Introducing The Toff (20 page)

The Toff was fortunate in that he did not need to worry where his next pounds were coming from. He promised Daisy Lee another pony if she told him – through Winkle at the ‘River Tavern’ – if Garrotty or anyone from Garrotty got in touch with her, and then he left 10 Randle Street.

She had been impressed unduly by the fact that he had apparently come from the dead; and she was aware of his reputation. She was probably more afraid of the Toff than of anything else on two feet, and again he had good cause to thank his reputation. It rarely occurred to him that he had built it up, and he had only to thank himself.

So the Toff reasoned, betting on Daisy’s honesty.

Old Ben, with a finger twisted in his beard, was lounging against the open front door. The drizzle had not stopped, and there was a greasy wet film over the macadam-topped road. The Toff put half a crown into a gnarled but ready hand, and stepped across the pavement towards his car.

It was the shout from above that saved him.

Daisy’s voice, raised in alarm, fear, terror! The Toff glanced up quickly, and saw the man outlined against the window on the other side of the road, and, what was more, saw the gun in his hand. A pregnant second passed.

The gun spoke. Flame flared, and there was a soft coughing sound. The Toff’s knees doubled up, and he crouched behind the Frazer-Nash, rooting in his pocket for his own gun. A second shot and a third came, clanging into the side of the car. The Toff, still out of sight, opened one of the doors, and then slid along the front seat. His legs were sticking out of the car on the one side, and he could just reach the handle of the far door.

He opened it slowly, all the time desperately afraid that there might be shooting from behind him, or from a floor above that on which the gunman was shooting. He could see through the gap at last, and he brought his gun into play.

He was not using a silencer, and the shooting seemed to roar up and down Randle Street. Bullets pecked into the window, glass smashed, and plaster fell in a shower. A bullet smacked against the side of the Frazer-Nash.

The man at the window swung round, and was out of sight in a flash.

The Toff hesitated, only for a fraction of a second, but enough for him to get the affair in its proper perspective. If he tried to get across the road he might be shot down; if he did not act soon the gunman would get away.

And then he remembered the ruse at the ‘Red Lion’.

It had worked once and there was no reason why it should not help him again. He squirmed upright, and no shots came. The clutch went in, and he raced the engine for a moment before swinging the wheel and driving for the house on the opposite side of the road.

He did not see Daisy Lee standing by her window, nor the bearded ancient on the floor, gasping, with blood coming from his shoulder and his chest. He was concerned with one thing only: getting the gunman.

The Frazer-Nash roared across the road and bumped against the kerb. The Toff jammed on the brakes and pulled up less than six inches in front of the small wall surrounding the house. The car seemed to be moving when he leapt from it towards the front door.

It was open.

Gun in hand, he went through the passage. The door of the front room – where the gunman had been standing – was also open, and on the floor was a trail of blood. The Toff raced towards the back of the house, but the door leading to the kitchen was locked. It was not a perfect specimen of the door maker’s art, and the Toff rushed at it. At the second effort its hinges gave way and he almost fell through.

Against one wall a terrified child was crouching. Steam was spouting from a kettle on the gas-stove, and a saucepan was boiling over noisily. But the door leading to the small garden was open, and over the wall the gunman was climbing.

The Toff fired from his hip. The youngster screeched in terror, and the man dropped down. The Toff raced towards the wall, but as he went he pitched over a small, broken doll’s pram, and he went flying.

His head and the concrete surface of the garden – no more than a courtyard with a couple of small flower-beds filled mostly with weeds – connected with a thud. A red mist crossed the Toff’s eyes, and he felt his senses whirling. He did not lose consciousness completely, but could not move for some seconds.

Slowly into his ears came the wailing of the child and the shrill blast of a policeman’s whistle. Rollison managed to pull himself up. He sat on the ground for a few moments while he saw the heavy body of a policeman blocking the passage – the garden door was exactly opposite the street door.

The Robert came ponderously through.

He saw the child, and Rollison found a smile for the first time, although his head was aching like the devil, and there was a smear of blood over his hand when he wiped it across his brow.

For the policeman stopped for a moment.

‘All right, little’un, you needn’t cry. I’ll look after you.’

