Introducing The Toff Read online

  Garrotty grinned.

  ‘That so? Good hearing, Drag. How many of the dicks got theirs?’

  ‘One more died, in hospital,’ said Dragoli. ‘Three were dead last night. Harry’s dead too.’

  ‘Sure. That won’t make me keep awake at nights’ grunted Garrotty. ‘The squirt was scared all through.’

  Dragoli laughed, showing his yellow teeth.

  ‘Of the Toff,’ he said. ‘But remember this, Garrotty. We have made it impossible to work in the open much now. The police are different over here from what they are in your country, and they won’t take kindly to the death of three detectives.’

  There was a swagger’in Garrotty’s manner as he went towards a radiogram in a corner of the big room.

  ‘That so? They ain’t so dumb in Noo York State, Mister, an’ I reckon I saw the way to get past ‘em. I’m not worryin’.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Dragoli smoothly. ‘Well, our next big task, Garrotty, is Colliss.’

  Garrotty swung round from the radio.

  ‘Dat guy, huh! What’s on him?’

  ‘A great deal. Colliss is home from Stamboul, as I told you before – last night’s interruption. He has been investigating the Black Circle for the police over there, and he is to contact with Scotland Yard. He is first, of course, going to his country house. It is believed that he visited Turkey solely as an archaeologist. The English police are showing some imagination, my friend, for they are realizing the importance of the Black Circle.’ He laughed, as though at some secret joke. ‘But there are leakages of information at Scotland Yard –’

  ‘Sure, graft,’ grunted Garrotty. ‘You can’t tell a Noo Yorker about dat, Drag.’

  ‘It is more difficult in England,’ said Dragoli. ‘The information came somewhat reluctantly, and the price paid was considerable. But this afternoon I had information that Colliss can give the police some unpleasant facts. Facts that might prevent us from earning that large sum of money.’

  Garrotty’s eyes glittered more viciously than ever.

  ‘Where’s de guy?’

  Dragoli laughed, well satisfied.

  ‘That is what I wanted to hear. Colliss, as it happens, Jives near Winchester. On this road. I want you to take two of your men and get rid of him. Here is a photograph.’

  Dragoli took a wallet from his pocket, slipped a postcard photograph from it, and handed it to Garrotty. The gangster stared at the photograph of a thick-set man whose large mouth and chin seemed out of proportion to the rest of his face.

  ‘I got him.’ Garrotty passed the photograph back. ‘I’ll put him out for ten, an’ more, Boss. When do I start?’

  ‘The police are visiting him the day after tomorrow, at ten o’clock in the morning. Tomorrow night is the best opportunity, Garrotty.’

  ‘O.K. I’ll fix it.’ Garrotty grinned, wiped his forehead with a dirty handkerchief, and at last switched on the radio. It was just after nine o’clock, and he scowled when he heard the end of the weather report.

  ‘Keep it there!’ Dragoli snapped as the gangster was about to turn the dial to a more amusing subject. Garrotty scowled but obeyed. The measured voice of the B.B.C. announcer came over the wires, and Garrotty’s hands tightened, while Dragoli let the paper fall from his grasp.

  ‘We regret to announce,’ said the radio dispassionately, ‘yet another death as a result of last night’s East End explosion following a battle between police and gangsters. At half past seven this evening the Hon. Richard Rollison succumbed to his wounds. The revelation of his great part in the fight against crime was a surprise to his many friends in London. Mr. Rollison was born in nineteen . . .’

  Dragoli and Garrotty heard nothing more. They stared at each other, expressionlessly at first, and then Garrotty began to laugh.

  The laugh echoed horribly about the room, far worse when Dragoli joined in.

  10: MR. REGINALD COLLISS

  The Toff, in a sitting position and with bandages round his head and his right arm strapped to his side, managed to put something of his old insouciance into his expression, something of the old devil-may-care gleam in his one visible eye.

  ‘Miss Farraway,’ he said with mock ferocity, ‘you’re proving a nuisance and a worry. There are supposed to be only five people concerned in the conspiracy to make me die, and you are not included.’

