Introducing The Toff by John Creasey

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