The Toff and The Sleepy Cowboy Read online

  He went down on one knee and examined the lock.

  It was one of the old fashioned mortice type, difficult to open unless one had the know-how. He had. He took a knife from a special pocket in his trouser waist-band, one with a surprising number of blades — a souvenir of Poland, where knives were knives. This had a pick-lock blade. He used it quickly, not worrying too much about noise as the flat seemed to be empty. The barrel resisted for a long time but at last shot back with a snap of sound greater than he liked.

  He paused, but no other sound came.

  He pushed the door open cautiously, seeing more and more of the room beyond. Someone might be there, lying doggo: Alec George King, for instance. Certainly no one was in this room, which was pleasantly furnished but in no way remarkable.

  Two doors led off on one side; one, off the other. He checked the one first; it was a bathroom. He checked one of the others to find a small kitchen. So the third door would lead to a bedroom. He pushed it open cautiously, and saw a huge, king size bed, the kind of bed a really tall man could stretch on.

  On the bed was a stetson hat, of pale brown leather; and laid out was a suit which, even at first glance, was not a conventional cut. He went farther in, and at the side of the bed saw a pair of western riding boots, not unlike Tommy Loman’s. He felt quite certain that the guess that Tommy was to be impersonated was justified. Now, he needed to find out all he could about the plot.

  There was a small dressing-table and a chest of drawers; he went through every drawer but found only clothes. A hanging cupboard was filled, half with a man’s apparel, half with a woman’s; there were no papers. He moved back to the living room and saw a small writing desk, much higher than most; obviously this was to allow Alec George King to get his knees under. The long middle drawer was unlocked and inside were oddments, cheque books, cheque stubs and letters. Rollison scanned the letters which were all demands for payment of overdue bills.

  Folded in a bank statement was an even sharper demand for the clearance of an overdraft.

  Rollison went through the other papers with extreme care, and found one thing he was looking for in the paying in book. A week ago, King had paid five hundred pounds into his bank account, putting this into credit by over three hundred pounds.

  There was nothing to indicate where the money had come from.

  Rollison tried two smaller drawers in the bureau; one was unlocked, and contained postage stamps, pins, clips and other trifles. The other was locked. He used the pick-lock blade of his knife again, and in a few moments the lock turned and he pulled the drawer open gently.

  Inside, were pencilled notes kept in diary form. Obviously the early notes had been jotted down from memory, for they ran:

  Sept. 15/16 — A.W. called.

  Sept. 17— Saw A.W. who outlined the general idea.

  Sept. 17/18 — Talked it over with Effie, who didn’t like it much.

  Sept. 19 — Asked A.W. how much it would be worth — he said £5,000 minimum, £500 at once — cash.

  Sept. 20 — Talked it over with Effie again and she agreed to go ahead if I would salt the first £500 away.

  There followed some notes about a meeting with the mysterious A.W., his promise to pay a further £500 once King had started ‘the job’. There was a cryptic note: “I was always good in a Yankee part!” If that meant what it seemed to, King did not know the difference between a Yankee and a man from the south west, but that was a passing thought. How had King started to earn that second five hundred pounds? There was another note:

  Oct. 3rd — Effie says she can’t tell the difference.

  Oct. 4th — I did the tape and posted it to A.W.

  Oct. 6th — A.W. delighted — he coughed up the second £500.

  Rollison put this aside and looked about the room, saw a portable record player in one corner and a small tape recorder with several tapes kept in place with rubber bands, on a nearby stool. One tape was on the recorder, ready to play. Rollison studied the instrument and then switched it on. There were some squeaks and scratches, before a man’s voice sounded.

  “Sure — that’s my name . . . I come from Tucson, Arizona . . . I work at the Lazy K ranch between Tucson and Nogales . . . Well, why not . . . Thomas G. Loman . . . I am twenty-eight years old . . . I was born in Truth and Consequences, New Mexico . . . My grandfather was English. He. . .”

