“What did Sir Douglas warn you about?” asked Roll-son gently.
“That the house and I would get this reputation,” she said, opening her eyes. “We are old friends, Mr. Rollison, although until I came here we hadn’t met for many years. When I first knew that he owned this house I went to see him, asking for his help—but he had no sympathy at all with what I was trying to do. He was furiously angry because he had signed the lease without being told what it was going to be used for. It—it was not a very pleasant meeting,” Naomi finished, on a note both saddening and dreary.
“How often have you met since?”
“Only occasionally.”
“Socially?”
“Once or twice. He—he is a very good man, Mr. Rollison, and he did not believe that because we differed fundamentally on this aspect of society—I have always believed that unmarried mothers and illegitimate children should be given special consideration, because of what they inevitably miss, having no husband, and no father—we should not remain friends.” She raised her hands and dropped them again. “Douglas maintained that if you broke the rules of the society you lived in, you should accept the consequence. I can see his point of view, of course.” Unexpectedly, her voice sharpened. “Can you, Mr. Rollison?”
“I can see both points of view,” parried Rollison.
“A friend to both sides is said to be a friend to none,” Naomi said a little bitterly. “Nevertheless, I still need your help. Mr. Rollison, can you help Anne? I know she shouldn’t have done what she did but it was under terrible provocation, and I am sure she hadn’t the slightest intention of injuring Douglas.”
“I can get a good lawyer to speak for her and ask for bail,” said Rollison.
“Oh, if only you will!”
“I’ll have a word with Professor Nimmo and make sure I’m not treading on any corns,” promised Rollison. “Are the girls going to meet together tonight?”
“Yes,” said Naomi, and caught her breath. “I think at least half of them will. leave at once.” She gave herself a little shake and rose to her feet. Her movements and her manner had become more decisive, as if for the moment, at least, she had done with brooding and with being sorry for herself. “I’m very grateful for all you are doing. Will you come this evening?”
“If I may.”
“I don’t think you can do anything to help them,” said Naomi, “but you will at least see and understand the mood of the girls. It’s so very sad,” she went on, in her brisker voice, “only a few weeks ago everything appeared to be going so well.” She led the way to the door, and then touched the back of his hand. “Mr. Rollison, please understand and believe one thing. Professor Webberson and Dr. Brown did not take advantage of their position as sponsors. There was a very real friendship in both cases.”
Friendship, love, or simply lust, thought Rollison grimly, neither men had deserved to be murdered; nor had either of the girls.
And now Naomi Smith was telling the truth, which he wanted and hoped to be the case, or she was a consummate liar.
As he walked to his car, parked further away this time, he saw Guy Slatter walking towards him. He stopped as Guy drew up, aware of the powerful physique and the rugged good looks of the young man, who was so like his uncle.
“How is Sir Douglas?” Rollison asked.
“I’m assured there’s no permanent damage to the eyes,” said Guy, harshly. “No thanks to you. Now do you think those little bitches are worth protecting? If I had my way I’d send ‘em all to a whore-house I.”
“You know,” said Rollison, “that doesn’t do you any credit.”
“If you’re still on the side of that mob, you’re a bloody fool,” growled Guy. “You do-gooders make me sick!” He strode past, head held high, and Rollison walked more slowly towards his car. As he drew near, he thought he saw a shadowy movement in the back. All thought of the Slatters and the girls vanished. If someone was in the back of his car, it meant trouble—and a single sledge hammer blow would put an end to his interest in crime forever. He glanced down as he drew close, and saw a rug move. He opened the driving door, but instead of getting in he simply leaned inside, and said roughly :
“But that rug off you, and show your hands. And hurry!”
There was a convulsive movement—and then the rug was pushed off and two hands appeared; even he did not think there was the slightest chance that they were big enough to hold a sledge hammer. They were small and plump and very familiar.
“I don’t want anyone to know I’m here,” breathed Angela. “Guy came out to look for me. Just get in and pretend you’re alone. We can talk when we’re at Gresham Terrace or anywhere you want to take me. But please hurry,” she pleaded. “I’ve something I’m desperately anxious to tell you. I think I may have solved the case!”
Rollison heard all this as he drew his head back, got into the car in the normal way, sat back and touched the wheel.
“You can tell me as we go along,” he ordered.
He pushed the self-starter—and on the first instant of pressure, the front of the car blew up.
