Salute the Toff Read online

  Copyright & Information

  Salute The Toff

  First published in 1941

  © John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1941-2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2014 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN EAN Edition

  0755136276 9780755136278 Print

  0755139607 9780755139606 Kindle

  0755137949 9780755137947 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

  Creasey wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the 'C' section in stores. They included:

  Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

  Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

  He also founded the British Crime Writers' Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey's stories are as compelling today as ever.

  Chapter One

  The Toff At Ease

  The Toff – or the Honourable Richard Rollison – was walking one day in July through the glades of the New Forest when he came upon a small village which he knew well, a quiet and secluded place. A small village green whereon the cricket pitch was still marked and wired off to prevent the cows from grazing on it, a single High Street with small terraces of thatch-roofed cottages, white walls and dark oak beams and facings, each with a narrow strip of well-tended garden in front of it. There nasturtium and antirrhinum, rambler and creeper, those lovely humble flowers of incredible colour, grew in abundance. There the windows were polished so that they reflected the slanting rays of a warm sun without showing long and irregular smears. Windows and doors were open, as if in silent invitation for the wayfarer to pass in and not pass by; curtains of lace, and sometimes chintz, moved gently in a breeze that robbed the evening of its true heat. A farm cart rumbled past; and a gnarled old man with a face tanned deep brown touched his forelock and wished the Toff good night.

  “Good night,” said the Toff, and he smiled, which was always a pleasing thing to see. He was at ease in an open-necked shirt and slacks, and his brown face glistened a little because of the warmth and his exertions. “You’ll find the hay early this year, won’t you?”

  “Ar, that un be,” said the old one.

  The Toff would have passed on but for a cry from within a cottage that was standing in a small garden of its own, a charming place both colourful and clean.

  “Rolly! Rolly, it can’t be—wait a minute, wait!”

  And as he turned, his eyes lighting up, a young woman came from the cottage, wrestling with a small apron that helped to cover a printed cotton frock, but did nothing to spoil a lively, lovely face and a figure which it did men good to see. Dark hair, tumbled as she pulled off the apron, set an oval face in a halo that seemed to have been born for it.

  “Rolly, it is you!”

  “Fay,” said the Toff, with unfeigned pleasure, “it’s good to see you.”

  He went inside, and drank tea, and watched the lovely Fay in the small lounge with its oak beams and its charm. The cottage suited her: it was the background she should have had. Odd that she had gone there only at the strong appeal of her husband, who was in Cyprus. The marriage would not have taken place but for the activity of the Toff.

  As Fay talked the Toff recalled their story and the fact that the Draycotts (as they are now) had played a part in one of his adventures that he would never forget. There had been tragedy in it, and death; but there had also been hope and inspiration.

  For the Toff it had started one day when he had been at his ease in London.

  There were many who called the Hon. Richard Rollison a man-about-town, and they meant the term disparagingly. They said that he did not know what it was to do a fair day’s work, that he was a drone with far more money than was good for him, and if they heard rumours of some of his activities they turned up their aristocratic noses and declared that for a man of his birth and breeding such notoriety was disgraceful.

  They did not know of the legend which had grown up about Rollison in the East End of London, where his soubriquet of ‘the Toff’ was first inspired, and they turned a deaf ear to the reputation which slowly built about him, until he was as well known in the West End as the East. They would have laughed derisively had they been told that he took crime seriously, and even crusaded against it, for was it not a fact that he would spend weeks at a time east of Aldgate Pump? Was it not also true that even when he was at his Gresham Terrace flat, perhaps entertaining relatives of considerable complacency or, as they liked to say, importance, peculiar little men in ill-fitting clothes and with unbearable accents called to see him? Men, it was whispered, who had been in prison, or ought to have been, thieves and pick-pockets and probably far worse, and women too, with excessive rouge and lip-stick and with absurdly high-heeled shoes.

  Yet the Toff was always very much the same, quick to smile and quiet-voiced, lazy to look at despite his seventy-two inches and his lean and well-proportioned figure. The smile was the real trouble, it was said, for he always created the impression that he was laughing at his guests, or else at some joke which he could or would not share: and socially each alternative was a crime.

  One late afternoon early in September renowned for its perfect weather the Toff saw five distant relatives to his door and returned to his lounge, where Jolly was opening the windows.

  “Thank the Lord,” said the Toff, “that we needn’t have another of those for a month, Jolly. Can you tell me why they must be at all?”