  Rollison heard the tape right through. There was a great deal of repetition, obviously King had been learning all he said by heart, so as to stand in another man’s place. Here in the heart of London an Englishman had been learning to take on the identity of Thomas G. Loman! He switched off, thinking that if he took the tape it would warn King that he had been traced; for the time being it would be better to leave it.

  Rollison had been here for about half an hour.

  The woman whom he assumed to be the Effie of the notes might be back at any moment. There wasn’t time to listen to any more tapes. He sat at the desk and scribbled out a copy of the notes and the dates, added the name and address of King’s bank manager, and went to the door leading to the landing.

  He heard no sound.

  He opened the door and stepped on to the landing, turned and bent down to lock the door, always more difficult, with a pick-lock, than opening it. He worried even less about noise, breathed with satisfaction as the lock clicked, straightened up, and turned round.

  Framed in the open doorway of Flat 4 was a man who had a stocking drawn over his face, as a mask.

  He covered Rollison with an automatic.

  * * *

  Rollison stood utterly still.

  So, for a few moments, did the man with the gun. There were noises from the street; cars, whistling, voices. There was music from the flats below, but up here there was just the stillness and the silence. It seemed a long time before the man in the doorway said: “So you made it.”

  “Sooner or later,” Rollison replied, “I always do.”

  “You won’t after this,” the other said, softly. “Who knows?” Rollison shrugged.

  “I know. You won’t live to.”

  Rollison did not speak, but simply raised his eyebrows. The man in the doorway moved to one side, and said: “Come in.”

  “I would rather stay here,” replied Rollison.

  “So I’ll have to shoot you there,” the masked man retorted.

  “I would rather you didn’t,” said Rollison, and began to walk towards the other.

  The man could be the one who had hurled the hand grenade: there was no way of telling. His hand was steady and his voice cold and calculating; there was no way of being sure whether he would shoot. If he, Rollison, allowed himself to go into the other flat, he would be trapped; here, with the stairs and the hallway below, he had some freedom of movement.

  He must take a chance and leap for the stairs.

  It had to be the right moment — the exact moment.

  He was within a yard of the man who could shoot him at point blank range, so it was literally now or never. He actually flexed his muscles to duck and spring towards the stairs when a door opened somewhere below, with a squeak, and footsteps sounded in the hall. The eyes behind the mask swivelled to one side and on that instant Rollison kicked the man on the shin. Gasp of pain and the swivelling of the gun came simultaneously but Rollison had time to chop with the side of his hand on the gun-wrist.

  The gun fell.

  “Stay down there!” Rollison roared. “Stay there!”

  “Effie!” the man cried from behind the mask. “Effie!”

  Rollison heard a cry from below, and turned his head to look towards the stairs. It was his first mistake, for the masked man, still gasping, backed into the room and disappeared. The door slammed. Rollison snatched at the handle, but the girl below began to cry out:

  “Help, help! I’m being robbed.”

  Rollison stood absolutely still, to try to collect himself.

  The man would get away through the window and there was little chance of
catching him; if he, Rollison, forced this door and went in he would be breaking and entering, very much on the wrong side of the law.

  A man spoke downstairs and the woman whom the masked man had thought was Effie was screaming: he could just distinguish the words :

  “Up there, up there!”

  Rollison could run down the stairs and out of the house, or more wisely, go down and reason. He had what he wanted. The girl was now alarmed, and the wise thing was to have the police here as soon as possible. He could take them to King’s room, and the evidence of the plot to impersonate Tommy Loman would be indisputable.

  So he called: “No one’s robbing anybody,” and he went to the head of the stairs.

  The pregnant young woman was standing in the hall, a middle-aged man stood with his arm round her, a scared-looking woman was in the doorway of one of the flats. Effie was sobbing and screaming in a magnificent show of pretended hysterics, and of course she was trad-ing on her condition. She caught sight of him and pointed, screaming even more loudly :

  “There he is, there he is!”

