Free Introducing The Toff by John Creasey Page A

were. McNab had placed two plain-clothes men in the vicinity of the Toff’s flat, and they had been watching for hours. The Toff noticed them when he went to the open window and stared into the street for a moment to get a breath of air. The thunder which was brewing made the room hot and stuffy, but by the window it was fresher, as it had needed to be.
    He pointed the watchers out to Anne.
    ‘Perhaps,’ he said flippantly, ‘McNab thinks I’ll spirit you away before he comes with his questions.’
    ‘Are you going to?’ asked Anne mischievously.
    ‘Not yet,’ said the Toff, with meaning. ‘Lord,’ he broke off, ‘it is darned hot in here!’
    It was. But he put it down to the thunder that was threatening, and therein he made a mistake.
    For, unknown to him and to the police, the second floor flat in the house adjacent to the Toff – a corner house – had been recently let, and let furnished. The new tenants had, in point of fact, been in possession for two days – even before the affair at the ‘Steam Packet’. And they were in the flat while the Toff talked with Anne Farraway – which accounted in no small manner for the stuffiness of the room.
    The very effort of thinking seemed to tire the Toff, and he put it down off-handedly to break the tension, now that he knew the truth. He wiped his damp forehead with a silk handkerchief and grinned at Anne.
    ‘It wouldn’t be any hotter,’ he said, ‘in the place where Garrotty’s going. Joke.’
    Anne smiled obediently. She felt more like smiling now than she had done for a long time. The Toff inspired confidence – and she lacked his suspicious mind, which was just as well.
    All that had to be done was to take the plan to the police.
    The Toff smiled as she said as much.
    ‘I suppose you’re right, sweet one. I’ve looked everywhere I can, and I don’t see the catch. I’ve just got to potter round to McNab – but he’ll be calling soon, and that’ll save the trouble – and hand the whole thing over to him. Whether Garrotty and Dragoli will fall into his hands is a matter for conjecture. But there’ll be the blazes of a scrap – that’s a safe bet.’
    He levered himself out of his chair with a smile at the corners of his mouth. The end of the Black Circle’s English campaign was in sight, and the Toff was pleased.
    Then he frowned, and there was a far-away look in his eyes. For there was something the matter, something which had not happened to him in all the years of his life, excepting in those days when he had run the hundred in a shade over evens, and he was trying to find the reason.
    He failed. But the fact remained that his heart was thumping against his breast, and he was breathing hard.
    ‘I’m puffed,’ he said slowly, and he looked at Anne questioningly. ‘Do you feel all right?’
    The strangeness of his manner worried her. She nodded, but without conviction.
    ‘Yes. I feel warm, that’s all.’
    ‘Very warm,’ agreed the Toff. ‘Much too warm.’
    But an unpleasant thought was forming in his mind. It made him feel cold inside, in spite of the heat and the stickiness of his body. Little beads of perspiration were standing out on his forehead – and the palms of his hands were greasy with sweat.
    ‘I don’t believe,’ he thought, ‘that I’ve fallen for poison. I . . .’
    But he felt a terrible conviction that somehow he had, that somehow the Black Circle had reached him.
    He thought back on the food that Jolly had prepared, but his thoughts were muddled. Nothing was clear.
    He walked slowly towards the telephone, looking at Anne, seeing the strain about her eyes. She was breathing hard, and with increasing difficulty.
    The smile which he flashed towards her was a mockery.
    ‘We’d better – tell – the police about the plan,’ he muttered, and heard the pauses between the words as though he was listening to someone else speaking from a long way off.
    The telephone, on a table near the window, looked a black