Contraband

Dennis Wheatley

Contraband

There was menace in the night sky over England: an international smuggling racket with far-reaching political implications.

Gregory Sallust knew nothing of this when, in the Casino at Deauville, he first saw the lovely Hungarian girl, Sabine Szenty. Nor did he know that, before the thing was finished, he, Gregory Sallust, to save Sabine from retribution she had surely earned, would once again become a 'Wanted' man…

1

Midnight at the Casino

When Gregory Sallust first saw the girl it was already nearly midnight on the last day of his holiday. He had made a leisurely tour of Normandy, stopping at some of the less pretentious inns where the cuisine was still unspoiled by the summer tourist traffic, and was ending up with three days of riotous living at Deauville.

It was a little early yet for that playground of the rich. Another ten days and la grande semaine would bring the wealthy and the fashionable, with their locust crowd of hangers-on, from every city in Europe; but the Casino was fairly full. English, French, and Americans jostled each other at the tables while here and there a less familiar type of face proclaimed a true Latin, Scandinavian, or Slav.

The women, for the most part, were middle-aged or elderly, except for a sprinkling of professional harpies. The majority of girls who filled the tennis courts, the bar du soleil, and the bathing beach by day would be dancing, Gregory knew, and it was fairly easy for a practised eye like his to sort the few, who stood by their mothers or were gambling at the 'low tables for a few francs, from their more adventurous sisters. The clothes of the latter, their jewels and general air of casual indifference to their surroundings, gave away no secrets; it was the way in which they watched the faces of their men rather than the piles of plaques, which represented so many thousand francs, that indicated to the shrewd observer where their real interests lay.

Gregory glanced again at the girl who had just come in then lowered his eyes to the man she was accompanying, a strange little figure, now seated at the table. He was not a dwarf yet he was curiously ill proportioned. His body was frail and childlike, but his head massive and powerful. From it a shock of silver hair swept back, giving him a benign and priest like appearance, but his rattrap mouth and curiously pale blue eyes belied any suggestion of mildness.

Catching sight of him had first drawn Gregory Sallust's attention to the girl, for Gregory knew him, which was not surprising since he knew most people of importance.

From his public school he had gone straight into the war but a nasty head wound had put an end to his trench service and he had been seconded to Intelligence. His superiors there thought him a cynical but brainy devil and came to value him as a reliable man who would stick at nothing to collect vital information. They had kept him on, specially employed in Paris after the armistice, during the whole period of the Peace Negotiations, and it was then that he had first come in contact with so many famous personalities.

At the time of the currency collapse in Central Europe he had left the Service to undertake certain confidential work for English banking interests in Vienna, and when that job had ended he had drifted into journalism in order to supplement his private income of a few hundreds a year.

That had led, a year or two later, to his being sent out to the Far East as war correspondent to one of the big London 'dailies'. On his return he had remained unemployed except for occasional literary work until an old friend of his had recommended him, as highly suitable to undertake a special investigation needing secrecy and brains, to a group of men who controlled one of Britain's greatest commercial corporations. Gregory had accepted the offer and as a preliminary had taken his fortnight's 'holiday' in Normandy. He was due back to make his first report the following day.

The girl remained standing behind her companion's chair, and Gregory watched her covertly. He was wondering if she was a poule de luxe or just some friend's girl in whom the old man was taking a fatherly interest; but Gregory knew that he was not the sort of old man to derive the least pleasure from the innocent conversation of respectable young women. He was almost a recluse, having cut himself off from all social life years before, and even when he travelled he rarely appeared in the public rooms of the hotels where he stayed owing to supersensitiveness about his physical shortcomings. On the other hand, he was by no means the types of old rip who travels with pseudo 'nieces' in his entourage. He was reputed to be colossally rich, but Gregory had never heard the word 'mistress' breathed in connection with his name.

She must be a poule, Gregory decided, but a devilish expensive one. Probably most of the heavy bracelets that loaded down her white arms were fake, but you cannot fake clothes as you can diamonds, and he knew that those simple lines of rich material which rose to cup her well formed breasts had cost a pretty penny. Besides, she was very-very beautiful.

A little frown of annoyance wrinkled Gregory's forehead, catching at the scar which lifted his left eyebrow until his face took on an almost satanic look. What a pity, he thought, that he was returning to England the following day. If only he had seen her soon after his arrival at Deauville it would have been fun to get to know her.

Gregory Sallust was no ascetic, yet it was quite a time since any woman had loomed on his horizon about whom he had felt that it was really worth while to exert himself. This girl was just the type to rouse him from his lethargy into sudden intense activity. He knew from past experience that he could sweep most women off their feet inside a week with the intense excitement of a hectic, furious, laughing, yet determined pursuit, and what magnificent elation could be derived from carrying a rich man's darling off from under his very nose despite her better sense and the rich man's opposition. Gregory had done it before and he would certainly have attempted it in this case if only he had had a few days left to work in.

The more he studied her, between making bets, the more the desire to do so strengthened in his mind. He could never bring himself to be anything but 'un-cleish' to 'nice' girls, however attractive, and he barred respectable married women, except on rare occasions, on practical grounds. The aftermath of broken hearts and tearstained faces with possible threats of being cited as correspondent by an injured husband was, he considered, too heavy a price to pay. He preferred, when he took the plunge into an affair, a woman whom he could be reasonably certain was content to play his own game. Nothing too easy in fact it was essential to his pleasure that she should move in luxurious surroundings and be distinguished of her kind, and so quite inaccessible except to men of personality even if they had the wealth which he had not. Then, when victory was achieved, they could laugh together over their ruses, delight in one another to the full and, when the time came as it surely must, part before satiation; a little sadly, perhaps, but as friends who had enriched life's experience by a few more perfect moments.

'Rien ne va plus' came the level voice of the croupier and Gregory realised, too late, that he had failed to place his stake.

Really, he thought, I'm behaving like an idiot and if I'm not careful I shall be thinking of that lovely face of hers for weeks. I've known this sort of thing happen to me before, so I'd better go home to bed before I get her too much on my mind.

He pushed the cards away from him and, collecting his chips, stood up. Then, just as he left the table, a simple action caught his eye while the players sat tense receiving their cards for a new deal.

The elderly man had pulled out his watch, but he was not looking at it. He held it in the palm of his hand and the girl was gazing at it over his shoulder. She nodded and, turning from the table without a word, walked quickly away.

Gregory knew that it was just on midnight and, as he watched the receding figure, so graceful in its sheath of heavy silk, he paused to wonder just what lay behind that little act. He was certain that neither of the two had spoken. Was the old man sending her somewhere or reminding her of an appointment? Anyway, she was just leaving the sale and alone!

The temptation was too much for Gregory. True, he had only a dozen hours or so before he must pack and catch his boat but much could be done in a dozen hours. With a long loping stride he made his way to the entresalle.

Before she appeared in her wraps he had already collected his light coat and dark soft hat and had a taxi waiting a few yards from the entrance of the casino.

Too old a bird to attempt to speak to her, he watched, a little surprised that no car was waiting to pick her up, as she walked down the steps and turned to the south along the gardens which fringed the plage. He gave her about five minutes' start, then boarded his taxi, giving the man precise instructions in fluent French.

The taxi slid along the asphalt road, easing down to a crawl when the lady once more came in sight. A moment later she turned round the far corner of the Normandie. The taxi speeded up until it came level with the corner. Gregory peered out. Opposite the Deauville branch of the famous jewellers, Van Cleffe et Appel, situated in the side of the Normandie Hotel, stood a large limousine. The girl was just getting in.

'Follow that car,' said Gregory softly to his driver, and then sat back again.

The limousine ran silently through the almost deserted streets, crossed the little Place with its now darkened bars, dress shops, and confisserie, then took the road to Trouville. The parent town, once fashionable in its own right but now, as Margate is to Cliftonviile, the holiday resort of greater but less wealthy crowds, lay only a mile or so away, and their route ran through the suburbs which connect the two.

At Trouville Harbour the limousine halted. The taxi pulled up in the shadow of some buildings two hundred yards behind. Gregory turned up the collar of his coat to hide his white shirtfront and with his soft hat pulled well down to conceal his face leaned out of the window.

The girl had descended from her car and evidently dismissed it; for the limousine swung about and sped back towards the big villas and great hotels along the Deauville plage.

A man came forward from behind the deserted customs shed. Quiet greetings were exchanged. The girl called a solitary taxi that still lingered on the rank. She pushed the man in before her and bent forward to whisper an address to the driver then she too got in and the taxi moved off towards the centre of the town. Gregory sat back and his taxi followed.

For a few moments they wound in and out the old-fashioned twisting streets, then Gregory's taxi pulled up once more. The other stood some way along a narrow turning outside a lighted doorway. The man and the girl were getting out. Gregory could see now that the man was hatless and wore breeches topped by a leather airman's coat.

'Stay here,' he ordered as he stepped down into the street, softly closing the door of his cab behind him. The driver grinned. 'C'est une maison de passe, M’sieur. L’autre a de la chance ce soir.'

'Thank you for nothing,' Gregory snapped. Then he smiled resignedly. 'C'est la fortune de guerre' he translated the English idiom literally but incorrectly for the driver's benefit. It did not always suit him to draw attention to his proficiency in foreign languages; then, being a very thorough person, he took the trouble to walk quietly down the street to verify his taxi man’s statement.

The other taxi, now paid off, had driven on. The place seemed to be a cheap cafe open to the street. A few night birds were sitting silent, with drinks before them, at the little tables. The girl and the man were not among them but Gregory's quick eye had immediately noted a side door giving separate entrance from the street to the rooms above. He shrugged his slightly stooping shoulders impatiently. What an ass he had been to bother. The girl was a cocotte all right, and this was undoubtedly a 'house of accommodation'. It surprised him a little that so gloriously lovely a lady should consent to meet her lover in a sordid joint, but he knew well enough that women care nothing for such things if they happen to have got the great madness for a particular man. The old chap might be running her but obviously she was of the type who insist on having their freedom at certain times, and this was one of them.

He was just about to turn away when a sharp cry came from the room above the cafe. It was a little muffled by the thick window curtains, through which chinks of light filtered, but Gregory's ears were almost abnormally keen that night.

A sudden grin spread over his lean face. In three strides he had crossed the narrow street. His raised foot crashed against the flimsy lock and the private door to the rooms above swung open with a bang.

Crouched like a leopard, he raced up the narrow flight of stairs, dashed across the landing, and flung his weight against the only door beneath which there appeared a streak of light.

The room was not the cabinet particulier which he had expected but almost a replica of the cafe below. In one comer four men were writhing in a struggling heap. Three wore the blue cotton blouses of French dock labourers. The fourth, who lay beneath them, was the fellow in the airman's coat. The girl stood nearby with distended eyes, her hands gripping the sides of a little table over which she leaned, apparently too paralysed by fear to scream.

The situation would have been clear to a dullard's eye so Gregory wasted no time in thought. Seizing a bottle from a nearby table, he knocked it sharply against the wall, smashing off the punt. Then, waving the jagged end, the ugliest weapon in the world, he sailed into the fray.

2

The Coded Telegram

As Gregory leapt he saw a knife flash in the hand of one of the thugs. For a second it looked as if the vicious stroke would pin the young man to the floor, but Gregory struck with all his force. The jagged bottle bit through the flimsy covering of the dock rat's shoulder and into the grimy flesh beneath. With a sudden scream he dropped his knife and clutched at the torn and bleeding muscle.

The other two swung round, still crouching in the comer over the prostrate man, to face Gregory. With his free hand he seized a chair and flung it just as the nearest was about to spring. It caught the man below the knees. He staggered wildly, grabbed at a frail table and went down with it on top of him. The other whipped out a knife and, with a quick twist which Gregory recognised in sudden fear as the manner of the expert, drew back his arm to throw it.

But they had all reckoned without the man in the airman's jacket. He was a hefty fellow, well over six feet tall, and broad in proportion. Despite his recent gruelling, it seemed that he had plenty of fight left in him for his muscular hand closed like a vice round the ankle of the knife thrower and, with a violent jerk, he brought him crashing to the floor.

Then he scrambled to his feet, pushed the girl roughly from his path, gasped out 'Thanks a lot' to Gregory, and dashed from the room.

The wounded thug was cursing vilely as he tried to staunch the flow of blood from his shoulder. The other two picked themselves up, and the knife thrower, a sinuous dark young fellow with crisp curly hair, cried wildly, 'Vite! Vite! Ar retezle!'

Without so much as a glance in Gregory's direction all three thrust themselves through the door and pounded down the stairs in pursuit of their late victim.

Gregory turned to the girl. She seemed to have recovered her self-possession completely and was watching him with a curious intensity beneath which, he just suspected, lay a faint amusement. He raised his eyebrows and smiled.

'I can excuse many things in the young,' he said softly, 'but not bad manners. Now, it would have been quite impossible for me to leave Mademoiselle so suddenly and without even one little word of farewell or a deep sigh of regret… In fact,' he added seriously as if the thought had just come to him, 'I should find it difficult to leave Mademoiselle at all!'

'You follow me from the Casino. I recognise you,' she stated softly, ignoring his remarks.

'Lucky for you I did,' Gregory replied promptly.

She was French as he had supposed but obviously English came quite easily to her. It was the first time that he had had the leisure to study her at close quarters and the quick smile which twitched his thin lips showed that he was in no way disappointed.

A long coat of mink with a heavy double collar now hid her graceful figure, but above it rose her heart shaped face with its broad low brow and little pointed chin. He admired again the dark pencilled eyebrows which curved back like the two ends of a cupid's bow, the points rising almost to her temples, and the sleek black hair, parted on the side and flattened on the crown but spreading into a mass of tight jet curls behind her small pink ears and on the nape of her neck. Then he noted the perfection of her skin. It was fresh and healthy as that of a child, and such light makeup as she wore was obviously only a concession to fashion.

As her large dark eyes held his with an unflickering gaze he was suddenly aware that she was no young girl but a very dangerous woman. The type which makes all other women bristle with jealousy and suspicion from the moment they enter a room, and for whom men have killed each other, and themselves, throughout the ages.

For the first time for years a real thrill ran through Gregory's body and even in that moment the thought came to him how wise he had been not to fritter away his emotions on lesser game while there were still women like this in the world.

'We must get out of here,' he said quietly but there was an imperiousness in his voice which had been lacking before, for the noise of the chase had hardly died away below when he caught the sound of hurrying feet from somewhere in the rear of the house. Next moment a door at the back of the room behind a small bar was thrust open and a thickset bald-headed man in his shirtsleeves burst in upon them.

As the newcomer's small dark eyes lit upon the overturned furniture he began shouting in voluble French.

'What is this! You make a scene in my respectable house! You break the furniture. I see blood! There is murder done! I will call the police!'

'Shut up!' snapped Gregory. 'You were in it yourself I expect. Any more from you and I'll give you a taste of this.' He waved the end of the broken bottle, which he still held, aggressively.

