by John Creasey
Then Rollison, arm stretched out behind him, felt something cold and heavy being put into his hand: a glass paper-weight. Bless Jolly! He judged the distance, and shouted again. He saw a yellow flash and heard the sharp report of a shot as he hurled the paper-weight. He missed the motorcyclist by an inch or two, but the glass smashed on to the hard surface of the road. It seemed to burst, like a hand grenade, and showered the motorcyclist with tiny pieces of glass. He flung up his right arm to protect his eyes.
“Run for it!” Rollison bellowed to the man in the doorway.
He doubted whether he would be heard; but he was, for the crouching man straightened up and ran straight across the road – not to his car, but towards Rollison’s front door. The motorcyclist had one hand at his face, and the gun was no longer in sight. The engine had still not stopped, and suddenly it roared, as if the driver realised that he dare not stay here. The people at the far end of the street broke into a run now that it was too late either to help or to be injured. A man appeared from a doorway and made for the Jaguar, then stopped to stare at the motorcyclist, who went by, his machine quivering, and it was impossible to read the registration number. There was just a chance that the man would fall off the machine if his eyes were injured, and Rollison swung round towards the door. It was wide open. So was the front door, leading to the top landing of the house; Jolly had anticipated that he would want to get out in a hurry. Rollison went racing down the stone steps, feet making a staccato tattoo. He felt a draught of air, realised that the front door was open, and reached the ground-floor passage as a tenant from a flat below backed away from the young man who was staggering in from the porch.
The young man had come from the small car.
There was blood on his hands, which were held up in front of him, and some red smears on his forehead. He looked on the point of exhaustion, and was gasping for breath. There was nothing to admire in him, but a great deal of pity.
“Sorry about this,” said Rollison to the other tenant. “He’s come to see me; I won’t be a moment.”
He stepped past the startled middle-aged man and the younger one, and stared along the street.
The motorcyclist had gone.
“Could be as well,” Rollison consoled himself, and went towards the car, which was only thirty yards away.
A wing was crumpled against a lamp-post, but not badly damaged. As he had seen from the window, the front wheels had mounted the kerb, but had not gone too far; the lamp-post had prevented that. It was a post-war Morris which looked as if it had been well kept. Inside it was immaculate, with shiny brown leather. Both front windows were down, which was normal enough on a warm summer’s day.
Ten yards away from it was all that remained of the paper-weight: a broken nugget of green glass. Splinters of the same colour, beautiful in the open daylight, were spread all about the road and pavement. There were the skid-marks of the car.
“Better get it off the pavement,” Rollison called across the road, and the two people who had hurried so belatedly came up and began to exert their strength and importance, and to show how manly they were. The car bumped off the kerb. The men wanted to talk, but Rollison was brusque and almost impolite as he turned and crossed to the open front door of his house.
The middle-aged neighbour, who knew of his reputation, had recovered from the shock, but there was deep feeling in his voice when he said: “I keep hoping you’re going to move, Rollison.”
“After thirty years?” asked Rollison, reproachfully. “You ought to put a memorial placque over the door. Not hurt, are you?”
“No, I’m all right,” the tenant answered. “I suggested that poor chap go up to your flat and have his hands washed. It was just a nasty graze, as far as I can see. What’s it all about?”
“I hope he’s going to tell me,” Rollison said.
The neighbour smiled understandingly, and went off.
Rollison closed the street door and went upstairs. He did not hurry – there were times when speed was essential, and times when it was folly. He went slowly up the stairs, a dozen conflicting thoughts running through his mind. When he reached his landing he found Jolly crossing the lounge hall from the study. Doors led from this hall to the other parts of the flat – the bedrooms, domestic quarters, and bathroom. Jolly was still quite immaculate, as he said: ‘I’ve just tried the Yard again, sir. Mr. Grice won’t be in until six o’clock. As it is bound to be reported immediately, I mentioned the incident outside, sir.”
“And so showed how anxious we are to co-operate,” Rollison said, dryly.
“I have put the young gentleman in the bathroom and given him all facilities for first aid,” Jolly went on.
“Nice timing,” Rollison said. “Did you leave word that I’d be at the Yard at six?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thanks. Go downstairs and find out if the police are on the spot yet, will you? Tell them that all I know is that there was a crash and the motorcyclist went haring off. Don’t tell them we’ve a visitor yet—I’d like to find out what it’s all about before we play host to policemen. Better put some beer on ice, though.”
“I’ve put six bottles in the refrigerator,” Jolly murmured.
“You get better as the years roll by,” Rollison said with a grin. “Have a look at the porch of Number 29 and see if you can see a bullet in the wood of the door, or else lying about—only one shot was fired. I heard it. I’d like to see the size of the bullet, and if we could have it for our own Exhibit A, it might be useful.”
“I will try to get there before the police arrive,” Jolly promised.
“Don’t let them catch you putting the bullet in a matchbox.”
There was a glint in Jolly’s eyes as he said: “Be sure I won’t, sir.”
