“And more?”
“Sure,” answered Loman. “Some old papers showing my grandpa had come from Stratford-on-Avon, a kind of family tree, I guess.”
“Wasn’t that in the baggage?”
“No, sir.”
“In your hand baggage — anything that was stolen in New York?”
“No, sir,” repeated Loman. “I kept those papers in an envelope in my pocket, I didn’t want to take any chances with them. You think that’s what the thieves were after?”
“I think it could have been,” answered Rollison slowly, and he went on, hardly daring to ask : “Have you any copies of these documents?”
“No,” answered Loman. “Why would I want copies when I have the genuine article?”
“Some people play safe,” Rollison remarked heavily. “Were you carrying anything else in your pockets?”
“I guess not — I got everything else back at the airport.”
Rollison asked, out of the blue: “What was your grandfather’s name?”
“Joseph.”
“Joseph what?”
“Joseph Loman, what else?”
“It could have been on your mother’s side,” Rollison pointed out. “Did you —?”
“There was something else!” cried Loman. It did not occur to him to wait but whenever a thought came into his head he interrupted in the most natural way. “I’d forgotten, I guess. There were some old photographs.”
“Of you?”
“Are you crazy? Of my grandfather and his wife. They were pretty old, those brown-coloured prints, what do you call them? Sepia, that’s the word, sepia. I’ve had them ever since my pa handed them to me just before he died. Had them in a special folder,” Tommy Loman added. “It was too big for my billfold so I put them in this envelope so they could all go into my pocket.” His eyes glowed with this happy recollection, but the Toff’s heart sank.
“Tommy,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Do you have any brothers?”
“No, sir. No brothers, no sisters.”
“Cousins?” asked Rollison.
“I’ve never heard of any relatives any place,” answered Loman.
“No one at all like you?”
“Richard,” stated Loman with great certainty, “there ain’t nobody like me, any place.”
“I can believe it,” Rollison replied feelingly, and he moved towards the tall man, going on in an even voice. “Tommy, I am only guessing but it looks to me like a good guess. You appear to stand to inherit a lot of money — that’s the simple and obvious explanation. If someone wants to prevent you from getting it, then the obvious means would be to impersonate you. That could be done safely only by killing you or keeping you out of the way until the inheritance had been claimed and paid over. The simple way would be to kill you but not until they had these documents and photographs. From now on, if I’m anywhere on course, so far as these impersonators are concerned you would be far better dead.”
The word ‘dead’ hovered about the room and seemed to echo from the trophies on that resplendent wall. As it hovered, Rollison looked into Tommy Loman’s light brown eyes. The younger man’s face was blank, he looked almost as if he had not taken in everything that Rollison said.
But he had taken it in, for he said: “It would make sense, I guess, if you had written and told me about a legacy. But you didn’t. So who did? And who told me to come see you?”
“That we shall find out.”
“And who tried to blow you up?” asked Loman.
“We shall find that out, too,” Rollison promised. “We have found out one thing: you are in danger.” After a long pause, Loman said: “So?”
“So, we must look after you.”
“I’m good at looking after myself,” Loman retorted laconically.
“On a cattle ranch, I am sure you are. But in an aeroplane?” Loman opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again. “Or in London, a strange city where you don’t even know the rule of the road?”
Resignedly, the other said: “So how are you going to protect me?”
“In the first place, have you stay here,” Rollison began. “Then —”
“Richard,” interrupted Loman, spreading his hands, “do you know what claustrophobia is? Do you know what it feels like to be in a big city surrounded by bricks and stone when you’re accustomed to riding a range where all you can see are mountains and saguaro cacti and dirt?”
“I can imagine,” Rollison conceded.
