by John Creasey
Then the Toff streaked across the saloon bar towards a second door, opening, he knew, into the rear quarters of the ‘Red Lion’. The door was shut, but on the other side he heard the mutter of voices – Harry the Pug’s among them.
The Toff put his gun to the lock of the door, and a yellow stab of flame spat out. The bullet smashed through the lock and the door swung inwards. As he ducked and swerved, avoiding the rattle of bullets which swept through the open door, he saw Harry the Pug and one of Garrotty’s thugs glaring towards him, smoking guns in their hands.
The Toff was taking no chances. Both crooks were in full view, but he was hidden by the framework of the door. His hand jutted out and his gun spoke. Once – twice!
Harry the Pug dropped his gun and clapped his hands to his stomach. He staggered about, writhing, groaning. The second man just dropped in his tracks, a huddled heap on the bare floor.
The Toff stepped into the room. He slipped his gun in his pocket and caught the Pug’s thick neck in his wiry fingers.
‘Where’s the girl?’ he demanded, and his voice was like a lash.
The Pug gurgled in his throat. There was no fight left in him. His only sensation was a terrible agony in his stomach and a fearful dread of the steel-eyed man who was glaring into his face. He choked. His right hand wavered towards a second door, opposite that through which the Toff had come.
‘In – the – cellar . . .’ gasped the Pug.
The Toff let him go, and turned towards the door. It was shut, but when he touched the handle he knew that it was not locked. He flung it open and darted behind the cover of the wall, but nothing happened.
Then he looked through the opening, and saw a flight of wooden steps, illuminated only by a single electric lamp jutting out of the wall at the bottom. Beyond it was an open door.
The Toff took out his gun again and stepped into the open. Still no sound came beyond the distant pattering of footsteps. The Toff dropped down the stairs, three at a time, an ugly glint in his eyes.
Was Anne Farraway all right?
His silent question was answered more quickly than he had expected. As he went through the open door he saw a big, concrete-walled cellar, bare of everything but a line of cupboards running alongside one wall. The doors of the cupboards were open, and with one exception they were empty. But in the last receptacle were stored countless little packages, all neatly sealed – just like the packages which McNab had shown him at Scotland Yard. There was no doubt now as to where Dragoli had kept the dope.
But the Toff was thinking of the girl more than anything else. And he saw her, lying full length on the concrete floor in a far corner.
He darted to her side, and bent over her. A gag was tied tightly round her mouth, biting into the skin, but he cut through it quickly with his penknife.
There was a twist at the corners of his mouth.
‘Here we are again, Annabelle. Are you all right?’
Anne Farraway nodded. She tried to speak, but her voice was thick, inaudible. And for the first time the Toff saw that her arms and legs were bound.
‘Keep still,’ he said quietly, and pulled a small flask of whisky from his hip-pocket forcing a trickle of the spirit down her parched throat. Then he cut through the rope which bound her and lifted her to a sitting position, supporting her with his firm arm.
He smiled encouragingly.
‘Everything’s set, Annabelle. The police will be here in two shakes. Tell me’ – his voice took on an urgency which it was impossible to repress –’do you know where Dragoli’s gone? Which way?’
Anne spoke at last in a hoarse whisper.
‘There’s a switch,’ she managed, ‘beneath the electric light switch over there. When you turn it, a part of the wall opens, and you can get through. Dragoli and Garrotty went five minutes ago-’
‘Good girl!’ breathed the Toff, standing up. ‘Anything else?’
Anne forced herself to speak.
‘They took a lot of – that stuff – she pointed towards the empty cupboards, and the one which still contained a small fortune’s worth of cocaine –’with them. I think you can get through the passage to a house somewhere – and they’ve been loading the stuff into a removal van. I heard Dragoli telling Garrotty-’
‘Annabelle,’ breathed the Toff, ‘you’re a marvel! I’ll see you later.’
He moved across to the electric switch and found the second control just as Anne had told him. But a sound on the top of the stairs made him look up. McNab was there, hurrying down.
‘You all right?’ shouted the Chief-Inspector.
