Read Online Salute the Toff by John Creasey - Free Book Online Page B

you arranged for the fake Draycott to telephone Harrison from here, did you?”
    Lorne swore: “Why, you swine—!”
    â€œThere you go into the purple again,” said the Toff, “and you still don’t impress. I wonder why you wanted to create the impression that Draycott was still alive? Perhaps you hoped that the body wouldn’t be discovered yet, and a call to the flat would have made it inevitable. You arranged for the call from here, but not until after Miss Gretton and I had looked in at Chelsea. Right?”
    â€œSupposing it is?”
    It was right, of course.
    Harrison bathed his head and face, dried himself on a soiled towel, and looked at the Toff with amazement.
    â€œHow did you do this?”
    â€œChiefly by persuasion,” said the Toff. “Lorne is a beginner, and beginners are always easy. We now know that Lorne was most anxious that Draycott’s body should not be found so soon. Too bad, wasn’t it? And of course,” he went on musingly, “he followed—or preceded—us up here because he was afraid I knew enough to put him inside for the murder. A very proper fear too,” added the Toff. “But what I said at Dring Mansions still holds good, Lorne. I want the bunch of you.”
    â€œYou’ll never get us.” Lorne was very pale.
    â€œSo there is a gang!” exclaimed Harrison.
    â€œAnd now you’re getting the exclamation-mark complex,” said the Toff. He put his head on one side and regarded Lorne thoughtfully. “I can’t make up my mind what to do with you. You can’t stay at liberty, and you certainly can’t stay here. I think perhaps you’ll talk more easily to me than to the police. I—”
    There was no tap on the door, but it opened abruptly, and he saw two men. They looked as if they knew which end of a boxing-glove should be used for the greatest effect. They were hefty and husky, and the first of them said: “Put that gun down, you!”
    The Toff did not obey; but neither did be use the gun, for a missile that he did not at first recognise came through the air from the second newcomer and struck his arm. The gun dropped, and then Lorne turned.
    Towards the windows!
    It was open at the bottom, and he pushed it up swiftly and climbed through. The Toff could do nothing, and when Harrison made a rush one of the newcomers caught his arm. Lorne scrambled outside, and from the fact that he stood upright the Toff guessed there was a fire-escape. The clanging of his footsteps proved it.
    It happened so quickly that it was hard to believe it was true, but the missile – a stone, as it turned out – had caught his funny-bone; and a simple thing like that could easily incapacitate him.
    â€œAnd that takes care of Lorne for the time being.” He regarded the two huskies calmly but without approval. He did not think that either man was armed, or the guns would have been shown by then. “Who are you?”
    The first man, taller, blunt-faced, and with a truly remarkable cauliflower ear, said slowly: “Was that Mr. Rollison’!”
    â€œOh, my God!” exclaimed Harrison. “What is this?” And the Toff, very softly, laughed.
    â€œIt’s a joke,” he said. “And if you can see it that way it’s funny. No, George. I’m Rollison.” The husky roared: “What’s that!”
    â€œI’m Rollison,” said the Toff, and went on: “and you, of course, are friends of Bert?”
    â€œThat we are that,” said the speaker, and his villainous face took on an expression of such abject self-reproach that even Harrison smiled. “Bert got on t’phoon and told us t’coom right here, after we’d seen a man come by t’airyplane from London. Meaning,” he added confusedly, “we were t’follow t’man, that’s so. We didn’t see him, mister, but we found that he’d coom up