it at all. The left arm only could be seen, half-raised, the hand resting against the dark overcoat. And he was gloved.

His shoulders were enormous.

People passed, footsteps sharp on the pavement. Cars passed, mostly with only parking lights on, some with headlights dimmed, but bushes in the grounds of the Hall were so placed that the man was almost completely hidden; only the Toff, whose power of observation amounted to a sixth sense, would have noticed him.

There was a sudden click from the porch, as of a door being opened. The man seemed to square his shoulders, and to raise his right arm. Now at last Rollison could see that he carried something heavy, it looked like a bricklayer’s hammer with its massive steel head.

The door opened; brighter light shone but did not fall upon the waiting man. Rollison placed a hand on the wall, ready to vault over, quite sure that he could forestall any attack. He saw the shadow of a woman thrown by the light in the hall, then heard the door slam and the light was dim again.

Naomi Smith stepped from the porch on to the path. The waiting man raised the weapon in his hand, and leapt forward.