The Toff and The Sleepy Cowboy

12

Pamela Brown

ROLLISON TURNED FROM the telephone to find both of his visitors watching him, Jack Fisher frowning, Tommy Loman with characteristic calmness; he seemed always to be looking not only at but beyond the Toff, like a man used to peering into long distances.

“Was a newspaper trying to blackmail you?” demanded Fisher.

“More like whitemail,” answered Rollison lightly. “Even the police are not above trying it at times. Forget that, please. How about another drink?”

“No, really, I must go,” said Fisher, as if regretfully. “I have an appointment at half-past six.” He gave a smile which brightened his blue eyes. “A date, you know.”

“You want to be careful,” remarked Loman. “You don’t want to give anyone an excuse for whitemailing you. Does he, Richard?”

Fisher frowned, until suddenly he saw the point and gave a hearty laugh, while Rollison chuckled and Loman regarded him with almost benign approval. Fisher left, effusive in his thanks, and Rollison sent him on his way with a quiet:

“How could I do less for a man who was such a help?”

Fisher, apparently covered in embarrassment, hurried down the stairs. Rollison turned back into the big room, to find Tommy Loman regarding him with his eyes smiling but his face set and even stern. Rollison was strangely aware of the contrast; it was seldom that he had to look upwards at a man, or be looked down upon. They stood for a few moments and to Rollison this seemed the first quiet spell he had known all day.

At last, Loman sank into a large armchair, diagonally across a corner, and Rollison sat in a rather smaller chair, opposite.

“Is that right — he did you a service?” asked Loman thoughtfully.

“Yes.”

“He’s a funny little guy.”

“How funny?” asked Rollison.

“Cute.” Then Loman went on: “Kind of nervous. Didn’t you think he was nervous?”

“I make some people nervous,” Rollison remarked.

“Not that kind of nervous,” replied Loman. “He was surprised to see me here when he arrived, I seemed to make him kind of jumpy.” That slow, attractive smile dawned and stayed.

“Have you ever looked up at a giraffe without expecting to?” asked Rollison lightly. “Tommy, I’ve a guest coming for dinner and I’d like to talk to her alone for half an hour or so before we eat. Would you mind —?”

“I can take a bath,” Loman interrupted, instantly placing his hands on the arms of his chair. “You don’t have to eat with me, Richard. I can go into the kitchen with Mr. Jolly, he —”

“I only need half-an-hour tete-a-tete,” Rollison said firmly. “I —” There was a ring at the front door, and he broke off to say: “This may be her.”

Loman was on his feet in a trice, uncoiling like a giant spring. He went to the spare room along one passage while Jolly went to the front door along the other. Rollison could see the lounge-hall from here but before he saw the visitor he knew it was Pamela Brown, because she said in an eager voice:

“Mr. Rollison is expecting me.”

“Miss Brown?” asked Jolly, standing aside. “That’s right — Pamela Brown.”

“Mr. Rollison is certainly expecting you,” Jolly said, and turned as Pamela entered.

My! thought Rollison.

She looked ravishing in a dark green dress with a deep V neckline, her hair piled high, her eyes bright, ear-rings dangling and a brooch glittering at her bosom. The dress rustled faintly as she walked. It fell just above her knees, and for the first time Rollison saw that she had beautiful legs; he already knew that she moved with youthful grace. He was out of his chair and on his feet when she came in with one arm held out; he extended both hands and took hers.

“Ravishing!” he uttered the word that had first come to mind.

“Oh, thank you!” She had nice, cool hands, and she looked into his eyes, not about the room. “It’s lovely to be here.”

He held on to her hands a moment longer than was necessary, then drew her into the room. She looked about her, at and beyond the Trophy Wall, at the paintings on one other wall, at a group of four etchings of old London, and at the pieces of antique furniture ranging from Elizabethan through Georgian and Regency to Victorian all of which fitted perfectly in their places and merged together.

“What will you have to drink?” he asked.

“May I have something soft — ginger ale or bitter lemon?”

“Of course,” he said.

“You see,” she exclaimed with the familiar naivete. “I don’t drink alcohol.”

“Not at all?” He was surprised.

“Never.” She gave the word a slight emphasis and her eyes danced. “What a lovely flat you have. And — may I have a closer look at those macabre things on the wall?” She took her drink and they moved towards the wall as she went on almost in the same breath. “Did I see Baby Blue Eyes in the street as I was parking my car?”

“He’d just been in for a drink,” said Rollison. “How well do you know him?”

