“So you think he murdered your brother. What made you think so, Brown? Don’t waste time.”
Brown muttered: “Try and find out.”
“Bill, he’ll bash you again!” cried Deaken. “Andy,” said Joe in a menacing voice, “
At the third blow from the giant, Brown began to talk.
He was talking or answering questions for over twenty minutes. Joe learned that Tony had been with Eve on the night of Halliwell’s death, and learned exactly what Katie Brown had told Roger. He pressed for more, probing to find out whether Brown could give evidence or whether all he had was hearsay, until Brown was half stupid with pain and fatigue.
“That’s fine, that’s fine,” Joe said, when it was finished. “If you’d told me all that before, you wouldn’t have got hurt. Not so much, anyway.” He grinned. “But it’s a pity you’ve seen me and my friends, isn’t it? Because you’d talk to the narks, wouldn’t you? You’d—”
A man shouted from downstairs.
Joe swung round. “What’s that?”
His answer was a thud and a gasp, then footsteps sounded on the stairs. Joe moved swiftly toward the door, taking out an automatic. Andy pulled the door open.
A man at the top of the stairs shouted: “Get out of my way, or—”
He broke off, as Joe appeared.
From behind Joe, Andy called: “
Joe had kept completely cool during the moments of crisis, and now he said, quite evenly: “You’ve had it, copper.”
He fired.
Roger fired from his pocket as he jumped aside. The other man’s bullet smacked into the wall near his head. Joe staggered back, clutching his chest, and his gun dropped from his fingers.
“The cops,
CHAPTER XVIII
“BROWN’S IN hospital but he confirmed his wife’s story,”
D said Roger to Chatworth, an hour later. “Deaken’s all right, as scared as a rabbit, but not hurt. We’ve another dish of hearsay evidence, as far as Eve Franklin is concerned, but nothing that leads direct to Raeburn.”
“What about this man Joe?” asked Chatworth.
“He’s badly hurt. I didn’t have time to take aim,” said Roger. “He’s being operated on now. The other men seem dumb. They say they only know Joe’s Christian name, and I haven’t been able to find out anything about the man. But I will.”
“You’d better. The Home Secretary thinks your resignation would clear the air a lot.”
Roger caught his breath. “Are you making me ?”
“I told him if you were suspended, I’d quit,” Chatworth said bluffly. “But we want results soon. Yesterday — well, go on.”
Roger said, slowly: “Thank you, sir. I think we can get Raeburn eventually, but if you feel that I ought ——”
“I said, go on.”
Roger said: “Brown says that the man Joe told him he was after Raeburn, but I don’t pay much attention to that. We might find a Joe-Tenby connection, and I’m also working on that angle. I don’t think we can complain about today’s progress.”
“No, but this campaign against you must stop soon,” Chatworth said.
Roger leaned back in his chair, and drew at his cigarette. He was hungry, his eyes were tired from the strain of driving through the fog, and Chatworth had given him a nasty shock.
“It won’t stop until we’ve dropped the case or got Raeburn,” he said. “It’s shrewd and very clever— Raeburn flaunting himself as a champion of the rights of the people, and winning a lot of sympathy. But there’s a sharp contrast between the newspaper campaign and Raeburn’s usual tactics against us, and this violence,” Roger went on. “It’s almost as if two different people were behind it. Raeburn’s completely lost his head, or else he can’t control the forces he’s let loose. Either way, I think it will give us a break.” It had to. “I hope we’ll get something out of Joe soon. I’ve left a man by his side.”
Chatworth nodded dismissal.
At half past three, Roger heard that the bullet had been removed, and that Joe was making reasonable progress. He had not yet spoken a word, but if he had a good night he might be questioned the following day.
Tenby was interviewed, but when shown a photograph, professed not to know any Joe. He said that he had been in his rooms all the morning, and certainly he could not be linked up with the attack on Bill Brown on the present evidence. Efforts to identify Joe went on all that day and the following morning, but without result. He seemed to have no history. The other three men, Army deserters, had been staying at a doss house; according to Andy, they had met Joe in a pub.
Joe had paid Andy fifty pounds, and the other two men twenty each for the job.
Roger saw Joe the following afternoon. The wounded man was out of danger, and conscious, but would not