  Rollison began to walk down the stairs. It was useless attempting to stop the girl, who was undoubtedly trying desperately to give the masked man time to get away. The middle-aged man looked as scared as the woman in the doorway.

  “Now, don’t upset yourself, my dear, don’t upset yourself.”

  “We — we ought to send for the police,” called the middle-aged woman, staring at Rollison defiantly. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  “I certainly should,” urged Rollison, forcing a smile.

  “I—”

  His voice was drowned by the roar of an explosion above their heads. The floor shook, a picture crashed down, the roar went on and pieces of the ceiling fell in, a door banged, then another. There was a split second of uncanny silence followed by a roaring sound.

  “Oh, my God!” cried the woman in the doorway.

  “He did it, he did it,” gasped Effie, still pointing at Rollison. “He’s blown the place up!”

  Someone had obviously blown the flat up, and the roaring sound was unmistakable; that of fire. Rollison turned and ran upstairs, for the evidence he so badly needed was there, but he saw a red glow at the foot of the door and knew that the Kings’ rooms were an inferno. If he opened the door the fire would get out of control so he went back, calling to the man :

  “Telephone the police and the fire service. Hurry!” He ran through the hall and out of the house, for unless a delayed action bomb had been used the man was still nearby. Rollison raced to the corner, but as he reached it, he saw a motor-cyclist swing out of the rear entrance and roar away, towards the Embankment.

  Flames were showing at a window of Rubicon House, people were already in the street, a police siren sounded not far off. Rollison could make himself scarce, or stay and talk; he ‘decided that the sensible course was to stay and talk. That way, he would be less likely to anger the police.

  * * *

  He told part of his story to a divisional detective-sergeant, who telephoned the Division, who telephoned Grice at the Yard, who asked Rollison to go and see him.

  “Gladly,” Rollison said, the ringing of fire engine bells almost drowning his words. “If one of your chaps can give me a lift. My car —”

  “I’ve heard what happened to your car,” said Grice, grimly.

  His office was high in the new building at Broadway and Victoria Street, not far from its old site. Rollison had not quite got used to the acres of glass and the similarity of each floor plan. Grice, a tall, spare and angular man with a sallow complexion, was good-looking in a rather severe way. The bridge of his nose was sharp so that the skin at it showed white. On one side of his face was a large, discoloured scar, the aftermath of an explosion which had nearly killed him. At the time he had been opening a box addressed to the Toff. They never referred to that, these days, but it had forged a bond between them which was often strained to breaking point, but never actually snapped.

  “Well,” Grice said as they shook hands, “it looks as if they mean to get you, Rolly.”

  “Even I’m beginning to think that,” Rollison confessed.

  “Did this bomb thrower think you were in the flat?”

  “No,” Rollison answered. “I think I was an incidental — he wanted to destroy the evidence.”

  “Oh,” said Grice heavily. “What evidence did you find?”

  “Notes and tapes which show that a certain actor, Alec George King, has been learning the part of Thomas G. Loman, with a view to impersonating him,” answered Rollison. “It was there, Bill.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Must I incriminate myself ?” demanded Rollison, and Grice smiled faintly:

  “Did you actually see it?” he demanded.

  “Yes,” answered Rollison. “And if I really had to I’d say so in court. The certain thing is that we need to talk to the actor named King and to his wife Effie. Is the fact that their flat was set on fire enough to justify a search for them?”

  “We don’t need to search for the woman,” Grice told him. “I’ve just had a telephone call from Chelsea. Appar-ently labour pains started just after you left and she was rushed to Chelsea Hospital to have her baby. There was a rumour that it might be a miscarriage, another that the child was born dead. And in either case a lot of people are going to say that it was your visit to her home which really brought things on.”

  11

  Whitemail

  AFTER A LONG PAUSE, Rollison said: “That’s what they’re going to say, are they Bill?”

