Salute the Toff by John Creasey

Author:John Creasey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2014-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

The Man With The Scar

It had happened, and there was no purpose in accusing himself yet again of a sin of omission. Nor, as he stepped towards the woman and made sure that she was dead, did the Toff reproach himself. There was no way he could see in which he could have avoided this.

He let the limp hand go, and stepped to the door.

The man had stopped swearing. He did not look so much scared as vindictive, and when the Toff bent over him he kicked out with his uninjured leg. Rollison dodged the kick, yanked the man up, then carried him and let him fall on a settee. The blood was coming through the navy blue trousers. The Toff put a towel on the seat.

“Do you want first aid or don’t you?”

“You can ruddy well do what yer ruddy well like!”

The Toff cut away a patch of trousers and swabbed the wound; the bullet had gone into the thigh, and probably touched the bone.

“You’ll need a surgeon,” said the Toff. “A police surgeon, too. What do they call you?”

“You won’t git a word outa me!”

“Won’t I, Benny?”

The man’s surprise was ludicrous, and told the Toff that this was the Benny whom Lorne had mentioned; that was nearly conclusive evidence – judging from Lorne’s conversation with Myra – that Benny had murdered the man at Grey Street. The knowledge was satisfying; the man’s refusal to talk was not. There was no way in which the Toff could think of making him.

He telephoned Scotland Yard. McNab was not there, but an inspector promised to arrange for a police-surgeon and an ambulance to come at once.

Until their arrival Benny had maintained a sullen silence. On it he began to swear again, and nothing the inspector or the surgeon could do quietened him. The latter confirmed the need for an immediate operation for the removal of the bullet, and that the bone had been touched.

Benny continued to hurl blasphemies until he was carried out on a stretcher.

Detective-Inspector Wilson, young, spruce and eager, watched the middle-aged and uncommunicative surgeon examine Myra. He waited until the surgeon had pronounced his obvious verdict, asked questions about the bruises, and then had gone. By then the Toff had given Wilson the address at Dring Mansions; it would be better, now that Myra had been killed with such heartlessness, to bring Lorne in. He felt sick at the failure, but was not depressed for long, and the arrival of McNab cheered him.

McNab took the story on its face value, and seemed convinced that for once the Toff had told the whole truth. He did not even complain that the Toff should have told him of Lorne much earlier.

The Toff had not mentioned Harrison.

He hardly knew whether to be pleased or sorry when he was told that the police had found the flat empty, and that there had been all the signs of a hurried departure. He knew that a call would go out immediately for Lorne, while McNab had at least the satisfaction of getting the murderer of the woman.

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