‘Right as two pins,’ said the Toff, operating the switch. ‘Send a man back, McNab. Dragoli’s got a removal van outside a house in one of the side streets. You ought to get them –’
But someone called out above-stairs, McNab stopped swearing, and he yelled: ‘Upstairs – up fast, Rolleeson!’
The jubilation that the Toff was feeling because of the triumph of the forced entry disappeared. McNab appeared for a moment, waving wildly. Rollison jumped towards Anne Farraway, carried her off her feet, and raced for the stairs. McNab turned and clumped up before them, blowing like a grampus.
The Toff had never experienced a worse moment of fear: it was the unknown menace. The cause of McNab’s warning, that did the damage, and he leapt from the top of the stairs as he reached the saloon. In front of him, but crowding back to the door, were a dozen men, police, and Garrotty’s gangsters. Warrender-
And then the explosion came from behind him.
He heard it, a terrific roar that seemed to shatter his ear-drums, and a gust of wind that lifted him clean off his feet. He was vaguely conscious of that dreadful roaring in his ears, of the girl flying from his grip, of something that seemed to grip him like a giant’s hand and tear at his limbs. And then for the second time that day blackness came.
Dragoli had covered his retreat by blowing the place up.
9: FORCED REST
Not one of the dozen-odd men who had been standing near the entrance to the cellar kept their feet. The force of the explosion sent them crashing, and the people in the street heard the roar, saw the windows smashing outwards, and the smoke billowing from the back of the ‘Red Lion’. An emergency squad of police rushed forward and started the work of rescue.
Those near the doors had escaped lightly. Warrender was conscious, and managed to scramble to his feet. He saw the outstretched bodies about him, saw splashes of blood in a dozen places, and his heart went heavy.
McNab, with the side of his head badly battered, was unconscious between Rollison and the door. The Toff was in a crumpled heap, with hardly a stitch of clothes left on him. His right arm was bleeding from a cut that ran from elbow to wrist.
Oddly enough, the girl had hardly suffered.
In Rollison’s arms she had missed the full force of the wind from the explosion, sheltered by Rollison’s body. She was dazed and frightened as she sat up, but even her fall had been broken by the body of a man in the doorway. Her frock was torn, but she looked presentable.
She did not recognize the grey-haired Warrender.
‘Are you all right, Miss Farraway?’
‘Yes – yes, I’m all right. But Mr. Rollison-’
‘He’ll be well looked after,’ muttered Warrender. He hated to pass on the fear in his mind – a dread that the Toff was dead, with McNab. ‘Get outside, please-’
But Anne had seen Rollison’s crumpled body, and she hurried towards him. From below-stairs there was an ominous roaring, and she was conscious again of a dreadful oppression and a heat that made breathing difficult. And then, as someone pushed past her and dragged Rollison upright, she saw a tongue of flame shoot up the stairs.
Below, the ‘Red Lion’ was an inferno.
Yet she stuck with the police and ambulance men who were getting the wounded on to stretchers. She felt cool and calm and the fact surprised her; perhaps it was because of her acquaintance with that remarkable man, the Toff. Had he been con
scious and active she could have imagined his easy smile, the gleam in his eyes as he encouraged the others to fiercer efforts.
As it was, it was a grim business.
Warrender took his coat off and worked as hard as any, while the flames took a greater hold, and smoke billowed into the wrecked saloon of the ‘Red Lion’. The heat was growing unbearable. Anne pushed her hair back from her eyes, and her hand came away, wet with sweat. Only three people, Rollison among them, were still inside.
Wind from the streets, coming easily through the smashed door, was nursing the flames. The walls at the head of the stairs were blazing; flames were licking along the counters.
Two policemen lifted Rollison gently, laying him on a stretcher. He was the last man to be carried out. Only Warrender and two others remained, with the girl. The Assistant Commissioner’s voice was gentle.
‘Good work, Miss Farraway, I’ll remember it. Now outside, quickly.’
Anne went out. The coolness of the street air was refreshing, yet did little to ease her burning forehead. The sightseers, pushed well away from the doomed building, and the warehouses next to it that would be bound to suffer, were staring and muttering. From somewhere out of sight came the strident ringing of a fire-engine bell.
