have run if it hadn’t hit me.”
“Perhaps,” Grice said. “Have you seen Mr. Loman before?”
“Sure — at Kennedy.”
“Just one moment,” Grice said. He went to the door, opened it, and stood aside for Tommy Loman to come in, and as the door closed he asked sharply: “Have you seen this man before, Mr. Loman?”
“Sure have,” Loman replied without any hesitation.
“Where?”
“At Kennedy Airport,” Loman said. “He’s one of the cops there.”
“Have you seen him in England?”
“No, sir, I have not.”
“Did you see the man who attacked you and Miss Brown tonight?” asked Grice.
Loman replied in a wondering voice : “No, I didn’t. I think the guy must have been hiding in the garage. All I know is something hit me in the groin and all I could think of was the pain. That was what I call
“She’ll be all right in a day or two,” Grice tried to soothe.
“Are you sure, or —?”
“I am sure. She has been seen by her own doctor and by a police surgeon,” Grice replied. “Are you going back to Gresham Terrace? Or would you rather stay here for the night? We could find you a shake-down.”
“I promised Rollison I would go back.”
“I’ll have a car take you,” Grice volunteered. He called for a man on duty outside, and gave instructions. Next he turned to Luigi Tetano and spoke in a more relaxed way. “Mr. Tetano, I am inclined to accept your statement but I’ll need to keep you here overnight.”
“On a charge?” Luigi asked, ruefully.
“No. Until I hear from Long Island.”
“You’ll hear the simple truth,” Luigi assured him. “I thought it was the baggage racket and hopped the B.O.A.C. flight — all airlines will take a cop if he can prove he is one, and let him pay later. You will probably be told I’m absent without leave.” After a pause, he went on: “You can’t mean what I mean by a shake-down.”
“A camp bed,” Grice said. “The folding type. You surely have them in America.”
“A camp —” Tetano started off puzzled and then exclaimed: “Oh, a rollaway! Why sure, that’ll be fine! I didn’t know Scotland Yard was a hotel.”
Grice actually laughed.
“That Rollison,” Luigi Tetano went on in a wonder-ing tone. “He’s quite a guy.”
“Yes,” agreed Grice quietly. “He is quite a guy. I only hope —” He broke off, as if suddenly reluctant to say what was in his mind.
“Hope what?” asked Luigi.
“That he lives through this case,” Grice completed heavily, and looked the American straight in the eye. “I would hate him to die for a stranger he’d never heard of until this morning.”
Luigi Tetano put his head on one side, and then asked softly :
“Are you sure of that, Superintendent? Are you sure Mr. Rollison has told you everything he knows or suspects in this case? Maybe you are but I am not. No, sir, I am not. I am a long way from it.”
* * *
Oblivious of what had been going on, and of Luigi Tetano’s doubts, Rollison slept the sleep of the sedated. It was Jolly who let Tommy into the flat, able to assure him that a police message had confirmed that Pamela Brown really was only slightly hurt.
Outside the police kept watch, while the empty house smouldered.
16
ROLLISON WOKE TO VAGUE NOISES, turned over and blotted them out.
He woke again, to quiet, turned over ‘and lay snug but did not get to sleep. Before long, he turned on to his back, and looked up at the ceiling; and as suddenly as new thought he remembered what had happened. He gave a little shiver. No one would ever know how much it cost to stand and wait for a little piece of metal which might blow one to smithereens. That shiver was the last of his conscious reaction to the previous night. He began to think, clearly and lucidly, about all that had happened. Glimmerings of ideas, not yet even half-formed, chased one another across his mind.
There was the obvious question : what was worth this series of vicious attacks?
A million pounds?
Yes, it could be; worse crimes had been committed for less reward, but there was a cold-blooded deliberateness about this affair which was rare.
Each attack had been on him