The man gnawed his walrus moustache in apparent indecision while he eyed Gregory stupidly for a moment, then he suddenly dived back behind the rampart of his bar and ran from the room as quickly as he had come.

Gregory wasted no time in argument. If the landlord of the place was not in with the thugs he was now making a beeline for the telephone and the police would be arriving at any moment. Gregory knew just how inconvenient a French police inquiry could prove, even to innocent persons. They might hold him for days as a material witness against the thugs. To be mixed up in anything of that sort was the last thing he desired. But the lesson of Drake and the game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe was one which had always appealed to him. Time enough now to impress the lady first and run from the French police afterwards. So instead of hustling her out he dropped the bottle, held open the door and, removing his hat with a graceful bow, said courteously:

'Mademoiselle, the time has come for you and me to find pleasanter surroundings. I have a cab below.'

'I thank you, Monsieur,' she replied evenly, and the suggestion of a smile which played about her red lips as she walked from the room showed that she was not unappreciative of his poise and gallantry.

As Gregory made his bow, his eye had fallen on a flat, black notecase lying a few feet away from the corner where the tussle had taken place. He stooped swiftly, picked it up, and thrust it in his pocket. Then he strode after the girl and shepherded her swiftly down the stairs.

The street was still empty except for his waiting taxi a hundred yards away. The voices of the few night birds now raised in excited argument within the cafe drowned the sound of their footsteps as he took the girl's arm in a confident grip and with long, but apparently unhurried strides, led her to the cab.

'The Metropole, Deauville,' he told the driver, and the man nodded with a quick grin as they climbed in.

The airman and the thugs had probably taken the other direction, Gregory assumed, since the taxi man said nothing of the chase. Anyhow, the fellow could grin until he burst, for he, Gregory, had got the girl, and what a girl. She seemed to radiate warmth by merely sitting beside him as they bumped over the pave of the old streets back to the harbour, and a faint delicious odour, not so much a definite perfume as the scent of daily coiffured hair, freshly washed silks and a scrupulously tended person the hallmarks of a superbly soignee woman filled the darkness of the taxi. The problem was how to keep her?

'What would you like me to call you?' Gregory asked her suddenly.

'My name is Sabine.3

'Delightful and the other half?

'Monsieur is curious, but I do not consider it necessary that I tell. We part soon and it is not-er convenable that we meet again.'

'Parfaitement.' Gregory bowed to her decision but with mental reservations. 'Sabine it is then but you seem to forget that the police are probably taking down our descriptions at the moment. Unless we can keep clear of them we shall both spend the rest of the night in the lockup?'

'You think that pas de blague ?'

'I certainly do. That's why I told this chap to go to the Metropole and here we are.'

He paid off the taxi with a lavish tip and followed her into the hotel.

'I leave you only for the moment,' she said as they reached the entresalle and he watched her walk in the direction of the ladies' cloakroom.

But Gregory was not to be caught like that. She might give him the slip if he went into the lounge and sat down at a table so, instead, he took up a position where he could keep the door under observation and occupied himself by examining the notecase which he had collected from the floor of the upstairs cafe.

A quick survey of its contents caused him to smile with pleasure. Then he slipped the case back into his pocket and, lighting a cigarette, stood waiting for Sabine.

She appeared again a moment later and he noted with satisfaction that she had not left her mink coat in the cloakroom; thus enabling him to put a completely fresh plan into operation without delay. As they passed into the lounge he took her arm again and whispered:

'We won't stay here. There are so few people about at this hour we're certain to be noticed. We'll go out through the other entrance and along to the Normandie.'

'But why should there be people in quantity there more than here?' she questioned.

'There won't,' he answered tersely, 'but the taxi man set us down here so it's as well to get out of this place as quickly as possible in case he's questioned.'

'As you will.' She allowed him to lead her out on to the plage and they walked the few hundred yards to the other hotel. At the entrance he paused and faced her.

'Listen Sabine!' he spoke with unusual firmness. 'Any argument will draw attention to us. I am staying here, so there must be no fuss you understand? Do as I say or else the police will get us and we shall both spend the night in some uncomfortable gaol.'

'But…' She was about to make a protest.

'Stop it,' he cut her short abruptly. 'I hate to remind you of the fact, but it was you who took the fellow who was attacked to the maison de rendezvous, so it is you whom the police will want to talk to. Remember, he may have been murdered by now for all we know.'

'All right,' she murmured and when he took her straight over to the lift and upstairs to his room she made no further protest.

'Now,' he said, having closed the double doors behind him and thrown his coat upon the bed, 'I think you had better tell me what you know.'

Again she regarded him with her large, calm, unfrightened eyes. 'How?' she asked.

'There's something going on, and I want to know about it.' Gregory's chin jutted out as he faced her in the quiet room, shut off from the corridor by the private bathroom, clothes closet and miniature hall, with its toile de jouy hangings and rose du barri colouring, warm in the pink lights of the shaded lamps.

He took the worn notecase from his pocket again and added quietly: 'Perhaps this will help us.'

The case contained 2,440 francs in notes of various denominations, the document which Gregory had already scanned at the Metropole, and a telegram. He spread out the latter and read it carefully.

'This is written out in pencil; by a woman I should judge. It's on a sending form so it has not yet been despatched; it says:

COROT CAFE DE LA CLOCHE CALAIS SIXTH 41 44 II 15 THENCE 46 SEVENTH 43 47 EIGHTH 43 AGAIN 47

Well, that doesn't help us much, since it's in code,' he added. 'But it's interesting all the same, and confirms my ideas about your charming self. Now, once again, what do you know?'

She stared at him with a lazy insolence in her hazel eyes.

'If I knew anything why should I tell? Also, I do not regard the chance of being questioned by the police as of sufficient importance to risk my reputation by remaining in your room.'

A sudden smile that could on occasion make Gregory's lean face so attractive flashed over it. 'Why?' he said softly with a new note in his voice. 'We are both bad hats anyway aren't we?'

'Of course,' she murmured with an answering smile. 'And you are how shall I say? well, emotionant in your way one does not often meet an Englishman with your personality see how frank I have become. But I fear I have no time for gallantry at the moment.'

'Haven't you? I think you have.' Gregory took one of her hands and kissed it.

'No no,' she shook her head. 'You are a nice person but at this time such follies are apart from me.'

'Are they?' He pressed nearer to her and his eyes said infinitely more than his words conveyed. But at that moment the telephone which stood on a little table near the bed shrilled loudly.

It was just behind her and she picked it up without the least hesitation. 'Ullo,' she said, 'merci… ah bon!… Adieu.' Then she replaced the receiver.

'As I thought,' she turned back to him. 'That call was for me. My friend whom you have seen with me in the Casino has many ways of knowing what I do. Someone in this hotel has told him of my presence here. He assures me that all is arranged so that there is no further likelihood of my being troubled by the police.'

She smiled a little mocking smile of triumph at Gregory. 'You understand? I must return to my friend. This little adventure has been quite amusing and I thank you for your courtesy, but now, Monsieur it is over.'

Gregory smiled too. 'I hate,' he said, 'to seem to press you; but I think you will see the wisdom of remaining here in hiding when I tell you I know from his papers that the man whom you lured to that dive tonight was an officer from Scotland Yard. If the French police knew that they would renew their desire to interview you despite anything that your very clever friend can do. So it seems to me that you are wrong, Mademoiselle, and that this adventure has only just begun.'

3

An Interrupted Idyll

'You mean to keep me here against my will?' For the first time the self-confidence faded from Sabine's eyes. Almost instinctively she glanced behind her to see if there was another exit from the room.

Gregory faced her across the broad low bed. His back was to the only door which gave on to the miniature hallway of the suite. Tall, lean, the suggestion of a smile pulling at his thin lips, he noted with quiet satisfaction that he had at last broken through her armour of casual ease.

It was now well after one o'clock. Many of the wealthy crowd staying at the Normandie would, he knew, still be at the casino; while those who did not gamble or dance would already be in bed. The double doors, with the small hallway in between, separating the big room from the corridor, muffled the loudest sounds even in the day time; now, the unbroken hush of midnight hours pervaded the great hotel. In the soft light of the rose du barri shaded lamps against the back' ground of the toile de jouy hangings Sabine's dark beauty glowed warm and alluring.

Not a flicker of an eyelid betrayed Gregory's determination to take with both hands this golden hour which it seemed that the Gods had decreed for him. The girl was no bread and butter miss but an adventuress, perhaps even a poule de luxe, one of those rare exotic women for the sake of whose caresses millionaires commit crazy follies and sometimes come to ruin, disgrace, and suicide. He had caught her fairly; he was even running some risk of trouble with the police for deliberately concealing her. She must pay toil but she should do so of her own free will in an hour or two. Gregory was by nature the joyful cynic and far too old a hand to rush his fences. He moved round the bed towards her.

'Listen!' he said. 'You lured that chap in the airman's coat down to that dive where he was set upon.'

''Monsieur, that is not true.'

Gregory dismissed her protest with a wave of his thin muscular hand. 'Owing to the break I gave him he may have got clean away. On the other hand, those thugs may have run him down and knifed him.'

'No no. If so my friend would have told me of that when he telephoned just now.'

'Toucher Gregory exclaimed, his smile broadening into a grin. 'A confession, my dear Sabine, that those cutthroats were in your friend's employ, and that you knew it.'

Her dark eyes flashed. 'Monsieur is clever but it is sometimes dangerous to know too much.'

'A threat, eh? Come, that's ungenerous, since you'd be in Deauville police station at this moment if I hadn't got you out of that cafe. More, it's rank ingratitude when I propose to keep you here all night to save you from arrest.'

'My friend has said that I am in no danger of arrest.'

'You forget that your description will have been given to the police by the patron of the cafe. They'll nab you for certain if you try and leave this hotel.'

'Nab what is that?'

'Pinch arrest. All the hotel porters and taxi men in Deauville will have been warned to keep a look out for you by this time. Remember, the man whom your friend's thugs tried to do in was an officer from Scotland Yard. When our special branch men operate on the continent they always keep in touch with the local police, so if he has escaped he will have made his report by now, and the authorities will be wanting you pretty badly.'

For a moment she was silent then, with a little sigh, she sat down on the arm of a low chair. 'I am so tired,' she murmured, passing her hand across her eyes. 'Perhaps you are right, Monsieur, but it is ungallant that you should take advantage of my situation.'

Gregory reassessed his chances. Her regal self-assurance of a few moments before had suddenly disappeared. It was as though a spring inside her had given away; she sat now hunched and dejected, a rather pitiful little figure, acute anxiety in her dark eyes as to the outcome of this difficult position in which her evening's adventure had landed her.

His experience of women made him certain that she was not shamming. She was an adventuress, of course, but not a poule, otherwise she would never have broken down like this. He was glad of that since it made the affair so much more interesting. Like a good diplomat he prepared himself to make concessions. The gods gave only in their own good time. They had been kind to place so rare a gift within his compass. Now he must wait upon their pleasure.

He smiled, one of those rare warm smiles which could at times make his grim face so attractive, and laid a hand on her shoulder.

'Don't worry please,' he said softly. 'I hope we are going to see quite a lot of each other in the future, so the last thing I want is to make you think me a bore. I only want to help you. I'm sure it's best for you to stay here the night. You can have my bed and I'll shake down with some cushions and the eiderdown in the bathroom. We'll talk things over in the morning.'

She nodded slowly, not doubting for an instant that he meant exactly what he said.

'I think I might have guessed that I need have no fear of you. How wise you are, too, if you really wish to gain my fren'ship.'

'May our friendship ripen quickly,' he replied, and they smiled into each other's eyes like two expert swordsmen about to enjoy a test of skill with buttoned foils.

'Pyjamas!' Gregory drew a clean pair, of peach coloured silk, from a drawer and threw them on the bed. 'You'll have to use your fur coat as a dressing gown I'm afraid I'll need mine if I'm to sleep hard. They key's in the door, so you can lock it if you wish but you needn't bother. Your virtue is as safe as the crown jewels for, shall we say, the next eight hours or until you leave this suite but after that, gardez vous ma belle Sabine. Je deviendrai le loup dans le bois.'

She arched her splendid eyebrows. 'Is that a challenge?'

'It is. I know nothing of your dealings with your elderly friend but I mean to take you from him even if I have to, swing for it.'

As he spoke Gregory had been gathering up his things together with the cushions and the coverlet from the bed. He had no intention of losing the maximum effect of his withdrawal by prolonging the conversation. In the doorway he turned. 'Good night, little Red Riding hood.'

Sabine inclined her head. 'Dormez bien, my Big Bad Wolf.'

She was now a little uncertain if she was altogether glad to see him leave her so quickly.

Outside he locked the door on to the corridor, made up a couch for himself on the bathroom floor, undressed and, putting out the light, lay down to think.

His unusual resting place did not trouble him at all. Gregory Sallust could sleep anywhere but his brain was busy with the events of the evening.

His tour through Normandy, spying out the land for the organisation which had engaged him in London, had proved completely abortive until this, the very last evening of his visit. Even now he had no certain knowledge that this strange adventure, into which he had been led by following Sabine had any bearing upon the operations which he had been asked to investigate, yet he had a strong feeling that this might be so. The officer from Scotland Yard, who'd been attacked, might have been in Deauville for half a hundred different reasons, but it was Sabine's connection with that strange little man, with whom he had first seen her in the Casino, which intrigued him. That almost dwarf like figure with the powerful head, pale stone cold eyes, and shock of white hair above the broad forehead, was known to Gregory as one who had been engaged for years in great, and always sinister, undertakings. It might well be that he was at the bottom of the whole business. Even if that were not so, Gregory had found Sabine, a woman in a million; one of those rare beings who possessed all the attributes which appealed to his fastidious nature. Gregory Sallust felt that his evening had not been wasted. For a time he amused himself by conjuring up her face again in the darkness; then he turned over and slept peacefully.

Gregory made a practice of never being called and usually slept late in the morning, so he would probably not have woken until nine o'clock, but at half past eight the bathroom door creaked and Sabine put her dark head round the corner.

As his eyes opened he stared at her in bewilderment; then the events of the few hours before flooded back to him and he sat up.

'I am so sorry if I disturb you,' she said, 'but I have been awake a long time and I am hungry; also, I would like a bath.'

'Right oh! Give me ten minutes, will you, and I'll see what we can do about some breakfast. Feeling better this morning?'

'A lot, t'ank you.' She smiled and shut the door.

He shaved his lean face with quick sure strokes, brushed his tumbled hair, slipped on his dressing gown, and then joined her in the bedroom.

Her evening dress and stockings were still lying over a chair and she sat perched on the edge of the bed muffled up in her big fur coat.

'I've turned on the bath,' he told her, 'so in you go, and don't come out before I call you. In the meantime I'll order breakfast. What would you like? Just coffee and rolls, or something more sustaining?'

'May I have some canteloupe, also an omelette fines herbe I think.'

'You little glutton,' he laughed, 'of course you may, but we'll have to eat it off one set of plates, or else they'll tumble to it that I've got a visitor. Run along now and when you hear the waiter come in mind you stop splashing.'