  Anne laughed a little, softly.

  ‘I hope you’re not really annoyed. I can’t see you properly with those bandages on.’

  ‘Oh, save me!’ appealed the Toff, lifting his left arm towards the white ceiling of the small private ward in the nursing-home to which he had been shifted from the Grandley Hospital only three hours before. ‘You’ve known me about five minutes, and after your stuff with Dragoli and Garrotty you ought to be beyond lifting your voice above a whisper, and here you are trying to humour me.’ He paused. ‘Hand me a cigarette, Anne, and you’d better light it for me. Then, as you’ve worried Warrender’s life out until he let you come, I’ll tell you. Don’t say that I haven’t warned you that I’ve a tortuous mind.’

  ‘I don’t mind what kind of mind you’ve got, providing you’re alive,’ said Anne. She lit a cigarette, took it from her lips and pushed it between his. Rollison made a scowl with the visible half of his face.

  ‘If your husband-to-be could see you doing that he would probably sue me for divorce or breach-of-promise. I can –’

  ‘You mean I can manage my husband-to-be,’ said Anne, ‘and after all he can’t very well grumble at me lighting a cigarette for a corpse.’ Her eyes were gleaming, and Rollison leaned back in his pillows, puffing contentedly and studying her.

  It was easy to understand now how she had managed to hold out against the pressure of Dragoli’s gang. She had more spirit than he had realized, and she had a deep understanding. He knew that he was fond of her, and he hoped that he did not for once let his heart rule his head. He had often dreaded the day when he might be bowled over. But she was young: no more than twenty-two or three. That made her complete self-possession the more remarkable.

  It was the morning after the radio and newspaper announcements of his death. It had taken him several hours and a great deal of effort to get the announcement put out. No one, not even Warrender, had liked the idea of it. But Warrender had learned a great deal since the affair at the ‘Red Lion’, and he knew just how effective was the Toff’s reputation in the East End. From Harry the Pug, before he had died, Squinty, and others, he had discovered the not very palatable fact that the Toff was more feared by the gentlemen of crime than were the police.

  Apparently Rollison had been unconscious all the way from the ‘Red Lion’ to the hospital. There he had gathered strength enough to ask for Warrender. The Assistant Commissioner and a doctor had been present when the Toff’s one eye had opened to its widest, and his lips had curved in a cheerful smile.

  ‘I’m a lot better now the crowd’s away.’

  To say the least of it, the startling recovery in a few seconds had been a surprise. Before Warrender and the house-surgeon had been able to make any intelligent comment, the Toff had explained that although he had had a nasty packet he had not lost consciousness, but he had considered it an excellent idea to play possum. His idea widened out. Many people, including, in all likelihood, many of Dragoli’s people, had seen him looking badly wounded. It would be an excellent idea if he died, from two points of view.

  First, he said firmly, Dragoli and Garrotty and any others concerned in the menacing association of the Black Circle would be inclined to take more chances. He said, as gently as possible, that he believed they would be more scared of the Toff than of the police, and in the light of his recent discoveries Warrender had been forced to admit that was true.

  ‘Right,’ the Toff had said. ‘Point one: with the Black Circle operatives in this country a little careless, when I’m in fighting order again I can manage to pull something off against them. And when I virtually rise from the dead, I can promise you that a lot
of people of the Harry-the Pug kidney are going to be a damned sight more careful of me in future. You may not be inclined to believe it, but as the Toff I have a strong corrective influence on all manner of queer people.’

  Warrender had admitted that was probably true, and later, reluctantly, had agreed to let it be reported that Rollison was dead.

  After the announcement he had been smuggled from the hospital to a private nursing-home only a few hundred yards from his Gresham Terrace flat. Warrender, a nurse, the surgeon, Jolly, and Chief-Inspector McNab – also wounded – had been the only people concerned in the trick. Warrender covered the house-surgeon and the nurse against any possible trouble for making out false death certificates: and officially, at half past seven on the previous evening, the Toff had died.

  Anne Farraway had been told by Warrender. Just why she had disbelieved it she hardly knew. Perhaps it was the fact that the Assistant Commissioner did not look as worried and grieved as he should have been.

