by John Creasey
Lessing did not speak, but simply turned away. The shutters were pulled to but were not locked, and he opened them wider, then stepped on to the tiny balcony.
A dozen times, perhaps twice as often, Rollison had taken desperate chances in a life which had been starred with risk. He dared not take one now. His left arm hung limp, and the wound in the shoulder was beginning to throb; he would not have had a chance outside. But it was worse, standing here, and knowing that another man was taking that chance.
He was staring at the window and the tiny balcony beyond.
He had studied these from the outside, and knew that several feet separated one balcony from another; that it would be taking one’s life in one’s hand to jump. Lessing would attempt it; Lessing had all the qualities of courage and of heroism that it needed; but could he possibly succeed?
Rollison would have given a fortune to have the chance, to take the risk that Lessing was taking now.
Carruthers called, “What are you two talking about?”
Rollison whispered, just loudly enough for the sound to reach Lessing; then whispered again, as if Lessing were answering back.
“Don’t try any tricks!” Carruthers called sharply, “I’ve got the shutters open, I can see the window from here. And if he kills Lorne, I’ll kill Barbara!”
“Don’t you think I know?” Rollison said, as if in anguish, and then raised his voice sharply, speaking as if Lessing were still in the room; Rollison could not see him, but could just see his shadow, and knew that he was poised on the iron balcony. He seemed to be swaying.
“Keep away from Lorne!” Rollison shouted.
“Guy, don’t be a fool, I mean what I say.” Carruthers was trying not to screech, but could not conceal his desperation; a live Lorne was vital to him.
“Lorne, look out!” Rollison shouted, and with his right hand gripped the back of a chair and sent it crashing down, thumped the floor with his foot, staggered against the table and made it rock; and he actually let himself fall, so that Carruthers could have no doubt that someone had fallen. The fall jolted him painfully, but he spoke as if he were gasping for breath.
“All right, Carruthers, now let’s talk terms. Lorne means nothing to me, you can do what you like with him. But if you don’t hand his daughter over, you’ll never get Lorne alive. What’s it to be?”
That was when he saw Lorne open his eyes.
But Lorne was not important in that moment, only Lessing mattered. Had he made that jump? There had been no thud from the courtyard, but the noise of climbing could have been drowned.
Rollison backed to the window, and to the balcony, acutely aware that Lorne was watching him.
He glanced across.
Lessing was hanging by his arms from the other balcony. He had made the jump and nearly missed, and now he could not climb up. He dared not drop the sixty feet to the cobbles, for that would break his bones, and almost certainly kill him.
He was clinging by his fingers, and would not be able to stay like that for long; he had to be helped up, or else he would crash down.
Carruthers called, “I won’t make a deal until you and Lessing are on the other side of the river. I won’t hurt the girl, you’ll have to take my word for it.”
As he spoke, Lorne was getting to his feet.
And Lessing hung there, eyes turned towards Rollison as he twisted round and looked over his shoulder.
He called in a whispering voice: “Don’t worry about me. Save Barbara.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Save Barbara
Rollison heard the words clearly, and Lorne must have heard them, too. He was on one knee. Rollison saw that, but Lorne seemed hardly to matter. He was helpless, even without the danger from Carruthers; he could not act at all to save Guy Lessing. Here was failure; utter, desolating failure. He could not see how it could end, could not see any hope. The girl helpless, Lessing likely to fall and smash himself to pieces, he himself so weak from pain and loss of blood that he could hardly stand.
The nearness of complete disaster made him feel even worse; and his legs were weak.
Then he saw the gun in Lorne’s hand.
He should have known about that; should have realised that Lorne had fallen near the table; and when he had knocked against the table to make Carruthers think that he and Lessing were fighting the gun had fallen.
Now Lorne had it.
There was a cut on the man’s lips, and a puffy swelling on one of the fat, round cheeks. One of his eyes was closing, too, yet he looked oddly immaculate as he stood to his full height. There was a kind of dignity about him; he was more the
Lorne of the wedding breakfast than the Lorne of today.
