“If I may.”
“I don’t think you can do anything to help them,” said Naomi, “but you will at least see and understand the mood of the girls. It’s so very sad,” she went on, in her brisker voice, “only a few weeks ago everything appeared to be going so well.” She led the way to the door, and then touched the back of his hand. “Mr. Rollison, please understand and believe one thing. Professor Webberson and Dr. Brown did not take advantage of their position as sponsors. There was a very real friendship in both cases.”
Friendship, love, or simply lust, thought Rollison grimly, neither men had deserved to be murdered; nor had either of the girls.
And now Naomi Smith was telling the truth, which he wanted and hoped to be the case, or she was a consummate liar.
As he walked to his car, parked further away this time, he saw Guy Slatter walking towards him. He stopped as Guy drew up, aware of the powerful physique and the rugged good looks of the young man, who was so like his uncle.
“How is Sir Douglas?” Rollison asked.
“I’m assured there’s no permanent damage to the eyes,” said Guy, harshly. “No thanks to you. Now do you think those little bitches are worth protecting? If I had my way I’d send ‘em all to a whore-house I.”
“You know,” said Rollison, “that doesn’t do you any credit.”
“If you’re still on the side of that mob, you’re a bloody fool,” growled Guy. “You do-gooders make me sick!” He strode past, head held high, and Rollison walked more slowly towards his car. As he drew near, he thought he saw a shadowy movement in the back. All thought of the Slatters and the girls vanished. If someone was in the back of his car, it meant trouble—and a single sledge hammer blow would put an end to his interest in crime forever. He glanced down as he drew close, and saw a rug move. He opened the driving door, but instead of getting in he simply leaned inside, and said roughly :
“But that rug off you, and show your hands. And hurry!”
There was a convulsive movement—and then the rug was pushed off and two hands appeared; even he did not think there was the slightest chance that they were big enough to hold a sledge hammer. They were small and plump and very familiar.
“I don’t want anyone to know I’m here,” breathed Angela. “Guy came out to look for me. Just get in and pretend you’re alone. We can talk when we’re at Gresham Terrace or anywhere you want to take me. But please hurry,” she pleaded. “I’ve something I’m desperately anxious to tell you. I think I may have solved the case!”
Rollison heard all this as he drew his head back, got into the car in the normal way, sat back and touched the wheel.
“You can tell me as we go along,” he ordered.
He pushed the self-starter—and on the first instant of pressure, the front of the car blew up.
One moment he had only the thought of Angela and what she had to say in his mind; the next, the metal of the bonnet bulged upwards and upwards, there was a vivid red flash and then leaping flames, and as the windscreen cracked into a thousand tiny fragments, a roar and a blast.
A few pieces of glass fell over his knees.
The car rocked, as wildly as if it were a small boat in high seas. The flames rose higher and dark smoke billowed, and through the smoke Rollison saw a man reeling back, hand over his eyes, and he had a fierce and frightening recollection of Sir Douglas Slatter’s cut and bleeding face. But he could not move; in those few seconds he was too shocked and numbed. He saw other figures, men and women, hurrying towards the reeling man, was aware of cars pulled up in the road, saw a man leap from one with a small fire-extinguisher in his hand.
The sight seemed to revive Rollison. He pulled his own extinguisher from its clips beside the brake, and turned to look at Angela, suddenly alarmed lest she was hurt. She looked more startled than scared, her eyes and mouth open wide and round. He opened his door and jumped out, opened her door and said : “Get out, quick!” and strode to the front of the car. The bent and broken bonnet was now a mass of foam, there was an evil stench of the chemical and a smell also of burning. But the flames were out, and a little man with the remains of a huge cigar still jutting out beneath his hooked nose, was lowering his extinguisher.
“I got it,” he said with satisfaction.
“I can’t even begin to thank you,” Rollison said, looking towards the once reeling man who was standing in the middle of a small group.
“Who wants thanks?” the Good Samaritan said. “You’d do the same for me. You okay, sir?”
“I’m—yes, thanks. I’m fine. I hope—”
“You in a hurry to go any place? I’ll be glad to take you.”
“I’d better wait for the police to come here,” said Rolli-
son, “but if you could take my passenger—”
“Sure, sure, be glad to,” the cigar-smoker said. “That’s if you’re okay, Miss.”
It was not until Angela was being driven away in a sky-blue Jaguar that Rollison wondered whether he should have let her go, whether the helpful motorist could possibly have known who had put the explosive in the car. It was too late to stop her, and a police car was already pulling up, while a policeman was standing in the road, urging the traffic on. Very little had been tossed into the air, the metal of the bonnet was too strong. The man nearest the explosion had covered his face in time to escape the full effect of a billow of steam from the burst radiator, and was comparatively unhurt.
The engine, which had taken the full force of the explosion, was wrecked. Oil was dripping out of the sump, and there was a strong smell of petrol.
Wired to the base of the self-starter was a scrap of red cardboard.
“So they used dynamite,” remarked a policeman. It was the fair-haired Detective Sergeant Adams, who had seen Anne Miller. He shook his head lugubriously. “A chance in a million, Mr. Rollison, that you’re not in hospital by now.”
“If not in a morgue,” added Rollison lightly. “Sergeant, need I stay? I didn’t see who put it there, but you may find a passer-by who noticed someone. May I leave the rest to you?”
“You have been in touch with Mr. Grice of the Yard, sir, haven’t you?”
“I saw him only an hour ago.”
“And where can we find you, sir?”
Rollison gave him the Gresham Terrace address, then espied a taxi putting down a passenger a few houses along the street. Pushing through the crowd he ran towards it. It was not until he sat back, heavily, that the shock waves struck him. For a few moments he was very cold and shivery, and his forehead and upper lip were beaded with sweat. He was halfway towards Gresham Terrace before he began to feel acute anxiety for Angela. What on earth had possessed him, to allow her to go off with a stranger?
Turning out of the far end of Gresham Terrace as his cab turned in at the end nearer Piccadilly, was a sky-blue Jaguar. Relief surged over him.
Waiting for him at the open door of his flat were Jolly and Angela—Angela holding a glass of brandy. She looked pale and shaken, but her voice was calm enough. Jolly, very solicitous, ushered him to his favourite armchair, and brought him whisky and a soda-syphon.
“As Miss Angela said you weren’t likely to be long, I’ve timed dinner for seven-fifteen, sir,” he said. “And Miss Angela will be staying.”
“If that’s all right with you, Uncle Richard,” Angela said demurely.
Rollison looked at her anxiously. She had a tiny cut on her right temple, where blood had dried, and a reddish bruise on her left cheek.
“What makes you think you’ve solved the case?” he asked.
She did not answer at once, but sniffed the bouquet from the large glass.
He wondered if he should have given her more time to recover, whether she was really in a condition to answer and to think. Then he reminded himself that she was very tough indeed, as well as highly intelligent. He did not press her, but waited, sipping his whisky, grateful in a perverse way for her prolonged silence.