As she left him, carrying away her clothes, he gave the order by telephone, and a quarter of an hour later the floor waiter appeared with the dishes and coffee upon a tray. He was accompanied by an under porter carrying a cabin trunk, which he set down carefully as he said: 'This has just arrived, Monsieur. I was ordered to bring it up to you at once.'

When the men had gone Gregory examined the trunk. It was addressed to him and he found it to be unlocked. On opening it, he saw a note inside; it read

Dear Mr. Sallust,

I trust that you have taken care of my little friend, Sabine. Some people in my position might find grounds for serious; annoyance in her desertion of me, but at my age I can afford to be tolerant towards the escapades of young people. I only hope she was not disappointed in you.

Now that this little frolic is over, however, she will naturally wish to return to my care at the earliest possible moment. To facilitate that end I send under your name a complete outfit of her day clothes. Should she fail to rejoin me by midday I shall consider you lacking in appreciation of the courtesy I have extended to you and proceed to teach you a sharp lesson in good manners.

I do not sign this as Sabine will know from whom it comes.

P.S. My analogies to Sabine, please, that my servants are unable to find her Bassana powder. Also, although she is fond of it, I should be obliged if you will exercise your influence to restrain her from eating any fish for breakfast, since I am always a little doubtful of it in the summer months abroad.

Gregory grinned. He did not need to ask Sabine from whom the letter had come and, knowing something of the sender, he felt that the veiled threat was by no means an empty one; yet he had no intention of truckling to it. Sabine was far too beautiful a prisoner to be released because some risk might be incurred by a continuance of her company. Gregory was already planning in his mind the manner in which they might most pleasantly spend the day together. He slipped the note in his pocket and, knocking on the bathroom door, reported the arrival both of the trunk and breakfast.

Sabine joined him a few moments later clad in her evening dress and looking beautiful but slightly incongruous in the bright morning sunshine which was now streaming through the window.

Breakfast proved a gay and pleasant meal. They had to drink from the single cup and shared the melon and omelette with the happy laughter that springs from quick mutual attraction. All the distrust she had shown of him the previous night had disappeared.

When the meal was over he waved a hand towards the trunk. 'You had better change now, I think, into day clothes, while I have a bath and get dressed myself. But what shall we do afterwards? How would you like to spend the day?'

She became grave at once. 'I must get back and rejoin my friend. Otherwise he will be angry and when he is angry it is not good.'

Gregory raised one eyebrow, the left, until it met the white scar running down from his forehead, which gave him at times such a Mephistophelean appearance. 'You're not out of the wood with the police yet, you know,' he said, 'and if you go off on your own they may pinch you for that affair last night.'

'If that is so, they may do so if I am with you, n’est ce pas?'

He shook his head. 'I don't think you need worry as long as you remain with me because, you know, that Scotland Yard man owes me something. By turning up when I did I probably saved his life. He's bound to take that into account so the chances are that if you're caught with me they'll prove much more reasonable about you than if they catch you on your own. Besides, the wolf knows the forest and you're much more likely to escape altogether if you let him be your guide.'

'That may be so but my friend? He will make trouble if I do not return.'

'Listen.' Gregory leaned forward eagerly and took her hands. 'I'll put it to you another way. If you wish to do so you are perfectly free to walk out of this room now. From the beginning I've never had the least intention of turning you over to the police, I'm sure you know that, but if you go now I may never see you again. All I'm asking is for another hour or two with you. This is the last day of my holiday. I'm returning to England this evening by the five o'clock boat. You said last night you might give me your friendship for sheltering you here and asking nothing of you in return. Now is the time then. Won't you be very sweet and kind, risk a spot of trouble with the old man, and spare me a few hours today? Just long enough to drive somewhere and lunch together in the sunshine. I'll have you back in Deauville and safe at home by four o'clock. I promise.'

'You have been kind and generous.' She hesitated a second. 'But this may be most dangerous for you.'

'Danger has never stopped me doing anything I wanted to yet, nor you my dear. We're two of a kind and thrive on it be honest now aren't we?'

'C'est vrai,' she said softly. 'All right then, I will do as you wish, but the consequences they must be upon your own head.'

'Splendid!' With a quick gesture Gregory pulled her to her feet and kissed her on the cheek. 'Quick now and change while I get my clothes on.' With a happy laugh he swung away from her and two minutes later he was singing lustily in his bath.

When he returned he found her dressed in an airy primrose summer frock and large picture hat, which suited her dark beauty to perfection. She had repacked the cabin trunk with her evening clothes and, but for the tumbled bed, the room now showed no traces of her occupation.

'Now to make our getaway,' he exclaimed and, picking up the telephone, he gave swift orders in French that his car should be driven round from the garage and left outside Van Cleffe et Appel, the jewellers, at the side of the hotel.

'We'll give them ten minutes,' he said, turning back to her, 'then slip down the service staircase, just in case there's a large blue policeman waiting to wish you good morning in the lounge, although they can hardly know you went to earth here last night.'

Only a good-natured chambermaid hid a smile of understanding as she passed them hand in hand on the service stairs.

They slipped through a side door into the restaurant then, under cover of the cider apple trees, out through the courtyard. The car was waiting at the spot to which Gregory had ordered it. His plan had worked without a hitch yet those few minutes of suspense made a bond between them; for both felt a little like naughty children who were slipping away to play some forbidden game in spite of the prohibition of stern elders

Gregory turned the car to the left, along the front, then left again on to the fine main road, and so out of the town between the rows of big Edwardian villas. He had already settled it in his mind that they should lunch at the famous Guillaume Conquerant Restaurant at Dives, but it was still only ten o'clock, so he drove straight through to Cabourg and then turned inland along the road to Caen.

When he discovered that Sabine had never visited the old Norman capital, except to dine at that resort of gourmets, the Champs d'Hiver, he parked the car in the square and they got out.

They spent an hour laughing and talking as they walked round the market and inspected the Cathedral then, after, an early cocktail, they picked up the car again and drove back to Dives, that little village at the mouth of the river, from which William the Conqueror set out so many centuries ago with his Norman knights to invade England.

Neither Gregory nor Sabine were strangers to the celebrated hostelry, which is the principal centre of interest at Dives today, and they were soon seated at one of the small tables in its ancient flower decked courtyard, receiving the ministrations of the mctre d'hotel.

The August day was one of torrid heat so they decided on a cold luncheon: Consomme en gele, Canard Montmorency, and Praises de bois.

Sabine had lost all trace of the anxiety which she had previously shown in playing truant to that powerful and sinister figure whom she termed her friend. She was protesting gaily that she could not possibly manage a third helping of the excellent cold duck, dressed with foie gras and cherries, when Gregory saw her face go suddenly blank.

'What is it?' he inquired anxiously.

She leaned across the table, laying her hand swiftly on his; her smooth forehead creased into a frown. 'That man,' she whispered. 'Quick, he is just going through the gate. Oh, but you must be careful.'

Gregory glanced over his shoulder and was in time to catch one glimpse of a tall broad shouldered well dressed fellow, who dragged one leg slightly as he walked.

'Who is it?’ he asked.

'The Limper; that is the name by which they call him,' she murmured. 'Is it by chance, I wonder, that he is here, or has my friend sent him? Be careful of yourself, please. It would make me miserable now if any misfortune were to happen to you.'

'Is he so dangerous then?'

'Very, I t'ink. At least, many people are afraid of him.'

'Well, I'm not,' Gregory laughed, 'but thanks for the warning, and thank you far more for your concern for me. But tell me this: why do you mix with such people? Have you got to or is it from choice?'

She shrugged. 'It is my life.'

'I wish you'd tell me more of yourself, and more of your, er-friend.' As he spoke he was speculating again as to whether Sabine could possibly be the old man's mistress. The thought that it might be so filled him momentarily with one of those gusts of cold fierce rage which made him capable, at times, of sacrificing his egoism to become a killer; not from jealousy, but because some queer streak in him leapt to the defence of the beautiful, the precious, and the rare, utterly regardless of all manmade laws, conventions, shibboleths. He had been born five hundred years after his time, knew it and, even in his more sober moments, was inclined to glory in the fact.

She shrugged again. 'I prefer that you should not question me. In a little time now we must part and it is better that you should know nothing of me.'

'Yet I mean to. Believe me Sabine, we shall meet again and soon.'

'I do not say I would be averse to that but no! At this time I am apart from men. It is too dangerous-dangerous for you. Please, after today forget that we have ever met. It would be better so.'

'Tell me one thing,' he urged. 'When you speak of your friend, do you really mean your lover?'

'How absurd you are,' she laughed. 'But no, perhaps, not altogether absurd, for he is a most fascinating and interesting person. He has no time for women though, I t'ink, and uses me only as a cog in his machine.'

'To lure unsuspecting young policemen to their death, eh?'

He smiled, his flaming anger having evaporated as quickly as it had come.

'No, no, not that. Those thugs, as you call them, would not have killed him. Their orders were only to get back the telegram that he had stolen.'

She spoke hastily in her anxiety to deny the suggestion that she might have led the officer to his death and, in so doing, had said more than she had intended. Gregory was quick to note the flush that mounted to her cheeks. The telegram was now reposing in his breast pocket and as soon as he had the chance he meant to get a cipher expert on to decoding it, if possible, since he had felt from the beginning that it might hold the key to the mystery in which he was so interested.

'Do you know the code in which that telegram was drafted?' he asked casually.

She helped herself to a few more wood strawberries from the little wicker basket which reposed between them then said slowly: 'If I did I would not tell you and, since you speak of it, much trouble could be saved if you would give that telegram to me. If I could hand it to my friend on my return I should escape his anger. Also, he would be grateful to you and perhaps allow that we meet again.'

Gregory shook his head, 'I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that's impossible. I'm sure you'll be able to make your peace with him when you get home in an hour or so now, and I mean to keep the telegram at least, as a small souvenir of our adventure.'

She shrugged and lifted up her coffee cup. 'As you will but you would be far wiser to do as I suggest.'

'No. I have to return to England in any case tonight, so even with your friend's permission I should not be able to see you again for a day or two, although I mean to, whether he likes it or not, as soon as I can. Here's to our next merry meeting.' He tossed off his liqueur of vintage Calvados and beckoned the waiter to bring the bill.

As he was paying it she stood up, saying that she must leave him for a moment, but would rejoin him at the car. He watched her go, a gracious sylvan figure, then he stood up himself and walked slowly through the creeper covered gateway round to the garage.

His car was not where he had left it in the car park, but a blue overalled mechanic met him and told him that, having noticed the car had a flat tyre, he had run it into the garage. Then the man hurried off on some errand saying that he would be back again in one moment.

The car park was deserted and, all unsuspecting, Gregory turned from its strong sunlight into the deep shadow of the ancient stables. As he rounded the corner a tall figure with raised arms leapt forward casting a cloud of black dust straight into his face.

It was pepper. Too late, he shut his eyes and thrust up his hands. Searing red-hot pains seemed to stab through his eyeballs. The infernal stuff was in his mouth and nostrils making him choke and gasp. Then, as he staggered back, blind and helpless, a powerful fist caught him a terrific blow in the stomach and he doubled up, writhing in agony upon the ground.

4

Enter an Eminent Edwardian

'And that,' said Gregory two nights later, 'was the last I saw of the delectable Sabine.'

Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust sat back and roared with laughter.

'Well, I'll be devilled!' he exclaimed when he had somewhat recovered. 'The minx fooled you properly, and no wonder your eyes are in such a state. Still, there are as good fish you know.., Have some more brandy, my boy, have some more brandy.'

'Thanks.' Gregory picked up the decanter and poured a further ration into the big Ballon glass that stood on a little table at his elbow. His host's brandy was as rich, as full flavoured, and of as fine a vintage as the man himself.

Sir Pellinore was one of those remarkable products which seem peculiar to England. Born in 1870, the heir to a pleasant property on the Welsh border, which had been in his family since the Wars of the Roses, he came into his inheritance in the naughty 'nineties, while still a subaltern in a crack cavalry regiment. He had an eye for a horse and a pretty woman, and an infinite capacity for vintage port, but no one had ever accused him of having any brains. He was distantly connected with royalty, and numbered three dukes among his first cousins, so from his youth upward he had known everyone who mattered by their Christian names, yet not one in a ‘hundred thousand of the general public had ever heard of him. He had shot everything that is shoot able, including men, and received a brief notoriety from a particularly well deserved V.C. in the South African war, but as he had never courted publicity he soon slipped from public notice again.

Early in King Edward VII's reign a crisis had occurred in Sir Pellinore's financial affairs which had made him consider it desirable to resign his commission rather than sacrifice his ancient patrimony. Some people in the city had offered him a directorship, entirely, of course, on account of his social standing, but curiously enough they found him a surprisingly regular attendant at their board meetings, where he displayed a blunt persistence in acquainting himself with the minutest details of the company's affairs. After a little, the people in the city discovered that if they had a particularly tricky transaction to negotiate with an Armenian or a Greek the best thing to do was to leave it to Sir Pellinore; true he had no brains, but he possessed a strange direct way of putting matters to such people. He was so transparently honest that they never quite knew what had come over them, until they were back in the Levant. Other directorships had been accepted by Sir Pellinore, although he always modestly declined the chairmanship of any company with which he was connected.

For services in the Great War he had been offered a peerage, but declined it on the score that there had been a Gwaine-Cust for so many centuries at Gwaine Meads that the tenants would think he had sold the place if he became Lord something or other.

He had always dealt with his co directors with that same disarming frankness which he displayed to Americans and Greeks; his formula being, 'Well now, you fellows, just pay me what you think the job was worth say half what I've saved the company, eh? That's fair. No cheating there. Mustn't rob the shareholders, must we?' He was now exceedingly rich.

He inhabited a vast mansion in Carlton House Terrace to which admirals, generals, diplomats and cabinet ministers came to unburden themselves when their affairs proved particularly difficult. Not for advice, oh no! because everybody knew that Sir Pellinore had no brains, but he was as safe as the grave and a decent sort one of the old school with a curiously direct way of thinking, an eye for a horse or a pretty woman, and an infinite capacity for vintage port.

His only son had died of wounds during the Great War, and it was Gregory who, as a very young subaltern, had carried him back out of the hell of Thiepval Wood on the Somme, in 1916, at imminent risk to his own life. That was how he had come to meet Sir Pellinore who, times without number, had offered him lucrative permanent posts in his companies, but Gregory had a loathing of routine and just enough money of his own to be independent.

He had a direct way of thinking too, however. That was why they liked each other and why, when one of the great corporations which Sir Pellinore virtually controlled, found their interests threatened, he had said to the board, 'I think I can get you a man. Very able feller. Much more likely to get to the bottom of this business for us than one of those beastly agencies. If you care to leave the matter in my hands…'

Now, Gregory warmed the precious liqueur in the bowl shaped glass with his palms, before sniffing its ethers appreciatively. Then he glanced round the big quiet library where they were sitting after dinner. 'She didn't fool me, you know,' he said.

