Five yards away, he saw the man start, and turn round. He was peering towards the Toff, and but for the darkness of a shadow from a large pile of packing-cases inside the wharf, he must have seen the interloper. The Toff waited for ten pregnant seconds, and then the other breathed more easily and turned about.
At the same moment the Toff leapt.
He went like greased lightning, without a sound, for he could jump yards from a standing start. The gangster had no idea that there was anything the matter when a pair of lean hands were at his throat, and two thumbs pressed murderously – or so it seemed – into his jugular. Every ounce of strength seemed to go from his body; and then the pressure relaxed, and as he breathed wheezily, an automatic shone in front of his eyes.
The Toff had judged his pressure to a nicety. The man was too exhausted by that sudden, frightening pain to put up a fight, and the unexpectedness of the attack had been the chief harbinger of its success.
The Toff relieved him of his shoulder-gun and another from his pocket, as well as a knife and a cosh.
‘Quite a wholesale merchant,’ he murmured, and then his voice hardened. It was no more than a whisper, but it made the other feel as though his end was very near.
‘Where’s Garrotty gone?’
A pair of frightened eyes stared out of a twisted swarthy countenance. The Toff waited a fraction of a second, and then raised his gun. The man gasped: ‘I’ll tell ya! ‘I’ll –’
‘Fast!’ snapped the Toff.
‘In – inside. Wid anodder guy. You gotta say “acid”!’
‘I’ve got to say “acid”, have I?’ asked the Toff, and he was laughing silently to himself. One day he might make a bad mistake in judging the truth of admissions, but he did not think he had made one then.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Now I’m not going to hurt you.’
As he spoke he slipped his gun into his pocket, and almost with the same movement brought his clenched fist up with a crack against a fleshy jaw-bone. Two sharp punches did all that was necessary. The Toff repeated the cord tricks and plaster on the second gangster, and then lugged him, unconscious and trussed far more conscientiously than the average chicken, behind the friendly packing-cases.
As he went towards the doors of the warehouse he was repeating that he had to say acid, and the occasion came a few seconds afterwards.
The door, the only one in the warehouse wall, was shut. The Toff took a deep breath and tapped sharply.
There was a pause and then a latch opened.
‘Who’s that?’
It was a reasonably well-educated English voice, as far as the Toff could judge, and his mind was full of questions as he used the watchword.
Would it work?
Apparently the speaker had no suspicions of a trick, and the door opened. In a dim light he could see a lithe, thin-hipped man
in evening dress.
It was hard to understand why the fact of the evening clothes made the Toff feel as if he had been kicked hard. He certainly wished he was wearing something different from a pair of gaudy reach-me-downs.
That the other was wearing a small mask, much like a fancy-dress ball trifle, was not so surprising, and the Toff did not comment on it, even to himself. But he had another shock when the man said plaintively: ‘Put your handkerchief up, you bally fool.’
It was the bally that nearly finished the Toff. He snorted, turned it into a cough, and then tied his handkerchief over his mouth and chin. The man in the black mask nodded, and led the way to a second door. He pressed a button and the door slid open.
The warehouses of Willow and Kellson were up to date and electrically operated. The Toff was sorry, but he went on.
It might be no easy task to get out again, but he was determined to go as far as he could now. He was sizzling with curiosity, and he had a job to stop himself from making theories. He had allowed the soft-speaking man to go untouched, for others might come, expecting to see him here. Garrotty’s men were probably only stationed at Garrotty’s orders, and only the Yank would realize anything was wrong if they failed to materialize out of the gloom.
The Toff went through the electrically controlled door.
He found himself in a long, narrow passage. At one end hung a pair of heavy curtains; he went towards them, and as he grew nearer he heard a man’s voice, measured; a little high-pitched, like that of a man muttering a prayer.
Dragoli’s voice?
The Toff thought so, until he pushed aside the curtains. And then he saw a dozen or more people, sitting on chairs and benches in a big store-room. On a dais at one end of the room – on closer inspection the Toff saw it was the platform of a big weighing-machine – was a little man wearing a black mask, speaking very softly and fluently. It was not Dragoli – Dragoli was a foot taller than the speaker.
