The doctor put down the receiver. “Well, that’s all settled. And now, what about the other fellow? No, no, don’t show me, I’ll find him.” He disappeared in the direction of the spare bedroom. A few minutes later he was back. “He’ll be okay. It’s the first chap I’m worried about.” He followed the stretcher downstairs.
Rollison felt a surge of relief. Thank God Jolly was all right, he thought, he could have been badly hurt—these men were undoubtedly killers.
Killers . . . And Olivia had gone chasing after them . . .
Rollison glanced anxiously at the telephone, but it remained silent.
Clay crossed to him.
“What made you suspicious, Mr Rollison?”
Rollison answered in a tone of mingled wonder and anger. “A nineteen-year-old girl “saw” this happening from a mile away, and I took her seriously.”
“You mean—Miss Lister?” Clay looked astounded. “Good God!”
“Precisely.”
“She actually saw—oh, it must be some kind of trick.”
“Oh, no,” Rollison said. “Not this one. Whether we like it or not, she went into some sort of trance—I thought she was asleep, actually—and then began to shout in distress. Even if she’d known what was going to happen, she couldn’t have known the precise time it would happen, and—but she didn’t know.” He looked at Clay, his eyes troubled. “She couldn’t have known.”
Clay said stubbornly: “All right then, it was a kind of premonition.”
Rollison pointed to the Trophy Wall.
“In that premonition she saw that top hat— and she saw Lucifer Stride being attacked.” He forced a laugh. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Jolly was attacked, and she didn’t see that.” There was no reason to say anything about the stranger he had left locked in the spare bedroom. If Clay had any idea of this it would certainly be very awkward indeed, and the knowledge that he had had a prisoner and lost him was cause enough for chagrin. If only Ebbutt’s men had been prepared to help, the flat would have been watched and this could never have happened.
And Olivia Cordman wouldn’t be missing.
Was, “missing’ too strong a word? Or was the situation serious enough to make it necessary for him to tell Clay to look for the Features Editor of The Day if she didn’t ring through soon.
The telephone bell rang, and he snatched up the receiver.
“Rollison.” But it wasn’t Olivia.
“Richard,” Lady Hurst, “I trust there was no cause for alarm.”
“Oh—” Rollison tried to cloak his disappointment— “Jolly’s all right.”
“And the young man?”
“He’s on his way to hospital, and we should know his condition in a couple of hours,” Rollison said. “No need to alarm the girl until then—just say he was hurt.”
“She wants to come over at once.”
“She’ll be better off where she is,” Rollison decided, then immediately changed his mind. “No. I’ll talk to her here if you’d like to bring her over. Aunt—” He paused.
“What is it?”
“It happened just as she said it would.”
“Of course it did,” said Lady Hurst.
As she rang off, Rollison went tense again, hoping for a call from Olivia. It still did not come. By now he was aware of Clay watching him with revived suspicion, and the detective said:
“What’s worrying you, Mr Rollison?”
Rollison began to tell him, but before he finished Clay snapped his fingers at one of his men and said:
“You know Miss Cordman by sight, don’t you? Red hair, five feet one—”
“I know her, sir.”
“Go down to the car and have a general call put out for her—London and Home Counties.
“What was the car, Mr Rollison? . . . A black Morris 1000, Registration 5X2151. Thank you . . . Look slippy,” Clay added to his man, who hurried out and down the stairs.
As the door closed, the telephone bell rang.
For a reason he could not understand, Rollison hesitated before picking it up. He felt sure this must be Olivia, yet now that she had telephoned at last—if in fact this was she—he feared she had bad news. At last he snatched up the receiver.
“Rollison.”
“Otherwise known as The Toff,” a man said in a sneering voice. “You listen to me, Toff. Get off the star-gazer case and forget anything you found at Mrs Abbott’s flat. If you don’t, then one of your pet star-gazers won’t gaze at anything else any more. She’ll be as dead as Mrs Abbott.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Prisoner
Clay was whispering hoarsely: “What is it? Who is it?”
“Rolly, I feel such a fool,” Olivia said into the telephone. “The last thing I wanted was to make things worse for you, but I have.” The man with her muttered something.
Olivia gave a sharp exclamation, and for a few moments Rollison could hear nothing but a confused jumble of sound. Then Olivia came back on the line. “Rolly, he probably means it, and I would hate to die. Really I would.”
“You won’t,” said Rollison, with a confidence he was very far from feeling. “It’s all right, Olivia, we’ll get you. Where are you?”
She appeared to ignore his question. “How’s Lucifer?”
“Lucifer?” said Rollison, puzzled. “Oh, he’ll be okay.” It wasn’t like Olivia to waste time on irrelevancies, he thought. “But you, Olivia. Where are you?”
Still she ignored his question.
“Oh, dear. So they did kill him. Poor Lucifer. If he were still alive I’d say go and talk to him—but he was always such a moaner—”
The line went dead.
Clay said in a voice tense with anger:
“Why didn’t you let me talk to her?”
“It wouldn’t have been much good,” Rollison said, absently.
Lucifer, he thought. Olivia had been trying to tell him that Lucifer would know where she was. What was it she had said?— “But he was always such a moaner . . .” Moaner? Moaner? Why, Monal thought Rollison excitedly, of course. Olivia had been trying to tell him that he could get help from either Lucifer Stride or Mona Lister.
Clay was looking impatient. “Is she all right?”
“She’s being held prisoner. I’m to get off the case.”
“That wouldn’t exactly make me cry,” Clay said drily.
Rollison shrugged. “I may have to get off the case, but not yet. That man’s accent was Rhodesian—Madam Melinska comes from—” Rollison stopped short.
“What is it?” Clay demanded in alarm.
“I meant to ask you to send someone to the Marigold Club, Madam Melinska and the girl—”
“You needn’t worry about them,” Clay said impatiently. “In view of what’s happened you wouldn’t expect us to let that pair roam about loose, would you? They’ll be looked after. Did Miss Cordman give you any clue where she was being held prisoner?”
The question was whether to tell Clay or not. Once the police knew, they would want to take action, and Rollison was well aware that this might be disastrous. Any appearance on the scene by the police would not only tell the Rhodesian that he, Rollison, was not going to give up the case, but that he was working with the law. And yet—
Clay had surprisingly clear grey eyes, and a sensitive mouth in spite of his square face and massive chin. There was a pleasing quality in him, and quite suddenly it showed in his face and in his manner.
“Mr Rollison,” he said, “I want to help, you know. We’ve got off on the wrong foot and no doubt it’s as much my fault as yours, but that doesn’t matter now. I know you’ve often done a great deal on your own and—” he waved at the Trophy Wall— “there’s the proof that it hasn’t been a waste of time. But if you go off on a lone wolf act without consulting us, well, it does make things a bit difficult. But I’m as ready to listen to reason as Mr Grice.”