Introducing The Toff (8 page)

She stopped for a moment, and the Toff thought of the queer contradictions in a man’s make-up. John Farraway had been one of the worst men, but even when he had been operating for the Black Circle, he had sent money regularly to his sister. He wondered who the step-father had been, but decided not to press the girl for information.

Anne went on suddenly, almost as if she had read the Toff’s thoughts.

‘I couldn’t touch the money,’ she said, with spirit, and the Toff admired her the more. ‘I put it in the bank, under his name, and managed to get a job in one of the Chelmsford estate offices. I lived – I still live there – in a little cottage three miles away from the town. Then, just over a week ago, John came back.’

Anne paused again, and leaned back in her chair, her eyes closed. The Toff waited.

‘I knew he was afraid of something,’ continued the girl, ‘but he wouldn’t say what it was. He was in need of money, and grateful for the account in the bank, but he said it wasn’t enough, that he knew how he could get big money quickly, and get out of England again – to somewhere a long way from Turkey.

‘There was nothing I could do to dissuade him. I gave up trying after the second day, and hoped that he would settle down. But on the next day – it was late, and I had only been home a few minutes because I’d been to a dance in Chelmsford – he was waiting for me, with a car that he had hired, and he said that he had to get up to London quickly. I had to go with him because, he said, it would be safer for him. I didn’t try to stop him. He was too nervy, afraid of something – somebody. Who it was I didn’t know until we were stopped on the road. Then I saw Dragoli for the first time.’

For a third time Anne stopped and the Toff stood up and went towards her, sitting on the arm of her chair and resting his hand lightly on her shoulder.

‘Steady,’ he said. ‘It’s all over, remember!’

He felt her body shaking, heard the hiss of the breath between her lips.

‘Yes,’ she said dully, ‘I suppose it is. Well – John saw Dragoli, and swore. Then he stopped the car and whispered to me, almost frantically. “Get away,” he said; “get away and go to Scotland Yard. Tell them the man who is selling the snow is Dragoli, and that everything that matters is on the plan fastened in the strap of your left shoe!” ‘

The Toff’s body suddenly went rigid. For a moment the vastness of the information made him gasp. All that mattered was fastened in the strap of the girl’s shoe – the shoe which he had found on the road, amid the wreckage.

It seemed incredible! For three days and more he had had the solution of the riddle slung in a drawer of his wardrobe.

The Toff said nothing.

‘I tried to get away,’ went on Anne lifelessly, ‘but Garrotty came after me. I struggled, and in the struggle I lost my left shoe. Where it is now I don’t know. And’ – again Anne’s voice grew firmer, and the Toff recognized the fine spirit within her –’I’m glad I don’t know! If I had, I think I must have told Dragoli – it was too terrible to keep silent while they were pestering me, questioning me. But I had to, because I’d no more idea where the shoe was than Adam.’

Anne stopped and leaned back in her chair. The Toff kept his hand on her shoulder for a moment, then took it away and stood up from the arm of her chair. He went in front of her and stared down, a smile hovering about the corners of her mouth.

‘You’re a great kid,’ he said, and the compliment brought a flush to Anne’s cheeks. ‘Were you happy in your country cottage?’

She nodded. Something prompted her to confide in her companion. The Toff was a man of great charm at times.

‘Yes,’ said Anne, ‘very happy. I’m hoping to get married soon, and settle down there.’

‘Splendid,’ smiled the Toff. ‘Count me in if you need a best man. And now’ – a smile curved the corners of his lips, but was tempered with seriousness –’be prepared for a little excitement. You remember the shot which was fired out of the Daimler when Garrotty and Dragoli were taking you away?’

Anne nodded. Her lips parted a little.

‘Yes. I was afraid someone else had – been hurt.’

‘No such luck for dear Achmed,’ drawled the Toff.i ‘I was in the other car, and I ducked in time. Also I found your shoe, Annabelle.’

Anne’s eyes widened incredulously.

‘You found it? And you’ve still got it?’

‘I have,’ said the Toff, with assurance. ‘Hold on a minute while I get hold of the thing.’

The Toff went out of the room, with a shrewd idea at the back of his mind as to what would be found in the strap of the shoe. He smiled to himself at the irony of fate; all the time he had been sitting on the solution of McNab’s worries – the secret hang-out of Dragoli, the place where the supplies of cocaine were kept.

