John Creasey - The Toff and The Sleepy Cowboy

Rollison heard cars passing, followed suddenly by a sharp explosion, like the back-fire of a car.

But it wasn’t a back-fire.

Fragments of metal struck the windscreen, the sides of the car and the bonnet, clods of earth and turf smacked on to the metal and into the road. As they did so, Rollison peered ahead. Through a gap between two pieces of soil, saw the motor-cyclist disappearing at the roundabout. He heard brakes squealing and a car horn wailing, and heard Pamela Brown ask in a strangled voice:

“What — what was that?”

At the same moment a young man put his head through the window, and asked tensely :

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Rollison said, straightening up and letting Pamela go. “Thanks to the grace of God, and —”

“Thanks to your speed of action,” contradicted the young man, who had dark, wavy and attractive hair and a pleasant face. “I’ve never seen anyone jam on brakes so fast. Did you know what he was going to do?”

“I had an idea he was up to no good when I saw the way he was behaving,” Rollison replied. “Were you behind?”

“Fifty yards or so, yes. I saw everything. The motor-cyclist put on a fantastic burst of speed and tossed something into the car — well, at the car. The way you stopped made him miss.” He withdrew his head from the car as if to peer over the top, and said in a voice which sounded farther away: “My God, look at that hole!” He bobbed down again. “You know,” he went on in a bewildered voice. “I think he meant to kill you.”

“It looks very much like that to me, too,” Rollison conceded gravely, and he smiled up into the young man’s eyes. “Do you know the airport well?”

“Pretty well,” answered the other. “I’m on building maintenance here.”

“Can you go to the Airport Police and tell them what happened and give them this?” Rollison handed the other a visiting card which simply gave his name and address. “Ask for Chief Inspector Paterson, he’s expecting me.”

The young man glanced at the card, and then stared back at Rollison in stupefaction :

“You — you’re the Toff?”

“Some call me that,” Rollison agreed.

“Good Lord!” The young man still looked dumbstruck, but he wasn’t and before Rollison could urge him to hurry, he said : “Now I know how you came to act so quickly. You’re as good as your reputation. Yes, stay here, I’ll go and get the Inspector.”

He turned and ran back to his car. A moment later he passed them in a green mini Morris, going like a streak of lightning. No one else had stopped, but dozens of drivers had passed the be-spattered car and the hole in the ground and the smoke still rising from it.

Throughout all this, Pamela Brown had sat very still. Rollison did not even know whether she had looked at the young man, or at the hole, or whether she was dazed from shock. Now, he turned towards her, and as he did so she shifted round in her seat, placed her hands on his cheeks and drew his head towards her, then quite deliberately kissed him on the lips. When she drew back, she said:

“I shall never be able to thank you.”

“Just do that regularly and you’d be surprised,”

Rollison retorted.

“Please don’t make light of it,” she pleaded, and tears were close to her eyes. “You saved my life.”

“If I did, I also saved mine.”

“I would never have believed anyone could have acted so quickly. It wasn’t until Baby Blue Eyes explained that I realised what had happened. The motor-cyclist actually threw a bomb.”

“Which makes him a bad man.”

“And if it had come into the car —”

“It didn’t,” Rollison interrupted. “Pamela Brown, we’ve no time to brood on might have beens. He certainly meant to kill the pair of us and whether he was after one or the other or both we’ll soon find out. Do you know why anyone should want to kill me?”

In a subdued voice, Pamela answered: “No.”

“That makes two of us. Do you want to be interviewed by the Airport Police and then by the men from the Yard?”

Slowly, she shook her head.

“Not really,” she said.

“Then now is your only chance to avoid it,” Rollison told her. “If you take all the short cuts you’ll see —”

“Oh, I know where the taxis are,” she interrupted.

“You’ll really let me go?”

“I shall expect dinner tonight, tete a tete, at my flat.” Her eyes lit up.

“That would be lovely!”

“Don’t get yourself killed before then,” he warned. “And be careful crossing the road.”

She was already sliding along the seat towards the far door, looking at him but groping for the handle. She found it and opened the door, turned to get out, then stopped on the edge of the seat, turning her head as she cried:

“What’s the name of the street where my car is parked?”

“Hood Lane,” he replied without hesitation.

“Thank you,” she said, got out, bent down to stare at him intently for a few moments, and then went on fervently: “Bless you. Bless you!” She jumped away, slammed the door, and ran, waiting for cars to pass. He watched her moving with most attractive ease, and marvelled. Then he saw her waving at a taxi, and saw the taxi slow down.

“Lucky Pamela,” he said aloud.

She probably did know how lucky she was to be alive.

Certainly he knew how lucky he was, too, but — he did not understand the situation at all. Why try to kill him? Why follow him and the girl to the airport? He had another feeling, which made him shiver; he must have been followed but he hadn’t noticed the motorcyclist until he had pulled the car up here. Once he had the girl, he had not even troubled to keep a look-out. On such an affair as this, he must not be even momentarily careless twice.

