by John Creasey
At a quarter to eleven, Rollison reached a corner house in a quiet Kensington Street – Marple Street. A small sign fastened to the wall by the porch, which was supported by two rounded pillars, read: Marple Guest House.
The brown front door needed painting, and it stood ajar. He opened it wide and stepped into a narrow hall. A vacuum cleaner was buzzing somewhere upstairs. The hall was papered a faded blue with red roses on it, there were a few old prints in cheap frames, a big mirror which was badly speckled, a hall stand, a baize-covered board festooned with notices of nearby cinemas and a few West End theatres and, the thing which Rollison was really glad to see, an In—Out board. In all there were about fifteen names, and opposite each was a number, presumably a room number, and alongside this the word In or Out, which could be changed from one to the other by sliding a small marker. There were two showing In – a Mr Carter and a Miss Soloman. Leah and Soloman went together well enough.
It would be Leah Soloman who had been out late the night before – late enough to have driven from Hapley after taking the girl away from the station.
“There couldn’t be that much luck,” Rollison said softly.
The vacuum cleaner stopped, and he could hear his own breathing. He waited for footsteps, but heard none; and the cleaner started again. Miss Soloman’s room was 7. He went up the stairs, which were covered with a strip of carpet already threadbare in places. The house was clean enough, and the furniture and the banisters seemed to be polished; it was good third rate. He reached a landing and saw four doors closed, a bathroom door open; the doors were marked 3 to 6. He went up the next flight of stairs, turned along a landing, and saw room 7, straight in front of him; the numeral 7 was a metal one, screwed into the door.
The vacuum was on the floor above, and seemed much louder. He wanted it to go on. He took out a penknife which was a little fatter than most, and selected a blade which police would have frowned on but which would have made a burglar’s eyes glisten; it was a simple picklock. He felt quite safe to use it under cover of the noise of the vacuum cleaner, and twisted it freely. He felt it push out the key on the other side, then felt the resistance, twisted – and as the lock went back the vacuum cleaner stopped, and the click! sounded startlingly loud.
Rollison stood quite still. The sounds above his head suggested that the cleaner was being pushed along manually; and then footsteps sounded immediately overhead, as if the woman with the machine had stepped into the passage. He turned the handle of room 7, and thrust; if Leah Soloman bolted her door, he would have to try again, and—
She didn’t.
The door opened, and he stepped into a shadowy room, with blinds drawn at big windows; and the windows were probably closed, because the room had a heavy smell, of body warmth and cheap scent and stale tobacco smoke. He closed the door swiftly and the room seemed much darker. He picked up the fallen key, inserted and turned it, and the lock clicked. He dropped the key into his pocket as someone started coming down the stairs, treading very heavily.
He heard a creaking sound, and from the bed which was against the wall on his right a woman said in a squeaky voice: “That you, Max?”
“If you don’t want to get badly hurt, keep quiet,” Rollison said roughly.
The woman in bed was too far away from him to put a hand over her mouth, and there was nothing to stop her from calling for help, unless this frightened her into silence. He heard the creaking much more loudly, and saw her struggling to sit up. She was breathing very hard.
The light from the window was kind to her, for he could make out little more than her shape. The vacuum cleaner thumped on the floor just outside the room, and a woman clumped along, pushing it.
The woman in the bed drew in a deep breath, as if she were going to scream for help.
“Quiet, or I’ll bring the police,” Rollison whispered.
She didn’t cry out. The footsteps began thumping down the stairs again. The woman in the bed had not moved, and now that Rollison was getting accustomed to the light, he could see her fair hair falling to her shoulders, and remembered Smart’s description, of a small waisted, balloon-bosomed blonde.
“Who—who are you?” she managed to ask squeakily.
“Just sit there, and keep quiet,” Rollison ordered. He went across to the window, and raised the blind a little; beyond it was a net curtain, so he could let in a little light without the risk of being seen. He let the blind up; it rolled viciously round its roller, and shed bright light on Leah Soloman.
For the second time that morning, he saw a woman at her worst who yet stood up well under scrutiny. Silky blonde hair was this one’s saving grace, but she had rosy cheeks and bright eyes and a fresh complexion; she wasn’t any more than twenty-two or three. Her small mouth suggested that she could be spiteful, but just now it was taut and her eyes were rounded in genuine fear. She sat bolt upright. She wore a yellow pyjama suit which stretched very tightly, too tightly for comfort, he thought; and she looked like a little high-breasted pigeon. It was almost certain that she also had a small waist.
“What do you want?”
“Where did you take Caroline Kane?” asked Rollison, moving towards her as he spoke. He would be able to judge from her reaction whether she recognised the name or not: and in a moment he was quite sure. She threw up her hands, as if in dread.
“Well, where?” he demanded. He drew near enough to spring forward and slap a hand across her mouth if she looked likely to scream, but he thought that she was paralysed with fear. “Tell me and be quick about it, and I’ll forget you had anything to do with it. Where is she?”
“It’s no use asking me,” the girl gasped. She was breathing hissingly now. “I don’t know where they took her. We brought her to London and handed her over. That was all we had to do.”