“I’ll give you five minutes to get Lessing away,” Carruthers called. “If I don’t see you crossing the street by then—”
“It’s all right,” Lorne called, in an unsteady voice. “It’s all right, I’ve got him covered.”
“Bob!”
“I’ve got Rollison covered,” insisted Lorne, and then he raised his voice; for a despairing moment Rollison thought that the end had come, for Lorne raised the gun and fired.
But he fired a yard wide of Rollison.
“What’s that?” Carruthers cried.
“It’s all right,” Lorne called again, “you won’t have anything else to worry about with Rollison, he’s finished. And Lessing’s unconscious.”
He was standing and covering the door.
“Come on,” he called. “I’m in a hell of a mess.”
There was a thud of footsteps, the handle of the door turned and then Carruthers came striding in. He was grinning broadly, and looked on top of the world. In that moment he must have been quite sure that he had triumphed, had thrust all thought of failure behind him.
He looked big and handsome and likeable – until he saw Lorne.
He stopped in his tracks.
“What the devil—?” he began, but couldn’t go on.
Rollison held his own gun now, steady in his right hand, and Carruthers would never know how near he was to collapsing or guess what an effort it was to keep the gun level.
“From the beginning I told you not to let Barbara suffer,” Lorne said, in a tense voice. “And you always told me that the only danger to Barbara came from Lessing. Well, I know better now. He’s just risked his life to save her, and you—well, I heard every word you said. Now I’m going to kill you, Carruthers, because of all the things you’ve done to me, and the harm you would do to Barbara.”
Carruthers gasped. “Bob, don’t be crazy! I was only bluffing, I wouldn’t have hurt her.”
“You wouldn’t?” echoed Lorne. “Well let’s see if this will hurt you.”
Carruthers realised that the fat man meant to shoot, and leapt at him; and as he leapt, Lorne fired. Carruthers seemed to stop in mid-air. There was a look of bewilderment on his face, as if he had not believed that this could happen.
He crumpled up, with a bullet in his chest.
Rollison ejaculated, “Watch him!” and made himself hurry into the passage. He went into the bedroom, where Barbara lay unconscious. He felt as if his left arm would fall off, and at moments his legs threatened to collapse under him, but he reached the balcony. He saw Lessing’s fingers, still gripping; but slipping. He went down on one knee, and put his right hand through the railings of the balcony, and gripped Lessing’s wrist.
He said, “I’ll pull, you try and get a grip on a railing.”
There was sweat on Lessing’s face, and Rollison knew that the man could not hold on more than a few seconds longer; and he wondered whether he could find the strength to give him a chance to get up. He set his teeth, and pulled. He felt Lessing’s weight, like a ton on his right arm and shoulder. He gritted his teeth and held on. With agonising slowness Lessi
ng’s hand and wrist came through the railings; then Lessing seemed to swing his right arm, and grip the iron.
“Can’t hold on long,” Rollison gasped. “Heave.”
“I’ll be all right, now.” Lessing released Rollison’s hand, and grabbed a railing with his own free hand; now it was easy. He hauled himself up until he got a foot on the edge of the balcony. Rollison was leaning against the shutters of the window and he could just see Lessing, as through a kind of mist.
“Thank Lorne,” he managed to say. “Lorne shot Carruthers. Thank Lorne.”
“Good God!” Lessing exclaimed. “Miracles.”
Rollison was in the ward of a hospital or nursing home; he didn’t know which, for he had been unconscious when he had come here. His left shoulder was heavily bandaged, but he felt free from pain. He was going over much that had happened in a lazy kind of way. He hardly deserved a trophy from this case, although he need not blame himself too much, for he had been made almost hors de combat from very early on, and had never properly recovered. On the credit side, too, was the fact that he had not been fooled for long by Carruthers’ manner, and had been quick to see the importance of Holy Joe.