  Showing something of the dogged persistence with which she had refused to answer Garrotty’s questions, she had pestered Warrender, stating frankly that she thought it was false. Finally, and because Warrender was afraid she would start making unnecessary investigations, he had told Rollison.

  Now the girl was sitting by the side of the Toff’s bed, and smiling somewhat whimsically. The man who married her, thought the Toff, was going to be a lucky devil, and God help him if he didn’t deserve her.

  ‘And there you are,’ he said after five minutes of brisk talking. ‘Now I’m tired, and the nurse will tell you shortly that I’m ill. My name, remember, is not Rollison, but Browning. Mr. Bernard Browning, as a matter of fact, and I hope to be up and doing in a couple of weeks.’

  Anne nodded. She guessed that the wounded arm – he had jagged it along a broken bottle when he had fallen, and another broken piece of glass had been responsible for the cut over his left eye – was worse than he made out, otherwise he would not have been prepared to wait for a fortnight.

  That’s fine. But – what happens meanwhile?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’ said the Toff, and he closed his eye. He looked weary and worried, and the nurse frowned when she entered a few seconds afterwards. Anne stood up, but the Toff stopped her with a raised hand.

  ‘Listen, young lady, this fiancé of yours: where is he?’

  ‘At Wisford Hotel. I sent for him –’

  ‘And of course he came running. Has he got a family?’

  She looked puzzled.

  ‘No, he lives in lodgings at the moment. Why?’

  ‘Just this,’ said Rollison slowly. ‘I wouldn’t put it past Dragoli to try and get his own back, and I don’t want you to get in the front line. What’s his name, by the way?’

  ‘Frensham – Ted Frensham.’

  ‘Well, he sounds all right’ admitted the Toff dubiously.’

  ‘I hope he is, because I’m going to suggest that you stay with some friends of mine. Excellent people, but in Surrey and not in Essex.’

  ‘I could stay here and help to look after you,’ suggested Anne Farraway.

  ‘You could not,’ said the Toff. ‘In the first place, I’m an impressionable man, and in the second I don’t want to break your heart, or the heart of Mr. Frensham. Will you go?’

  The girl hesitated.

  ‘Who – who are these people?’

  ‘Named Tennant. Bob and Patricia. They’re quite respectable; they’ve a nice house and servants to look after them. I know it means giving up your job, but there’s a lot to be said for sliding out of Dragoli’s reach. And if he should happen to find you, I can’t think of a better man than Bob Tennant – barring myself, of course,’ he added, with a smile that seemed a little weary, ‘to take care of you. I’ve asked them to meet you at the Eclat Hotel for lunch, anyhow, so –’

  The nurse stirred impatiently. Anne Farraway stood up quickly, pressed the Toff’s left hand, thanked him, and promised she would take no chances. The Toff lay back wearily after she had gone, and he was asleep before he started thinking seriously of what he would do when he was on his feet again.

  Chief-Inspector McNab, heavily bandaged, and groaning when he moved in his bed, eyed the Assistant Commissioner glumly.

  ‘I wish I could get to see Colliss, sir, but –’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said Warrender, with a smile. ‘I’ll go down and see him myself, McNab. According to his report he knows something we can bite on, but he says he does not think there is any desperate hurry. This Black Circle thing has not been working too long. We found it in good time.’

  ‘I’m hoping so,’ said McNab, who would never have scored high marks for optimism.

  Warrender laughed more lightly than he felt, and left the ward.

  He thought of the Toff as he stepped into a taxi after ordering the driver to take him to Scotland Yard. It was right enough up to a point, but he wished he had been more careful about allowing it to be told ‘officially’ that the Hon. Richard Rollison was dead.

  But Rollison on his feet could look after himself, while one thing was certain: while he was in the private nursing-home no one from Dragoli’s Black Circle would discover that he was alive, and he would have a better chance of recovering.