“So that was all you had to do,” said Rollison heavily. He felt a sense of anti-climax, because she admitted that so quickly. It was too easy, and experience had taught him that whenever a solution seemed too easy, it was time to prepare for the unexpected snag. He moved to the side of the bed and stood looking down at her; and he saw her dart a glance towards the door, as if she were sure that it would open and that help would come. He stood with his fingers crooked, ready to close them round her throat, and went on softly: “Who did you hand her over to?”
“I don’t know who it was,” Leah gasped. “There was a man in a car, but I didn’t see him; it was pitch dark. I don’t know where she’s gone.”
“Don’t you?” asked Rollison, very softly, and the glitter in his eyes frightened her, for she thrust her hands out towards him, palms downwards, and pressed back against the pillows.
That was the moment when Rollison heard the sound at the door.
9
REASON TO KILL
It might be the woman with the vacuum cleaner, but Rollison believed that she walked too heavily to reach this door without making some noise; and there had been none until the handle began to turn. It was a good thing he had locked it. He whispered: “Don’t make a sound,” while Leah stared at the door as if towards salvation; if she cried out, even a locked door would not help, and only fear of his hovering hands would keep her quiet.
The handle stopped moving.
The stealthiness of this told Rollison that whoever stood outside had some reason to catch Leah unawares, and possibly knew that he was here. What would he do when the door would not move?
The door opened.
It moved very slowly, and Leah saw it, and caught her breath. So there were two keys – a pass key, of course. This might be the woman – or the ‘Max’ Leah had named. There was brightness from the landing window, and a shadow appeared. Rollison moved a little away from the bed, so that he could see both Leah and the door. He felt oddly defenceless. He had a mental vision of the driver of the small car running Jeff down with the cold-bloodedness of a killer. He
had no weapon. He found himself wishing almost desperately that he had, and looked round for something he could use. On the dressing-table there were the usual oddments and a heavy looking hairbrush, but it was just out of reach.
The shadow was short – or distorted.
Leah gasped: “Max, be careful, be careful!”
On the last word, the door crashed back against the wall, and a short man stood on the threshold. He had a jacket, with absurdly wide shoulders, a turnip-shaped face, and jet black hair; this was almost certainly the man whom Smart the railway porter had seen. With his back to the door, what light there was fell on his face; his eyes seemed to glitter. He kept his right hand in the pocket of his coat, thrusting it forward, as if he were pretending that he had a gun; but it might not be pretence. The warning meant nothing to him; there was no hint of fear in his manner as he stared at Rollison, came forward, and hooked the door to with his foot. It slammed.
“How long has he been here?” he demanded.
“He—he’s only just come; he woke me up. He—”
“What did he want to know?” asked the man named Max.
“About—about that girl last night.”
It was done deliberately, of course, in an attempt to unnerve Rollison, and it would have unnerved a great number of people. It made Rollison very wary indeed, for this Max talked to the girl as if no one else were present.
“Did he?” Max said. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing! Nothing. I wouldn’t—”
The man stepped forward.
“What did you tell him?” he demanded again.
He had a surprisingly pleasant voice, and as he finished, he smiled. Fine white teeth seemed to light up his face and there was an amused-looking gleam in his eyes, too; seen in different circumstances, he would have seemed attractive and pleasant. He moved softly and without any physical effort, in a gliding motion. He kept his right hand in his pocket, and that side of him was closer to Rollison, at whom he had not even glanced.
Leah was obviously more frightened of him than of Rollison. She clutched the bedclothes in front of her as if they would give some kind of physical protection, her pouty little mouth was trembling, and she could not get words out.
If he helped her, Rollison thought, she might be useful later on. He ought to say: ‘She told me nothing.’ Against that there was the undoubted fact that Max was ignoring him simply to force him to speak first; these were tactics meant to dominate, and would often succeed. The problem was to decide quickly whether to lie and so win Leah’s favour later, or whether to wait and let Max break the ice.
Before he could decide, Max said: “Tell me, Leah,” in a soft, persuasive voice, and she was so frightened that she burst out: “I told him we’d handed her over to another man. I couldn’t tell him any more, I didn’t know who it was!”
“No, you didn’t—” Max began, still pleasantly.
For the first time, Max turned to face Rollison.
He was certainly short; no more than five feet five or six. The cut of the coat might make him seem much more broad-shouldered than he was; certainly it made him seem shorter. He raised one thick black eyebrow slightly, and said: “Sure, I know.”
“Who was it?” asked Rollison mildly.
Max looked surprised; and then his smile flashed, and he looked as if he were genuinely amused.
“Who wants to know?”
“I do.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend of Mrs Kane?”
“I wondered about that,” Max said. “Mrs Kane has some remarkable friends.” He looked Spanish, Italian or Southern French; he looked like a Teddy boy; he looked as if he really belonged to the street corners of Soho – and he spoke like an English public school boy, behaving rather as if all this were a game he found amusing. “Tell me more, stranger – what’s your name?”
“Shall we skip that?” suggested Rollison.
Max smiled again, a little more tensely. “Ask Leah if you can skip anything I want to know,” he advised. “Tell him, Leah. Do we ever skip anything?”
“No,” the girl gasped.