She looked at him quite sharply. “I’d never met him until this morning,” she said. “What makes you think I know him?”

“He didn’t mention you to the police,” said Rollison drily. “I couldn’t believe that was an accident.”

“Oh, poof! He was dazzled by the Toff and just didn’t see me!”

“Any man who doesn’t notice you is no man,” replied Rollison.

“But how gallant!” Her eyes danced again. “Well, let’s say he was so overcome when he realised who you were and what had happened, that he forgot me.”

“Which would make him even less of a man.”

“You are determined to live up to your reputation!” She looked away from him at the silk stocking which was draped over a polished brass bracket, and asked with new-found solemnity: “Is that a murder weapon?”

“Yes. Did you know about this wall and my reputa-tion or had you been looking me up?” he asked.

“Who could tell me?” she asked.

“Any newspaperman who wanted to.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes, I suppose so. Well, as a matter of fact, I knew.”

“Just as you knew I was going to meet Tommy Loman at the airport.”

“Yes,” she said. How beautifully her eyes glowed. “Mr. Rollison —”

“Richard.”

“Richard, I cannot tell a lie!” She was acting very slightly, as if this in many ways amused her; she was laughing partly at herself, partly at the situation, partly at him. She lowered her voice and went on melodramatic-ally: “I am a private inquiry agent.”

“Good God!” he gasped.

“You mean I fooled you?” She was delighted.

“You fooled me utterly. At the very least I thought you were a seductress, plotting to seduce Tommy Loman.”

“Oh, nothing so unexciting,” she replied. “He isn’t the man I would try to seduce! I wrote to Tommy Loman and invited him in your name to come to London and see you,” she went on simply. “I signed the letter P. Brown, for Richard Rollison.”

This time Rollison was really astounded, but all he said was: “In my name?”

“Yes. I thought he would come if you invited him, whereas if a strange woman wrote, he might shrug it off. Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“Yes,” Rollison said heavily. “Why?”

“Because I believed he would run into trouble if he just arrived here and had nowhere to go for help.”

“I see,” said Rollison.

He was studying this young woman much more closely, reasonably sure that she was telling the truth but fully aware of how easy it would be to be fooled — ‘seduced’ — into accepting her on her face value. The harder he looked, the more flawless her complexion and the more beautiful her eyes; and the dress was most enticing, showing just enough of her white bosom and shoulders. She seemed to sense that it was a moment for silence and she made no attempt to speak or prompt him.

“Why should he run into trouble?” he asked. “Because he was coming to claim a fortune which someone else wants to take from him.”

“What fortune?”

“A great-uncle, his grandfather’s brother, left a for-tune and Thomas G. Loman is the only legatee,” she said. “And someone thought it a good idea to stand-in for the real Loman and collect the inheritance.”

“How did you know that?” Rollison asked quietly.

For the first time, she hesitated, and he preferred that she should; the series of swift answers made her sound almost glib. She sipped her ginger ale, swallowing slowly as if her mouth was dry, and finally went on:

“It’s a very long story, Mr. Rollison. If I’d been able to produce facts and evidence I think I would have gone to the police and told them — after all, it’s really their job, isn’t it? But I had only an old man’s fears and suspicions to go on, and — and a feeling, an intuition. Please don’t laugh.”

“I wouldn’t laugh even at a man’s intuition,” Rollison assured her.

“You see, old Josh — that’s the great-uncle — had a kind of persecution mania. He was ninety-one, and remarkably fit physically and no slouch mentally, except in this one way — he thought someone was always trying to rob him, and had a fear that someone outside the family would get his money when he died.”

“When did he die?”

“Just a month ago.”

“A natural death?”

“Yes — indisputably, I think.”

“Was there an autopsy?”

“Yes — I work with my father and a brother, Mr. Rol —”

“Richard.”

“Thank you, Richard! And my father has been in the profession for a long time. The police respect him and he telephoned the Superintendent of the Hampstead Division where Mr. Clayhanger lived, and said an autopsy might be advisable although a death certificate was signed. One was carried out by Kenneth Soames, and you must know pathologists don’t come any better.”

“I do,” admitted Rollison, becoming more and more intrigued. “What was the cause of death?”

“Cerebral haemorrhage. The old man had had two mild strokes so that wasn’t surprising,”

“And can’t easily be induced,” Rollison remarked. “Did he have a nurse?”