Jolly went out, closing the door behind him. Rollison stepped into the passage leading to the bathroom, and heard the sound of water splashing from a tap. He went into a black-and-white bathroom which gleamed and shone. The ceiling was all black and the floor all white, and this may have accounted for the pallor of the “young gentleman’s” face. The driver of the small car looked over his shoulder at Rollison, and seemed to be as scared as if the motorcyclist had stepped into the room. When he saw Rollison, he swung round, and his eyes seemed to blaze.
“Are you Mr. Rollison?”
“Yes.”
“The man they call the Toff?”
“Silly of them, isn’t it?” remarked Rollison mildly.
He noticed that the other man’s knuckles were grazed, doubtless as he had fallen in the porch opposite, but he did not look badly hurt. He also saw that the hands were dripping wet, and as he picked up a towel and handed it to the stranger, he noticed that there was a small jagged tear in the right knee of a pair of grey flannel trousers, and a smaller tear in the sleeve of a puce-coloured jacket. Puce, black, white, and pallor did not really go well together. He understood the gentle irony of Jolly’s “young gentleman”, for here was a young man in his early twenties, somewhat precious and arty, with over-long coppery-coloured hair and a large bow tie of puce with cream spots. His clothes were obviously made by an expensive tailor, and his education was obviously by one of the public schools, and possibly a university. He was not a person to whom Rollison took an immediate liking, but that did not necessarily mean that nothing was likeable about him.
“You’ve got to help me!” the young gentleman declared with great intensity. “If you don’t they’ll kill me.”
It was hard not to say: “Why should I stop them?” But there seemed to be real fear in great, browny-grey eyes, fear in the tension of the well-shaped mouth, in the lines at the lips and at the eyes and forehead; this man might be nearer thirty than twenty. He was very thin, too, almost hollow-cheeked. Could he be the starve-in-a-garret type?
“Now take it easy,” Rollison said, soothingly. “Tell me what happened and what it’s all about.”
“Will you help me?”
“When I know what the trouble is, I�
��ll tell you.”
“But I’m in desperate need. That man nearly killed me. He—he’s tried to twice before.”
Obviously he had tried once, Rollison thought, and asked mildly: “Why?”
He spoke as he turned and went out of the bathroom, knowing that the other would come hurrying after him. He stepped to the big room where he had entertained Mrs. Benning and Isobel, opened a corner cupboard which was also a cocktail cabinet, and took out whisky. This young man needed a stiffener, and once he had it, would probably be able to talk more coherently.
The young man was in the doorway.
“What—what is that?”
“A whisky will make you feel a lot better.”
“Not for me,” said the young man. “I don’t drink.”
“Oh,” said Rollison, and felt very slightly foolish. He put the whisky back, rubbed his hands together briskly, took out his cigarette-case and proffered it.
“Not for me, thanks,” said the young man. “I don’t smoke.”
“So you have all the virtues,” Rollison remarked, and tried to stifle the rising of prejudice against a man who looked so pale and puny, who scared so easily, and had neither of the ordinary vices. The prejudice was unreasoning, but it existed. “Were you coming to see me?”
“Yes. I—I thought you might help me. I’m scared out of my wits. I—I’m always looking over my shoulder, I can hardly sleep at night. I’m absolutely terrified, I tell you.”
At least he seemed absolutely frank.
“How long has this been going on?” Rollison asked.
“For about three weeks.”
“Why?”
“If I knew, I could do something about it, couldn’t I?” The first hint of courage he had yet shown was in that response. “I just can’t imagine why it’s happening; that’s what I want you to find out.”
“Have you asked the police for help?” inquired Rollison.
With one half of his mind he was interested in this young man whose name he did not yet know; with the other, he was exasperated because he had wanted to concentrate on the troubles of Bob Benning. It would not be easy to concentrate on two such cases at the same time; the police, with their great reservoir of trained men, had every possible advantage of him. He did not take to this visitor, but fear was a common factor in the day’s two cases, and this man’s fear seemed real.
“Yes,” his visitor said. “I’ve seen the police.”
“Didn’t they help?”
“They practically told me that I was suffering from delusions,” the man answered, bitterly. “One of them actually said that they have five or six people in every week suffering from persecution mania. Oh, it was said very politely, but what they meant was that I should get the hell out of their office and stop wasting their time. The—the devil of it is, there was nothing to justify what I said. Until to-day there hadn’t been any open attack. This is the first one, and—and I think it must have been to try to stop me from seeing you. What else could it be? The motorcyclist followed me, as he’s followed me for days. I always feared that the time would come when he would attack me, and—well, you saw it with your own eyes, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Rollison answered. “The police will take you seriously now, all right.”
The young man said: “I’ve got no faith in them at all. They’ll make out that it was an accident, or else they’ll start probing into things that don’t concern them. Mr. Rollison, I can pay you any fee you ask, just name it and I’ll pay it, but help me. I must find out what is going on, who wants to kill me, and why. It really is driving me mad, and it’s getting worse. Look!” He snatched a cheque-book from his breast pocket, waved it, slapped it down on Rollison’s desk, and actually touched the noose of the hangman’s rope, without noticing it. Never had that wall, once the greatest pride of the Toff, been treated with such scant respect and so little attention. “I’ll make you out a cheque for a thousand pounds, here and now; that will prove how serious I am, won’t it? You must help me!”