‘Along here.’ A detective-sergeant, detailed to look after the girl, took her arm. Dazedly she walked along a small alley at the back of the ‘Red Lion’. The police were in sole possession here, for it was a cul-de-sac, and a cordon of uniformed men prevented the crowd from pushing along it.
It was like an emergency field-dressing station.
Two doctors were working, although Anne did not realize who they were. Three ambulances were there, being loaded, and a lorry was used as an emergency couch for first aid.
All this – because the Toff had almost caught Dragoli.
Almost. . . .
The girl felt cold, frightened. She had known Dragoli perhaps more than anyone else present. His baleful eyes, his cruelty, the devilishness of the man when he had tried to force her to speak – all those things came back slowly. Garrotty too. And as far as she could tell, both the men had escaped.
The fight was not over; it had hardly started.
The police, thanks in the main to the Toff, had found one of the hide-outs of the Black Circle’s organization, had even succeeded in finding some of the stores. But the surprise had been prevented. The furniture van, loaded with cocaine, had escaped through the back streets, approached by a secret entrance from the ‘Red Lion’.
She knew, although no one had told her, that the van had escaped. Warrender would not have looked so grim but for that. The detective-sergeant, a cheerful young man named Owen, had told her who Warrender was. Owen was a little worried by the anxiety in the girl’s troubled eyes: and the fright.
‘It’ll be all right,’ he assured her. ‘A matter of time, that’s all.’
‘Is it?’ she asked the question slowly. ‘I – I don’t know. If Mr. Rollison is dead . . .’
Detective-Sergeant James Owen stared, and then shook his head abruptly.
‘The Toff’s not dead,’ he said. ‘He’ll go on for ever.’
It was absurd, of course, and she knew it: yet the confidence with which the man spoke cheered her. If a policeman could really believe that the Toff was indestructible . . .
A path had been cleared now for the fire-engines and the brass helmets of the brigade that had arrived first glittered all about them. With smooth, almost clockwork precision, the escapes were run up, the hoses unfolded; water began to stream on to the burning buildings.
Smoke, flame, and water, and then steam, added to the magnificence of the spectacle and the roar of the fire. Owen pursed his lips, and then shrugged.
‘Three or four buildings. I’ll go; we can’t avoid it. Cigarette?’
‘Thanks,’ said Anne. She did not smoke a great deal, but one then was a godsend. As she drew on it, Sir Ian Warrender turned from one of the ambulances. His grey hair was streaked about his head and covered with grime, soot was daubed on his face, and his clothes were filthy.
‘We’ll be able to get away now,’ he said wearily.
‘Mr. – Rollison?’
‘I think he’ll pull through,’ said Warrender.
But he did not seem confident, and Anne Farraway hated the expression in his eyes. But she said nothing as he led the way to a police car that had been brought into the cul-de-sac, and he opened the door for her. The ambulances first threaded their way between the fire engines and the police. Farther along the road cordons of police were forcing the surging crowds back. A thousand eyes were staring at the girl sitting next to Warrender.
Anne hardly noticed them.
She was remembering Dragoli, and the things he had done. The murder of her brother. The dreadful affair near the London-Chelmsford road. The ordeal at the ‘Steam Packet’, and the way the Toff had come, debonair, smiling, cheerful and single-handed – and damnably dangerous to Dragoli,
She believed the Toff could beat Dragoli, but she was afraid of what would happen if he did not live to fight – or if he was forced to stand by indefinitely. The picture of his blood-stained face, the jagged wound in his arm, seemed to frighten her.
But what was worse was the conviction that only the Toff could beat Dragoli.
Without him . . .?
The Black Circle would flourish: its influence, and the effect of the drug it was distributing, would grow. And she knew that while she was alive Dragoli would watch and wait for her. Indirectly she had caused the smashing of the ‘Red Lion’, the loss of thousands of pounds’ worth of the drug.
She shivered: she felt afraid.