He’d talked a way into gaining time, too, so that Lorne …
He wondered where and how Lorne was; and Barbara; and Lessing.
Had he been here for an hour or two or a day or two? Until he could check with a nurse, he could only guess; operations often took a long time and recovery from the anaesthetic longer. But he was so comfortable, with dope of course, that he hardly cared whether he had been here for hours or days. He could even smile a little at the thought of the moment when Barbara had appeared at his flat; the runaway bride who need not have run away.
“One of these days I’d like to know all about it,” Rollison said aloud, then closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
He sat up in bed, not quite sure how much later it was, but in a very different mood. He was fully alert. The haziness had gone, and Lessing was sitting by the side of the bed, very handsome, still rather tight-lipped although smiling.
“How’s Barbara?” Rollison inquired.
“Very well, thanks, and sends her love.”
“Give her mine,” said Rollison, and realised that there was no tension at all in Lessing. “How about Lorne?”
“You might say that there has been a complete reconciliation,” Lessing declared. “I doubt whether he and I will ever actually like each other, but we have acquired what you might call mutual respect.”
“I can imagine that,” said Rollison. “What was the business all about?”
“That’s a tall order,” Lessing said, and smiled a little more freely. “From the beginning, or—”
“Who married those women in your name? Was it Carruthers?”
“It was just after I’d had the head injury, and was convalescent. I had some lapses of memory and black-outs. I made a joke of it. So did Carruthers. He was already married, but wanted company in
London as well as Paris. Helen Goodman was a simple soul, and ‘marriage’ was the easy way to get her. She’d never known me as Lessing, only Brown. Carruthers married her as Guy Lessing, and persuaded her to keep it secret, saying his family objected. By Helen’s standards he kept her well supplied with money, and promised that he’d win his family round. He used my name because he couldn’t use his own; it was as simple as that, to begin with.”
Lessing paused, and made Rollison realise how anxious he was to hear the rest.
“What I didn’t suspect was that the man I’d known and trusted all my life was utterly corrupt,” Lessing went on. ‘The use of my name was almost incidental. At that time he was already blackmailing Robert Lorne. In his early days, before he made a lot of money, Lorne wasn’t particularly scrupulous. Barbara doesn’t know, and I hope she need never find out, but he defrauded a lot of people. He first began to make money by buying surplus army stores, using a small business that he owned outside the Army, and he was also among the men who valued the surplus goods. Carruthers was the officer in charge of some of this disposal; he discovered what had happened, and cut himself in. They worked together for years. But Lorne used his money to make a fortune in industry and commerce, and Carruthers gambled and lived fast. Finally, Lorne refused to pay him more money. What Lorne didn’t know was that Carruthers had kept a close watch on him, and knew about one or two other frauds. The two were deadlocked when Lorne’s wife died, and left her fortune to Barbara. Lorne also made a large part of his money over to Barbara, to avoid death duties, and so keep it out of Carruthers’ reach. Carruthers had no hold over Barbara, and couldn’t be sure how she would react if he blackmailed her by threatening to disclose her father’s past crimes—”
“All old crimes?” interrupted Rollison.
“Yes, and mostly to do with tax frauds,” Lessing answered. “Lorne felt he was on top, until Barbara and I decided to get married. Carruthers had introduced us, and Lorne thought that I was hand-in-glove with him. No doubt you remember Lorne’s opposition,” Lessing added dryly.
“I remember.”
“I never understood why he was so bitterly opposed,” went on Lessing. “He’s told me now that he accused Carruthers of trying to control Barbara through me— and apparently that caught Carruthers on the raw, and made Lorne realise that he was wrong. Of course, Carruthers saw me marrying the fortune he’d been working to get for years.” Lessing smiled twistedly. ‘That was too much, and yet he knew that he had no hope of marrying Barbara; his money would come direct from Lorne if it came from anyone.
