Stars For The Toff

Clay crossed to him.

“What made you suspicious, Mr Rollison?”

Rollison answered in a tone of mingled wonder and anger. “A nineteen-year-old girl “saw” this happening from a mile away, and I took her seriously.”

“You mean—Miss Lister?” Clay looked astounded. “Good God!”

“Precisely.”

“She actually saw—oh, it must be some kind of trick.”

“Oh, no,” Rollison said. “Not this one. Whether we like it or not, she went into some sort of trance—I thought she was asleep, actually—and then began to shout in distress. Even if she’d known what was going to happen, she couldn’t have known the precise time it would happen, and— but she didn’t know.” He looked at Clay, his eyes troubled. “She couldn’t have known.”

Clay said stubbornly: “All right then, it was a kind of premonition.”

Rollison pointed to the Trophy Wall.

“In that premonition she saw that top hat— and she saw Lucifer Stride being attacked.” He forced a laugh. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Jolly was attacked, and she didn’t see that.” There was no reason to say anything about the stranger he had left locked in the spare bedroom. If Clay had any idea of this it would certainly be very awkward indeed, and the knowledge that he had had a prisoner and lost him was cause enough for chagrin. If only Ebbutt’s men had been prepared to help, the flat would have been watched and this could never have happened.

And Olivia Cordman wouldn’t be missing.

Was, “missing’ too strong a word? Or was the situation serious enough to make it necessary for him to tell Clay to look for the Features Editor of The Day if she didn’t ring through soon.

The telephone bell rang, and he snatched up the receiver.

“Rollison.” But it wasn’t Olivia.

“Richard,” Lady Hurst, “I trust there was no cause for alarm.”

“Oh—” Rollison tried to cloak his disappointment— “Jolly’s all right.”

“And the young man?”

“He’s on his way to hospital, and we should know his condition in a couple of hours,” Rollison said. “No need to alarm the girl until then—just say he was hurt.”

“She wants to come over at once.”

“She’ll be better off where she is,” Rollison decided, then immediately changed his mind. “No. I’ll talk to her here if you’d like to bring her over. Aunt—” He paused.

“What is it?”

“It happened just as she said it would.”

“Of course it did,” said Lady Hurst.

As she rang off, Rollison went tense again, hoping for a call from Olivia. It still did not come. By now he was aware of Clay watching him with revived suspicion, and the detective said:

“What’s worrying you, Mr Rollison?”

Rollison began to tell him, but before he finished Clay snapped his fingers at one of his men and said:

“You know Miss Cordman by sight, don’t you? Red hair, five feet one—”

“I know her, sir.”

“Go down to the car and have a general call put out for her—London and Home Counties.

“What was the car, Mr Rollison? . . . A black Morris 1000, Registration 5X2151. Thank you . . . Look slippy,” Clay added to his man, who hurried out and down the stairs.

As the door closed, the telephone bell rang.

For a reason he could not understand, Rollison hesitated before picking it up. He felt sure this must be Olivia, yet now that she had telephoned at last—if in fact this was she—he feared she had bad news. At last he snatched up the receiver.

“Rollison.”

“Otherwise known as The Toff,” a man said in a sneering voice. “You listen to me, Toff. Get off the star-gazer case and forget anything you found at Mrs Abbott’s flat. If you don’t, then one of your pet star-gazers won’t gaze at anything else any more. She’ll be as dead as Mrs Abbott.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Prisoner

Clay was whispering hoarsely: “What is it? Who is it?”

“Rolly, I feel such a fool,” Olivia said into the telephone. “The last thing I wanted was to make things worse for you, but I have.” The man with her muttered something.

Olivia gave a sharp exclamation, and for a few moments Rollison could hear nothing but a confused jumble of sound. Then Olivia came back on the line. “Rolly, he probably means it, and I would hate to die. Really I would.”