John Creasey - The Toff on The Farm

He dropped out of sight.

For fear Bishop would be over-zealous, he lowered the rooflight and latched it from beneath, and moved the steps. By the time he had finished, Bishop was talking to someone on the radio. Rollison hurried downstairs, went out the back way, then to the trees and the tunnel. He reached the farmhouse as M.M.M. was being admitted by Gillian.

“Hallo, folk,” greeted Rollison, making M.M.M. look round with a frown. “It shouldn’t be long before the bait brings the bad men. Seen the safe, Monty?”

“I don’t believe it exists.”

“Come and look,” invited Rollison, and took them both in to the kitchen. M.M.M. stood and stared, and looked as if he didn’t really believe what he saw. If that was an act, he did it very well indeed.

He swung round on Rollison.

“Now what makes you think that Brandt will come here?”

“I invited him.”

“You’re the biggest bighead I’ve ever met in my life ! You think you’ve only to snap your fingers, and people come running. Why, you’re crazy. He’ll never come here, and you know it.”

“I told him I’d unearthed the deadly secret,” declared Rollison in overtones of drama. “If anything will make him take a chance, that’s it.”

M.M.M. found nothing to say in reply, but poked at the safe with his walking stick.

“I’d like to know what’s worth two lives and all this fuss,” he said. “And I’ve been thinking. I’m not a bit sure that it’s any use waiting for this murderer, Brandt.” He shot an almost vindictive glance at Gillian. “He’s a smooth-tongued devil and will probably try to persuade us that black’s white. I think we ought to get out, and let the police wait here for him.”

“I think we ought to hear what he has to say,” said Gillian.

“Oh, no doubt you’ll get your way,” growled M.M.M. “I wish to God I’d never had anything to do with this. I wish I’d never fallen in love with you, too.” In that moment, he sounded almost as if he hated Gillian.

Rollison bumped against M.M.M. a moment later, taking the gun out of his pocket. It was a moment’s work to empty it.

They heard a motor-cycle outside, its engine roaring. M.M.M. turned with surprising agility towards the window, and hobbled towards it and wrenched the curtain aside. Gillian followed him. Rollison slipped the empty gun back into the other man’s pocket, then watched from the side of the window, and saw the motor-cyclist coming towards the farm, slowing down. He stopped at the gate, jumped off, and propped the machine up against the hedge. He was very tall, and his uniform suited him.

“Well, it looks as if I’m going to get my way for a change,” said M.M.M. “But why have the police sent a copper on a motor-bike ?”

“I wonder where Tex the Texan got that police constable’s uniform,” Rollison murmured.

Gillian exclaimed : “It’s Tex!”

Rollison was behind them, and saw the light which leaped into Gillian’s eyes, and noticed the glint in M.M.M.’s. Of hatred ? He saw the one-legged man drop his right hand into his pocket, and keep it there. He moved forward towards the door, glancing sideways at the bulge in M.M.M.’s pocket. He felt sure that the man was holding the gun out of sight.

How did that square ?

Rollison opened the door. Tex Brandt stood there, with his crash helmet making him look very tall indeed, a striking figure in the policeman’s blue. He smiled warmly at Rollison as he came in, and then saw Gillian. He was about to take off his helmet, but he stopped with his hand at his forehead, just to stare at her. He did not know that M.M.M. was in the room, just behind him.

“My, my, my,” he breathed. “I remembered you as beautiful, but I’d forgotten just how beautiful beauty could be. Did anyone ever tell you that you’re the most beautiful woman in the world ?”

Gillian said : “Don’t fool, Tex.”

“I’m not fooling,” he assured her. “I mean every word I say.”

He went forward.

It looked as if he would take her in his great arms.

“Don’t you touch her,” growled M.M.M,, and he drew his hand from his pocket. His automatic pistol covered the American. “Take your murdering hands away from her. If you so much as lay a finger on her, I’ll shoot you.”

Gillian exclaimed : “Monty, put that gun away!”

The Texan turned round, very slowly.

Hatred was undoubtedly the word for the look in M.M.M.’s eyes, but there was something else, for which Rollison had been looking. He found it, but as a negative. These two men did not know each other, or their reaction would have been entirely different.

“What’s all this?” Tex asked, in a calm voice. “Who’s calling me a murderer?”

“Your record is all over the newspapers. The police know you killed two men and they won’t care whether they get you alive or dead,” said M.M.M. and that viciousness was still in his voice. “Get away from her.”

“I think you must be mad, Monty.” Gillian’s voice could not have been colder. “Please put that gun away, and stop play-acting.”

“Play-acting I’ll show you who’s play-acting!” The maimed man’s eye glinted, he raised the gun a fraction, and there seemed nothing but death for the tall Texan.

“Monty!” screamed Gillian, and flung herself forward.

There was a little click; no sharp report, no flame, no bullet. The girl would have fallen had Tex not grabbed her, while Monty stood looking foolish, with the gun in his hand.

“I took the bullets out when you were poking at the safe,” explained Rollison mildly. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t do anyone any harm.”

M.M.M. didn’t speak, but all the colour drained away from his cheeks. He looked round, as if for somewhere to sit; as if he was afraid that he couldn’t stand up any longer. Then he moved to the wall and leaned against it, looked towards Gillian, and said:

“You’d even protect him with your life. Why is it? Why can’t you feel for me like you do for him ?”

The Texan was holding Gillian lightly, an arm round her shoulders.

“I just don’t know,” Gillian said, in a husky voice. “I just don’t know.” She looked up, twisting her head round so that she could see the tall man, and it seemed to Rollison that there was genuine bewilderment in her voice. “I felt exactly the same the moment I set eyes on him, although I know it doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes sense, honey,” said Tex Brandt. “It makes the kind of sense that leads to a marriage licence. Some folk wouldn’t believe it, but I felt just that way about you. I’ve been running from the police and looking for the biggest load of trouble I’ve ever known—and you were in my hair all the time, I couldn’t get you out.”

He held her more tightly.

“But he’s a killer! He’s got a reputation for killing!” M.M.M. looked and sounded desperate. “You can’t feel like that about a murderer.”

“Maybe I’m not the murderer,” the Texan said. “Maybe you know who they really are, Mome.”

“Hold it,” said Rollison. “Monty, how well do you know the man Littleton ?”

“Little what?” asked M.M.M., as if blankly.

“A man named Littleton.”

“I don’t know anyone named Littleton,” denied M.M.M. in the same taut, hopeless voice.

“You’ve been acting oddly since I came into this job,” Rollison said. “You’ve been with the Selbys nearly all the time in recent weeks, you could have been the man watching them, reporting what they were doing, keeping Littleton and his employer informed all the time.”

M.M.M. said in a husky voice: “Are you crazy? I didn’t kill anybody, and as for spying on Gillian and Alan—no, I haven’t spied on anyone. I don’t know what you’re playing at, but if you think I’m a crook, you’re wrong.”