  An evening paper on his desk when he reached the office towards nine o’clock – he was up early during the Black Circle schemozzle – still carried headlines about the outrage in Shadwell. There had been a great stir in the Yard, and farther along, in Whitehall. The Home Secretary himself had shown interest and concern, but Warrender had not yet felt justified in raising a real scare.

  No one more than Warrender could appreciate the damnable effect of a widespread habit of taking cocaine.

  It was practised, of course, among a small circle of erotic wastrels in every big town. Probably three or four thousand people in London were victims. But from the amount of dope that had been seen by McNab and Rollison at the ‘Red Lion’ and destroyed in the fire, there were supplies enough to last London’s normal clientele for years.

  It would not be the first time that efforts had been made to make the drug habit more widespread. Its effect was more insidious than anything else, and Warrender, with good reason, considered it the biggest crime. Now it was being practised on a big scale, and he did not want to cause an alarm.

  The fact that Garrotty had been employed by Dragoli had helped him.

  The official police story was that Garrotty was making an attempt to start gang-warfare in London. That had satisfied the demands of the Press, and to a point it was true. There had been a great commotion on the placards in the newspapers on the morning following the raid, and Scotland Yard had been warmly congratulated on its great effort to wipe out the threat of gangsterdom.

  Warrender’s lips twisted.

  Without the Toff, the raid would never have taken place. Had he been told, without being shown evidence, he would have doubted the possibility of one man being able to do what Rollison had done. But there it was....

  Warrender looked at his watch, and pressed a bell for a sergeant. It was fair-haired Detective-Sergeant Owen, and Warrender smiled a little.

  ‘Owen, we’re going into the country for a breath of air.’ The Assistant Commissioner was popular with the C.I.D. officials because he was not above joking mildly with them, in direct contrast to the efforts of the other A.C.s. ‘Have a fast car, and be outside at nine-thirty, will you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Owen, curly haired and cheerful to look at, left the office with satisfaction. A day virtually off duty was a rare thing.

  Warrender telephoned to Mr. Reginald Colliss, the well-known archaeologist who was not as well known as a special agent of the Yard, and told him that McNab would not be able to get along the following morning, and that he, Warrender, had determined to go along instead.

  ‘It’s a day earlier,’ he said, ‘but it’s urgent, Colliss.’

  ‘I’ll be in,’ promised Reginald Colliss.

  When he had finished
talking to the Assistant Commissioner, Colliss leaned back thoughtfully in his chair. As the photograph that Garrotty had seen had emphasized, he had a very full jaw, and very full lips. Yet oddly enough, when in repose, he looked handsome, perhaps because of his well-shaped nose and the pair of fine grey eyes that gazed at all and sundry with a cool, detached air that hid most of his thoughts.

  In many ways Colliss was worried.

  He stood up and walked towards the window. The sun was shining; the green lawns looked cool and refreshing. After the heat and sweat of Stamboul, England was a paradise.

  He was above medium height, and his shoulders were very thick. Yet his hands and feet were smaller than the average, the hands white and carefully tended. His hair was rather long and crisp, and when he smiled little lines crept into the corners of his eyes.

  The wrinkles appeared suddenly, but he was not smiling.

  He had seen the movement in the shrubbery at the end of the lawn. It was not the wind, and he did not believe that it was a cat or dog, or even a rabbit. There was something darker there than there should have been.

  He drew towards the wall a little, his eyes narrowed.

  The dark thing moved. He could just make out the figure of a man slipping through the shrubbery to the side of the lawn. The man was lost from sight, suddenly, in a small thicket.

  Colliss pursed his lips as he turned towards his desk.

  He opened the top drawer and took out a heavy Army revolver. It was fully loaded, and despite his small hands he carried it lightly and purposefully back to the window.

  There was the slightest rustle of sound outside.

  Colliss moved quickly to try and catch a glimpse of whoever was near, but he failed. For from the far end of the lawn he saw another figure, a squat, swarthy man, crouching low and pointing something towards the house.

  The shot came a split second later.

  Colliss jumped to one side. The glass of the window smashed into a thousand pieces, one splinter sticking into the special agent’s coat. Colliss swore as he returned the fire, but several shots were coming, and he knew that he had more than two men to deal with.