Introducing The Toff by John Creasey Page A

room, one of them ripped across. There were even empty whisky bottles on the floor, and a broken glass.
    Few people would have recognized the clean-shaven man as Achmed Dragoli until he spoke. His voice was as slow and measured as ever, and anyone who had known him well would have seen in their mind’s eye the long, silky beard, the heavy eyebrows.
    ‘You’re drinking too much, Garrotty.’
    ‘Aw, shucks!’ The American lifted the bottle without troubling to use a glass, and emptied some of its fiery contents down his capacious throat. He drank neat whisky like water. ‘We gotta live, Drag.’
    ‘Ye-es.’ Dragoli spoke very softly. ‘We’ve got to live a long time, and there is a great deal of work to do. It’s to be done – sober.’
    He leaned forward, and snatched the bottle. It clattered from Garrotty’s grasp to the floor, crashed, and the whisky spilled out. Garrotty’s face flushed an ugly red, and his hand darted towards his shoulder holster.
    But Dragoli had a gun in his hand before the half tipsy gangster could draw.
    Garrotty’s eyes narrowed venomously, but his hand moved away, and his lips formed a grudging apology.
    ‘O.K., Drag. No need for that between friends.’
    ‘I’m glad you think so,’ said Dragoli, but he kept his gun in sight. ‘Listen, you drunken fool. We have six months or more to go, most of the cocaine to be unloaded, and – a quarter of a million pounds to collect. Does that make sense?’
    Garrotty stared. The figure mentioned was seeping through the whisky fumes that had befuddled his brain.
    ‘How – hic – how much wassat?’
    ‘A quarter of a million.’
    ‘P-pounds or dollars?’
    ‘English pounds,’ said Dragoli slowly. ‘And your share, if you work well, will be a big one. Say a quarter. Will that make you change your mind and stop drinking? You’ve taken enough since last night to last most men a year.’
    Garrotty grinned, a little sheepishly. He lifted his hands and dropped them. Cupidity, not hate, was glittering in his eyes, and he wiped his shirt-sleeve across his wet lips.
    ‘Jus’ a little holiday, Drag, yuh can’t say no t’ thet.’
    Dragoli shrugged.
    ‘Don’t have too many of them. We are safe enough here and five of your friends are able to work. In addition,’ he added slowly, ‘to the rest of my own friends, ready to work in England. But we shall do most of the actual handling of the cocaine, Garrotty. Understand?’
    ‘Sure – sure. I understand.’ Garrotty wiped his lips again, and staggered up from the table. He went to the window and pushed it up, although it was pitch dark outside.
    Silence greeted him.
    The silence of the countryside after dark, broken by the odd murmurings of the trees and hedges and the night birds, and yet intensified by it. The cool air did him good. He turned round cumbersomely, and he no longer looked drunk.
    ‘All right, Dragoli. I’m with you. But here’s one thing I’m worried about. The Toff . . .’
    He spoke casually, but he failed to make the words seem casual. In that room, on the top floor of a small country house near Camberley, in Surrey, the presence of the Toff seemed to make itself felt, although he was thirty miles away and helpless in a hospital. Garrotty, for the first time, was really beginning to feel the influence of the Toff.
    So was Dragoli, but he succeeded in hiding the fact.
    ‘He’s finished for weeks, Garrotty, if not for longer. Don’t worry about him.’
    ‘I don’t trust de guy,’ said Garrotty. ‘Dere’s just one way I’d like to see the Toff, and that’s in a box. Sure’ – he scowled, and lit a cigarette, letting it droop from the corner of his thick lips. ‘In a box, Dragoli, an’ I reckon I’d pay somep’n to put him there myself.’
    ‘You’ll have the chance,’ said Dragoli. ‘But we will forget the Toff while he is in hospital. According to this’ – he lifted the evening paper –’he is in a bad way. An emergency operation was performed