It was just twenty-four hours after the affair at the ‘Red Lion’, Shadwell, that a clean-shaven, yellow-faced man with narrow, compelling eyes, looked up from the evening paper he was reading into the glittering eyes of a tough-faced man sitting by a table, with one ugly hand on the neck of a whisky bottle.
The room was well-furnished, although it was badly littered. No one seemed to have worried whether anything unwanted went on the floor, the tables, the chairs or the cupboards. Three daily papers were lying about the room, one of them ripped across. There were even empty whisky bottles on the floor, and a broken glass.
Few people would have recognized the clean-shaven man as Achmed Dragoli until he spoke. His voice was as slow and measured as ever, and anyone who had known him well would have seen in their mind’s eye the long, silky beard, the heavy eyebrows.
‘You’re drinking too much, Garrotty.’
‘Aw, shucks!’ The American lifted the bottle without troubling to use a glass, and emptied some of its fiery contents down his capacious throat. He drank neat whisky like water. ‘We gotta live, Drag.’
‘Ye-es.’ Dragoli spoke very softly. ‘We’ve got to live a long time, and there is a great deal of work to do. It’s to be done – sober.’
He leaned forward, and snatched the bottle. It clattered from Garrotty’s grasp to the floor, crashed, and the whisky spilled out. Garrotty’s face flushed an ugly red, and his hand darted towards his shoulder holster.
But Dragoli had a gun in his hand before the half tipsy gangster could draw.
Garrotty’s eyes narrowed venomously, but his hand moved away, and his lips formed a grudging apology.
‘O.K., Drag. No need for that between friends.’
‘I’m glad you think so,’ said Dragoli, but he kept his gun in sight. ‘Listen, you drunken fool. We have six months or more to go, most of the cocaine to be unloaded, and – a quarter of a million pounds to collect. Does that make sense?’
Garrotty stared. The figure mentioned was seeping through the whisky fumes that had befuddled his brain.
‘How – hic – how much wassat?’
‘A quarter of a million.’
‘P-pounds or dollars?’
‘English pounds,’ said Dragoli slowly. ‘And your share, if you work well, will be a big one. Say a quarter. Will that make you change
your mind and stop drinking? You’ve taken enough since last night to last most men a year.’
Garrotty grinned, a little sheepishly. He lifted his hands and dropped them. Cupidity, not hate, was glittering in his eyes, and he wiped his shirt-sleeve across his wet lips.
‘Jus’ a little holiday, Drag, yuh can’t say no t’ thet.’
Dragoli shrugged.
‘Don’t have too many of them. We are safe enough here and five of your friends are able to work. In addition,’ he added slowly, ‘to the rest of my own friends, ready to work in England. But we shall do most of the actual handling of the cocaine, Garrotty. Understand?’
‘Sure – sure. I understand.’ Garrotty wiped his lips again, and staggered up from the table. He went to the window and pushed it up, although it was pitch dark outside.
Silence greeted him.
The silence of the countryside after dark, broken by the odd murmurings of the trees and hedges and the night birds, and yet intensified by it. The cool air did him good. He turned round cumbersomely, and he no longer looked drunk.
‘All right, Dragoli. I’m with you. But here’s one thing I’m worried about. The Toff . . .’
He spoke casually, but he failed to make the words seem casual. In that room, on the top floor of a small country house near Camberley, in Surrey, the presence of the Toff seemed to make itself felt, although he was thirty miles away and helpless in a hospital. Garrotty, for the first time, was really beginning to feel the influence of the Toff.
So was Dragoli, but he succeeded in hiding the fact.
‘He’s finished for weeks, Garrotty, if not for longer. Don’t worry about him.’
‘I don’t trust de guy,’ said Garrotty. ‘Dere’s just one way I’d like to see the Toff, and that’s in a box. Sure’ – he scowled, and lit a cigarette, letting it droop from the corner of his thick lips. ‘In a box, Dragoli, an’ I reckon I’d pay somep’n to put him there myself.’
‘You’ll have the chance,’ said Dragoli. ‘But we will forget the Toff while he is in hospital. According to this’ – he lifted the evening paper –’he is in a bad way. An emergency operation was performed this morning.’