by John Creasey
He sounded as if he meant it; and he did.
“I also would like to,” said Simon politely. “How are you trying, and what happened when you were nearly run down by the imbecile in that car?” Simon winced as he finished, and snapped his fingers with a noise like the pulling of a champagne cork. “Sapristi! Not an imbécile, a murderer!”
“The girl was known to be fascinated by the stage,” said Rollison. “She once did a song-and-dance piece in a small dive in London. They guessed that she would be looking for a job like that here; that’s how it was they traced her to the Baccarat. Have you ever heard of the great Rambeau, King of the Night Clubs?”
“Have I ever heard—” began Simon, and drew his legs up so that his knees almost met his chin; he looked as if he were praying. “The famous impressario, whose boîtes de nuit is all the rage of London and New York. Who comes soon to the Riviera? Who is going to stage the biggest cabaret show in the whole of France? My friend, who has not heard of the great Rambeau? Why do you think that Leon, of the Baccarat, sends for the one and only Simon Leclair and his Fifi, hein? I tell you. Only the best is good enough to compete with the great Rambeau, so, we come. Why do you ask me if I have heard of Rambeau?”
“For the time being,” said Rollison, “I am posing as Rambeau’s agent. I am engaging the girls for his show, the artistes, everything. Rambeau,” added Rollison, “is a good friend of mine. He agreed to let me represent him. So I’ve spread the word that I’m looking for girls for the greatest cabaret in France, and—”
“Hope this girl you seek will apply?” boomed Simon.
“Yes.”
“And no?”
“She hasn’t. A lot of girls have, though. There have been times when it’s hardly been safe to go out alone,” continued Rollison, smiling faintly. “I think I’ve seen every would-be leg-show all-show girl in Nice, Cannes, Menton, Monte Carlo, and a surprising lot of other places. I’ve seen them from the age of fifteen to four-score and fifteen. I swear one was nearer a hundred than ninety, yet still able to dance. I’ve seen hundreds upon hundreds, Simon, and the girl wasn’t among them.”
Simon considered all this, and then declared: “It is sad, but you will never find her.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Rollison very softly. “I’m not at all sure, Simon Leclair. I’ve asked for her by name, just casually—I asked some of the girls if they’d ever met her, saying that if they had it would be worth their while to tell me. No one told me, but” – he tapped the letter – “I had this message—and someone tried to run me down. And I came across a beggar who says that he saw her near here, only last week.”
“Last week?”
“That’s right,” said Rollison. “I don’t say that I’d vouch for the beggar in a court of law, but he looks honest, and his eyes are always open for the main chance. He says that the girl whose photograph I showed him was at the far end of the promenade, alone, last week. He was there, he has a niche where he sleeps, and was going to it. The girl was frightened—”
“Frightened?” interjected Simon.
“Yes. He says that he asked her if he could be of any help, and she just stared at him, then burst into tears. Then a car drew up, a man jumped out, flung him a thousand francs, and told him the girl was having boy-friend trouble. This man drove the girl away.” Rollison paused; then picked up another cigarette and lit it. “The beggar and I together have seen the three bodies which have been washed up this week within the boundaries of Nice, Cannes, and Monte Carlo. The girl wasn’t among them.”
“You pay this beggar?” asked Simon abruptly.
“A little.”
“To a beggar, your little may be a fortune,” said Simon wisely. “He might tell you all this so that you would keep on paying him. Let me deal with this beggar. I shall be able to tell you whether he is telling the truth.”
“Later, perhaps,” promised Rollison. “Simon, there were two girls this morning. I’d seen them both when they came for an audition. Very nice,” he added, almost as an aside; and there was a reminiscent smile at his lips. “Very nice indeed; quite ready to show off their charms to Rambeau’s agent, when their beauty of figure could speak for itself. They were on the promenade. They wanted to speak to me. They didn’t because they dared not. I wish I knew why.”
“Why do you think?” demanded Simon.