  “You know perfectly well that they are.”

  “Some of them may but you know as well as I do that most of them won’t,” Rollison said with forced lightness.

  “Was the house destroyed?”

  “The upper part was gutted, and the downstairs flats are uninhabitable.”

  “Are your chaps searching the wreckage?”

  “The place is still burning.”

  “One tape from a bundle in the front room would be enough to prove my point,” Rollison said.

  “There isn’t likely to be even the remains of a tape,” Grice told him. “They say the upper part went up in no time, and the roof has fallen in.”

  “Is there a call out for King?”

  “To come and see his wife at the hospital, yes. Rolly, we’ve nothing on King, and you know it.”

  “Bill,” said Rollison, “these people are killers. I think King’s life is in grave danger because he could tell us —all right, you — what’s been going on. If I were you I wouldn’t simply try to find him to soothe his wife down, I’d try to find him because his life is in acute danger. There’s nothing in the world to stop you from putting out a general call.”

  Slowly, Grice, conceded: “He could be in danger, I suppose. I’ll have a general call put out for him.” He lifted one of three receivers on his desk, and gave instructions, put down the telephone and went on to Rollison almost in the same breath. “The description of the motor-cyclist who attacked you and this motor-cyclist is identical. Green helmet, black goggles, on the big side, and splay-footed.”

  “Any trace of him?” asked Rollison hopefully.

  “I’ll tell you the moment there is,” Grice promised. “Thanks. What more do you want from me now?”

  “A statement covering why you went to Rubicon

  House and what you did and anything you can say to help us find the motor-cyclist.”

  “That will be a pleasure,” Rollison replied with relish.

  Half an hour later, he was taken downstairs to the garage beneath the new building, and the first thing he saw in a bay near the ramp was his Bristol. A police mechanic moved over towards him and a sergeant whom Grice had sent down with him.

  “Did you get that bomb off?” asked Rollison.

  “No, sir, I did not!” the mechanic replied. “We sent for a bomb disposal squad, and they came pronto and prised it off. They said it would have blown up half the
car, and you with it. It’s all okay now, though, sir.”

  “Yes,” said Rollison. “Thanks very much.”

  All right, he kept repeating to himself. All right. One moment he could have laughed at the ludicrousness of the fact that so much had happened. He must have been recognised by Effie, who had sent for the motor-cyclist: what other explanation could there be. At least, he wasn’t being held. He got into the car and saw that it was a quarter past five.

  Pamela Brown was due at half past six, and —Good Lord! He’d forgotten Jack Fisher!

  What would he find when he reached his flat?

  Outside were policemen and near them roughly-dressed men, Ebbutt’s men, who had come to keep an eye on him at Jolly’s request.

  He found Tommy Loman talking earnestly to Jack Fisher, in the big room, glasses in hand, whisky and a syphon of soda on a low table between them. He crept in the side way on recognising Tommy’s voice. He gave a soft whistle at the kitchen door, to alert Jolly, who turned at once.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Yes. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “The radio mentioned you in connection with a fire in Chelsea, sir.”

  “Did they mention Tommy Loman?”

  “No, sir — no names were mentioned except that of a Mrs. King —”

  “Jolly,” interrupted Rollison, “even our Grice tried to whitemail me about Effie King. In fact I still owe him a comment on what I think of her.” He leaned against the sink. “How long has Fisher been here?”

  “About twenty minutes, sir. I thought it best to give them a drink and let them find their own level. It has been rather amusing — they are vying with each other in their knowledge of you!”

  “What?” breathed Rollison.

  “It is true, sir. Fisher has obviously followed your activities for many years with close interest, and whilst here Mr. Loman has learned a great deal from the press cuttings books and case histories. Will Mr. Fisher stay to dinner?”

  “No,” answered Rollison. “I’d like him to go before Miss Brown arrives. Has anyone called?”