Sir Pellinore closed one bright blue eye under a bushy white eyebrow. 'Tell that to the marines, my boy. Been fooled often enough myself by women. Not afraid to admit it either. She tipped off that Limper feller and he did the rest. Gad, I'd have given a packet to see you afterwards. How mad you must have been.' He gave his long thigh a ringing slap, and roared with laughter again.

'Not a bit of it,' Gregory protested. 'If Sabine had put the Limper on to me he would have searched me afterwards for a certainty, and taken the telegram when he had the chance, but he didn't. He obviously couldn't have known I had it. All he was interested in was getting Sabine out of my hands under instructions from his boss. Here's the telegram to prove it.'

'Well, maybe you're right.' The baronet took the flimsy sheet and read it out:

COROT CAFE DE LA CLOCHE CALAIS SIXTH 41 44 II 15 THENCE 46 SEVENTH 43 47 EIGHTH 43 AGAIN 47

'What d'you make of it?' Gregory asked.

'Nothing. Never was any good at figures, much less codes. Never had much of a brain for anything at all.'

'No.' Gregory grinned. 'Yet the father of all the Rothschild’s would have buttoned up his pockets and knocked off work for the day if he had heard you were going to pay him a visit in his office.'

'What's that!' Sir Pellinore looked up sharply.

'Well, you know what I mean.' Gregory continued to grin unashamedly. He knew his man and treated Sir Pellinore in private as few of the baronet's co directors would have dared to do.

'Insolent young devil.' Sir Pellinore returned the grin. 'Good thing there aren't many more of your kidney knocking about. World wouldn't be fit to live in. Honestly, though, I can't make head or tail of this thing. However, I've got a pal in the Admiralty decoding department and I'll get him on to it tomorrow. Never do anything yourself that you can get other people to do for you. Remember that my boy. Better than any tip for the Derby. Lots of fools have paid me good money to get other people to do their work for them.'

'I can well believe you,' said Gregory succinctly. 'Have you still got any of that pre-War Kummel?'

'What, the original Mentzendorff?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Only that I've always found it an excellent aid to thought and I can get fine brandy in other people's houses but you seem to have cornered all the pre-War Kummel in London.'

Sir Pellinore brushed a hand over his fine white moustache and got up. He stood six feet four in his socks and could still have flung most men over thirty down his stairs if he had wanted to.

'Drat the boy,' he muttered as he pressed the bell. 'Another bottle gone and even Justerini's can't find me any more. But I'd sooner you drank it than most people I know. At least you appear to appreciate the stuff and I wouldn't mind a spot myself. Now you shall tell me what you really did with that attractive young woman.'

'There's nothing more to tell.'

'Come on, you young rascal. You had her in your room all night.'

'Even so, I promise you…'

'Expect me to believe that! Is it likely! Still, I'll let you off. It's nice to find a youngster who refuses to tell tales out of school. Crawshay, bring me a bottle of Kummel. Out of the bin mind. Not that muck we have for parties.'

'Very good, sir. The under butler bowed in the doorway and disappeared as quietly as he had come.

'Now! Let's have this thing clear.' The baronet sat back in his deep armchair. 'Do you really think you've tumbled on to something or just got yourself mixed up in some shady deal which doesn't matter two hoots to us.'

Gregory shrugged. 'I can't say for certain. It may not concern us at all. On the other hand it may be what we're after. Anyhow, I intend to follow it up.'

'Follow up that young woman is what you mean, my lad.'

'Certainly, but I have a hunch that I won't be wasting my time as far as the other thing is concerned. Remember, it was a Scotland Yard man whom those thugs attacked.'

'That's true. All the same, policemen must have their nights off, like other people, and it's quite probable this wench told you a whole pack of lies to cover up her affair with the fellow. Women are marvellous liars marvellous. Ha! here comes the Kummel.'

The under butler had arrived with the cobwebbed bottle still uncorked upon a salver, and Sir Pellinore took it from him. When the door closed behind the man he said to Gregory,, as he gently tapped the wax off the top of the bottle, 'Never allow my people to uncork old liquor. Servants don't understand that sort of thing these days. Cork's gone to powder, like as not. If so, they push it in and ruin the stuff. One thing I always do myself.' With a skilful sideways twist of the wide spiral corkscrew he drew the cork, smelt it, and then poured out two generous rations. For a moment they both sniffed at the old liqueur, then sipped it.

'By Jove! How right I was to ask you for this,' Gregory murmured. 'Smooth as cream, isn't it, but what a kick.'

Sir Pellinore nodded. 'Pity you didn't have some of this to give the girl at Deauville, eh? But I'll bet you managed without it. Where were we now? You were saying you had a hunch that you'd got on to something really big. What makes you think that? On the face of it, you know, it's only a brawl in a cafe in which it happened that a Scotland Yard man was mixed up.!

'Yes, on the face of it,' Gregory said slowly. 'But I wonder if you remember a conspiracy which took place a few years ago when, by means of arson, sabotage and paid gunmen, a combine endeavoured to gain control of the entire film industry?'*

'Yes, they murdered poor John Bamborough and a number of other people, didn't they? And Hinckman, the Trans-Continental Electric chief, who engineered the whole business, died while evading arrest.'

'He was supposed to have been drowned in a marsh, somewhere down in Surrey, but that's never been proved. However, Hinckman was only the figurehead. There was a far more sinister figure behind the scheme really. A man who controls almost limitless capital and who is believed to have been mixed up with all sorts of financial rackets during the past few years Lord Gavin Fortescue.'

'What, Denver's brother?' Sir Pellinore's white eyebrows shot up into his forehead.

'Yes. He's the Duke of Denver's twin, but whereas Denver is a fine upstanding figure, Gavin is a sort of freak. Not a dwarf exactly but very short, with an enormous head and a tiny little body, like a child's in its early teens. They say that his abnormality together with the fact that he was born second, and so failed to inherit the dukedom, embittered him to such an extent that it turned his brain. The story goes that he even attempted Denver's murder when they were boys together.'

'That's so! I knew 'em both. Know Denver well today but I haven't seen Gavin for years. He travels a lot I believe but wherever he goes he lives as a recluse. He's immensely rich and made every penny out of crooked deals. He hates his fellow men like poison and has sold his soul fifty times over to make his millions. Armaments, dope, white slaving on the grand scale, he's been in them all; but he's so powerful in a subterranean sort of way that nobody's ever been able to get enough watertight evidence to pin anything on him yet. He's not a man, but a warped inhuman devil. I'd put him at the top of the list as the cleverest and most ruthless criminal brain in Europe at the present day.'

Gregory nodded. 'Well, that was the man who gave Sabine her instructions before she left the Casino.'

5

Superintendent Marrowfat Takes Certain Steps

'Good God, man! Why didn't you tell me this before?' Sir Pellinore sat forward quickly.

'Because I'm a born storyteller and always save the titbit till the last. I could make a fortune writing thrillers if I weren't so darned lazy; but I think you'll agree now that I'm on to something big.'

Sir Pellinore drank again of the old Kummel. 'I agree entirely. This is worth opening a bottle for. I wouldn't be surprised if Gavin Fortescue isn't the kingpin in the whole of this devilish business we're up against. You're right, my boy, right every time in your intention to follow this up. What's your next move?'

'I want a plane. It must be fast, foolproof and whatever make has the least noisy engine.'

'You can have a dozen if you want them.'

'One's enough, thanks.'

'Want a pilot too?'

'No, I'll pilot myself but that's why I want it foolproof. I'm a good bit better than most amateur pilots but all the same I never take a single risk that isn't necessary. Most of my work will be night flying and I'll have to observe as well as fly the plane, so I want the sort of thing that flies itself almost, if you can get it for me.'

'Most planes do these days. Anyhow, the best machine that money can buy shall be at your disposal at Heston tomorrow. What then?'

'We'll see what your pal at the Admiralty can do to decode the telegram although I'm doubtful if he'll make much of it. You see, it's not a cipher where the numbers can be changed down on a sliding scale until one finds their equivalent. The numbers probably apply to things or places so only the people who have the key can read the thing. Still, where it says sixth, seventh and eighth, I think it's a fair bet that dates are implied as today is the fifth of August. If they are dates the inference is that something's going to happen tomorrow, the sixth, so I shall have a cut at getting in on it. Anyhow, I propose to be snooping round the Cafe de la Cloche in Calais tomorrow night.'

'Good, but as the police are already mixed up in this I think you ought to cooperate with them if possible.'

'The police hate civilians butting in on their affairs.'

'That's true, but since one of their men was attacked it's up to us to give them any information in our possession, whether they're after the same thing or not. The Commissioner is in Scotland at the moment but I'll get on to the Assistant Commissioner and arrange an appointment for you to meet somebody at the Yard in the morning.'

Gregory shrugged: 'Just as you wish, although I doubt if much good will come of it.'

Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust was an extremely efficient person. When he took an affair in hand it rarely suffered from the delays which are a bane in the life of ordinary business people. All he ever asked was a plain answer to a plain question and if anybody suggested to him that a certain routine must be followed he was apt to be devastatingly terse in his remarks to the routinist. He retained in his employ a well paid squad of private messengers and always used them in preference to the post as the standing order was instant dismissal for any one of them who failed to return with an answer even if they had to stay up all night to get it.

In consequence he was able to inform Gregory by telephone at eleven o'clock the following morning that the Admiralty decoding department had vetted the telegram and agreed that the numbers in it applied to things or places and, therefore, were quite undecipherable without a key. Also, that a plane, which would meet his specification, was now awaiting him at Heston, and that he had arranged an appointment for him at twelve o'clock with Superintendent Marrowfat at Scotland Yard.

At five minutes past twelve Gregory was ushered into the Superintendent's room. It was a cold, inhospitable looking office; the only cheerful thing in it being its occupant.

He was a large man, very large, weighing a good eighteen stone, and Gregory was reminded for a moment of that stout inspector who spends his life perambulating the courtyard of Buckingham Palace watching the great men of the world come and go.

In spite of Superintendent Marrowfat's bulk he showed no sign of physical deterioration. He could move as quickly as most of his colleagues and Gregory judged that he must, literally, possess a punch which could fell an ox. He had a round red cherubic countenance, friendly blue eyes, and a shock of tight carrot coloured curls upon his head.

'Sit down, sir.' The Superintendent waved a hand towards a chair on the far side of his desk; then pushed over a box of cigarettes. 'Will you smoke?'

'Thanks.' Gregory took a cigarette and lighted it.

'The A.C. tells me that Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust rang up to say you had some information which might be useful to us and, if that's so, we should be very pleased to have it.'

'May anything I say be used in evidence against me afterwards?' Gregory asked with a cautious smile.

The big man laughed: 'We're not wanting you on any charge as far as I know so I don't think you need worry about that. This is just a private interview.'

'Right oh,' said Gregory. 'I'm not worried as far as you're concerned, but I'm particularly anxious not to have my copybook blotted with the French police, so I'd like you to give me your undertaking that you won't pass anything I'm going to tell you on to them; that is, about myself.'

The Superintendent scratched his ear. 'Well, providing you haven't committed a felony in France. Anyhow, I think you can leave it to me to use my discretion.'

'Good, then I'll give you just the bald facts. On the third instant I had just completed a little motoring tour in Normandy ending up at Deauville. That night at the Casino I saw a very striking looking girl in the company of an elderly man who was known to me by sight. Just before midnight he pulled out his watch and, without saying a word to" the girl, showed it to her.

'She left him at once and, as I was interested in the pair, I followed her. She picked up a private car outside the Normandie Hotel and drove in it down to Trouville Harbour. There she dismissed it and a few moments later met a man, evidently by appointment, who came out from behind one of the customs sheds. He was wearing an airman's jacket. The pair took a taxi through the old part of the town, dismissed it outside a little cafe in a narrow street, and went upstairs to a room on the first floor together.

'I was just about to give up the chase, having made up my mind that I was butting in on some love affair, when the sound of fighting came from the room above the cafe. I dashed upstairs and found three dock labourers had set upon the man in the airman's kit. I went to his assistance and he managed to get away. The thugs went after him, leaving me alone with the girl.

'By that time the people in the cafe downstairs were raising Cain and the proprietor yelling for the police. I didn't wish to be mixed up in the affair and be delayed for an investigation, so I determined to get out as quickly as I could, taking the girl with me. But, before I went, I noticed a pocketbook lying in the comer which had evidently been dropped during the struggle.

'Later, when I went through it, I found that the owner's name was Wells, and that he was one of your people attached to the special branch. I got the girl away and as I wished to find out more about the business I gave her shelter for the night in my hotel to save her from being arrested. That's the part I want you to keep under your own hat and not give away to the French police.'

Superintendent Marrowfat nodded, and Gregory went on:

'She refused to give me any information, but I managed to hang on to her during a good bit of the following day and took her over to lunch at the Guillaume Conquerant Restaurant at Dives. Afterwards, when I was going to get my car to motor her back to Deauville, I was set upon, probably by a man whom she had pointed out during lunch and whom she referred to as the "Limper". In any case someone chucked a handful of pepper in my face and gave me a biff in the stomach.

'By the time I was fit to stagger round again my car had disappeared and the girl with it. When I got back to Deauville I found that my car had been returned to the hotel garage but I was only just in time to catch the boat for England that night. That's the story for what it's worth and here's your man's pocketbook.'

'Much obliged. Now, can you give me a description of this young woman?'

Gregory hesitated a second. He had no desire to put the police on Sabine's track, whatever she might have been up to, but Sir Pellinore had been insistent that he must give the authorities all the information he had so he could hardly avoid complying with the Superintendent's request.

'I can give you a sort of description,' he said, 'but I doubt if it will be very much use to you because, while one woman may be extremely beautiful, and another as plain as the back of a cab, their bald description about height, colouring, and so on, might tally almost completely. This one is of medium height, with what I suppose you would call a heart shaped face. She has black hair parted at the side and curled at the back of the head. I couldn't tell you the colour of her eyes exactly; pencilled eyebrows, like ninety per cent of women these days, and that's about all there is to it.'

'Nationality?' prompted the Superintendent.

'French I should think: she speaks excellent English though.'

'Age?'

'About twenty-six.'

'Body?'

'Good figure, fairly well developed bust.'

'Legs?'

'She'd get in the front row of the chorus on her legs all right.'

'Nose?'

'Straight.'

'Complexion?'

'Roses on pale bronze, but she was touched up, of course,, like any other smart woman.'

'Cheeks?'

'Full.'

'Ears?'

'I didn't notice.'

'Mouth?'

'Full curved lips.5

'Teeth?'

'Small, white, even.'

'Forehead?'

'Broad.'

'Hands?'

'Plump, pointed, with the usual crimson nails.'

'Carriage?'

'Very upright.'

'Jewellery?'

'She was wearing a big sapphire on the third finger of her right hand, when I saw her, and four no five, diamond bracelets; the heavy expensive sort, you know, and she had a pair of big pearls in her ears.'

The Superintendent stopped making notes on the pad in front of him and remarked: 'Well, I've had worse descriptions than that to go on.'

Gregory smiled ruefully. The description was far more full than he had intended to make it.

