Introducing The Toff Read Online Free PDF Page B

Pug, and he had learned a great deal more than he had expected. He knew now why Goldman had been killed, and he was inclined to agree with McNab that the dead man was crooked, through and through. Squealing put a man right beyond the pale.
    And he knew that Dragoli was an agent of the Black Circle, and if he was completely fogged by the game that the organization was playing, he did not intend to be in the dark much longer.
    But there were other things. Why had the police held back the news of the murder? And – more important – where did the Lady of the Shoe come in?
    The Toff didn’t know, but he had an ingenious mind. He wondered if the girl had known any or all of what Goldman had sold his life for. If she did, it was a black outlook for her.
    ‘But not so black,’ said the Toff suddenly, as he swung the Sunbeam into the Mile End Road, ‘as it would have been if I hadn’t learned that Garrotty is staying at the “Steam Packet”, Lambeth. Dragoli won’t be far away, I’ll wager.’
    And, as had happened before, he would have won his bet.
    As befitted the occasion, the Toff was very thoughtful on the drive to his flat. So thoughtful that when he reached Gresham Terrace and found a carefully-packed parcel, shaped like a hat-box and labelled with the sacred name of a certain famous hatter, he took it to the bathroom and turned the hot water on, soaking the package for an hour before opening it.
    Undoubtedly he bought his hats from that firm. But when he cut the string and found the sodden body of a blood-lusting tarantula, whose first bite would have sent him to a very unpleasant death, he was glad that he had been careful.
    It was very quick work indeed. He must have been shadowed to Harry the Pug’s, and his trailers must have taken it for granted that Harry would squeal something which was bad for Harry. But the Toff, who was very thorough, had more than an idea that the Black Circle was ruthless in the extreme, and he had been on the look-out for attacks.
    The nature of it annoyed him. It was high time he had an interview with Dragoli, the mystery man from the East.

 
4:   THE ‘STEAM PACKET’
    On the day that the Toff called on Harry the Pug, the second waiter at the ‘Steam Packet’, which is at the corner of Duke Street and York Road, Lambeth, with a fine view of the Houses of Parliament from the top windows, wrote a maudlin letter of apology to Blind Sletter, who owned the ‘Steam Packet’. He had, it appeared, met with’ an accident, and he would not be able to work for some weeks to come.
    Blind Sletter did not read the note because he could not; his interest was negligible, however, when Castillo, his manager, told him about it.
    ‘Get another man,’ said Sletter plaintively. He was a very old, white-haired gentleman, held in high esteem by those who didn’t know him well enough. Such a harmless, well-meaning old soul. ‘You can wait on the private rooms, Castillo,’ he finished up.
    Castillo, a Spaniard of uncertain lineage, bowed from force of habit and went out to look after the running of the restaurant, including the hiring of a new waiter.
    The ‘Steam Packet’ was one of those semi-high-class restaurants with which London abounds. Just too far from things theatrical to lure the West End crowds, it had a large clientele from goggle-eyed suburbanites who were easily persuaded to believe that it was the real thing.
    A contributing factor to its success was its absolute respectability beneath its shroud of daring, or bare-legged ballet dancers. No one, least of all the police, who are chronically suspicious of restaurants, suspected the many strange things which changed hands over Blind Sletter’s plain desk in his simple office at the extreme end of the ‘Steam Packet’s’ premises.
    Sletter passed dope, and jewels, and bonds, if they were safe enough, and he had a rich picking.
    Also – with which the Toff was concerned – he had a number of private rooms of which the local