Introducing The Toff Read Free Page B

of the night seemed to whisper death – death which was hiding amidst the ruins of that smashed-up car.
    As Rollison pulled in beside the wrecked car, he saw that it was a saloon Packard, with its radiator buried in the ditch at the side of the road, where it had plunged helplessly. The body was crushed and twisted; the wings ripped away, and the windscreen was smashed into a thousand pieces.
    Rollison stepped out of his car, and, as he drew nearer, he realized it had been the very devil of a smash.
    But he was looking more for what had caused the smash than the effect of it. But for the Daimler and the attack which had been made on him, he would have jumped to the conclusion that it had been due to the driver’s recklessness. Now no such possibility entered his mind. The Packard had been deliberately wrecked by the man with the beard and his sharp-shooting passenger – and the Toff’s car had been put out of action to give the attackers a clear get-away before the alarm could be raised.
    The Toff squeezed through the narrow gap between the car and the hedge. Thorns caught his coat and scratched his fingers, but he hardly noticed them. For he caught his first glimpse of the victim of the smash – the body of a man slumped in the driving seat amidst the wreckage. And as he saw him, the Toff knew there was not a chance in a thousand of the man being alive.
    The victim’s right leg was doubled back beneath him. His eyes were glazed and sightless. One arm was bent across his chest, with his hand near his chin, as though he had darted his hand upwards to ward off the sudden terror that had loomed in front of him.
    The moon shimmered on blood coming from a hole in the forehead, and there was no mistaking the cause of that wound. It was a bullet hole,
    The Toff knew it, and his shoe tapped the surface of the road. His nostrils were distended as his breath came softly. In his mind’s eye there sprang a picture of a bearded face and a pair of baleful yellowish eyes.
    Then he found himself thinking, unreasonably, inconsequently, of a name.
    ‘Garrotty’s in England,’ he muttered. ‘Garrotty the Yank. And this is gunman’s work. I wonder –’
    He jerked himself together suddenly and bent down, feeling for the man’s heart. It was a mere formality; there was no movement, and he had expected none.
    But he felt something damp against his hand, something which shone red in the moonlight. The man had been shot through the chest as well as the head.
    The Toff stayed where he was for a moment, staring down. The face of the man was arresting, even in death. Saturnine, swarthy, like that of a man who had lived for many years in hot climates, there was a sardonic twist to those still lips, as though the man had died with mockery in his eyes.
    The Toff took his hand away, stood up and peered about him. There would be the deuce to pay for this brutal murder on the country road. And, without question or doubt, it had traces of gangster work; in the vernacular, the man had been put on the spot, and the killers had made a good job of it.
    Then the Toff, who was not easily surprised, saw something which made his heart miss a beat.
    Odds and ends of steel were strewn about the road, mixed with a few pitiful possessions of the victim. A watch dangled from its chain, which had got caught in the running-board, the glass smashed, but the mechanism was still ticking. A case, half full of broken cigarettes, was close to it; and close by a trilby hat rested on its crown.
    Then, entirely out of keeping with the rest, and some distance from the wrecked car, was a woman’s shoe.
    The Toff picked it up. It jerked his mind from the horror of the murder, and his lips curled.
    ‘Puzzle,’ he muttered, ‘find the lady.’
    The shoe was a small, satin-covered creation, more suited for a ballroom than for a journey by road. There was a film of dust over the satin, and here and there it was scratched and torn. Half-way up the heel was a patch of mud