“You mean, what do I guess?” Rollison hesitated, and said firmly: “I think they’re being watched. I think that one of them sent me the note saying she’d be here at twelve and stayed away because she was afraid to keep the appointment. Or else she was prevented. I don’t like anything that’s going on.”
“But—” began the clown, and stopped.
“Yes?”
“The attempt to run you down suggests that you are beginning to learn,” declared Simon, rubbing his great hands together and making a noise that was peculiarly his own; it could sound through a packed auditorium like distant thunder. “Is that what you think? That imbecile driver—”
“He’s certainly a man to watch,” agreed the Toff. “I wish I knew why he chose to run me down when he did, Simon. What do I know that scares him? Or what does he think I know?”
Simon said: “We have to find that out! What is there to do next?” His great eyes were open at their widest. “How can I help you? Who is this missing blonde?”
“There’s a photograph of her in the top drawer,” Rollison said.
Simon turned, stretched out a fabulously long arm, opened the drawer, and plucked out the photograph. He studied it, eyes narrowed, lids like shutters. The Toff could not see it, but knew it almost as well as he knew his own face.
The girl was Daphne Robina Myall. She was pretty and she had charm, but she was not really beautiful. There was more character than beauty in her face – one of the things which surprised the Toff, for usually girls who lost their heads and tried to make a fortune or else to find fame in the demi-monde of France were empty-headed floosies, sisters to the original dumb blonde. Daphne Myall was not empty-headed. He had checked everything her parents had told him with many others: with friends, with the headmistress of her expensive and exclusive school, with her dressmakers, her milliner, her hairdresser; and all were agreed that she was no fool.
And they said that whatever she wanted she was likely to get. She no more thought of taking no for an answer than she would have thought of entering a vow of silence. Like so many who had filled a pretty head with Stardust, she longed for the fame of the footlights; and someone unknown had promised her that fame here.
Now she had vanished.
If the little old beggar with the fine brown eyes had not lied to Rollison, she had been here a week ago.
“What is it that we do next?” asked Simon Leclair, and so committed himself to the task. “You may be a badly injured man, but I am hale and hearty.” To prove it, he thumped his chest with great vigour. “What can I do for you, my good friend? Today is Thursday. On Monday I begin at the Baccarat; until then I am free, Fifi is free, and we will do everything we can to help.”
Rollison did not answer.
“My friend, there must be something we can do,” insisted Simon, and looked as if he were about to burst into tears. His double-jointed body slumped into a position of utter dejection, his mobile face assumed an expression of deep gloom. As he had clowned his way to the top of his world, so he clowned his way through life, as if it were an act which never really finished. He looked at Rollison from beneath his lashes, then began to rock gently to and fro.
Rollison watched him thoughtfully.
“Something,” pleaded Leclair. “Find this Raoul, find the Villa Seblac—”
“We can do that any time,” said Rollison. “The question is, what’s less obvious? The simple thing, I think. Find out who knows me here—who knows who I am and what I do. If it’s gen
erally known that I’m a private eye, it won’t help at all, but if very few know it, we might be able to trace a line back. Will you do that?”
“Of course,” promised Simon, and began the lengthy process of standing up, first looking askance at the chandeliers to make sure that he didn’t bang his head. He was crouching when the telephone bell rang, and continued his upwards movement while watching Rollison lift the receiver and say ‘’Allo’, a Frenchman to the life.
As he listened, his expression changed. He looked into Simon Leclair’s eyes, and his own were cold and hard. It was only a few seconds, but it seemed an age before he said: “Yes, someone will come, Gaston. Where did you say?”
He paused again, said: “Yes, I understand,” twice, and then rang off. Simon was now standing upright, his head only a few inches from the ceiling. He did not speak but waited hopefully and expectantly.
