The Toff and the Kidnapped Child by John Creasey Page A

swivelled, as it turned a corner to the left; and then the rear lights vanished, and the street seemed very dark.
    There was no sound from Jeff.
    Rollison felt a fierce urge to rush into the driving seat and hunt the car down, but he forced himself to swing round, and run towards Jeff. Only the distant hum of the vanished car’s engine sounded. “ Higgs ! ” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Higgs!” A light at the window seemed to mock him; so did the small lamp near the entrance to the school, only a few yards away. “Higgs!” he bellowed, and then reached Jeff’s side. There was sufficient light for him to see how motionless the detective was. Jeff’s face was turned away from him, and he lay on his stomach. Rollison called out for the porter again, his voice pitched high, then shone his tiny torch with its pitifully slender beam. It shone on the crimson of blood, and on Jeff’s hand; it shone on a dark stain on Jeff’s white shirt, where the coat had been caught up; and it shone on the tyre marks across the shirt and the top of the trousers, the car must have gone right over him.
    The murderous swine . . .
    A man came, hurrying, not far along. “Help!” Rollison called, and saw a uniformed policeman passing beneath a street lamp. At the same time, Higgs limped from the driveway; so the shouting had not been useless. “Ambulance, quickly,” Rollison called. “A man’s been run over.”
    He saw Higgs hesitate, and then the policeman drew up, gasping for breath but managing to ask: “Is he hurt badly?”
    â€œVery.”
    The policeman did a simple thing: he blew his whistle.
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    Now Rollison had to decide how much to tell the men at the police station as well as how much to tell Eve. He could imagine what she would feel if she believed that her daughter had been taken away by people who would act as ruthlessly and cruelly as the driver of the small car. He was still suffering from a kind of shock, and had not really started to ask himself why the driver had been so ruthless and cold-blooded.
    Jeff was already on his way to the hospital. The constable had asked the formal questions and Rollison given the formal answers. Miss Ellerby had come out to see what the fuss was about, had been told there had been an ‘accident’ and had gone back, with that tight-lipped tension. Rollison had not seen Eve again yet. A car drew up and the policeman he had seen at the railway station got out, with a tall, thin man whose hair showed very silvery in the lamp light.
    â€œMr Rollison, this is Chief Inspector Dawson,” he introduced.
    â€œGlad to know you, Mr Rollison.” Dawson had a slow speaking voice. “Not going to try to persuade me that this was a coincidence, are you?”
    That made Rollison’s mind up for him.
    â€œNo,” he said. “Will you come into Miss Ellerby’s house, and give me a few minutes with the mother of a girl who’s missing? Then I’ll tell you what I know.”
    â€œVery well,” Dawson said. He made that sound ominous.
    Eve was with Miss Abbott and Miss Ellerby in the big room. Her eyes seemed frightened, and she looked at him as if she had some premonition that the news he brought would not be good. The two mistresses went out, and Eve stepped towards Rollison, and said in a taut voice: “She isn’t hurt, is she?”
    â€œI still haven’t the faintest idea where she is,” Rollison told her. “But we’re going to have to tell the police some of the truth, in spite of that note.”
    Eve didn’t speak.
    â€œI don’t think year husband is responsible,” Rollison went on. “I can’t believe that this has anything to do with your married life, either.”
    Eve caught her breath. “Why?”
    â€œA policeman has been run down and badly injured, trying to talk to one of the men we think are concerned,” Rollison