The Toff heard the words as he peered about. He was twenty feet from the nearest man, forty from the speaker. The walls of the store-room were bare; the only other door was behind the man on the weighing-machine platform. The Toff, with the light of the devil in his eyes and an automatic in each hand, prepared to take the biggest chance of his life. It was madness; but the Toff, at moments like these, was mad.
The little man chanted: ‘Our arrangements are working smoothly. There will be no alterations until the next meeting. New members –’
‘There won’t be a next meeting,’ said the Toff in a cool, easy voice that was pitched on a low key and which echoed to every corner of the big room. ‘Put your hands up, gentlemen – high. Especially Garrotty!’
There was a lilting mockery in his voice, a challenge in the words flung out so nonchalantly; but as thirteen pairs of eyes turned towards him, as half of the men moved and the others jumped up, as Garrotty’s hand went towards his shoulder, the Toff spoke again, and there was all the threat in the world in his voice.
‘Move another fraction and you’re finished! I’m carrying fourteen bullets, and that leaves one to spare. Garrotty –’
And then two guns spoke in quick succession, two flashes of flame – one from the Toff’s gun, one from Garrotty the Yank’s.
Had the Toff been working at full pressure during the past three weeks he would probably have adopted different methods; most likely he would have tried to get out of the warehouse without raising an alarm, and follow the little man who talked like Dragoli. It might have been the wiser course; but the Toff, with what he called three weeks’ rest, was at the absolute peak of confidence, and he had acted almost as quickly as he had thought. He had never worried about odds; the heavier against him the better he liked them. A ten-to-one chance gave him an opportunity for pulling off some unexpected and completely unbeatable stroke, where in a two-to-one effort the very fact that he was the Toff, and he had played such games for years, practically levelled them out to evens.
He had a gun in each hand, and he had expected the shot from Garrotty.
He fired a fraction of a second before the gangster, and Garrotty squealed’ as the bullet bit into his wrist. His gun clattered to the dusty floor, and at the same time the Toff fired again, towards a tall, thin man in evening dress, who had his right hand at his pocket. A second gun clattered; and then as the smoke drifted upwards and the echoes of the shooting stopped, eleven sound and two wounded men stared at the tall, lean figure in reach-me-downs, a face that, despite its disguise of grease-paint and dirt, carried the devil-may-care spirit of the man, and gave them some idea of the strength in him.
No one spoke, but from the passage there was a sharp sound of running footsteps. A single set, if the Toff reckoned rightly. He lifted his left hand, still carrying the gun, to his lips, exhorting silence that he did not think he would fail to get. And then the masked man in evening dress, who had used the word ‘bally’, burst through the heavy curtains.
The Toff was standing by them, facing the gathering. His right foot shot out, and the youthful man pitched over it, hitting his head against the floor-boards with an unpleasant thump. He stayed where he had fallen for several seconds, and then the Toff stirred his posterior with a gentle toe.
‘Join the boy friends,’ he said.
The man on the floor started to crawl towards them, and the Toff, sensing a trick or an attempt at one, used a toe that was no longer gentle. The man jumped to his feet and sped towards the group of men staring towards the Toff.
Had they been ten yards nearer, the Toff knew the chances of success would have been negligible. As it was, he was by no means sure that he would manage to bag them all, and if he tried he would probably lose the lot. The most comforting thought at the back of his mind was that Garrotty’s men would not bar the way out.
He was thinking fast. One thing was certain; he could not persuade any one of them to go for the police, and there was no telephone at hand. He could not lock the door on them, for the curtains made that impossible; perhaps it was one of the reasons why they had been installed. If he went out of sight they would move, perhaps towards another exit. But he certainly could not stand where he was for hours on end, and hope that something would turn up. For the first time he wished he had asked Winkle to get in touch with the Yard; and then he comforted himself with the thought that he might have failed to get anywhere had he done so.
The little man had been speaking as though at the end of his instructions. The arrangements, he had said, were working smoothly, and there would be no alterations. Probably in five minutes, ten at the most, the meeting would have broken up. Before the police could have reached the spot the mice would have scurried to their holes.