  Jolly, inches shorter than the Toff, grey and sparse of hair, miserable of countenance although optimistic of temperament, with a lined face and a baggy patch under his chin which suggested that he had once been fat, allowed himself to say: “They are considered a duty, sir.”

  “Yes, I know,” said the Toff. “But why should a group of back-bi
ting old hypocrites continue to descend on me and vent their disapproval? Why don’t they leave me alone?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jolly, and moved slowly to the door. “Your good nature prevents you from making that quite clear, sir.”

  “Oh,” said the Toff, and he looked surprised. “You needn’t go, Jolly. Sit down.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Jolly did not perch himself on the edge of a chair, but sat down and became comfortable, for the Toff had insisted on that long since. Moreover, the Toff rarely talked to him for the sake of talking: more often than not there would be some information or some problem he wanted to discuss.

  Somewhat unexpectedly the Toff said: “Jolly, I’m tired.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” said Jolly. “I had thought that the recent period of inaction allied to a sequence of quite early nights would have the opposite effect.”

  “Yes I suppose so,” said the Toff, “but I yawned twenty-one times between four o’clock and half past five.”

  “The company may have been the cause of that, sir.”

  “It was more than the company. It was boredom that started a long time before four o’clock today. London is empty, Jolly.”

  “This part of London, sir, perhaps.”

  “So little entertainment,” said the Toff.

  “Precisely, sir. Since Madame Litinov—”

  “Never mention her name,” said the Toff firmly. “And don’t try to wish feminine company on me. I have finished with ballerinas for the time being. And film stars. And all the others. I am tired of exoticism; I want freshness, English charm, genuine vivacity that isn’t ladled out with a spoon. Night-clubs and bad music are sickening me, while there is a remarkable inertia in the East End.”

  “For which we should be thankful, sir.”

  “Don’t be sonorous,” said the Toff, and he crossed one leg over the other. “I’ve been giving it some thought, and I think that a week or two in the country, on our own, might be a help. So you will drive down to the New Forest and see what you can find in the way of a small place, furnished not too hideously, and with an acre or two of its own ground. We will rusticate, Jolly.”

  “Very good, sir. Shall I go tonight?”

  “As ever was,” said the Toff. “You’ll be down there by nine o’clock, and you can start looking round in the morning, Not a large place, Jolly: one that you can look after without help from the locals, but one with a telephone and electric light.”

  “I know precisely what you want, sir.”

  “Good,” said the Toff. “Then find it.”

  Jolly was on his way within half an hour, and the Toff wondered whether it had been a wise decision, played with the idea of going out for the evening, but put on slacks and a flannel jacket before settling down for an evening’s reading. He was deep in a disquieting book by William Golding when the front-door bell rang.

  He finished a paragraph, put the book down, and opened the door without giving much thought to the likely identity of his caller. It was still daylight, and there was a window in the passage which illuminated the Toff’s front door excellently, and so enabled him to see the girl who stood there.

  He had never seen her before.

  She was neither tall nor short, and she was dressed in a light-grey costume with a white silk blouse that had frills at the V neck. A small hat covered dark hair, and it entered the Toff’s mind that he was seeing what he had told Jolly he wanted to see: someone fresh and yet quite lovely, with wide-set blue eyes, a short nose and a short upper lip, a square chin which was the least bit shiny, and a complexion in which artifice had helped nature and not covered it.

  “Good evening,” said the Toff.

  “Good evening. Is Mr.—Rollison in, please?”

  “Yes,” said the Toff. “I am Rollison.”

  “Oh,” she said, and she almost looked disappointed, while before she could stop herself the words came: “I expected an older man, I’m sorry.”

  “Why be sorry?” asked the Toff. “And why stand there?” He stood aside for her to pass, and he saw that although she was self-possessed up to a point she looked about her quickly, while he fancied that the colour on her cheeks was partly due to excitement.

  “And now,” said the Toff, “don’t apologise for calling, don’t assure me that you know I’m busy, but if I could spare you a little time you’d be grateful. I have positively nothing to do, and I am very bored. Does that help?”

  She smiled, quickly, gratefully.

  “It does, a lot. I—I wouldn’t have known of you, but a friend suggested that you might help, and I’m worried. My—my employer has disappeared, Mr. Rollison. He has been missing for two days, and I’m sure that something is wrong. May I tell you the whole story?”