Within three minutes he was back. The girl stood up, tense with excitement, as she saw the shoe.

‘That’s it,’ she said quickly.

‘You can bet your sweet life it is,’ said the Toff lightly. ‘In the strap, eh? Where’s my penknife?’

As he spoke he rooted in his pocket for the knife; a minute later he had cut through the stitches of the strap – on inspection it was obvious that they had been made by an amateur with a needle – and a grin of satisfaction creased his lips as he took out a thin spill of paper.

Anne gasped, and her eyes were bright with excitement.

‘The bag of tricks,’ murmured the Toff, and uncoiled the paper.

If Anne, peering over his shoulders, was a trifle disappointed at the ink-drawn sketch, the Toff was mightily pleased. It was a plan, not drawn to scale, but accurate enough for the purpose, of the situation of Dragoli’s drug warehouse. Once the place was raided, the back of the drug traffic would be broken.

‘Do you recognize the place?’ asked the girl.

The Toff said nothing for a moment. He was tracing along one line, which was intersected at various points by two small, parallel lines. His eyes glinted as he realized that it represented the river Thames, with the intersections representing bridges. Then he transferred his attentions to the several straight lines, all converging to one spot which was marked in a black square. And beneath the black square were the words:

‘Red Lion’

The Toff’s lips formed a soundless whistle.

‘Well, I’m damned!’ he exclaimed after a pregnant pause. ‘The “Red Lion” – Harry the Pug’s place! The little swab double-crossed me after all. I’m getting careless.’

Anne caught something of his excitement.

‘So you know it?’ she demanded.

‘Know it!’ The Toff’s eyes were gleaming. ‘I should say I do! It’s bang on the Thames – the stuff could be taken from a ship into the “Red Lion” inside five minutes. And if there was a scare, Dragoli could be out of the place in a jiffy, taking most of the dope with him.’ The Toff looked into Anne’s eyes and chuckled. ‘It’s a shame, but McNab will have the time of his life when he gets this!’

The girl’s eyes narrowed.

‘And there isn’t any chance of Dragoli getting away?’

‘Not a ghost of a chance,’ said the Toff optimistically. ‘But there’s likely to be a rough-house down at the “Red Lion” before it’s over.’ He eased his collar suddenly, feeling hot and sticky. ‘You know, I’m getting warm with the thought of it.’

Anne stood up, and walked towards the window.

‘It’s hot in here,’ she said. ‘I think there’s a storm brewing.’ She seemed worried, and the Toff countered promptly.

‘There is,’ he said with assurance. ‘A big one.’

Perhaps it has not been sufficiently stressed in this story of one of the Toff’s biggest adventures that he, like all men, was human.

He had seen, with clarity of vision which was almost uncanny, the possibilities of the situation. He had discovered the ‘Steam Packet’, and made it too hot for Garrotty and Dragoli, and now he believed that there would be a breathing space while the Egyptian conferred with his masters on the next move. He had sent the two hired pugs away, for he was not expecting trouble.

To do them justice, the police were. McNab had placed two plain-clothes men in the vicinity of the Toff’s flat, and they had been watching for hours. The Toff noticed them when he went to the open window and stared into the street for a moment to get a breath of air. The thunder which was brewing made the room hot and stuffy, but by the window it was fresher, as it had needed to be.

He pointed the watchers out to Anne.

‘Perhaps,’ he said flippantly, ‘McNab thinks I’ll spirit you away before he comes with his questions.’

‘Are you going to?’ asked Anne mischievously.

‘Not yet,’ said the Toff, with meaning. ‘Lord,’ he broke off, ‘it
is
darned hot in here!’

It was. But he put it down to the thunder that was threatening, and therein he made a mistake.

For, unknown to him and to the police, the second floor flat in the house adjacent to the Toff – a corner house – had been recently let, and let furnished. The new tenants had, in point of fact, been in possession for two days – even before the affair at the ‘Steam Packet’. And they were in the flat while the Toff talked with Anne Farraway – which accounted in no small manner for the stuffiness of the room.

The very effort of thinking seemed to tire the Toff, and he put it down off-handedly to break the tension, now that he knew the truth. He wiped his damp forehead with a silk handkerchief and grinned at Anne.