'I think we may assume too the Superintendent went on, 'that, in your view at least, she was not as plain as the back of a cab, but extremely beautiful, since you risked getting yourself knifed on her account after only having seen her for a few moments.'

'I followed her because it was part of my job,' said Gregory tonelessly.

'Just as you wish. Now, what about the man she pointed out to you and referred to as the "Limper"?'

'I only caught sight of him for a second and his back was turned towards me. He was a tall fellow, over six feet I should say, dressed in a smart, light grey, lounge suit and a Homburg. He dragged his left foot a little. That's all I can tell you.'

'Thanks. It's a pity though that you can't tell us more about him, because he might be an old friend of ours whom we've lost sight of for some time. The lady, of course, we knew all about before.'

'The devil you did!' exclaimed Gregory.

'Yes. Wells got away all right and naturally he gave us details of the occurrence in his report. He'll be glad to have his pocketbook back. The woman's not French, but Hungarian, and you're right about her being a good looker. He laid stress on that in his description of her.'

'If you had it already why on earth did you bother me for it then?'

'Just a matter of routine, sir. We have rather a habit here of checking up as often as possible.'

'Checking up whether I was lying to you, eh?'

The big man's eyes twinkled. 'I wouldn't exactly say that, but I always like to establish the mental orientation of my visitors as far as possible; if you understand what I mean. Now, what can you tell me about the elderly man who was with the girl at the Casino?'

'I don't think you'll need any description of him. It was Lord Gavin Fortescue.'

For a second the Superintendent's blue eyes went curiously blank, but not a muscle of his face betrayed his sudden interest, and a less acute observer than Gregory would have missed his carefully concealed reaction.

'Lord Gavin Fortescue,' he repeated casually. 'Yes, we can get particulars of him easily enough, as we can of most well-known people. Are you quite sure though that it was Lord Gavin?'

'Certain. I could hardly be mistaken could I?'

'No. Once seen never forgotten, as the saying goes/ the Superintendent replied, admitting that he was quite well acquainted with Lord Gavin's strikingly unusual appearance. 'Strange, though, to find a gentleman like him mixed up in an affair like this isn’t it?'

'Is it?' Gregory countered. 'He's such a queer bird I should have thought it quite possible you had him on your records already.'

'Really now.' Marrowfat's eyebrows shot up in bland surprise. 'I can't imagine why you should think that. We know nothing of him officially.' He lowered his voice and leaned forward confidentially. 'Now, just what's your view of this business, sir?'

Gregory shrugged. 'I'm afraid I haven't got one at the moment. It's clear, of course, that the girl lured your man down to that cafe where the thugs set on him.'

'Very interesting,' nodded the Superintendent. 'In your view, then, Lord Gavin Fortescue sent those thugs to lay out our man?'

'That's about the size of it.'

'What d'you think he was after?'

'I haven't the faintest idea, but I hope to find out in the course of the next few days.'

Superintendent Marrowfat raised his carroty eyebrows again. 'But what's your interest in the matter, outside the lady, may I ask? It's hardly your business to ferret out Lord Gavin Fortescue's affairs.'

'No, but I'm engaged on a private investigation for Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust at the moment and the two things may link up together.'

'What sort of thing are you investigating?'

'That is Sir Pellinore's affair, and if he hasn't told you it's hardly my place to do so. He was hoping though, I think, that you might agree to my working with your people.'

Superintendent Marrowfat shook his large round head. 'I'm sorry sir: I'm afraid we can't agree to that. You see it would be quite contrary to regulations and I don't think the matter Inspector Wells was sent over to look into can have any bearing on a private issue which appears to rest between Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust and Lord Gavin Fortescue. We're very much obliged for the information you've brought us all the same.'

The Superintendent was glancing through the papers in the wallet. 'You didn't happen to find a telegram in this by any chance did you?' he asked after a moment.

'I'm afraid not.' Gregory lied glibly. He had never been particularly keen on police cooperation and since his offer of assistance had been rejected he had no intention of letting them have a sight of what he considered to be his best card.

'Pity,' said the big man, searching Gregory's face with innocent blue eyes. 'Wells had no time to make a copy of it and the thugs must have got it back after all.'

'That's what they were after then. Well, if you'd prefer that I should continue to act on my own I'm afraid there's no more to be said is there?'

'That's so, sir. Of course, if you tumble across any criminal activities during your investigations you're entitled to call upon the assistance of the police. In fact, it's your duty to do so, but it wouldn't do for us to mix ourselves up with Sir Pellinore's private concerns. If we once started doing that sort of thing we should never hear the end of it.'

'Right oh! Superintendent. Maybe you'll be hearing from me again later on.'

The Superintendent extended a large plump hand. 'That's it, sir. Much obliged to you I'm sure. I don't think there's any necessity to inform the French police that you concealed the lady for the night and I'm very grateful to you for having come to Wells's help so promptly when they were giving him a rough house. Good morning to you; and thank you.'

As the door closed behind Gregory the big Superintendent suddenly became amazingly active. He grabbed his desk telephone and, after a moment, bellowed down it.

'That you Wells? I've just had that bird here who helped you out at Trouville. Gregory Sallust's his name a clever devil if ever there was one he wanted to work in with us but, of course, I couldn't have that. Listen though, you're the lucky one. Lord Gavin Fortescue's in this. It'll be the biggest thing that's happened in years and it means promotion for you if you handle it right. Come up to me at once, but put some good men on to trail Sallust as he leaves the building. He's not to be lost sight of day or night. He's pinched that telegram, but he's going to lead us to something or my name's not Marrowfat.'

6

The Secret of Mont Couple

From Scotland Yard Gregory walked round the corner to Westminster Bridge and took the underground down to Gloucester Road, where he had rooms comprising the first floor of No. 272.

He could well have afforded better quarters but the building was the property of one, George Rudd, who had been his batman in the war and had ever since remained his devoted henchman.

Mr. Rudd eked out a precarious living by letting the upper floors of his house, generally to students at the London University, and doing odd jobs for the retail grocer who had the old-fashioned little shop on the ground floor.

When Gregory returned he found Rudd in his sitting room polishing some eighteenth century silver hilted rapiers. Rudd was a great polisher and always seemed to find some difficulty in disposing of his hands unless he had something to occupy them. He was a medium sized man with yellowish hair, close cropped and bristling at the top of his head, but allowed to grow into a lock in front, which he carefully trained in a well greased curve across his forehead. A small fair moustache graced his upper lip but, as he always kept it neatly trimmed, it failed to hide the fact that his teeth badly needed the attention of the dentist. His eyes were blue quick, humorous and. friendly.

'Like to come on a trip with me to France?' Gregory asked him.

'Not 'arf sir.' The ex-soldier removed the butt of a Goldflake that dangled from his lower lip. 'Is it gay Paree, or one of them places on the coast, where the girls from the Folley Berjares disports themselves in pocket handkerchiefs during the summer months?'

'No, this is business. I've got a private war on.' 'S'treuth! Who are we going to cosh this time?' 'That's the devil of it: I don't quite know.' 'Well it's all the same to me sir but I pity the poor devils if you've got it in for 'em. Shall we be taking the armaments?'

'May as well. We'll probably need them before we're through.'

Rudd replaced the rapiers above the mantelpiece and took two big automatics from a drawer in the writing table. They were greased and polished to a superb degree of oily efficiency and he fondled them with loving pride.

'A bag apiece is all we'll need,' Gregory went on. 'Just in. case we have to stay the night anywhere. By the bye, we shall be flying.'

'Must we go risking our necks that way as well, sir?' asked Rudd ruefully. 'No nasturtions on you as a pilot sir, but I always feel it's more homely like in a nice comfortable train me self.'

Gregory grinned. 'No, we've got to be birdmen this trip and it's probable we shall be flying backwards and forwards across the Channel until we're sick of the sight of the damn thing.'

'Very good, Mr. Gregory, just as you say,' agreed Rudd philosophically. 'But 1 hopes we has long enough on the other side between trips to knock off a bottle or two of that vin rooge in one of them estaminaies.'

'Do you ever remember me going hungry or thirsty in all' the years you've known me?'

'No sir, and pray God I never will. You've always been a rare one for your victuals; though a bit queer in your tastes, if I may say so.'

Gregory refilled his case with cigarettes then picked up his hat. 'I'm going to lunch now. Have everything packed by three o'clock and the car here ready to run us down to Heston.'

'Right you are sir, and if there's any time over I'll be rubbin' up me French.'

Rudd's French was mainly English, shouted very loudly and clearly with the addition of 'Kompronevous' at the end of every other sentence, so it was not greatly improved by the time Gregory returned and found him seated outside the grocer's in the car, with the bags strapped on behind.

The afternoon was the sort one always hopes for in early

August, but rarely gets; sunshine so brilliant that the passing people were walking perceptibly slower than usual; the women were in their lightest frocks and nearly all the men had abandoned their waistcoats. The ice-cream vendors, beside their tricycles, were doing a roaring business, and that lazy hush filled the air which made London seem temporarily a city of the tropics.

At Heston many people were taking advantage of the fine spell. Quite a crowd was gathered on the flying ground watching the planes come and go. Gregory presented his credentials at the office, while Rudd garaged the car, and a few moments later an official led them over to a hangar in which reposed a very up-to-date looking monoplane.

It was an enclosed two-seater Miles Hawk, cruising speed 180 m.p.h., but as it was fitted with a retractable undercarriage Gregory knew that would give it an extra 15 and by the use of the supercharger he could rev her up to a good bit over 200.

For twenty minutes he discussed its engine, speed, and capacity with one of the mechanics then he took it up for a trial flight. When he landed again Rudd knew from his expression that he was satisfied. Sir Pellinore had functioned with his usual reliability and provided a machine which met entirely with Gregory's requirements. At a quarter to five, with Rudd in the observer's seat, Gregory called 'contact'" and took the air.

He headed straight for Calais, but did not descend at the landing ground; instead, he turned eastwards and followed the coastline as far as Dunkirk, carefully scrutinising the ground beneath him. There, he turned on his track and flew south-westward until he reached Cape Gris Nez, then he turned once more and finally came down at the Calais airport a little before seven o'clock.

Having parked the plane, and refuelled it to capacity, he left instructions that he might be returning in it to England that night. Then, in a taxi, he drove to the Maine and inquired the whereabouts of the Cafe de la Cloche.

54

At first no one seemed to know it but, having penetrated at last to a musty little bureau, where an old woman sat writing a spidery hand in a well thumbed ledger, he learned that the place was a poor sort of estaminet a kilometre outside the town on the road to Boulogne.

As they came out again from the Maine in the evening sunlight he remarked to Rudd: 'Our birds won't operate until after dark in any case so there's no sense in making ourselves conspicuous. We'll go to the Hotel Terminus. So few people stop in Calais that I cannot think why it should be worth the proprietor's while, but it's a fact that it has a first-class cellar, and the fresh caught local soles cooked a special way are a thing to dream over.'

'That's O.K. by me, sir,' agreed Rudd, 'although I'd rather have a good steak and chips. I never was one for these frenchified foods, in a manner of speaking.'

'You shall have a Chateau Briand, which is French for an outsize steak, to your own cheek, and a bottle of vin rouge to wash it down.'

The queerly assorted couple obtained an excellent meal, entirely satisfactory to both their divergent tastes and, by the time they had finished, darkness had fallen.

During dinner Gregory had been carefully considering the problem of how he could best install himself at the Cafe de la Cloche without arousing suspicion. To visit it was simple enough, but he might have to remain there for several hours, and from the description which the old woman at the Maine had given him of the place, it hardly seemed one at which a well dressed traveller would choose to linger. True, he had brought a disreputable looking old raincoat for just such a possibility the pockets of which bulged with his gun, night glasses, and a big torch but that hardly seemed enough.

The fact that Rudd was so obviously an Englishman, and could hardly speak a word of French was also certain to raise comment in such an out-of-the-way spot. He could leave Rudd outside, of course, but he preferred to have him with him so that he could send him off at once to shadow anybody whom he wished to have followed. Moreover, if this estaminet were the headquarters of a gang there was a possibility that one of the thugs who he had come up against in Trouville might be there and, if he were recognised, a rough house was certain to ensue. Gregory was perfectly capable of taking care of himself but all the same it would be a comfortable thought to know that Rudd was with him. From past experience he knew well that the excellent Mr. Rudd could prove a magnificent ally and an extremely ugly sort of customer in any fracas.

After dinner, by an offer of lavish payment, he managed to hire a car to drive himself from a garage. It was a Citroen and had seen better days but that suited his purpose admirably.

At ten o'clock they packed themselves into its worn seats and Gregory drove slowly out of the town; explaining to Rudd his plan of campaign as he did so.

'I want to snoop around at this place a bit,' he said, 'and unless I can get what I'm after I don't want to leave until they chuck us out. We're on a motoring holiday you and I and another bloke named Brown. We intended to move on to Boulogne tonight, but this wretched old bus let us down a few hundred yards from the estaminet. We've sent poor old Brown to footslog it back into Calais and come out with a mechanic to do the necessary repairs.

'In the meantime we've dined damn well, and that's the truth God knows, but we'll give them the impression we've dined a damn' sight better; not tight you know, but just about half a one over the odds, so what's more natural than we should knock off a few more drinks at this place while we're waiting for old Brown and the motor merchant.

'If he fails to turn up in an hour or so we may think it a bit strange, in fact even funny that the poor blighter's lost his way, but by that time we'll be fairly well ginned up and not caring two hoots in hell for anybody. We'll start talking of making a night of it as we refresh ourselves with further potions of the local poison. Round about midnight we'll agree that old Brown's lost himself and obviously returned to the hotel in Calais, where we spent last night. Then we'll say, for the benefit of anyone who's listening, that we'll do the same ourselves and foot it back when we feel like bed. It's not likely they'll turn us out as long as we look like buying another drink off them since there are none of these fool early closing laws in France. If they do, we'll know that there's something fishy going on, then we'll have to continue our watch outside. Get the idea?'

'Yes, sir. Sounds like a first-class pub crawl, without the crawl in it, ter me. I've often wished there weren't no early closing hours in England.'

While Gregory was speaking they had driven clear of the last houses of the town and were now out in the open country with the rolling down land all about them. A few minutes later a solitary building came into view at the roadside on the brow of a low hill.

'That'll be it, unless I'm much mistaken,' said Gregory, 'so I think it's about here we'll ditch the car.'

He slowed down and ran it off the road into a shallow gully, then climbed out, remarking: 'I don't want to leave her on the road in case some fool breaks his neck by crashing into her. We'll say we had to run into the bank to avoid a speed maniac and that the jolt snapped something. We don't know what as we're not mechanics, only holidaymakers who've bought a cheap car for our trip.'

Side by side they trudged up the slope to the solitary building. It proved to be no more than a couple of ancient flint walled cottages knocked into one, but a creaking sign above the doorway established the fact that it was the Cafe de la Cloche. Before it, on the stony ground, stood a few rusty iron tables and battered chairs. The place was shuttered but lights came through the cracks of two windows and from beneath the heavy door. No other sign of life showed about the place and it was wrapped in a deep silence.

