Introducing The Toff Read online

  Rollison smiled as he took a letter, addressed to Mr. Bernard Browning. It might have been from Jolly, at the flat, or from Anne Farraway – but he had had a note from Anne on the previous day, saying that she was enjoying her stay with the Tennants, and that Ted Frensham, at her hosts’ invitation, was spending a few days in Surrey.

  Moreover, he did not recognize the writing on the envelope.

  With a murmured apology, he tore it open. And then he stared down, his face very hard. Warrender eyed him with growing alarm.

  ‘What is it, man?’

  Rollison’s eyes held an expression that Warrender had never seen in them before.

  ‘Just a friendly little note,’ said the Toff bitterly. ‘From Dragoli.’

  A pin would have sounded like a tin kettle dropping in the room as Warrender and McNab eyed the speaker. Rollison laughed shortly, and handed them the letter. It was typewritten, although the envelope had been addressed in handwriting, and it said simply:

  Clever, Rollison, but not clever enough.

  Warrender pushed his hand through his hair.

  ‘But – it’s impossible! ‘

  ‘God, how you do jump to the obvious!’ snapped the Toff, who was not in one of his best moods. ‘It’s possible, and it happened. How many people knew of this? Five?’

  Warrender sat heavily on the bed.

  ‘Seven, Rollison. I told Colliss, and Owen heard me.’

  ‘Owen?’

  ‘My sergeant,’ explained McNab.

  Rollison looked at both men without speaking for a few minutes, and then he stood up, taking a box of cigarettes from the table.

  ‘Well, the scheme’s busted, and we can’t undo it. I wish to heaven I could get busy.’

  ‘Don’t you realize,’ said Warrender slowly, ‘that someone must have told Dragoli about it? By the way, there’s Miss Farraway, and she might have taken your friends into her confidence.’

  ‘She might have done,’ admitted the Toff, ‘but the Tennants are as safe as I am about talking. We’ll assume she didn’t. We’ll assume that there are eight people altogether who knew the truth – and that’s seven too many,’ he added bitterly. ‘Yourself, Colliss, McNab, Owen, the nurse here, the house-surgeon at Grandleys, and I don’t think he would talk, Anne Farraway, and my man Jolly, as well as the innocent victim of the conspiracy, myself. And one of us talked.’

  Warrender looked pale.

  ‘Dragoli –’

  ‘Couldn’t have guessed,’ said the Toff, and then suddenly he laughed, more normally. ‘Well, we’ll find out, and it doesn’t matter much.’

  ‘Don’t you think so? If there’s a leakage of secret information like that –’

  ‘It might have been from the hospital,’ Rollison said carelessly. ‘Dragoli’s too deep to be taken in by anything without checking up, and when he learned that Colliss had put it across him, he probably felt worried and started investigating. Forget it. I’m old enough to look after myself, and I’m moving from here right away. I can rely on Jolly’s cooking, but I’m damned if I’d enjoy the food here after this.’

  It was three hours later when Rollison did leave the nursing-home, and in order to keep up the pretence in some ways, he rented his Gresham Street flat as Mr. Bernard Brown, and the world officially believed in his death.

  But he was more worried than he had admitted to Warrender.

  He was sure that McNab was safe. He felt convinced that Warrender would never have let the secret out to anyone else than Colliss and Owen. And he was sure of himself and Jolly. That left a short list of suspects, of people who knew of Dragoli, and who might have given the Egyptian information.

  He put Anne Farraway at the head of it, although he hated to think she was possible. On the other hand, she had behaved with remarkable self-possession; she had blossomed out entirely different from what he had first expected of her.

  The list was:

  Anne Farraway.

  Reginald Colliss. (But if so, why attacked?)

  Detective-sergeant James Owen.

  Dr. Alderson, the house-surgeon at Grandleys.

  Nurse Alice Bligh.

  It was no use crossing any of them off, the Toff knew. But what worried him more was the fact that Owen and Colliss were working in the affair and that they might be able to pass on extra information at any time to Dragoli.

  Yet nothing happened to worry him in the next week.