The Toff managed to stand up while the policeman came through. The wailing had stopped; such was the influence of the Metropolitan Police Force. A large, stolid man, with a pale face and very thick lips, stared at him.

‘What’s all this?’

The Toff drew a deep breath.

‘Attempted murder, shooting with intent to harm, driving without due care and attention, and you can help yourself.’ He took a card from his pocket with his left hand, and a whisky flask from his hip pocket with his right. He presented the one as he lifted the other, and the policeman’s head jerked back. Rollison had presented a clean card without drawings, but the name Rollison was enough.

What?
Here, this won’t do. Mr. Rollison died—’

‘Oh, my God!’ exclaimed the Toff. ‘If I’d thought of this I’d never have arranged it. Constable, take my word for it, clamp on it, and ask Chief-Inspector McNab about it on the quiet. I’m Rollison, and...’

He sketched the story of the shooting briefly. The policeman seemed uncertain, but there was a pub on the corner of Randle Street, and he telephoned the Yard from there. What he heard from McNab seemed to satisfy him, although he looked at Rollison much as Daisy Lee had done.

Daisy was not one of the crowd that had collected, the Toff saw.

‘All right, sir.’ The man nodded ponderously, and Rollison wondered whether he would be able to keep his discovery from the ears of the five other policemen who had arrived. It was not a matter of vital importance, but it would be as well if the announcement of his ‘recovery’ was made public via the Press rather than by rumours.

“The inspector asked you to go and see him, sir,’ the man added.

‘Thanks. But I’d like to collect statements first, Constable. What’s happened to the old man?’

‘Ambulance took ‘im while we were phoning,’ said the policeman gloomily. ‘Nasty wounds he’s got.’

‘Poor devil,’ said the Toff slowly. There was one thing in his life he hated above all others, and that was the harm that sometimes befell, unavoidably, people not directly concerned in the chase he was following. ‘Well, it can’t be helped. Whose house did our friend shoot from?’

‘Couple called Miller,’ said the Robert. ‘’Usband’s at the docks, lookin’ fer a job. ‘Is wife goes out charring. The kid’ – the man broke off, as though he had just stopped himself from saying what he shouldn’t –’she looks after the dinner, and Miller’ll be back soon.’

Rollison felt sick at heart.

The girl was no more than eight or nine; she was older, even then, than he had first suspected. And she had to look after the midday meal while her out-of-work father was at the docks trying to get employment, and her mother was out scrubbing floors.

He was not surprised when the man Miller arrived, to tell his story. He was a little man with a straggly moustache and a pair of tired but defiant eyes. Unexpectedly, he spoke without the emphatic Cockney accent of most of the local inhabitants.

‘I didn’t know who he was,’ he reiterated. ‘He said he wanted the front room, and he paid five shillings a week for it.’

‘When did he start?’ asked Rollison.

‘Ten days ago. Oh damn!’ Miller broke off, and the Toff saw tears in the man’s eyes. ‘We shan’t get
that
now....’

‘Easy goes,’ said the Toff. ‘And don’t worry. You’ll have to repeat your story once or twice, I expect, but you’ll be all right.’ He slipped a pound note into the man’s hand. He would gladly have made it ten, but that would have been asking for trouble. Money could go to the head of a man like Miller quicker than strong wine, after a long spell of out-of-work pay. ‘Did this fellow look in any of the other rooms?’

‘Not – not as far as I know.’ Miller was looking at the pound, and then at the Toff. ‘I – I didn’t like the look of him, but five shillings was five shillings. He called himself Smith –’

Rollison nodded. Miller had doubtless suspected that the man was in crime of some kind, probably disliked the idea of giving him the room, but had not dared refuse the money.

He spent ten minutes at the house, and he had an opportunity of seeing that the downstairs flat was spotlessly clean, even if the furniture was second-hand and dilapidated, and the oil-cloth badly worn.

The Toff was thoughtful when he left Randle Street.

Obviously ‘Smith’ had been told-off to watch Daisy Lee. Probably – and it was not stretching the imagination too far – he had taken orders in the past twenty-four hours, perhaps more, to watch for the Toff. It was another angle of the thoroughness of the Black Circle’s organisation, and it did not make pretty thinking.