It was so old and tumbledown that Gregory allowed his vivid imagination to play upon it. He felt that it had probably already been an inn in Napoleon's day, frequented by gay Hussars and Chasseurs of the Guard from that mighty 'Army of the Ocean' that the Emperor had assembled on the nearby downs for his projected invasion of England in 1802. It was just the sort of place too, where spies might have met by night in those far-off times, to exchange secret intelligence about activities in the Channel ports after having run the gauntlet of the British fleet in some lightless lugger, while ten years earlier, aristocrats escaping from the Red Terror might have made rendezvous there before their final dash into exile and safety.

Dismissing his romantic speculations, Gregory kicked open the door and walked in with Rudd behind him. Inside, the place was like a hundred small estaminets which they had visited behind the lines, years before in the Great War. A bar ran down one side of the room; behind it on the shelves was a meagre collection of bottles, mostly fruit syrups, many of which, from their tattered labels, looked as though they had stood there for generations. A dark, blowzy, sullen eyed French girl sat behind the bar knitting. A handful of men occupied three out of the five cheap wooden tables covered with red and white checked clothes. One group was playing dominoes;, the rest were talking in subdued voices. All of them had the appearance of French peasants or fishermen. The air was heavy with stale tobacco smoke, the fumes of cheap spirits, and the odour of unwashed humanity.

'Monsieur?' said the girl, standing up and abandoning her knitting.

Gregory asked for whisky, but she had none, so he changed his order to cognac and she poured two portions from an unlabelled bottle into thick glasses.

He had become suddenly garrulous and friendly. Leaning across the bar he told her about their 'accident', and laughed somewhat hilariously at the thought of poor old Brown now trudging back to Calais. Then he went on to speak of their holiday; purposely refraining from using his best French and helping out his apparently scanty knowledge of the language with frequent vivid gestures.

The girl proved a poor audience. She was a dull creature and her share in the conversation was limited to polite meaningless expressions and a series of nods.

When the topic of their holiday was exhausted Gregory asked permission to remove the bottle to a table in the far corner and, with Rudd, parked himself at it.

So far he had purposely refrained from even glancing at the other visitors; giving them ample time to accept this invasion of their haunt by strangers. They had settled down again now after having listened with one ear to the story he had told the girl behind the bar.

When he had seated himself in the corner with his back to the wall, so that he could survey the whole of the low raftered room, he scrutinised each figure in turn while keeping up a desultory conversation with Rudd. He carefully hid his satisfaction as he noticed that one of the three men who were talking at a table near the doorway was the dark, curly haired young thug who had thrown a knife at him a few nights before in Trouville. Mr. Corot of the telegram, Gregory decided to assume for the moment.

Pulling his raincoat up round his ears, and his hat down over his eyes, he shifted his chair a little so that Rudd should come between him and the Frenchman in case the fellow happened to glance round. He had no desire at all to be recognised at the moment.

At a little before eleven the domino party broke up and the players left the estaminet. Only five others, including the curly headed knife thrower, now remained, and they were all seated together. Gregory and Rudd were halfway through the litre bottle of brandy. It was cheap, fiery stuff, but both of them possessed heads like rocks and if they had ceased drinking Gregory knew they would soon be informed that they had outstayed their welcome.

They talked together in English but avoided all mention of the real reason for their presence at the cafe in case 'Corot' or one of his friends should understand the language.

It was a dreary business waiting there for they did not know quite what, but something to happen, and Gregory was thankful when, at about a quarter past eleven 'Corot' stood up, obviously summoned by a few musical notes upon a motor horn, twice repeated, from a spot not far distant on the road outside.

As he left the inn the notes on the motor horn were sounded again with evident impatience which gave Gregory the opportunity to say casually to the girl behind the bar, 'I wonder if that's our friend, poor old Brown, who's found our ditched car at last and is wondering what's happened to us. As he wouldn't know we're here I think we'd better go and see.'

He pulled out a note and paid the bill in a leisurely way, treating the girl to some cheerful half tipsy badinage before he left, in order to avoid the appearance of deliberately following the other man.

It was Rudd who, fearing that they would miss the fellow in the darkness unless they left without further delay, muttered something about 'not keeping old Brown waiting any longer', and pulling Gregory by the arm led him outside.

'Good lad,' muttered Gregory directly they were clear of the cafe. 'We managed that exit splendidly. Now, where's our curly haired assassin got to?'

They could not see the man but fifty yards down the road stood a car. Keeping in the shadows they made their way along the side of the estaminet and then by a wide detour through an adjoining field until they came opposite the place where it stood in the roadway.

Like the majority of French roads, there was no hedge separating it from the field, behind which they could shelter, but only a ditch, so they had to get down on their hands and knees and crawl the last twenty yards to avoid being seen against the skyline.

The car was a powerful limousine and 'Corot' was standing by its doorway on the side nearest the ditch. A faint light lit the interior of the car and Gregory smiled in the darkness as he recognised the small hunched figure on the back seat. Then he caught his breath for beyond Lord Gavin sat Sabine; looking even more beautiful than his memory of her. He grasped Rudd's arm and pressed it.

'Take a good look at the old boy,' he whispered. 'That's the fellow we're after; Lord Gavin Fortescue's his name. Looks like an archbishop, doesn't he, but he probably deserves to die kicking at the end of a rope more than any man in Europe. Think you'd know him again?'

'Sure thing, sir,' Rudd whispered back. 'Looks like a monkey on a stick ter me, but 'e's got a distinguished sort of dial I will say. And ain't his girl friend a bit of orlright.'

Lord Gavin was talking in a quick low voice to 'Corot'. The watchers could not catch his words but they saw him pass over a sheaf of papers.

The handsome knife thrower touched his checked cap; then closed the car door and it was driven away at a high speed towards Boulogne.

For a second Gregory considered attacking the thug for the purpose of seizing the papers he had just received from Lord Gavin, but the chances were that, if they set on him, his shouts would bring his four friends tumbling out of the cafe before they could master him and get away. In any case, Gregory decided, more valuable information would probably be obtained by remaining under cover for the time being and following the man to see where he went.

'Corot' only waited long enough for the dust, thrown up by the car, to disperse, then he returned to the estaminet; but only to poke his head inside the door.

A moment later, the four others joined him outside and, as the whole party set off together up the road, Gregory saw that all five of them were now carrying things that looked like fat cylinders or oil drums, slung across their backs.

He gave them a few minutes' start; then followed. It was easy to keep the group in view as the road switched backed towards the rising ground and on each low crest they stood out plainly silhouetted against the starlit sky. After a mile they left the main road and took a track leading in the direction of the coast. Along this Gregory and Rudd had more difficulty in keeping sight of them as it wound in and out among the dips and hillocks of the deserted down land.

No lights were to be seen in any direction and Gregory knew that they were now well inside that desolate windswept triangle, entirely lacking in roads and villages, which lies between the three points; Boulogne, Calais and Cape Gris Nez.

A good two miles were covered, then the Frenchmen turned in the direction of Boulogne again, leaving the track to trudge over the short coarse grass. There was little cover in this open country which made the shadowing of them more difficult. Gregory had to drop much further behind, allowing them time to mount each gentle slope and disappear into the next shallow valley before he and Rudd dared to move on again, in case one of them should turn suddenly and realise that they were being followed.

Twice Gregory lost his quarry for a moment "but on each occasion he managed to pick them up again because, all unsuspicious, they were laughing and talking as they walked, and their voices carried clearly on the light airs of the still warm night.

They had long since left behind the last twinkling lights of Calais Town. It was over an hour since they had left the inn and in all that time they had not passed a single farmstead or seen a human being. As the slopes began to rise more steeply Gregory realised that they were moving towards the high ground which dominates that uninhabited area and is known as Mont Couple.

The group in front suddenly fell silent and must have turned off in a new direction for Gregory lost the shadowy blur of their moving figures in the semidarkness for the third time, and now, although he chanced discovery by trotting forward a hundred yards he failed to regain touch with them.

Cursing his ill luck he stumbled up a low mound and, pulling his night glasses from his raincoat pocket, began to scan the surrounding country. For ten minutes or more, with Rudd beside him, he swept the darkened down lands, first in one direction then in another, without success, until he suddenly caught sight of a faint glow which had just appeared a quarter of a mile away, throwing the line of the next ridge up into sharp relief.

For a moment he thought it might be caused by the lighthouse at Boulogne, but that had a sweeping beam, whereas this remained steady. With a word to Rudd he thrust his night glasses back in his pocket and they set off towards it.

As they advanced the silvery glow grew perceptibly brighter, throwing all the surrounding country into a heavier darkness. Halfway up the ridge Gregory suddenly slipped to his knees pulling Rudd down beside him. From that point they wriggled up the last hundred yards on their stomachs. At the crest Gregory caught Rudd's arm to stop him proceeding further and gave a low chuckle.

Below them stretched a broad shallow dip in the very centre of the high ground they had been traversing. The men they had followed had already set up two of their cylinders, from which there now hissed bright acetylene burners, and were busy with a third at the far end of the valley bottom. Soon they had completed their work and had all five flares going, spaced at irregular intervals, but marking out a fiery T at one end of a fine stretch of level grassy land hidden from any casual observer beyond its ring of encircling hills.

Suddenly Gregory pricked up his ears. He had caught the hum of an aeroplane. A moment later the noise ceased and a big bomber passed low overhead outlined in black silhouette against the starry sky then, sinking rapidly, came to land over the flares, taking its wind direction from their formation.

Its pilot taxied it towards the further slope and there the five men met it; but Gregory's attention was taken from it momentarily by the sound of another plane coming up from a different quarter which circled slowly overhead, came down into the wind, and taxied up alongside the first arrival.

For the next quarter of an hour plane after plane arrived at little more than minute intervals; but Gregory's eyes were now riveted upon the activities of the men on the ground. Their number had increased to half a hundred and these had not landed from any of the planes. They were emerging from a shadowy patch at the far side of the valley and all carried cases or bales upon their shoulders which they were busily loading into the first few aeroplanes to arrive at this secret depot.

At first Gregory was puzzled as to where the men with supplies were coming from. There were no roads or tracks within a couple of miles of this lonely spot so they could not have been brought by motor or lorry and no dumps were to be seen; although the men kept disappearing into the shadows in an irregular chain to return each time carrying a fresh load of cargo for the waiting fleet.

Touching Rudd on the arm he began to crawl stealthily along the crest of the ridge, keeping just within the belt of shadow, until he could get a better view of the place from which this chain of supplies continued to make its mysterious appearance.

After covering two hundred yards he was able to view the proceedings from a fresh angle and noticed what looked like a black slit in the seaward slope of the natural basin below them. It must be, he guessed, the entrance to an underground passage leading down through the old chalk caves to one of the little fishing villages, Sandgatt or Wissant, on the coast a mile or so away.

Rudd had been drilled to silence in the old days when, as Gregory's batman, they had gone out together time and again into 'no man’s land' on the western front; but now he could restrain his curiosity no longer.

'What's the game, sir?' he asked in a hoarse whisper.

'Smugglers, my boy,' said Gregory grimly. 'For the last two years this outfit has been costing Britain half a million pounds a month in revenue but there's more to it than that. These birds are out to wreck the old firm of J. Bull, Home, Dominions and Colonial unless we can stop 'em. D'you feel like running a marathon?'

"Orders is orders and got to be obeyed,' said Mr. Rudd 'Come on then.' Gregory drew back into the deeper shadows and stood up. 'We're going to run now run as we've never run in our lives. We've got to be in the air again before Gavin Fortescue's fleet starts on its way to England.'

7

In the Silent Hours

Ordinarily Gregory was a lazy devil in fact he prided himself upon being a master of the gentle art of idling gracefully. He never ran when he could walk, stood when he could lean, leaned when he could sit, or sat when he could more comfortably lie down. He loathed every form of exercise and had been regarded as a crank at his public school because of his open hatred of all ball games. He would, perhaps, have proved highly unpopular on that account if nature had not endowed him with other assets; a lean sinewy body, which made him a dangerous opponent in a scrap, and a bitter caustic wit to which the games enthusiasts found it difficult to reply. Moreover, he was quixotically generous and the ringleader in any devilry which could alleviate the monotony of the dull scholastic round. In consequence, he had been forgiven his idiosyncrasy and let off the penalties which would have been meted out during their first terms to most youngsters who had such heretical tendencies and, later, he established a definite reputation as a 'bad man' which earned him much admiration among the younger boys.

Perhaps it was the very fact that he had made it a life rule never to exert himself unnecessarily which accounted for his continued fitness. It so often happens that footballers and rowing blues run to seed and put on fat when they are compelled to abandon their regular hours of sport through the ties of business or professional life, whereas Gregory, never having put himself to any strain, had retained his supple figure and his wind unimpaired.

He could not, of course, compete with a trained athlete but he had a wonderful reserve of strength and when he felt it necessary to use it he could put up a far better performance than the average man of his age.

As soon as they were clear of the slope he broke into a long loping trot which Rudd, who was half a head shorter, but of far more muscular build, found it difficult to keep up with.

The going for the first mile over the coarse grass was tiring and tricky, as they felt it too risky to show a light, but when they reached the track Gregory produced his big army torch and lit the way as they ran on side by side.

Luck was with them when, panting and breathless, they reached the road, for they had hardly gone two hundred yards along it in the direction of Calais when a lorry loaded with fresh vegetables came rattling up behind them. Gregory hailed the driver in French and offered fifty francs for a lift into the town. The man blessed his luck and, gasping from their exertions, they scrambled on to the back of the vehicle.

'So it's smugglers we're after,' said Rudd when he had regained his wind. 'I thought smugglers was a back number since we beat old Boney at Waterloo.'

'Not a bit of it,' Gregory assured him. 'Free trade put them practically out of business for several generations but since protection came in with the National Government the whole racket has started up again. You see, there's a packet of money to be made now for anyone who can get silks and cameras and a score of other things into England duty free; and for the last year or two smuggling has assumed enormous proportions. The big concerns won't handle the stuff, but any amount of contraband is jobbed off cheap through some organisation in the East End to scores of little shops all over the country, which enables them to undercut the big corporations. That's why Sir Pellinore's people are getting so het up. Their turnover's been going down thousands a week in the last eighteen months and this new smuggling racket is the reason. But there's a more sinister side to it than that. I've been put on to try and run this dangerous organisation to earth; so that we can hand particulars over to the authorities and have it mopped up.'

'Seems like you've succeeded pretty quick, sir.'

'Good Lord no! What we've seen tonight is only one thread in the tangled skein. These people must be operating on a huge scale. They've probably got half a dozen bases on this side, because if they sent every cargo from that dip in the downs the French police would get wind of it before long. We've got to find out where they land their stuff in England and how they distribute it afterwards too.'

'Seems a chancy game ter me, anyhow, with all the planes there are flying about these days. Some bloke might fly over casual like any old night 'nd spot those flares.'