He took out his pen, a slinky-looking, gold-rimmed one, and leaned forward, to write the cheque. Some time in the next few seconds Rollison had to decide whether to allow him to sign it or not.
And a thousand pounds was a great deal of money. It would go a long way, perhaps all the way, in the defence of Robert Charles Benning, if that young man was ever brought to trial.
Chapter Three
Payment In Advance
The arty young man whose name Rollison did not yet know wrote the cheque swiftly, signed it with a flourish which seemed quite inevitable, thrust it towards the Toff, and cried: “There!”
In that moment he was almost as naïve as Isobel Cole. This could be a kind of cunning, too, but it did not appear to be. The ink was still damp on the cheque, and Rollison could see the wording and the round figure of £1,000. He was a human being. He could almost make out the signature, and was sure that the first name was Cedric, and the whole name looked like Cedric Wright. The ink was purple. The fingers which held the cheque were beautiful and white, long and slender, and the nails were manicured so that they looked as attractive as nails could. The hand was quivering a little, and the cheque seemed to be moved by a gentle breeze.
If he took it, Rollison would be committed to helping this young man. It was useless to tell himself that he could take the cheque, investigate tentatively, and hand it back if he were not satisfied that he could earn the money. There were other factors which could not be ignored apart from the value that this money could have for the two women. Their fear was so different from this man’s and yet as great, and to them this amount of money would seem a fortune.
One factor was the apparent truth – and the Toff had long since discovered that all things were suspect until proven – that Cedric Wright-or-whatever-it-was suffered as greatly from fear as the two women, and as young Benning. His money could not help him there, unless it could buy the services of a man who could.
Benning’s mother and Isobel had been able to buy those services by their obvious need; not by money.
“For God’s sake, don’t you understand what I’m offering you?” cried Cedric. “Here’s a thousand pounds!”
“So I see,” said Rollison, coolly. “Put it back in your pocket. When I’ve had the opportunity to consider your problem, and if I think I can help you, we can come to terms. What is your name?”
“Dwight.”
“Just Dwight?”
“Cedric Dwight.”
“I’ve an appointment at twenty minutes to six,” Rollison said, glancing at his electric clock, which pointed to ten minutes to five. “If that gives you time to tell me exactly what has been happening, who you are, what you do for a living, and what might make anyone want to kill you in cold blood, I’ll study the facts overnight and in the morning tell you if I can help.”
Cedric Dwight said, thinly: “But I might be dead by morning. Why can’t you help me now?”
It was a telling question, and he sounded as if he believed that the danger was as acute as that. That conviction could arise from the fact that he was strung up to a pitch of great nervous tension; certainly he had admitted that there had been no open attack on him before.
Was there a way to compromise?
“All right,” conceded Rollison. “You can stay here until the morning, by then I’ll have been able to make up my mind.” He smiled more amiably, in a further effort to reduce the other’s tension. “You certainly won’t come to any harm here.”
For a moment he thought that Cedric Dwight was going to reject that offer; if he did, then there was no problem: he would have to get his help from someone else. But slowly a brighter light showed in the big eyes, as if the significance of the offer slowly dawned on him. He began to smile. He had a good smile, and very white teeth. He became a good-looking young man, if a trifle effeminate. For the first time, Rollison noticed the well-defined marking of his eyebrows and the length of his curling eyelashes.
“May I really s
tay here? In this flat?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll accept the offer,” exclaimed Cedric Dwight. “You’ll never know what a relief that is to me.”
The odd and almost embarrassing thing was that there were tears in his eyes.
That was the moment when Jolly came upstairs, quite sedately, with a report. There was a police car with three Divisional detectives downstairs, checking what had happened. Two local constables were also there. No one had yet got round to asking where the driver of the small car was, but they were likely to within the next few minutes. Jolly did not make a report on anything else he had found, and nothing in his expression suggested that he had the bullet in his pocket. Rollison went to the telephone and dialled Scotland Yard, while Jolly moved into the domestic quarters, and Dwight stared intently at Rollison, as if at an oracle.
It was odd that anyone should inspire such confidence in a person who did not know him.
It had been as odd that Isobel and Mrs. Benning had felt the same kind of faith.
“Scotland Yard,” a girl operator said.
“Is Mr. Grice or Mr. Ribble there?”
“Mr. Ribble is, sir. Who is that?”
“Rollison.”
“I’ll put you through,” the girl said, and a moment later a man answered the call quickly and gruffly, as if the telephone were his enemy and there was no thought of peace between them.
“Ribble speaking.”
“Rollison.”
“Who—oh—you. Thought I told your man six o’clock.”
Ribble was not only a rough diamond, but was proud of it; he was determined at all costs to maintain his reputation.
“This is about another little matter,” Rollison said. “There was a spot of bother in Gresham Terrace, when someone tried to stop a caller from coming to see me. Your Divisional chaps are outside now. Do you think you could persuade them not to come and see me for the moment?”