  Time flew surprisingly quickly. The Toff collected a large supply of his visiting-cards, for he expected to pay many calls when he appeared again. Anne Farraway visited the place once, and assured him that she had not breathed a word even to her fiancé.

  ‘Is he still holidaying with you?’ asked the Toff.

  ‘Yes – he’s in London today.’

  ‘Doesn’t he ever work?’ demanded Rollison plaintively.

  ‘Well – he does more or less as he pleases. He’s a representative for a big wholesale chemist, and if he gets one or two decent orders he doesn’t have to worry about working for a few weeks.’ The girl smiled cheerfully. ‘I’d like you to meet him.’

  The Toff was looking thoughtful, but nothing like as thoughtful as he felt. It was a point of considerable interest that Ted Frensham, fiancé of Anne Farraway, should be an employee of a large chemical company. For no way of distributing snow would be better than under the guise, say, of boracic powder, or one of a dozen other harmless white powders.

  ‘That’s an idea,’ he admitted. ‘Especially if he isn’t overworked. Why are you so anxious about it?’

  Anne shrugged her shoulders. She was dressed in a flowered frock and a light swagger coat, for it was a warm day, and she looked cool and delightful.

  ‘Well, he’s not a fool, Roily’ – they had progressed considerably, since they had first met, in the method of addressing each other –’and he guesses there’s some reason for me going to stay with perfect strangers. He knows about – well, my earlier adventures; I’d told him about my brother, of course. And he thinks he ought to be able to do something.’

  ‘I quite agree with you,’ said the Toff.

  Just sixteen days after the explosion at Shadwell, he met Ted Frensham for the first time. He hardly knew whether to be suspicious of the man or not, but he had to admit that he liked the cut of his jib. Moreover, any idea that he was not worthy of Anne Farraway disappeared.

  Frensham was a big man, perhaps shorter than the Toff, but considerably broader and thicker. He was fair-haired, fresh-faced, and obviously followed outdoor pursuits. When the Toff learned that he was a cricket enthusiast, Anne Farraway wondered whether the men would ever remember that Ted had come on business. But the friendly argument on the merits of the top spinner against the googly finished, Frensham stretched out his large legs in front of him, and threw his head back as he looked at Rollison.

  ‘Now – Anne calls you Browning, but –’

  Rollison nodded lightly, although again he wondered whether the girl had confided in her fiancé.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I seem to remember a photograph of the Hon. Richard Rollison who died in the course of duty a fortnight ago,’ said Frensham, with a refreshing grin. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, of course. ...”

  The Toff scowled.

  ‘You ought to be,’ he said; ‘but – look here, Frensham, there’s one way you can help me, and a contributory way will be to think and talk of me as Bernard Browning. Do you think you can manage that?’

  ‘I do,’ said Frensham.

  ‘Right,’ said the Toff, and he made a fine show of being confidential. At the end of half an hour, Ted Frensham had promised to do everything possible to find out whether abnormal supplies of any chemical that looked like cocaine were being distributed anywhere in England, and if so, how. The Toff, when the couple went, sat back and wondered whether it would work, or whether by some freak of chance he had heard only half of the truth.

  Anne’s story about her brother had never been corroborated properly. He hated t
o think she might have lied: but there was a possibility that she was concerned in this affair from a different motive from that which she had professed.

  It was true that she had been badly treated by Dragoli: but the Toff was not sure whether that treatment had been inspired by the obvious reason or not. Beside, Dragoli himself might have been deceived. . . .

  It was on the same evening that Rollison was able to give up the sling, had his arm massaged by Jolly for the last time, and planned the next step against the Black Circle.

  13: FRENSHAM’S FIND

  Ted Frensham was one of those men, something like the Toff, who have a penchant for impressing others. Frensham’s task was to sell chemicals to retailers and to wholesalers. He would have been as successful selling silk stockings, knick-knacks or lawn fertilizers. He had a genius for selling, and he had succeeded in capitalizing it to good effect.