Gregory shook his head. 'Didn't you notice the flares were placed irregularly so that the valley would not have the appearance of a proper landing ground from the air? Besides, Gavin Fortescue is as wily as the traditional serpent: we've got to give him that. If anybody visited that base in the day time there wouldn't be a thing to show what's going on, not even a cart track, because the goods are all consigned to one of the little fishing villages on the coast and brought up underground through the caves.'

'Maybe, Mr. Gregory sir, but what abart all them planes? They've got ter have 'angars, ain't they? Though I didn't see none.'

'Of course you didn’t because the planes are not kept there. Each one is probably registered as a privately owned machine and housed separately somewhere between here and Paris. Then, when these night birds get their orders, they go up, only land here long enough to take on their cargo and are away again over the sea. I doubt if the whole operation takes more than half an hour so, if they don't use any one base too frequently, the chances are all against their being rumbled in an almost uninhabited stretch of country like this.'

'Half an hour, eh! Blimey, we'll have to make it snappy then if we're to be in the air before they hops it.'

'Ever known me run without reason?' Gregory replied tersely. As he spoke the lorry was rumbling into the outskirts of Calais. Leaving Rudd, he crawled forward and spoke to the driver, asking him to take them direct to the airport for an extra ten francs.

The man complied and five minutes after their arrival they were in their plane, Gregory having already thrust a note into the oily palm of the mechanic and asked him to telephone the garage with particulars of the spot where they had abandoned the hired car. Next moment they were in the air.

Gregory did not make straight for the secret base on the downs behind Cape Gris Nez. The place was so near by the measure of air travel that he would have been compelled to fly low over it and, perhaps, give away to the smugglers the fact that they were’ being watched. Instead, he spiralled round and round to gain altitude then, when he had reached three thousand feet, turned the plane's nose towards the west.

It was the dark period, between moons, and he guessed that the smugglers had purposely chosen this, and the succeeding dates mentioned in the telegram, to run through their cargoes; but there was little cloud, and many stars lit the August night. By their faint glow it was quite possible to make out the coastline and his position was easily ascertainable from the harbour lights of Calais and Boulogne.

As they passed over Mont Couple he felt a stab of disappointment. The flares in the hidden valley were no longer burning so he assumed that the secret fleet had already sailed but he turned his plane seaward in the hope that he might yet pick them up.

They had been cruising for about five minutes and were well out over the water when Rudd tapped him on the shoulder and jerked a grimy thumb towards their tail.

Gregory looked back towards the coast and saw what it was that had caught Rudd's attention. Dead in their rear certain stars in a long oval patch of sky seemed to be blacked out for a moment and then show up again. It was the smuggler fleet behind them and Gregory cursed himself as a fool for not having realised that the flares were only necessary to guide the planes in to their unofficial landing ground. Directly all the machines had arrived the flares would be put out in order further to shorten the time in which discovery of the secret base was possible by a casual plane passing over.

He began to climb again. His intention being both to gain further altitude and, by the resulting loss of speed, allow the smuggler feet to pass under him. Ten minutes later he was up at five thousand feet and dimly silhouetted below him against the sea stretched the long line of heavy bombers; but now they were climbing too and he judged that they meant to pass over the English coast at as great an altitude as possible, in order to escape drawing attention to themselves by the roar of their engines.

He climbed still higher as they passed beneath him, and altered his course a little when he noted that the fleet was now veering to the north.

Soon he picked up the lights of the English coast lying thousands of feet below to his left and, having acquainted himself with the varying flashes of the Kent lighthouses that morning for just this purpose he was able to check his course as almost dead northward, with Dover and the South Foreland light on his beam.

The smuggler fleet was a good way ahead, below him now and still climbing, but he hoped that if he could maintain his present distance they would lead him in to their English landing ground without suspecting that they were being followed. Unfortunately, visibility ahead was by no means so good as it had been over the French coast, and a moment later they passed through a cold wisp of cloud.

Gregory grabbed the throttle lever in his left hand and pushed it through the gate of the quadrant, bringing his supercharger into play and decreasing his distance a little, as he feared to lose the squadron; but they flew on, still gaining height, and apparently taking advantage of the cloud patches rather than avoiding them. A few moments more and he could see only two machines on the extreme right wing of the flight.

Cursing the clouds, he mounted again, hoping to get above them but the upper layers proved thicker than any he had yet encountered and now the smugglers had disappeared. The Sound of their engines was of no assistance since the roar of his own blacked out any other vibration; and as they were flying without lights he could only hope to spot them again in a clear patch then they momentarily obscured a star here and there.

For another ten minutes he flew on; still towards the north. He could no longer see the coastline below him bat judged that they must have left Deal behind on their left and were coming up to Ramsgate. In the dense cloudy masses through which they were now flying it seemed that all hope of sighting his quarry had vanished, so he decided that his best course was to get down below the cloud banks, pick up the coast, and cruise along it on the off chance that he might spot the smugglers when they came down towards their secret landing place. He had little hope that luck would favour him as it was probable that each machine would make for a separate destination, perhaps far inland, but it was worth trying.

Five minutes later he was free of the clouds and picked up Ramsgate with the North Foreland light beyond it. Then he suddenly banked steeply to the left for he had just spotted a single plane tearing through the night sky over Thanet.

It might only be some amateur pilot practising night flying but, on the other hand, it just might be a single unit now detached from the smuggler squadron. Setting the controls, he pulled out his night glasses and focused them upon the solitary night flyer, then grunted with disappointment. It was not a big plane such as he had hoped to see, but a passenger machine, probably a four seater.

They were well inland now and heading west north-westward. The solitary plane was a thousand feet below them and, as Gregory came down, he picked up a long irregular broken chain of lights upon his right which, although the town was dark and the holidaymakers long since sleeping, indicated the deserted front at Margate.

A few moments more and he could see the sea again; the north Kentish coast where it runs towards the Thames estuary. Westgate, Birchington and Herne Bay lay somewhere ahead of him.

The other plane was dropping now towards a great belt of trees a little inland from Birchington. Their massed foliage stood out darkly in the faint starlight against the flat arable land which surrounded them on every side. The ring of trees was at least two miles in circumference and several broad open spaces in its centre suggested that the place was a private park.

From his greater altitude Gregory watched the solitary plane through his night glasses as it descended. Another moment and, circling into the wind, it floated down towards one of the bare patches in the very heart of the great belt of trees.

Instantly Gregory swung away to the south again; knowing that immediately the other plane landed its engine would be switched off and the roar of his own machine would attract attention.

Diving now to gain speed he headed away from the big tree girt enclosure, then flattened out and returned ten minutes later at a height sufficient only to ensure escaping that aerial death trap, the grid system, with its thousands of pylons now forming a network over England.

As he sighted the tall treetops again, standing out stark and black against the naked Thanet landscape, he decided to chance any pylons and risk a landing. A broad field lay below him. He could not guess if it was corn already harvested or stubble, but switching on his landing light he turned his plane towards the prevailing wind, and came down gently.

His luck was in. The plane bounded lightly for fifty yards and he was able to bring it to a standstill without turning over.

'Stay here,' he shot at Rudd. 'If the village constable happens to be on the prowl after poachers say we had to make a forced landing and that I've gone for petrol. Better get out the corkscrews and picket the plane in case the wind gets up. The machine we followed may have nothing to do with the outfit I'm after, but anyhow I'm going into this place to find out a bit more about it. I may be away some time.'

'I get you, sir,' Rudd muttered, and Gregory tumbled out on to the ground.

The field was ridged with coarse stubble; but he was soon out of it and across the low ditch into a winding lane which followed the curve of a thick, six-foot hedge, overhung by the leafy branches of massed trees on its far side.

The place was evidently a private park and a splendid site for secret landings, Gregory thought, remembering the several fine open meadows, separated by patches of woodland, but all enclosed within this outer belt of trees which surrounded it entirely.

He ran lightly along the lane, hoping to find a break in the hedge or a place where he could scramble over easily, but it was in good repair and he covered two hundred yards before he found a suitable spot.

A grassy bank below the hedge sloped up a little for a foot or more and from it protruded the stump of an old tree. By mounting on the stump he was able to fling himself bodily on the top of the hedge and slip down on the far side.

It was pitch dark there and he did not dare to use his torch; not knowing how deep the ring of trees might prove at this point and fearing that a light might be spotted by the people who had landed in the plane.

He ran into a tree trunk, barked his knee, and swore angrily then, more cautiously, with hands extended in the darkness, he crept forward. The eerie silence of the night shrouded glade was broken only by the snapping of twigs beneath his feet.

As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he could just make out the boles of the big trees in time to avoid them, but the belt was much deeper than he had supposed, almost a strip of woodland, and he had to tiptoe a hundred yards before he emerged into the open.

He found himself then in a meadow, but there was no house or outbuilding in sight, such as he had expected. Turning right he warily continued his advance, sticking closely to the line of trees in order to be able to take cover behind them, if necessary, at a moment's notice, until he came up against an iron fence which bordered a gravel drive.

Remaining in the field he broke cover and proceeded, parallel with the drive, towards the centre of the park. After what seemed an interminable time the big field ended and he came to another wood. Clearing the fence he plunged again into heavy darkness down the driveway between the overhanging trees.

A moment later he caught a glimmer of light through the tree trunks and tiptoed forward until he reached the edge of the wood. Upon his left there was another great open space, a lawn with meadows beyond, perhaps, and on his right the drive broadened into a wide sweep before a long three storied house, up to which trees and bushes grew at both its wings.

The light came from an uncurtained downstairs window and by it Gregory could see clearly now a big closed car drawn up in front of the porch. As he watched, the light in the window was switched off, then four people came out of the darkened doorway and got into the car.

The engine of the motor purred. Next moment the beam of powerful headlights threw a golden glow on the gravel drive. Quick as a cat Gregory leapt back into the shadows and crouched there, dazzled for the moment by the blinding glare, and almost certain that his presence must have been discovered; but the car turned on the sweep and roared away in the opposite direction from which he had come, down the west drive which led to the Birchington Gate of the park and the road to London.

His glimpse of the car's occupants was brief but the man at the wheel and another seated beside him, like chauffeur and footman, had been wearing leather jackets so Gregory guessed them to be the pilots of the plane, while Lord Gavin Fortescue was hunched in the back seat and, next to him, wrapped in heavy furs above which her delicate profile rose as beautiful as a cameo, Sabine had been sitting.

Gregory released his breath with a little sigh of satisfaction at the success of his hunch to follow the solitary plane. It had led him to Lord Gavin's headquarters in England, which was, perhaps, more valuable even than finding one of the places where the contraband was landed.

As soon as the car had disappeared he stepped out from the trees and examined the front of the house. It was now in total darkness and the whole place seemed to be unoccupied. He scanned the lawns before it for the plane, but that was nowhere to be seen, so he assumed it had been run into a hangar, and tiptoed towards the far end of the house to see if he could find any building in which it might be garaged.

Passing through the shrubberies there he came upon some greenhouses and then two high windowless buildings which he thought might have been built for squash or as covered tennis courts.

He beat a gentle tattoo with his fingertips upon the locked door of one of these while he considered the situation. He felt that his luck was very definitely in tonight and that the house might hold all sorts of interesting secrets. This was far too good an opportunity to try and unearth some of them for him to even think of rejoining Rudd and flying back to London yet awhile. The problem was how to force an entry into the house?

Behind the big brick buildings he could just make out, in the faint starlight, a row of outhouses, stables and garages. Proceeding between them with a cautious, almost catlike step, he passed a fifteen foot brick wall with espaliered fruit trees on it; the eastern extremity of a fine walled garden. Turning right, he found himself at the back of the house itself. This too was wrapped in heavy silence and no light came from any of the windows.

Tiptoeing forward across the gravel, so that it barely crunched under his feet, his shoulders hunched, his eyes alert, like some prowling cat, he stalked along the rear side of the house, examining each window with the aid of his torch, which he now no longer feared to show as the place seemed to be quite deserted.

At last he found a spot suitable for his purpose; a small uncurtained window through which he could see a sink. The place appeared to be a scullery and a corner of the window frame was broken. Getting his fingers into the aperture he wrenched with all his might. There was a sharp crack of splintering wood as the catch was torn from its socket and one half of the window swung out towards him. Reaching inside he undid the bolt which held the other half and drew the casement wide open.

Gripping the sill with both hands, he put his head inside, and was just about to lever himself up when he caught the sound of a stealthy, footfall on the gravel close behind him.

8

A Night of Surprises

Gregory jerked his head out of the window and spun round to confront a tall man who had just emerged from the shadows of the shrubbery half a dozen yards away.

The man was alone and did not appear to be armed. A caretaker or keeper perhaps, thought Gregory. He swung his torch meditatively in his right hand. It was long and thicker than a policeman's baton. The big automatic was in his pocket but he had no intention of using it in England, or anywhere else for that matter, unless he found himself trapped and his life in actual danger.

'Come here said the man, 'and no monkey tricks or you'll regret it.'

Gregory came three slow steps forward. He meant to hit the man, and hit him very hard indeed, so that there should be no necessity to hit him a second time. The side of the neck was the place; just in line with the jaw bone. A good crack there, over the jugular vein, with the torch would out the fellow before he had time to shout for help and bring any friends he might have about the place on to the scene of action.

Gregory's empty left fist lifted in a feint, but dropped again almost as quickly, when the man took a swift step backwards and snapped: 'Stop that. I've got a gun here.'

It was only then Gregory realised a thing that he had failed to notice before owing to the difficult light. The man's right hand was thrust into his jacket pocket, which bulged ominously.

For a moment Gregory hesitated; wondering whether to risk an attack. To have to surrender tamely to one of Lord Gavin's men would not only be infuriating but definitely dangerous. He would probably be thrown into some cellar and guarded closely until Lord Gavin visited the place again, and, knowing how utterly unscrupulous the crooked financier was, he did not fancy that prospect at all. He knew that if Lord Gavin made up his mind that he had been spying upon his secret operations he was capable of having him murdered. The interests he had to conceal were so vital and far-reaching that he certainly would not hesitate at taking human life in order to protect them.

On the other hand, this tall fellow who had caught him just as he was about to break into the house seemed a cool customer; not at all the sort to be trifled with. Here, in the silent depths of this great park, a mile or more from the main road or any other habitation no one would hear the shot if the fellow used his gun; and it was highly probable that Lord Gavin had given instructions that if a spy were found about the place this fellow was to take no chances, but shoot rather than risk an unauthorised visitor getting away with any information he might have secured.

Discretion seemed the better part of valour. Gregory had just made up his mind to accept the situation, in the hope that an opportunity would occur for him to turn the tables later, when he caught the sound of gravel crunching underfoot again.

The other man heard it too and half turned his head. Next second a voice yelled: 'Jump, sir!' and a dark figure leapt from the shrubbery on to the man's back.

As Gregory sprang sideways, to avoid the bullet if the man's gun went off, the other two crashed to the ground together.

They rolled over once, then Gregory stepped in, bringing his heavy leather covered torch down with a dull thud upon his late captor's head. The man went limp and Rudd, wriggling free of him, staggered to his feet.