  The Toff pulled up a chair for her and said: “You certainly may.”

  Chapter Two

  One Man Missing

  She told her story with commendable brevity, her only preamble being that her name was Gretton, Fay Gretton, and that her employer owned a small estate agency which he ran under his own name of Draycott. She had been working for Draycott less than a month, but during that time she had seen nothing unusual. He was quite young – no more than thirty, she thought – and was engaged.

  That had considerable bearing on the problem.

  “He is planning to get married in ten days’ time,” said Fay Gretton earnestly, “and he’s been working all hours to get the office work up to date so that he can leave it for a fortnight. That’s why I’m so sure he would have been in if it had been possible.”

  “Go on,” urged the Toff.

  “I’ve called at his flat and telephoned him several times. He hasn’t been there since Monday evening, and it’s Wednesday now. I—” Fay hesitated, and then went on quickly: “I asked his fiancée whether she had heard from him, and she said no.”

  The Toff tapped the ash from his cigarette and asked: “And the lady wasn’t perturbed?”

  “No, not particularly. Apparently Mr. Draycott often goes away for two or three days at a time on business, and sometimes doesn’t tell her—she is away quite a lot too. She told me,” went on Fay, “that she thought I was making a lot of fuss about nothing.”

  “Too bad.” The Toff’s eyes were smiling.

  Fay said sharply: “I hope you don’t agree! I—oh, I’m sorry!”

  “Don’t be,” said the Toff. “Let me get the essentials straight. Mr. Draycott was in business on Monday, returned to his flat that evening, and has not been seen since. The flat has been searched—”

  “No,” said Fay quickly. “I couldn’t get in, and there’s no one on the premises with a key. The people in the flat below said they heard him go out on Monday, and someone else said he was carrying a small attaché-case. But I can’t be sure that the flat is empty, and—” She hesitated, and then went on with a rush: “I’m scared.”

  By that time the Toff had formed a judgment of Fay, mostly in her favour.

  He imagined that she was about twenty-five, that she had spent several years in business, and that she would be capable. She would be unlikely to have inhibitions or obsessions: probably she was as mentally healthy as she was physically. He would not be surprised to learn that she had grown to think more of Draycott than a secretary should.

  And from there, thought the Toff, the next step should have been easy. She was in love, and scared by things which were mostly imaginary. The fiancée’s attitude suggested that was true, and yet the Toff found it hard to believe.

  He said: “All right, Miss Gretton, we’ll have a look at the flat for the sake of our peace of mind.”

  “You mustn’t go to the police,” she said quickly.

  “I didn’t propose to, but why not?”

  “Well.” She hesitated, and then smiled nervously. “If there was nothin
g the matter, and Mr. Draycott found that I’d had the police in the flat, it might cost me my job. Especially after Miss Harvey has scoffed at the idea of trouble. I’ve really no business to interfere, but—” She broke off, and the Toff finished for her: “He was so busy clearing up that you can’t believe he would have gone off willingly without a word? That’s reasonable enough, provided he’s not temperamental.”

  “Great Scott, no! He’s the sanest man I’ve met Do you know Ted Harrison?”

  “I don’t recall him,” answered the Toff.

  “He said you wouldn’t,” said Fay. “He’s a part-time journalist—he really doesn’t do much work—and he plays a lot of cricket. I’ve known him for years, and I happened to meet him at lunch-time. He knows Mr. Draycott well—he got me the job. I told him part of the story, and he said that it would be the kind of thing to interest you.” Fay put her head to one side, and went on slowly: “He said so much about you that I thought you must be fifty at least to have crammed it all in.”

  “The talkative Mr. Harrison probably gave you many wrong impressions,” said the Toff. “But I’m glad he sent you. If there’s nothing to worry about, it’s all right, and if there is we haven’t lost much time.”

  “No,” she said. “Ted—Ted said that you wouldn’t laugh. It does seem pretty flimsy on the surface, doesn’t it?”

  “Well,” said the Toff judicially, “I’ve known flimsier starts to major problems, and I’ve known cases that seemed all-important fade after twenty-four wasted hours. But rid your mind of all that the talkative Mr. Harrison said—by the way, has he got a nice-looking on-drive?”

  “Yes,” said Fay. “And he’s pretty safe with the hook-shot.”

  “Then I do know him. You seem to know enough about cricket to talk in the vernacular, Fay.”