“Yes — a day and a night nurse in his last months. He —” She leaned forward and touched Rollison’s hand with her cool fingers before going on : “My father went to see him first, and took his fears seriously because he had such a lucid mind. He knew there was a nephew in Arizona, who was the only surviving relative, and wanted him traced and wanted to make sure he got the inheritance. Then one day my father was ill and my brother away and I had to go and see old Josh.” She gave a funny little strangled laugh. “You’ll never believe it, but he took a great liking to me.”

“I will try to make myself believe it,” Rollison said drily.

“And I’ve never met a man I liked more, whatever his age,” Pamela Brown went on. “So after that I would take the weekly report now and again; saying that we hadn’t yet traced Thomas George Loman, and found nothing to suggest anyone else had any claim to the inheritance. All he ever said was : ‘You will keep trying, won’t you’.”

“Did you ever find the slightest cause for his fear that there would be a false claimant?” asked Rollison.

“No,” answered Pamela. “No, we didn’t. We found one or two other distant relatives who had no expectations from his will and checked them carefully : there didn’t seem the slightest danger from them, except, possibly, one elderly — or rather middle-aged man. But what we did do was trace Thomas G. Loman.”

“You traced him?” exclaimed Rollison.

“Yes,” she assured him. “We hadn’t much to go on. His mother had left England as a young child and not kept in touch with her father, but we sent her name round to all the detective agencies in the south west —”

“Why the south west?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. It was known that she’d married a rancher somewhere in Texas. Anyhow, Richard, we traced the name — Clayhanger isn’t so common — in the records of an old Methodist church in Lubbock, Texas, and then discovered they’d moved from there to Austin and later to New Mexico. I can show you the reports from America showing how Tommy was traced. We’ve a kind of family tree showing name changes and marriages and two divorces — until finally we discovered Thomas G. Loman, whose mother was the daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Josh Clayhanger. All the rest of the family died out but for two distant cousins by marriage, and Tommy G., who still worked as a cowboy but didn’t own his own spread. That means —”

“I know what a ‘spread’ is,” Rollison assured her.

“I’m sorry. Well — there he was, the only legatee, who would inherit over a million pounds,” said Pamela Brown, simply. “We would just have sent for him, had someone not stolen the reports from America and our final report to old Josh. That was why we involved you. We felt there was something very odd going on, and by bringing you in this way, you would be intrigued. We hadn’t expected such quick action. Thank goodness Josh knew we’d traced Tommy, and —” Pamela broke off and stood up and moved about the room, then stood with her back to the Trophy Wall, facing Rollison. Her face was set, her eyes lacked fire but held their brilliance. “When we told the old man he said: ‘Thank God. You make sure nothing happens to him. Do you hear? You make sure nothing happens to him’ ” Pamela paused and her eyes were misty as if the recollection brought tears very close to the surface. Slowly, she went on : “He was so sure someone would try to get Tommy’s money, it was almost uncanny. As if,” she went on, looking defiantly at Rollison, “as if he had second sight.”

“Perhaps he did,” said Rollison gently.

“You think it’s possible.”

“Any man who doesn’t believe in second sight hasn’t been about much,” Rollison answered. “Yes. I think it’s possible.”

“Well,” went on Pamela, relaxing and going back to her chair, hoisting and smoothing her dress as she sat down, “we felt we had to try something. The police wouldn’t take any notice of such a story — or at least they wouldn’t be likely to take any action — so we thought of you. We wrote to Tommy G., as I’ve explained, and told him it was extremely important that he should come straight to you. We meant to be there when he arrived.” She gave her most charming smile. “You would hardly have refused to help, would you?”

“The devious way is too often wrong,” Rollison said drily. “After a story like this, though, I would have helped on a straight request. Why didn’t you come to see me first?”

Again Pamela leaned towards him and touched his hand, this time pleading with him to believe her. It was some time before she went on, in a husky voice:

“We were going to, but the whole family went down with two-day ‘flu. I went first and recovered first, the others are still not over it. And I’d had a cable from Tommy saying when he would be here only on the morning of his arrival. I did the only thing that seemed sensible, let events speak for themselves. And you must admit they did,” she finished, with mingled triumph and defiance. “Mr. Rollison — Richard — that’s everything I can tell you. I didn’t dream they would try to kill us in the car, I don’t know whether I showed it but I’ve never been so frightened. Have you?” she asked, in a low-pitched voice.

“I don’t know whether Richard has,” said Tommy G. Loman, striding in from the door leading to the spare room and Jolly’s quarters. “I’ve never been so frightened as I am now. No, sir, that’s the simple truth.”

He stood looking down from his great height at Rollison; it was a long time before he turned towards the girl.