Introducing The Toff Read Online Free Page B

to have his food specially prepared, and, in effect, hygienically sealed. Safety was much better than poisoned soup.
    The three days immediately following the murder were not entirely without incident, however, although the Toff admitted that he started the ball rolling.
    On the morning of the second day the Toff, resplendent in faultless grey and driving a Sunbeam, which was a car of cars, indeed, went to Limehouse and Shadwell. He knew, as he turned in and out of the cobbled streets, that the Sunbeam was recognized, and that the word was spreading that he was about. The thought tickled his vanity. A dozen gentlemen were shaking in their shoes.
    But the one man in all Shadwell who felt that he was safe from the Toff’s attention had a nasty shock.
    He was sitting in his parlour above the saloon bar, looking out of the window and seeing, but not noticing, the masts of many Dutch trawlers docked alongside the Thames, and the smokeless but grimy funnels of a few idle steamers. He knew nothing of the Sunbeam, which drew up in front of the ‘Red Lion’ – the parlour was at the back – until Squinty burst into the room in a pretty state of funk.
    ‘What the ‘ell’s the matter with you?’ snarled Harry the Pug, who had been dreaming rosy dreams. And then he saw the card trembling in Squinty’s knuckled hand.
    He felt a lump rise suddenly from his stomach to his throat. His voice was cracked.
    ‘The Toff! ‘
    Squinty didn’t say a word. He was still seeing the incredibly thin and immaculate man whose grey eyes had seemed to burn into his soul – which was nearly impossible, for Squinty was more brute than man.
    Harry the Pug felt very cold. He recognized the little picture on one side of the card, and did not trouble to read the other, introducing the Hon. Richard Rollison, of Gresham Terrace, W1. The picture was simple. Just a top hat set at a rakish angle, and immediately beneath it a monocle, and alongside both a swagger cane. The Toff called it his trade mark and used it only on business.
    The Pug found his voice again, but he was still pale.
    ‘You darned fool! What did you bring it in for? Tell him I’m out. Tell him anything! I won’t see him. I won’t!’ His voice rose to a squeak. ‘Don’t you understand that, you squint-eyed fool? I won’t see him –’
    And then he looked past Squinty, and his mouth stuck open.
    ‘Perfectly understood,’ murmured the Toff, from the door. ‘Too bad I followed Squinty up, wasn’t it?’
    He walked softly across the parlour, reached Squinty, and snapped his fingers close to a cauliflower ear. Squinty went, and the Toff watched him close the door.
    Then he turned to Harry the Pug.
    ‘Now we’re alone,’ he drawled, and sat down without being asked. ‘Keeping busy, Harry?’
    The Pug bit his lip. This was the meeting he had tried more than anything else in the world to prevent. And now it had happened out of the blue. The Toff was sitting elegantly in front of him, lean hands playing idly with his cane, flinty eyes staring – staring.
    Harry the Pug felt dreadfully afraid, but no one had ever called him yellow. His thick lips split.
    ‘What are you after, mister?’
    ‘If it eases your mind,’ said the Toff blandly, I’m not after you – yet. Information, Harry, with a capital “I”. Do we have a spot before you talk?’
    Harry ignored the hint and he licked his lips.
    ‘I don’t know nothing,’ he said doggedly.
    ‘Too bad,’ murmured the Toff. ‘And I had it from very good authority that you know where Garrotty the Yank is staying at the moment. Much too bad!’
    ‘Never heard of him,’ lied Harry, who hated the drawling mockery of that ‘too bad’. ‘See here, mister, I’m on the level. I don’t say I ain’t been a bit gay in my time, but I’m finished now, and...’
    He trailed off. The Toff’s eyes narrowed.
    ‘Stow it,’ he said sharply. ‘Where’s Garrotty?’
    Under that frosty stare, Harry the Pug wilted, as many a better man