  People liked him and believed him. If he said a thing was good it was taken for granted, and with the backing of Longley, Fare and Company, one of the most reliable manufacturers of drugs and chemicals in the trade, he was able to keep his promises that his supplies were of first-class value.

  After leaving the Toff, he had had tea with Anne at a small wayside café, on the road to the Surrey home of the Tennants.

  ‘More satisfied?’ she asked him, smiling a little.

  Ted scowled with mock ferocity.

  ‘I’m not sure that I approve, he’s an attractive blighter. But I wish to heaven you’d told me before just what kind of show you’d been mixed up in. I might –’

  ‘Have tried to interfere, and if you knew Dragoli –’ she broke off with a laugh that did not ring true, and leaned forward with a hand on his arm. ‘I daren’t risk it, Ted. But with Rollison used to this kind of thing, well – it’s different. I wish I’d met him before – well,” it started.’

  ‘Before they got your brother,’ Frensham said slowly. ‘Yes, it was a devil, but –’

  ‘It’s probably as well for him,’ said Anne. She thought little enough of her brother, but she hated the way he had died. None the less it was better than if he had been arrested by the police and gone through a trial, with the possibility of hanging at the end of it. For she knew that he had committed murder, or at least been an accessory to one. ‘Well, let’s try to forget it. You’re a fully blown member of the Toff’s army now.’

  ‘Army?’ Frensham lifted his brows.

  ‘Yes – pretty well that. He’s talked a little at odd times, and he has a most amazing crowd of friends in the East End. All kinds of rogues –’

  ‘Thank you,’’ said Frensham weightily.

  Anne laughed, more naturally.

  ‘Oh, they’re mostly reformed. When he wants to get information he goes to them. He seems to have a soft spot for what he calls the small meat, and they – well, they’re fond of him. But do you think you can find out what he wants to know?’

  Frensham dabbed a warm forehead with a silk handkerchief. It was near the end of August, and the past few days had been scorching hot.

  ‘I can,’ he assured her. “There must be a hundred powders that look like snow, but we’ll see. I’ll guarantee Longley and Fare aren’t in the racket, but I’ll check up in the warehouses all the same. Worried?’

  ‘A bit,’ she admitted. ‘I wanted to keep you out of it, Ted. It – well, I think I’d break up if anything happened to you.’

  Frensham smiled, nodding slowly, reassuringly.

  ‘I know the feeling. But doesn’t it occur to you, angel, that I’m just as anxious to stop anything happening to you? Can I have your guarantee that you’ll stay with these Tennant folk until it’s all over?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her eyes were gleaming now. ‘I’ve promised the Toff –’

  ‘I’m asking you, not the Toff,’ grinned Ted Frensham. ‘Er – not attracted, I hope.’

  Anne laughed, with genuine humour.

  ‘I like him a lot, and he’s a grand fellow, but – he’s not Ted Frensham. I didn’t think you could get jealous, darling!’

  Frensham looked rueful.

  ‘I’m not used to that kind of competition. He’s got a way with him – but away all fears! We’d better be getting on, if I’m to be back in time to start the good work in the morning.’

  He drove a roomy Talbot sports car, a recent acquisition. Anne was frowning a little to herself as they bowled along towards Godalming. The Tennants lived in the hills behind the town, some hour and a half from London.

  The Talbot worried her.

  Until a month before, Ted had always driven a Morris that had seen many better days. Because, he had assured her cheerfully, he was saving up to get married. Then he had made one or two extra big sales, taken a good commission, and had blossomed out with the Talbot. It was second-hand, it was true, but it must have cost several hundred pounds.

  Was it possible that he had a source of income other than he professed?

  She hated the doubt that crept into her mind. It had not really been there until the Toff had talked of the cocaine being sold – possibly – through a pukka chemical firm. And yet it was surely too much of a c6incidence to think that both her family and her lover were mixed up in the same criminal organization.

  She glanced at him.

  He was studying the road ahead, his face set as it always was when he was driving. His lips curved up a little at the corners, the wind was blowing his curly, crisp hair. He had the profile of an Adonis, and she told herself she loved him as she had never done before. Just the possibility that anything might develop to make her lose him made her realize that love more than ever.