“He needed to get control of Lorne again, break down Lorne’s resistance and make Barbara sign over her fortune to her father. He had the old bigamous marriage in my name as a possible weapon, and also had his identity as Holy Joe to help him. He’d blackmailed a lot of people for years—getting knowledge of the skeletons in their cupboards as Carruthers, and extorting blackmail through contacts who knew him only as Holy Joe.”
Lessing paused, but Rollison did not prompt him.
“That was the situation, then,” Lessing went on, speaking more sharply. “Neither Ellerby or I can see exactly how Carruthers’ mind worked afterwards. My wedding was drawing near, but stopping the marriage wouldn’t help Carruthers, for the strength of his position as a blackmailer lay in holding threat of disclosure of my ‘marriage’ to Helen Goodman over my head and Lorne’s. I’d be in no position to deny it if Helen was dead and couldn’t identify her husband. Carruthers obviously wanted Barbara and me to marry. So why should he tell Barbara about the other ‘marriage’ and send that certificate?”
“My dear chap!” protested Rollison.
“Now what?”
“Is Ellerby puzzled by this, too?”
“He says so.” Lessing’s manner became challenging. “Aren’t you?”
“Not now that it’s so obvious that Carruthers couldn’t cash-in until the marriage,” Rollison said. “Did Ellerby talk freely?”
“Very.”
“Did he say if anyone picked up a packet of £100 at any of the calling addresses?”
“No one did.”
“That always stank to high heaven,” Rollison said. “There were no fingerprints on the envelopes or certificates that Barbara or Lorne received, but the obvious assumption was that the same person sent each. The obvious is too often wrong. Ask Ellerby! The story told us was false, of course, probably put up by Carruthers to mislead the police or me. It explained why Lorne was so worried yet hid the real truth—that Carruthers was getting his claws into him again.”
Lessing began to smile.
“Quite right,” he confirmed. “Lorne’s told me that.”
“But not Ellerby?”
“No, and no one will tell the police if I can stop it. Rolly, who else would want to warn Barbara not to marry me?”
“False pr
emise,” Rollison replied promptly. “There was no one ‘else’, and Carruthers undoubtedly wanted the marriage. One person didn’t want it, though.”
“Who?”
“The woman who thought she was Mrs. Guy Lessing,” Rollison answered gently, and Lessing drew in a sharp breath.
“Helen?”
“Helen Goodman, who undoubtedly read about the forthcoming wedding,” agreed Rollison. “What was more reasonable than that she should make a desperate attempt to stop the wedding? She wouldn’t know what to do when she failed, lacking the courage to get inside the church and call out. We can be sure that Carruthers—probably as Holy Joe—persuaded her to go back to Rufus Cottage. I’ve little doubt that his shouting was to distract Helen as much as alarm Lorne on the church steps. There’s no doubt that Carruthers was at the cottage when I arrived, and killed Helen. That’s a relief of a kind,” Rollison went on quietly. “He would have killed her to keep her quiet, because she could have cleared you. She wasn’t killed because I went there. His own wife could betray him, too. I’ve no doubt that he told her to tell me that she was Mrs. Lessing; knowing he was within earshot, she was too frightened not to. But she wouldn’t be able to stand much questioning from the police or from me, so he had to kill her.”
“He had accomplices, of course—”
“The chauffeur from Paris was one; we know he was in England at the time of the murders,” Lessing interrupted. “He went back to Paris on an aircraft ahead of you. And Carruthers used several men from time to time, and sent them to try to keep you from going to Paris. He’d had Barbara watched, and she led to you.”
Rollison considered all this for a moment or two, and then asked:
“What about the part Lorne played at the end?”
Lessing shrugged.
“He says that he was prepared to do whatever Carruthers ordered in order to save Barbara, and there’s no doubt Lorne realised that Carruthers, if he’d lost out, would have disclosed everything discreditable in Lorne’s past,” Lessing said at last. “He made amends, whatever his motives.”