Scotland Yard, had been standing by the side of his car, the driver still at the wheel. It was a clear, starlit night, without a moon. In the distance traffic hummed, in the sky aircraft droned on their ceaseless to-ing and fro-ing. Ebbut’s men were in a car round the corner, so that both approaches to the house were covered.
“If you ask me,” the driver said, “those two make a bad case.”
Williter nodded.
His job was to make sure the girl got home and that the man returned to Rollison’s flat safely, and no time limit had been set for either. He was by nature both patient and tolerant. When he saw the car disappear into the garage, lighting up the inside, he waited; when the car lights went out, he moved farther away. When the couple lingered in the driveway, he moved back to his car.
No one had told him to play gooseberry.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a movement in the shrubbery, and a moment later the figure of a man appeared against the light-coloured gravel. He whispered to the driver :
“Come on, quick. Someone’s there.”
He was cut off from the garage by the shrubbery when there was a sudden gasp, a scuffle of movement. Williter put his whistle to his lips. Ebbutt’s men came running from the side entrance and the police driver was close behind, shining a torch.
The beam fell on Pamela Brown, who lay still on the ground; on Loman, who was on his knees, his hands at his head, making a funny moaning sound, and on a man who was running alongside the garage towards the back of the garden.
“Stop him!” Williter roared.
Ebbutt’s men were nearer, and could just make out the running man, now on the back lawn. One of them, a little terrier of a man, put on a spurt before flinging himself forward, hands outstretched for the runaway’s ankles. He clutched one, and the man crashed down. Before he could get up, Williter had arrived and other policemen, summoned by radio from the division, were on the way.
When Williter returned to the path near the garage, grey-haired Martin Brown and his son were on their knees beside Pamela, and a policeman was bending over Loman.
“How is she?” Williter asked Brown, urgently.
“She’s got a big bruise on the back of her head and bruises on her throat,” Pamela’s father said. “If I ever catch the swine who did it —”
“We’ve got him, and we’ll take care of him,” Williter retorted with deep satisfaction. He turned to the police- man who was straightening up from Loman; the Ameri-can was no longer moaning but appeared to be trying to straighten out his legs. “How is he?”
“If you ask me,” the policeman replied. “He had a knee or a kick in the groin, sir. You know what kind of pain
“I know,” Williter said. “He’d better come with us to the Yard. Are you sure your daughter’s all right?” he asked Brown.
“Yes,” Brown growled. “No thanks to you, though.” He glared at the prisoner, a short, solid-looking man with dark hair; there was something very un-English looking about him, he was more Southern European.
When at Scotland Yard this man was charged with assault with intent to cause bodily harm, he replied in a marked American accent — a New York accent to those who were familiar with accents from various parts of America.
“I didn’t attack anybody. I was trying to help.”
“What’s your name?” Williter asked, and for an answer he had one of the shocks of his life.
“Sergeant Luigi Tetano, of the Long Island Police Homicide Squad,” the arrested man answered; and so saying, he took his identifying badge out of his pocket.
* * *
Grice, who had hurried back to the Yard and been given news of the attack, went to the waiting room where the accused was being held. In the good light he saw the evidence of strain and tension on the plump face, the suppressed anger in the fine dark eyes. This man had much strength of character, and gave the impression of one with some authority who was fighting hard to maintain his self-control.
“I tell you I’m Sergeant Tetano,” he insisted. “I came over on the same flight as Tommy Loman because I thought Loman was a victim of a luggage racket which has been causing trouble at Kennedy Airport for a long time. Too long,” he added, scowling. “Then I began to wonder if I was wrong, so I stalled for a while, just watching. I was going to see what happened when the
Brown dame reached home. Sure, I knew she was on the way with Loman, I was in Gresham Terrace tonight during the shenanigan there, and stayed around until they left. I drove my rental car round the house while they were in the garage, and went into the yard on foot.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to hear if they were in this together, they’d behaved like old lovers outside the garage, and — oh well, you don’t need telling you have to suspect every-body. All I heard was a pair of lovebirds.”
“And then?”
“Someone threw a rock at me,” Tetano said, pointing to an inflamed swelling on his forehead. “I guess it was the man who attacked the others. By then your cops were closing in and I tried to get away.”
“Why not stay behind and tell us what you’ve just explained?” demanded Grice.
“Are you kidding?” Tetano’s voice rose in a laconic note. “Who was going to believe me?”
“It would have been easier to believe you if you stayed where you were,” said Grice. “Did you get a good view of the assailant?”
“I didn’t see a thing that mattered. One moment I was listening to the lovebirds and the next a rock hit me,” answered the sergeant from Long Island Homi-cide. “Maybe that knocked the sense out of my head and I wouldn’t