“You see,” said Max, and raised that thick eyebrow again. “So what’s your name?”
There were moments to force an issue, and this was not one of them. Rollison smiled faintly and felt the quickening beat of his pulse, and a forbidding sense of apprehension. It was easy to understand why Leah was so frightened of Max, less easy to understand how Ralph Kane could have associated with her.
“I’m a patient man,” Max remarked.
“Sometimes you have to be,” Rollison said, and dropped his right hand to his pocket. As he did so, there was a transformation in the other man; a swift change of expression, a glitter instead of a gleam in his eyes, a darting movement of his right hand; and a small automatic, the real thing, showed in that hand and pointed at Rollison.
“Keep your hands away from your pocket.”
“Max,” said Rollison gently, “guns make a noise. At least three people know that I came to see Leah. Don’t be hasty.” He continued to put his right hand to his pocket, but now he felt a thumping of his heart, in case Max ignored his warning. The girl was sitting bolt upright, and seemed to be trying to stifle her sobs. Without haste of any kind, Rollison took a card from his pocket, identical with the one he had given to the police at Hapley. He held this between his middle and forefinger, and flicked it lightly; it fell on the floor between Max and the bed. “My card,” Rollison said.
There was a moment’s pause; for the first time, Max seemed uncertain what to do. Then he smiled again. The smile wasn’t so free as before, nor so charming, but at least he had taken heed of the warning, and there was a smaller risk that he would shoot.
“Leah, pick that up and bring it to me,” he said. “I don’t think I should trust this joker too far.”
“B—B—but I—”
“You haven’t got any clothes on, but why worry about that?” demanded Max. “Get it.”
“No, I—”
“Leah,” said Max very softly, “we don’t want any more misunderstandings, do we?”
She gave a little sob, and pushed back the bedclothes. Rollison caught a glimpse of a white, plump thigh; she had on the pyjama jacket but not the trousers. He turned away from her towards the window, which overlooked the street that he could just see at the side of the blinds. His back was towards Max and the girl. He heard the bed springs creak, heard the little thumps of her footsteps, a moment’s pause, and then a resounding slap, of palm on plump flesh. She gave a little squeal, and a moment later scrambled back into bed.
“Now that’s what I call a real gentleman,” said Max, mockingly, and Rollison turned round to see the girl drawing the clothes up almost to her neck. Max was glancing down at the card and the man without a face. He looked intrigued, but nothing in his expression suggested that he recognised it. “A real Toff,” he went on. “I should think—”
He stopped.
His smile disappeared, he frowned and so brought a deep furrow just above the nose, drawing those thick jet black eyebrows together. The name had registered, after all, and it did not give him pleasure. He held the gun in one hand and the card in the other, and then said flatly: “The Toff, are you?”’
Rollison shrugged. “What’s in a name?”
“Well, well,” said Max, but he had lost a great deal of his buoyancy, and that was a good thing to see. “I didn’t think I would ever meet the great Toff in person. Leah, this is your lucky morning. This is one of the British aristocracy’s noble scions, as well as being a friend of Scotland Yard. Don’t say you never heard of the Toff.”
He was giving himself time to recover from the shock.
“I—I—I think I’ve heard the name somewhere,” Leah gabbled.
“You need a
.better publicity man, someone hasn’t heard of you,” Max said to Rollison. He moistened his lips, and then put his gun back in his pocket but kept his hand in his pocket, too. “So you’re a friend of Mrs Kane.”
“Her problems are my problems,” Rollison declared earnestly.
“That could be one of your mistakes,” Max retorted. “I get it now, though. I thought that name Rollison was familiar, but I didn’t—” He broke off, and for the first time since he had taken the card his smile was really broad. “Toff, I think this might work out better than either of us expected; this could be the solution to our little problem. How much do the police know about Caroline’s disappearance?”
“All of it.”
“Do they know about the request for money?”
“No.”
“Your friend. Mrs Kane is a very wealthy woman. Did you know that?”
“I’ve heard it rumoured.”
“It’s a fact,” Max said. “Twenty thousand pounds won’t make much difference to her. What do you think of people who can say goodbye to twenty thousand pounds and not be worried about it? Don’t you think they ought to share some of the cash?”
Rollison made no comment.
“So all you have to do is to collect the money from her and bring it to me,” said Max, and now his smile was really expansive. “She needn’t be worried any more. I get the money – and you get Caroline Kane shorn of a lock of a hair but otherwise sound in wind, limb and memory. We’ll have to make arrangements by which we can be sure you won’t cheat; but a gentleman who turns his back on a lady wouldn’t do such a thing, would he?”
“You might try to find out,” said Rollison.
“It wouldn’t be good for you or for sweet Caroline if I found out that you did try to cheat,” said Max, and the tension was back in his eyes and at his lips. “Don’t get me wrong, Toff. I know what I’m doing. I know there’s a big risk. But twenty thousand pounds is worth taking a risk for. You might manage to put me in jail, but you could be absolutely sure of one thing: before I went to jail, Caroline would have a very bad time. She’s a nice girl, I should think. Her mother wouldn’t like to think that she’d learned all about life the hard way, before she died.”