The wounded gunman was not picked up. Where he had gone to earth the Toff did not know, and tried not to care. A call went out for him, Rollison learned when he looked in at the Yard and told his story.

There was no object in keeping Daisy Lee’s information to himself, and Warrender promised to re-double, if possible, the look-out for Kellson. While the Toff said slowly: ‘Have you got anyone watching Willow, Warrender?’

The A.C. coloured suddenly.

‘Well – yes. They’re not interfering with him—’

‘All right,’ smiled Rollison, ‘a bargain’s a bargain, and you’ll keep it. But have Willow watched carefully, old man. Two men at a time, and armed, if you can manage it.’

Warrender frowned.

‘Have you learned something more?’

‘Only that it’ll pay to be careful,’ said the Toff. ‘For Dragoli, blast him, will learn I’ve been to see Daisy. He’ll put two and two together, and assume I know that Bowler Hat and Kellson were one and the same. By the way, better have Daisy watched too; they might try to get at her.’

‘I’ll look after it,’ promised the A.C.

Rollison, with all the angles blocked as far as he could see, went back to his flat. The more he pondered the position the more he was convinced that if he could find who had given Dragoli the truth about the Toff’s ‘death’ the quicker he could get at the Black Circle organization in England.

‘Anne,’ he murmured to himself, ‘her boy-friend, Colliss, young Owen – that’s about the limit. I—’

He broke off, for the telephone shrilled out. As he lifted it he was thinking of Anne Farraway. But he did not think of her for long when he recognized the voice at the other end of the wire.

It was Dragoli’s voice.

So you have been lucky again,’ said Dragoli.

His voice was chanting, as always, smooth and oddly threatening. Rollison had known no one with the same power of expressing thoughts with the very sound of his voice as Achmed Dragoli.

‘It’s a habit,’ muttered the Toff, as he settled himself to talk more comfortably into the telephone. ‘You can’t say the same, my Eastern friend.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Dragoli slowly. ‘I shall do. Does it appeal to you, Rollison, to know that you have been close to death far, far more often than I have?’

‘For an excellent reason,’ said the Toff gently, and his voice hummed with mockery. ‘You
want
to kill me.’

There was a moment’s pause before the Egyptian said, more softly than ever.

‘Are you trying to suggest you don’t want to kill me, Rollison?’

‘I wonder?’ murmured the Toff, and he was in high fettle, playing with words, using that most powerful weapon of his, lumbered as it was with the cumbersome name of psychological terrorism. It was simply a matter of making the other man think that you know a great deal more than you did, and getting him worried. ‘You’ll be much more use as a witness than a corpse, Dragoli. Did that occur to you?’

‘You are talking a lot,’ said Dragoli, and the Toff fancied that his voice reflected anger.

‘I always do, my friend. Another habit, and it serves me in good stead. No, let me keep talking, it’ll edify you. I’ve managed to collect a small army of your friends, and they’re languishing in the unpleasant place called prison – or a police cell, which is perilously near it. I’ve busted your Willow and Kellson connection, I’ve got Garrotty, and I have one of the little ticks you call an organizer ...’

He paused.

He had staked a lot on that last phrase, and he wished he was able to see the Egyptian’s face. It was not as important as it might have been, for Dragoli’s voice gave him away.

‘You – you mean you know of them?’

‘My dear, beloved Achmed,’ drawled the Toff, and his eyes were gleaming with a devil-may-care gleam that had something of triumph in it, ‘of course I know about them. Organizers up and down the country, all nicely placed for distributing the stuff. I’ve got one – and he proved more talkative than I expected. Probably more than you did too.’

‘Ali – talked!’

‘Ali did,’ lied the Toff cheerfully, and he was getting more and more pleased with life every second: now he knew the name of the little man he had collected from the warehouse. ‘He admitted being one of a large number, my friend, and that was a help. I’m extremely busy, as a matter of fact, locating some more. You’ll be in Queer Street in, as far as I can estimate at the moment, twenty-four hours. That might tempt you to leave the country, but I shouldn’t try.’

There was silence for a moment, and when Dragoli spoke again his voice was harsher and expressionless.