“That was my beggar,” Rollison said softly. “He’s seen the girl again, on a boat rounding the point at Cap Mirabeau. And I’m stuck here.” He clenched his hands, gritted his teeth, and almost overdid it. “Simon, you’ve seen her picture; go and see if—”
“I am on my way,” said Simon Leclair, and made a swift movement towards the door. “If she is there, I shall find her!” He slid out of the door and closed it noiselessly behind him.
As the latch clicked, Rollison pushed back the bedspread, jumped out of bed, and dressed with furious speed.
Chapter Four
Poor Little Beggar
Simon believed that Rollison’s leg was so badly injured that he must rest it. The manager believed it. Porters believed it. The sleek-haired driver of the car which had nearly run him down almost certainly believed it. That made a number of pertinent reasons why it would be wise for Rollison to continue to pretend that he was hors de combat. But he might step out of the room and bang into Suzanne, who could be squared; or into a waiter, who couldn’t; and he might get away with the ruse for hours or even days. There was now an enemy, known to exist, if unknown in identity; and the more the unknown could be fooled, the better.
Rollison rang for Suzanne, then bent down, opened the bottom drawer of the ornate dressing-table, and took out a small, grey automatic. It was a Webley .32 which had seen a lot of service. He loaded swiftly and with the casual precision of a chain-smoker lighting a cigarette. He put it into his hip pocket, which was so cut that it concealed the bulge. Seven bullets should be enough, whatever the emergency – but there wasn’t likely to be an emergency where shooting would be necessary.
Was there?
They had used that car, which might have killed him.
Suzanne came, hurrying and bright as she opened the door. She saw the empty bed, and stopped on the threshold, arms raised in astonishment.
“M’sieu!”
“Close the door, ma petite,” urged the Toff. As she did, he smiled broadly enough to dispense her sudden anxiety. “I’m going out. My injured leg is to fool some friends of mine—a practical joke, you see.” He moved towards her, tilting her head, his forefinger placed on the point of her chin. She was such a child, with clear skin and beautiful eyes and great freshness. “Don’t say a word to anyone, not even to Alphonse.” Alphonse was the father of all porters in Nice. “Not to anyone,” he insisted.
“I will not, m’sieu. But for you I am so glad!”
“Bless you,” he said, in English; then added in French: “Go to the head of the stairs and the lift, and if the lift is on the move, or anyone is approaching, drop your keys with a bang. Understand?”
“Perfectly, m’sieu!”
“Wait two minutes, first.”
“Yes,” she said, and her eyes glowed because she liked sharing a practical joke with the English milord; all her life she would be sure that he was a milord. She went out, drab blue skirt swinging about nice legs.
Rollison opened another drawer, and took out a navy-blue beret, the colour faded to grey at the top,’ for it had seen a lot of wear. He pulled this on. It was not a disguise, but it made a startling difference. From the wardrobe he took an old, faded blue jacket, with a zip fastener up the front and elastic round the waist; and a pair of old, patched blue jeans. He drew all of these on, and inside the two minutes’ grace that he had asked for he was at the door of his room.
He opened it an inch, and looked out. Suzanne dropped her keys with a metallic thump. He closed the door and stayed where he was. Then he heard the distant whine of the lift. It did not seem to stop at this floor. He opened the door again; there was Suzanne, standing at a point of vantage to see stairs, lift, and passages. She beckoned him with jerky, excited movements.
He went out, closing the door.
“But, m’sieu,” Suzanne breathed, when she saw him again.
“Go back and tidy my room,” Rollison said. “If anyone wants me, say that I’m having treatment for my leg, that I may have to go to hospital!” He gave her a wink which rivalled the prodigious one of Simon, then hurried along the passage. But he walked with curious gait, not like his own, and hunched his shoulders so that no one would have been surprised to hear that he was an electrician or a plumber or some artisan in the hotel on business which interested the customers only when it inconvenienced them.