One moment he had only the thought of Angela and what she had to say in his mind; the next, the metal of the bonnet bulged upwards and upwards, there was a vivid red flash and then leaping flames, and as the windscreen cracked into a thousand tiny fragments, a roar and a blast.
A few pieces of glass fell over his knees.
The car rocked, as wildly as if it were a small boat in high seas. The flames rose higher and dark smoke billowed, and through the smoke Rollison saw a man reeling back, hand over his eyes, and he had a fierce and frightening recollection of Sir Douglas Slatter’s cut and bleeding face. But he could not move; in those few seconds he was too shocked and numbed. He saw other figures, men and women, hurrying towards the reeling man, was aware of cars pulled up in the road, saw a man leap from one with a small fire-extinguisher in his hand.
The sight seemed to revive Rollison. He pulled his own extinguisher from its clips beside the brake, and turned to look at Angela, suddenly alarmed lest she was hurt. She looked more startled than scared, her eyes and mouth open wide and round. He opened his door and jumped out, opened her door and said : “Get out, quick!” and strode to the front of the car. The bent and broken bonnet was now a mass of foam, there was an evil stench of the chemical and a smell also of burning. But the flames were out, and a little man with the remains of a huge cigar still jutting out beneath his hooked nose, was lowering his extinguisher.
“I got it,” he said with satisfaction.
“I can’t even begin to thank you,” Rollison said, looking towards the once reeling man who was standing in the middle of a small group.
“Who wants thanks?” the Good Samaritan said. “You’d do the same for me. You okay, sir?”
“I’m—yes, thanks. I’m fine. I hope—”
“You in a hurry to go any place? I’ll be glad to take you.”
“I’d better wait for the police to come here,” said Rolli-
son, “but if you could take my passenger—”
“Sure, sure, be glad to,” the cigar-smoker said. “That’s if you’re okay, Miss.”
It was not until Angela was being driven away in a sky-blue Jaguar that Rollison wondered whether he should have let her go, whether the helpful motorist could possibly have known who had put the explosive in the car. It was too late to stop her, and a police car was already pulling up, while a policeman was standing in the road, urging the traffic on. Very little had been tossed into the air, the metal of the bonnet was too strong. The man nearest the explosion had covered his face in time to escape the full effect of a billow of steam from the burst radiator, and was comparatively unhurt.
The engine, which had taken the full force of the explosion, was wrecked. Oil was dripping out of the sump, and there was a strong smell of petrol.
Wired to the base of the self-starter was a scrap of red cardboard.
“So they used dynamite,” remarked a policeman. It was the fair-haired Detective Sergeant Adams, who had seen Anne Miller. He shook his head lugubriously. “A chance in a million, Mr. Rollison, that you’re not in hospital by now.”
“If not in a morgue,” added Rollison lightly. “Sergeant, need I stay? I didn’t see who put it there, but you may find a passer-by who noticed someone. May I leave the rest to you?”
“You have been in touch with Mr. Grice of the Yard, sir, haven’t you?”
“I saw him only an hour ago.”
“And where can we find you, sir?”
Rollison gave him the Gresham Terrace address, then espied a taxi putting down a passenger a few houses along the street. Pushing through the crowd he ran towards it. It was not until he sat back, heavily, that the shock waves struck him. For a few moments he was very cold and shivery, and his forehead and upper lip were beaded with sweat. He was halfway towards Gresham Terrace before he began to feel acute anxiety for Angela. What on earth had possessed him, to allow her to go off with a stranger?
Turning out of the far end of Gresham Terrace as his cab turned in at the end nearer Piccadilly, was a sky-blue Jaguar. Relief surged over him.
Waiting for him at the open door of his flat were Jolly and Angela—Angela holding a glass of brandy. She looked pale and shaken, but her voice was calm enough. Jolly, very solicitous, ushered him to his favourite armchair, and brought him whisky and a soda-syphon.
“As Miss Angela said you weren’t likely to be long, I’ve timed dinner for seven-fifteen, sir,” he said. “And Miss Angela will be staying.”
“If that’s all right with you, Uncle Richard,” Angela said demurely.
Rollison looked at her anxiously. She had a tiny cut on her right temple, where blood had dried, and a reddish bruise on her left cheek.
“What makes you think you’ve solved the case?” he asked.
She did not answer at once, but sniffed the bouquet from the large glass.