  He glanced down at her suddenly, laughing.

  ‘Have I altered?’

  Anne coloured a little, and looked away, at the distant fields.

  ‘Only for the better.’

  It was absurd: Ted Frensham was far too clean to be touched with anything in the way of crime. She was worrying herself needlessly, the fact that she had had nothing to do but moon about the country was giving her a fantastic imagination, and she would have to keep it under control.

  Bob and Patricia Tennant were in their garden. Tennant sitting in a deck-chair under a spreading oak, Pat weeding one of the flower-beds and wearing a wide brimmed hat and a flimsy cotton frock. She was taller than Anne, slim, fair, and in her way lovely to look on. No one could have called her beautiful, although she had one of the most soothing contralto voices, just a trifle husky, that Anne had ever heard.

  Her husband was a man as tall as Ted, but considerably fatter. A red-faced, jovial-looking man, with an unexpected streak of hardness in his make-up when things had to be done. Rollison knew that he and his wife had spent seven out of the past ten years exploring in the Afghan hills, a task that no one who preferred safety to comfort would have attempted. Yet Bob Tennant, lying back there and waving nonchalantly to the newcomers, looked the laziest man in the world.

  ‘Back, then? I wondered whether I ought to trust her to you, Frensham.’

  Ted grinned.

  ‘Seeing that you’ve been looking after her for a fortnight –’

  ‘Not me – Pat,’ said Tennant in a deep voice that suggested some alarm. ‘I’m no nursemaid, my son, no nursemaid at all.’ He frowned. ‘Funny thing that Rollison should have asked us to do our duty, when he knew you were about.’

  His voice grew lower when he spoke of Rollison: he had had a letter about Anne dated before the Toff’s supposed death, and knew no better than the rest of the world the real truth of the affair.

  ‘He didn’t know me,’ said’ Frensham quickly.

  ‘That explains it all,’ said Patricia, walking up with a weeding fork in her gloved right hand. ‘Ready for supper?’

  ‘I’ve got to be off,’ said Frensham. ‘I’d like to, but

  Actually he stayed to supper, and left an hour and a half afterwards. He drove back to the factory and offices that night, looked in at his own small office, and’ then went to the hotel in Chelmsford, where he s
tayed when he was not travelling the country.

  At ten o’clock next morning he made all the Inquiries he could at Longley, Fare and Co.’s warehouses, and then he started paying calls to various big retailers and wholesalers. No one would have dreamed from his charming smile and his casual questions that he was aiming to get vital information.

  But at half past four – on what he privately considered was the busiest day of his life, he was talking to the buyer of the wholesale distributing firm of Willow and Kellson, of Blackfriars.

  Two hours afterwards he was in the Toff’s flat, drinking iced’ beer and wondering whether the Toff, dressed in silver greys and looking more like a tailor’s dummy than a man of flesh and blood, was all that Anne believed. Could this man have performed those deeds he was supposed to have done?

  Rollison’s eyes gleamed with lazy humour.

  ‘Let it come, old man, I won’t bite.’

  Frensham coloured a little.

  ‘Sorry – I was day-dreaming. Well, I think I’ve got something for you, but I can’t be sure.’

  ‘Nothing’s sure in this wicked world,’ murmured the Toff, and his interest seemed no keener as he offered cigarettes.

  ‘No-o. Know of the firm of Willow and Kellson?’

  The Toff reflected.

  ‘Don’t they make syrup of figs, for gentle laxatives?’

  Frensham grinned.

  ‘Idiot! They do, as a matter of fact; but they’re also taking orders for boracic acid from several manufacturers like ourselves. It’s all being bought for re-sale abroad – in one-ounce packets.’

  Rollison frowned.

  ‘Small stuff, eh?’

  ‘Incredibly small for export orders.’

  ‘Anyone else doing the same thing?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, but I haven’t been to many places yet. Of course it may be nothing at all, but single-ounce packets would be a nice convenient size for cocaine.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ said the Toff. ‘Where do they warehouse?’

  ‘Blackfriars. Want me to try and look round?’