No, it was better as it was, and the thought made the Toff feel more pleased with himself than ever.
He broke the silence mockingly.
‘Well, gentlemen, we seem to be stuck. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m kind-hearted, you with the bowler. You’ve seen a little of the shooting I can manage, and I assure you I can do better. Anyone care to say a few words?’
No one did.
‘The man on the weighing-machine,’ said the Toff, ‘can unmask.’ The little man obliged, promptly, but still no one spoke.
‘Well, well,’ said’ the Toff mournfully, ‘you must be shy. It doesn’t matter; the police know ways of making you talk; those I want McNab to have, that is.’
There were three distinct oaths; an “Oh, God!” and the sound of a very deep breath. There was more disquiet in the eyes of the thirteen men – all except Garrotty and the little speaker masked – than there had been a few minutes before. The Toff smiled engagingly. He had pulled his mask down, for no one here would recognize him, although some doubtless guessed he was the Toff. For the moment he did not propose to confirm the truth or otherwise of their guesses.
‘Someone sound’s worried,’ he said. ‘All right, let’s start the procession. We’ll alter the methods and move in single file instead of circles.’
Someone else said: ‘God!’
‘Blasphemous lot,’ said the Toff, and he sounded sorrowful. ‘Now listen carefully, my friends, for I’m in a touchy mood. The little man with the sad voice – yes, you,’ he added as the speaker jerked his head up, ‘will lead the way. Turn round, and walk backwards towards me.’
He expected another attempt to fight, but nothing happened as the little man obeyed him. At ten paces the Toff stopped him, and said: ‘Bowler Hat, I’ll take you next.’
He was particularly interested in Bowler Hat. The man was tall – as tall as himself, Warrender, Frensham. And Bowler Hat obeyed with the same silence as the little Egyptian.
‘Excellent,’ said the Toff cheerfully, ‘we’re going to get along nicely, I can see. Now the door-keep man join the procession – turn your back, and walk towards me. Little man, proceed.’
He was laughing to himself, and his teeth were flashing, as the little man came within a yard of him. The Toff almost guessed what was coming, for like an eel the fellow squirmed round.
Rollison’s fist shot out like a battering-ram.
The other was moving towards him, and he took the pile-driver on the point. He went up a foot, and then slumped down, but three others were moving towards him. The Toff saw them, and yet he was elating, for none of them drew guns! They would have done had they possessed them.
He fired once, and his bullet took a man in the thigh. It was all the extra warning needed, and the conquest of Bowler Hat and’ the door-keeper was pitiful. Garrotty, nursing his wounded hand, was looking murderous, but had never been more innocuous. Three men were lying unconscious near the Toff, and a fourth was sitting on the floor with a badly shot thigh.
And then the Toff did an odd thing.
He took his cigarette-case from his pocket, and in doing so dropped his gun. He bent down in a flash to pick it up again, but kicked it farther away.
And he had never seen men move like it.
He had’ deliberately angled to get away from the door. The mention of the police, he believed, would make the men – unarmed as they were – aim for one thing only: get-away.
He had his left hand in his pocket all the time, in case there was a grab for a gun, but his reckoning was right. Garrotty was well in the lead in the rush for the door, and he paid no attention to the Toff. The crowd threatened to block the passage, and the Toff fired a couple of shots over their heads in order to hasten them. He need hardly have worried. Thudding of feet along the passage, the walls of the warehouse shaking, the banging of a door. Someone knew how to operate the electrically controlled partition.
And then a deep, loud voice: ‘What the hell’s
this?’
It was a question not likely to be answered for some time, but the Toff recognized the speaker, knew that
Ted Frensham
was here, and he greased along the passage.
The doors were open. Two men were having a stand-up fight in the small courtyard, and there was a thin stream of men racing along the alley beyond.
The Toff, his smile still showing, but a large question mark in his mind, approached the fighters. As he came up Frensham put a hefty left fist beneath a heavy jaw, and his man went backwards. He fell almost on to the Toff, and the Toff finished him off with a clout behind the ear.