A middle-aged man, dressed in black and wearing a bowler hat, paid off the driver and turned towards the front door.
“That’s Jolly,” said Rollison. “Let him in, will you?”
Judith went out at once and so did not hear what Rollison said to Scotland Yard. It did not seem to matter. The brief period of exhilaration had been short-lived; she felt far worse than she had before. It wasn’t because of Rollison but because of the evidence she now possessed that this might be—this
If she should die—
Judith opened the door and Jolly removed his hat, revealing thin, grey hair. In a brief glance she studied his face: it was part of her work to study faces and she did so subconsciously. He looked a gloomy man; his pale face was heavily lined and beneath the chin were many sagging wrinkles, as if he had once been much fatter; now he was thin and looked a little frail. He had doe-like brown eyes and when he smiled at her it was with a touch of eagerness merging with anxiety.
“Miss Lome?”
“Yes; do come in.”
He passed her but was facing her as she closed the door. She was used to tension now and recognised it in his manner.
“There’s been—” she began and then stopped, for “accident” seemed the wrong word.
He raised a hand, as if to ward off some sudden rush of fear and she added hastily: “It’s all right now, except that—”
“Is Mr Rollison still here?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I shouldn’t worry, Miss Lome, whatever the trouble is,” said Jolly. His voice was soft and reassuring and his smile was friendly and warming; fear had gone. “Mr Rollison will look after everything.”
“Wrong,” said Rollison, from the front-room door. “You’ll look after everything, Jolly. The police and an ambulance will be here in a few minutes. Miss Lome will tell you what happened. You’ll stay with the injured woman until the police arrive. The moment they come take them up to Miss Lome’s flat and tell them a dangerous customer is in the kitchen— a man who’s lost his gun but might use a kitchen chopper.”
That was the moment when Jolly said the thing which made Judith gasp—and then laugh. Her reaction was absurd but she couldn’t help herself. She laughed weakly and leaned against the wall while Rollison pressed her hand and Jolly opened the door for him.
Jolly had said, “Very good, sir.”
* * *
It was nearly a quarter to five when Rollison left the house in Knoll Road. As he turned the corner into a long street leading to a main road a police car swung round and Rollison had to pull sharply into the kerb. He smiled sweetly at the police-car driver who ignored him and raced towards Number 23.
* * *
“Now,” murmured Rollison: “I must hurry.”
He spoke to himself as he turned on to the Embankment where traffic was thin but would soon get congested for the roads would be thronged with home-going workers from the City and the West End.
He ignored the thirty-miles-an-hour limit, cursed at every traffic light that turned red against him, slid past other cars and cut in with an abandon which brought many protests and drew dark scowls from at least two policemen. He drew near the Houses of Parliament and the Abbey, swept along the wide road between them, swung round Parliament Square and was lucky with the traffic. He reached Westminster Bridge, which was already thronged with pedestrians, and was forced to slow down by a line of trams and traffic several cars deep; if the luck went against him, this would become a serious traffic-block. He glanced towards the Thames on the left and saw the two big buildings of Scotland Yard, one white, one red; he smiled. Then the traffic began to move again.
He had a good run to Cannon Street; then met more dense traffic and felt an increasing sense of frustration as he crawled behind an empty lorry. London’s narrow, twisting streets prevented speed and he was in a desperate hurry, although he did not quite know why. There was nothing tangible in the evidence— except the implication that the message to Judith had been in the form of a suicide note. The note was evidence the police would be sure to find and could easily be accepted as a confession. Already the police and the public believed Mellor to be a murderer; and it had been an ugly, brutal murder. There would be no compassion for the killer once he was found.
Rollison knew the East End well. He slipped along East Cheap, with broken buildings and empty sites on either side, the pavements thronged with office-workers who had grown used to the desolation of bombing and scurried past to bus and train. At Tower Hill he swung towards the approach to Tower Bridge, was held up for three minutes and felt almost as much on edge as Judith Lome had felt. Then he had a clear run and his knowledge of the mean, twisting streets became important.
Asham Street was near the river—and near the Red Lion. If you knew your East End, you knew your pubs. This was an old one with a wall shored up by heavy timbers because dozens of houses on one side had been blasted out of existence during the war. He remembered coming here the day after the raid and seeing the “
He pulled up.
“Hop in,” he said and leaned across and opened the door. “All quiet?”
Snub Higginbottom got in, jammed the corner of his case against Rollison’s arm, said “Sorry” and grinned. He was a young man to whom smiling came easily. He had a merry face and a snub nose, fair, rather curly hair and a genial ugliness which most men and nearly all women found attractive.