He wondered if he should have given her more time to recover, whether she was really in a condition to answer and to think. Then he reminded himself that she was very tough indeed, as well as highly intelligent. He did not press her, but waited, sipping his whisky, grateful in a perverse way for her prolonged silence.
At last, she said : “I don’t really think there’s any doubt, Rolly. Sir Douglas himself is behind it all. Look what I found in a drawer in his wardrobe.”
She opened her handbag and took out three nylon stockings, all full of runs and all odd-shaped, as if they had been used to adorn something very different indeed from a leg; it was easy to imagine that they had been pulled over a man’s face and had lost their shape. As Rollison fingered the stockings, Angela dipped again into her handbag, and this time drew out a pair of big, dark blue cotton gloves—the kind of gloves a man might wear if he wanted to grip a handle tightly, yet was anxious not to leave fingerprints.
Angela was looking eagerly into Rollison’s face, waiting for his approval. He smiled at her thoughtfully, and asked :
Was the drawer locked?”
“Yes, but I found his keys.”
“Where?” asked Rollison.
“In his trousers pocket,” answered Angela shamelessly. “They undressed him before he was taken to the hospital, and I had to take care of his clothes. I couldn’t fold them and put them away with everything in the pockets, could I?”
“Obviously not,” answered Rollison. “Did you look anywhere else?”
“I wanted to, but as a matter of fact I got cold feet,” answered Angela, with engaging frankness. “And Guy was a bit troublesome, too. You’d think he’d never seen an attractive young woman before—he says it’s a case of love at first sight, and I must say he behaves almost as if he means it. As a matter of fact, I think he’s rather nice.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Rollison, looking at her thoughtfully. “Is Sir Douglas coming home tonight?”
“No, he’s being kept at the hospital for at least twenty-four hours. Why?”
“Do you think you could lure young Guy to take you to a night-club, or any place where you’ll be out late?” asked Rollison. “I’d very much like to have a look round at Number 29.”
“Well,” said Angela, after considering, “I will certainly try, and I shouldn’t think it would be too difficult.
Two things happened simultaneously, to make her break off. The telephone bell rang, and Jolly appeared to say with customary solemnity that dinner was about to be served. Rollison got up and reached for the telephone while Angela finished her brandy with almost sacrilegious haste, and hurried out with a “Three jiffs, Jolly.”
“This is Richard Rollison,” Rollison said.
“You’ve had a taste of what will happen to you if you don’t keep out of Slatter’s business,” a man said. His voice was muffled, as if he were speaking through gauze or muslin. Or a nylon stocking, thought Rollison. “You keep out of it, or a lot more heads will be smashed in, including yours.”
CHAPTER 17
Busy Evening
As Rollison hung up, Angela appeared again, her bright hair brushed with school-girl precision. Jolly, who had also disappeared, returned with a laden tray. Obviously Rollison’s expression told them both that this had not been a normal call.
“Anything to do with us?” inquired Angela.
“I trust there is no immediate emergency,” said Jolly.
“Just an Awful Warning of what will happen to me if I don’t turn my back on the fallen angels,” said Rollison lightly, and went on almost in the same breath “By George, I’m hungry !” He pulled a chair away from the table for Angela, and as they had dinner—lamb cutlets, green peas and new potatoes, all with rare flavour—he talked to Angela and recalled lunching here with Naomi Smith and the way she had introduced him to this case.
Jolly hovered, was praised for his cooking, and was duly gratified.
Angela left at half-past eight, promising to call the flat if she failed to lure Guy out of his uncle’s house.
Rollison left at a quarter to nine, at the wheel of Jolly’s ancient Austin A35, a small grey car which would be blown to smithereens if a stick of dynamite were wired to the self-starter. The streets were empty and it took only ten minutes to reach Bloomdale Street. There was a parking place quite near Smith Hall, and here, under the stern eye of a watchful policeman, he left his car. There were a lot of police about; he spotted at least four. So Grice had taken his extra precautions early.
“Good evening, sir,” one of them said. “Are you all right? . . . Very nasty thing to happen, that explosion.”
“Yes, I’m fine. But make sure no one puts dynamite in this one, won’t you?”
“Don’t you worry, sir. We’ll watch it like lynxes!”
Rollison murmured “I’m sure you will,” and walked towards the house, recalling the shadowy figure of the bestockinged assailant on his first visit here. No-one threw a shadow tonight, but a policeman stood near the porch in the full light of a street lamp.