Why

There was no point in asking himself that question, but he simply had to find out. And there were only two ways in which to do so. One, through Pamela Brown whose address was imprinted on his mind from the envelopes in her handbag; the other, through Thomas G. Loman. He sat back, feeling bleak and grim, and it passed through his mind that he had not even got out to examine the damage to the car.

He got out.

At least a dozen dents showed, and two places where the metal was actually jagged; that made him tighten his lips . . . Two minutes later when tall, lanky, fair-haired Alex Paterson came up with another detective and the youth, the sight of the jagged edges of metal torn by pieces which had been flung into the air by the bomb made their lips tighten, too.

“That was a hand grenade,” he remarked.

“Yes,” Rollison said. “These gentry will stop at nothing, will they?”

“What do you know about these gentry, Mr. Rollison?” asked Paterson.

“They appear to be able to operate on both sides of the Atlantic,” Rollison answered. “And those on this side are deadly. That is absolutely all I know, although I hope to learn much more.” He looked grimly into Paterson’s face and went on: “In fact I am going to. Has Loman come round yet?”

“No,” answered Paterson.

Rollison looked at him steadily, pondered, and asked: “How soon can we make sure no one throws a hand grenade at him?”

“My God!” breathed Paterson. He swung round to his car, picked up the radio telephone, and gave instructions.

Throughout all this, the young man with the piercing blue eyes watched Rollison intently, and now Rollison turned towards him, thinking absurdly: Baby Blue Eyes. There was a baffled look in those eyes, which were a most remarkable blue, and Rollison had an impression that he was suffering from shock.

“May I know your name?” asked Rollison.

“Eh? Oh. Yes, of course. Fisher. Jack Fisher. I — I can’t get over what you did and what happened. You —”

“Mr. Fisher,” Rollison interrupted, “what time do you come off duty?”

“Oh. Four o’clock, I’m on early turn.”

“I’d very much like to talk to you when you’re free,” Rollison said. “Perhaps we could have a drink.”

“At your place?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The place with the trophies?” asked Jack Fisher, and then apparently he realised he was being naive, and straightened up. “I’d like that very much, sir. I live in Fulham so I’m not very far away from you.”

“Shall we say five o’clock?” suggested Rollison. “The address is on the card.”

“Five o’clock,” said Baby Blue Eyes. “On the dot. I’ll look forward to it enormously.”

Paterson came away from the car at that moment, while the man with him began to pick up pieces of metal from the ground; only then did Rollison notice that the man had cleared the dirt and grass off the windscreen. There were three chips in the glass, obviously caused by metal fragments, but no other damage. Paterson glanced at this and said:

“When they say safety glass they mean safety.”

“Yes,” Rollison said, heavily. “Can you have this cleaned up for me?”

“I’ll fix it. You just leave the keys,” Paterson promised. “Get in my car, will you?”

His was a Morris 1800, and Rollison got in next to the driver’s seat, heard Paterson give instructions to his solitary man, and then saw another carload of policemen arrive. Paterson did not wait to talk to them but joined Rollison and started off. He kept silent until they were through the tunnel and on the way to a small group of buildings between two of the main terminals. The red cross denoting First Aid was at one driveway and they turned into this. As he swung into a parking place, Paterson said:

“I talked to Grice, at the Yard.”

“Good.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Why should I?” asked Rollison. “Does he still think I know more than I’ve admitted about this affair?”

“I got that impression,” Paterson answered, coming to a standstill. He had to move his bony knees to one side in order to get them clear of the dashboard : moving, he was an ungainly man. “And when I told him there had been an attempt to murder you, he asked me to make sure you’re protected — he’ll send a couple of men to take over from mine, Mr. Rollison.”

This meant that Rollison was going to be followed wherever he went.

“Everyone is being most considerate,” he observed drily. “It may be hard to believe, but I’m more interested in seeing Thomas G. Loman than I am in hearing how worried everyone is about me.”

He flashed a smile, and Paterson laughed.

There were two men at the entrance to the two-storey hospital building and another just inside, and when Rollison and Paterson went into a narrow passage off the main one, another man was at the swing doors. At least, the danger was being taken seriously. Paterson led the way, pushing open a door marked ‘Private’ and Rollison found himself in a small, square, green-painted hospital ward with one bed.

On this, his feet thrusting out at the foot, was a man who lay on his back, with his eyes closed and nothing, at this distance, to suggest that he was alive.

6

Thomas G. Loman?

IN ONE CORNER of the room a small man sat, with a pocket book in his hands. He stood up slowly, gaze fixed on Paterson, who was looking at the bare feet, which were almost at right-angles from the heels. From this angle the toes, particularly the big toe, looked huge. A nurse pushed her way past Rollison and lifted the blanket which draped over the bony ankles, pulled it down and placed it over the feet. It covered them from the top but gave them no real protection. But it was warm in here.