‘It wouldn’t be any hotter,’ he said, ‘in the place where Garrotty’s going. Joke.’

Anne smiled obediently. She felt more like smiling now than she had done for a long time. The Toff inspired confidence – and she lacked his suspicious mind, which was just as well.

All that had to be done was to take the plan to the police.

The Toff smiled as she said as much.

‘I suppose you’re right, sweet one. I’ve looked everywhere I can, and I don’t see the catch. I’ve just got to potter round to McNab – but he’ll be calling soon, and that’ll save the trouble – and hand the whole thing over to him. Whether Garrotty and Dragoli will fall into his hands is a matter for conjecture. But there’ll be the blazes of a scrap – that’s a safe bet.’

He levered himself out of his chair with a smile at the corners of his mouth. The end of the Black Circle’s English campaign was in sight, and the Toff was pleased.

Then he frowned, and there was a far-away look in his eyes. For there was something the matter, something which had not happened to him in all the years of his life, excepting in those days when he had run the hundred in a shade over evens, and he was trying to find the reason.

He failed. But the fact remained that his heart was thumping against his breast, and he was breathing hard.

‘I’m puffed,’ he said slowly, and he looked at Anne questioningly. ‘Do you feel all right?’

The strangeness of his manner worried her. She nodded, but without conviction.

‘Yes. I feel warm, that’s all.’

‘Very warm,’ agreed the Toff. ‘Much too warm.’

But an unpleasant thought was forming in his mind. It made him feel cold inside, in spite of the heat and the stickiness of his body. Little beads of perspiration were standing out on his forehead – and the palms of his hands were greasy with sweat.

‘I don’t believe,’ he thought, ‘that I’ve fallen for poison. I . . .’

But he felt a terrible conviction that somehow he had, that somehow the Black Circle had reached him.

He thought back on the food that Jolly had prepared, but his thoughts were muddled. Nothing was clear.

He walked slowly towards the telephone, looking at Anne, seeing the strain about her eyes. She was breathing hard, and with increasing difficulty.

The smile which he flashed towards her was a mockery.

‘We’d better – tell – the police about the plan,’ he muttered, and heard the pauses between the words as though he was listening to someone else speaking from a long way off.

The telephone, on a table near the window, looked a black blur. He wondered whether he would be able to speak coherently, then thought muzzily of the detectives outside. Perhaps it would be better to signal to them.

His fingers touched the telephone, but slipped along the shiny surface. He managed to get the earpiece off its hook, and tried hard to set his lips to the microphone, for he knew that he would never reach the window. His legs were wobbling – his arms went stiff.

His mind was just a mad medley. Nothing ran normally, nothing looked normal. Anne, struggling against the unseen horror in the room, looked a hundred miles away.

Then the room whirled crazily about him. The floor seemed to sway in front of his eyes; a roaring thunder filled his ears. He tried to speak – to shout – but the words were but a gurgle at the back of his throat.

Then everything went black. He thudded to the floor, an inert mass.

Anne Farraway tried to scream, but something caught at her throat. She tried to move, but her limbs were stiff. She saw, horrified, the still body of the Toff, the telephone – off its hook, but useless – and then she too felt the room swirling about her, and she dropped into a yawning oblivion.

In the newly tenanted flat next to the Hon. Richard Rollison’s, two men stood close together, peering through a small hole drilled in the wall. They saw the whole drama as they watched in silence.

Garrotty was holding a long gas-cylinder, with its nozzle inserted in a second hole in the wall. Through the hole the poison crept insidiously, striking the Toff and the girl into unconsciousness.

Dragoli was standing next to Garrotty. He turned away suddenly.

That is enough,’ he said smoothly. ‘Stop the gas, Garrotty. The quicker we get them out of there the better.’

Garrotty turned off the gas control of the cylinder and swung round quickly enough. Sight of the plan which the Toff had found in the girl’s shoe had made him uneasy. It had been a narrow shave. If the police had found it first a hundred policemen would have been in the neighbourhood of the ‘Red Lion’ within an hour. And Garrotty did not like the idea of being caught red-handed in the dope racket in England.

‘Sure,’ he grunted. ‘What about Rollison’s servant?’