A door leading off the end of the passage led to the service stairs and service lift. He chose the stairs. Luck so often favoured the bold. No one saw him until he was passing the open door of a huge kitchen, which looked like a palace built in stainless steel peopled by spacemen dressed in spotless white from the hem of their long aprons to the top of their stove-pipe hats. No one took any notice of the Toff. He went out of a service door, into a narrow cobbled street. A van stood outside, and men were unloading netting sacks of oranges, onions, green-leaved artichokes, and French beans. He moved swiftly towards the wider street at the end, and something glistened at his feet: the polish of his shoes.
He kicked into a pile of rubbish, smearing them, and hurried on.
He wanted a taxi, or better, but unlikely, a drive-yourself car; in it he would head as fast as he could for a headland which was very like the Cap Mirabeau, with one vital exception.
It was in the opposite direction from here.
Simon Leclair would be having a wasted journey. That was a little hard on Simon, but he was a married man with a married man’s responsibilities, whereas the Toff was single.
The beggar had simply said that he thought he had seen the girl of the photograph in the grounds of the Villa Seblec, at a point called the He de Seblec.
The killer driver had given his address as the Villa Seblec.
The taxi moved away from the spot where it had dropped Rollison. The driver was not going far – just round the headland into some shade, drawn off the main road at a spot where he would not be noticed. He would doze there in the slothful warmth of midday, more than content with the five-thousand francs in his shabby leather wallet.
Rollison had known exactly where to come because of the beggar’s directions. Now he studied the lie of the land in the shade of a glorious bush of bougainvillea, so deep and rich and naming a red that it seemed to be born out of the sun. He stepped out into the burning heat, moving swiftly and sweating slightly. No one was in sight. This road was protected from the cliffs below by a low stone wall. The road wound out of sight, cut out of the side of the cliffs themselves.
A mile along, the beggar had told him, was a private road leading to the lie de Seblec and two villas, one called Le Coc, the other the Villa Seblec. By climbing the wall by this mass of bougainvillea, and taking a precarious route over the rocks, he would probably be able to reach the spit of land without being seen from the villas.
The beggar would be looking out for him.
Rollison climbed the wall. Below, the rugged cliff dropped almost sheer for two hundred feet; if he fell he would be thrown into the sea.
From
here, it looked a deep, deep blue.
Rollison scrambled over pale grey rocks in which long, coarse grass grew, a few wild geraniums showed up vividly, and flowers he couldn’t name grew from cracks in the rock. He would not be seen until he got near the sea, where Gaston the beggar would be waiting for him.
Gaston had told him that he had followed the raven-haired girl here, and watched – and seen Daphne Myall.
The heat was a worse enemy than the danger of being seen.
It came down from the sun; it rose from the rocks; and it seemed to rise out of that deep blue sea, which had a curious brassy look, although in the distance a faint haze obscured the sharpness of the horizon. Some way out, a single white yacht rode at anchor, graceful and still in the Mediterranean’s midday sun.
Holding on to a rock here, finding a wobbly foothold there, Rollison moved with commendable speed. It did not seriously occur to him that he might fall. The bright green roof of one of the villas came in sight, and he paused. There was a dip in the rocky land ahead, enabling him to see; that probably meant that he could be seen if anyone were watching.
Why should they watch?
He scanned the rocky cliff, and saw no sign of movement or of man. A ginger cat was sitting in a little patch of shade, and had one eye open, watching him. He went on, more slowly and more cautiously, until the whole of the roof and part of the upper walls of the villa came in sight; suddenly he could see a window.
“Make for a spiky palm-tree, growing shoulder high,” the beggar had said. “I will place a cigarette packet there for you to see.”
The stunted palm-tree was there, leaves thick and spiky, and looking as though the heat had drawn all the sap out of them. The cigarette packet? Rollison scanned the rocky hillside, until he saw something white and blue, went towards it, and recognised it as a packet of Celtique. He didn’t pick it up, but moved closer to the palm-tree. On the telephone the beggar had said that he had a hiding-place, just below the palm-tree, from which he could see the villa and the jetty, but could not be seen.