'Gawd! You bashed him proper an' no mistake. Ain't killed him 'ave you?'

'I don't think so,' Gregory muttered. 'I was careful to avoid his temple and caught him on the top of the skull. Show a light, will you. The bulb in my torch has bust.

Rudd pulled a torch from his pocket and shone it on the prostrate man's face. He was a nice looking, freckle faced, sandy haired fellow of about thirty, with a trim little upturned moustache, and not the type at all that Gregory would have expected to find among Lord Gavin's gunmen.

'He's all right,' said Gregory, after rolling back one of the man's eyelids. 'He'll be coming round in a few minutes I don't doubt, so we'd better truss him up. How did you happen to come on to the scene so opportunely?'

'Well, it was this way sir. You'd 'ardly 'opped it into the lane before another plane comes sailing down and makes a landing in the next field to ours. Hello! I ses to myself, what's all this abart? So I goes over to investigate. I was just in time to see this bloke here beating it across the field at the double towards the park so I follows cautious like. When I reach the lane he was shining a torch about, looking for footmarks in the long grass I reckon, where you had trampled it down as you went along. He comes to a tree stump and hikes himself over the hedge into the park, so naturally I gives him a minute and then 'ops over too. I lorst him for a bit among the trees dark as 'ell it was, and I barked me knuckles on one of the tree trunks something cruel but I picked up our Albert again as he was crossing a field be'ind 'ere, and tagged him round the 'ouse. Then when I crep up close enough I found 'e'd got the goods on youin a manner of speaking.'

'Darned lucky for me you did,' said Gregory. 'It was a good thing his gun didn't go off though when you jumped him.'

'That were the only thing I was scared of, but I 'ad to take a chance, and I know you're pretty nippy on your tootsies.

'He probably had the safety catch still down, but in any case with your weight on his neck the bullet would have gone into the gravel.' As Gregory spoke he was lashing the man's feet securely together with the belt of his raincoat. Their prisoner was now groaning a little and breathing stertorously.

Rudd pulled off his belt for Gregory to tie the man's hands and then shone his torch again. As the light streamed on to the limp unconscious head Gregory suddenly let out a sharp low whistle.

'Hang on a minute! I thought I'd seen this chap's face somewhere before when we looked at him just now, and by jove I have, although it was only for a minute.'

'Is he one of the bunch you made hay of a few days ago in Trouville, sir?'

'No,' sighed Gregory. 'I wish to God he were. This is the young policeman whom I rescued.'

'Blimey! Here's a fine how dedo. We've been and coshed a copper.'

'Never mind. As it's the chap I helped out before perhaps he won't run us in this time. Undo his feet again and I'll try and bring him round.'

They were both kneeling beside the policeman's body when a door creaked in their rear and a light suddenly illuminated the bushes. They swung round to see a woman silhouetted against a brightly lit doorway a few yards from the scullery window. She was a broad bosomed middle-aged female. Her tousled grey hair, thick dressing gown, and bare feet thrust into old slippers, showed that she had been roused from her bed by the recent scuffle. In her hand she held a large Mark V service revolver. She held it very steadily and it was pointing at them.

'Stand up you two,' she said, 'and put your hands above your heads. Then you'd better tell me what you're up to.'

Taken completely off their guard, the two men obeyed.

'What's your friend doing on the ground?' asked the woman sharply.

'He's met with a slight accident.' Gregory's voice was low and amiable as he strolled casually towards her.

'Keep your distance,' barked the woman. 'I've got a revolver here and I 'ave orders to use it.'

Gregory halted a few paces from her. He possessed more courage than most men but one thing that really scared him was to see firearms in the hands of a woman. They were so much more likely to go off unexpectedly.

'All right,' he said soothingly. 'I'm not a burglar and I wouldn't dream of harming you. As a matter of fact the chap on the path there happens to be a friend of mine and a police officer.'

The woman's face showed a stony disbelief at this surprising statement.

'Is he?' she said sarcastically, 'then he'll be pleased to see his friends from the station at Birchington as soon as I've had a chance to get on the telephone to them.'

As she spoke she stepped out of the doorway and sideways along the wall of the house keeping it at her back and the three men covered by her revolver. 'Pick him up both of you,' she said, 'and carry him inside. Then I can get a better look at you. Come on, be quick now. I don't want to catch my death of cold standing about in this heavy dew all night.'

Rudd took the policeman's shoulders and Gregory his feet. Then, followed by the woman, who never lowered her weapon for a single instant, they carried him into the house.

'Straight down the passage,' she ordered and then, addressing Gregory who brought up the rear: 'If you try and trick me I'll put a bullet in your back. Straight on now and the third door on your right.'

'Thank you, mother,' said Gregory amiably, 'but I'd rather have a nice cup of warm tea in my tummy. When you're tired of holding that thing I'll hold it for you and you shall make me one.'

They proceeded along a stone flagged passage, evidently the servants' quarters, but when Rudd thrust his way backwards through the third door on the right Gregory saw that it was a heavy baize covered affair which led to the main part of the house. For a moment they were in semidarkness and he contemplated dropping the policeman's feet to swing round and tackle the woman, but she closed up on him as he passed through the swing door and, jamming the muzzle of her pistol firmly in the small of his back, switched on the lights.

He saw that they were in the main hallway of the house; a fine apartment from which a broad staircase led to the floors above. There was a long settee in one corner and, on a small, table some way from it, stood a telephone.

'Put him on the couch,' said the woman, making straight for the instrument.

They dumped the policeman; who was now groaning loudly and showing signs of coming round. Then Gregory held out a quick restraining hand to the woman.

'Please, one moment,' he begged. 'The police won't thank you for lugging them out at this hour in the morning to arrest one of their own people Hang on until this chap comes round. I swear to you on my honour that he is a policeman. He'll be able to tell you so himself in a minute.'

The woman had her hand on the receiver; but she did not lift it.

'What was he doing unconscious behind the house then?'

'He was unconscious because I knocked him out. Mistook him for somebody else in the darkness.'

'And who may you be, I'd like to know.'

'A friend of Lord Gavin Fortescue's.' Gregory lied unblushingly. 'Honestly, Lord Gavin will be furious if you bring the local police into this. The chap we knocked out is from Scotland Yard and that's quite a different matter, but the last thing which Lord Gavin would want is to have a lot of flatfooted country constables mixed up in his affairs.'

The policeman's eyes flickered open and Rudd pulled him up into a sitting position on the settee. He groaned again and for a moment put his head between his hands; then he lifted it painfully and stared about him.

'Better now?' asked Gregory. 'I'm terribly sorry I knocked you out. I was under the impression that you were someone else, but you remember me, don't you? We met a few nights ago at Trouville.'

'Yes yes, of course. I remember now: you got me out of a nasty mess didn't you? I didn't know it was you either when I caught you trying to break into this place but I'm afraid I'll have to ask you for an explanation.'

'Plenty of time for that,' said Gregory easily. 'I think we're working on the same thing; but from different angles. We've landed ourselves in a new mess since you passed out though. This lady here with the heavy armaments, I don't yet know her name… '

'Mrs. Bird,' the woman supplied noncommittally.

'Well, Mrs. Bird seems to think that all three of us are up to no good here and she's just about to phone for the local coppers. I think it would be a good thing for all of us if you can persuade her not to.'

The policeman stood up a little groggily. 'Mrs. Bird,' he said, 'my name's Inspector Wells, and I'm down here on special work for Scotland Yard. Here is my card of authority. Just look it over will you, and you'll see that it's all in order. Then I think you can leave this business safely in my hands.' As he spoke he extended the card he had taken from his pocketbook.

'Stay where you are. Don't you dare come a step nearer, rapped out Mrs. Bird. 'What's the good of showing me that thing. Specially printed for the purpose, I haven't a doubt. Some people sneer at reading detective fiction but I don't. It gives respectable folk a lot of tips about your sort of gentry.'

Gregory grinned. 'One up to you Mrs. Bird. I'll bet you're thinking of that Raffles story, where he came in and got Bunny out of a tight corner by turning up dressed as a policeman and arresting him in the South African millionaire's house.'

A gleam of appreciation showed for a moment in Mrs. Bird's sharp eyes. 'That's it,' she said. 'Good stories those. We don't get many like them now; more's the pity.'

'If you'll excuse me madam you're making a serious mistake.' Inspector Wells drew himself up. 'If you like to phone the local police you are, of course, quite within your rights to do so; but it's going to cause a lot of unnecessary inconvenience to everyone concerned.' The Inspector was thinking at the moment what a fool he would look among his colleagues if the woman did hand him over to the local police as one of a gang of housebreakers.

She shook her head stubbornly. 'I may be right and I may be wrong, but what were you doing in our grounds I'd like to know? As for inconveniencing the local police what do we ' pay rates for. You stay where you are young man and don't you move a muscle while I telephone.'

A stair creaked above them and they all glanced up. Unheard by any of them a young girl had appeared on the landing and was now descending the broad straight stairway. She was barefooted and clad only in her nightdress. Two long plaits of golden hair coiled about her head made a halo gleaming in the light. Her blue eyes were wide open and staring. Instantly they all realised that she was walking in her sleep.

9

The Real Menace to Britain

'Don't wake her!' whispered Mrs. Bird. 'Not a sound please or the poor lamb may get the shock of her life.'

In two silent strides Gregory was beside the older woman. His left hand closed over her right and in a single sharp twist he forced the revolver from between her fingers.

It had happened before any of them had had time to even think and a cynical little smile twitched the corners of his lips as he whispered: 'Now, I'll hold the gun, Mrs. Bird, while you make me that nice cup of tea.'

If looks could have killed Gregory would have fallen dead upon the spot. Mrs. Bird's homely, but normally pleasant, features became, for a second, distorted into a mask of almost comical indignation and dismay but she brushed past him without a word and hurried on tiptoe to the foot of the wide staircase.

The girl was now halfway down the flight. She was quite young, eighteen or nineteen perhaps, slim as a boy, with only faintly rounded breasts and hips. The lines of her beautifully moulded figure showed clearly through the thin flowered chiffon nightdress. Her face was small and delicately chiselled; her creamy cheeks were slightly flushed in sleep. Above her short straight nose and white forehead the great oriel of plaited hair formed a shimmering golden crown. There was something ethereal and fairylike about her as she moved slowly down towards them which made it seem hardy possible that she was warm flesh and blood. The young Inspector's mouth hung a little open as he gazed up at her, completely fascinated; he thought that in all his days he had never seen anything quite so lovely, either human or in a work of art.

Mrs. Bird mounted a few stairs and took the girl very gently by the arm. With hardly a pause she turned in her tracks and began to walk up the stairs again; led now by the elder woman.

'Wells,' said Gregory in a sharp whisper.

'Eh?' The Inspector started as though he had been woken from a trance.

'Go up with them. There may be another telephone upstairs.'

Wells nodded and with one hand on the banister rail began to tiptoe upstairs after the two women.

As the little procession disappeared from sight Gregory let out a sharp sigh of relief, released the catch of Mrs. Bird's revolver, broke it open, and emptied out the bullets.

'Weren't she a pretty kid?' murmured Rudd. 'Almost like a fairy orf a Christmas tree; only wanted a wand and a couple of wings.'

Gregory shrugged. 'Pretty enough, but quite brainless I should think. Anyhow, it was a bit of luck for us that she turned up when she did or we would have had to waste more time arguing with the old woman.'

When Mrs. Bird and the Inspector came down the stairs again Gregory asked her sharply:

'What's the name of this place?'

'Quex Park, Birchington.'

'Good, now before we go on any further I want you to satisfy yourself that our friend here really is a police inspector. The quickest way is for you to get on the telephone to Scotland Yard. You can describe him to them then and they'll soon tell you if he's one of their people, or not. D'you agree?'

'That sounds sense,' she said, a little subdued, now that she no longer had the whip hand over them.

Wells gave her the number, but Gregory insisted upon turning it up in the London Directory, so that she could have no grounds to think that they were trying to trick her; then he made her put through the call herself.

The result proving satisfactory her attitude changed at once from acute suspicion to apologetic interest.

'Not another word, please,' Gregory protested. 'You were perfectly right to hold us up and you did it darned well into the bargain but now, joking apart, would it be troubling you too much if we asked you to make us a cup of tea? We've been up all night and I'm sure the others could do with one too.'

'Certainly, sir, of course I will. Maybe you could do with a bite to eat as well. What about some nice scrambled eggs for an early breakfast?'

That'd be splendid and really kind of you. Rudd, you go along with Mrs. Bird and give her a hand. I want a word with the Inspector.'

'Certainly, sir,' said Rudd cheerily. 'I'm a dab at scrambling eggs I am, as you know well enough from past experience.'

Mrs. Bird bridled. 'You'll do no cooking in my kitchen young man, but you can help with the plates and things.'

As they left the hall Gregory moved over to Wells, who had sat down on the settee again.

'Now let's try and get things straightened out a' bit,' he said. 'I'm awfully sorry about having banged you over the head but it would never have happened if it hadn't been for the stupidity of your own people in refusing to allow us to work together.'

'Don't worry about the knock you gave me.' Well's freckled face lit up with a boyish grin. 'You were at the Yard this morning, weren't you? I was talking to the Superintendent about your visit only a few minutes after you'd gone. Of course the position is a bit unusual and it's against our principles to work in with civilians. That's why the Super had to turn down your offer. But it's quite clear now it would be wiser for us to come to some working arrangement.'

'I'm glad you feel that way. You know most of my end of the story; what about yours?'

'I know what you told them at the Yard this morning and that you're acting on behalf of Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust but you didn't give away what you're investigating for him.'

'Need we fence? I'm trying to get to the bottom of the international smuggling racket. It's costing some of his companies a packet owing to unfair competition by the ring who're dealing in illicit goods upon which no duty has been paid.'

'Right. Well, I'm after the same thing. In the ordinary way the prevention of smuggling doesn't come under the police. It's the business of the Customs and Excise people to check up on suspected goods which have already been imported and the Inspector of Water Guard deals with prevention along the coasts. We're only called in to make arrests, and so on, but the loss in revenue during the last year has mounted to such a fantastic figure that it's got to be stopped. The Yard were asked to undertake a special inquiry and they've given me a chance at it as my first independent investigation. It looks to me like a biggish job too.'

'A biggish job!' Gregory echoed, a satirical edge to his tone. 'I'll say it is. The biggest that any policeman's been called on to handle in the whale of a while. I'm not being rude. I mean that. If you handle this thing right you'll be made for life, but, if you don't, it'll break you and lots of other people who're higher up the ladder than you are, as well. But go on. I must know all you've done to date if I'm to, give you any help.'

Wells did not like Gregory's faintly contemptuous manner but he was shrewd enough to recognise that he was in contact with a far more dynamic personality than his own, and somehow, he could not help feeling attracted to Sir Pellinore's rakish looking representative. His professional admiration had been aroused too, by the swift efficient way in which Gregory had relieved Mrs. Bird of her revolver instantly the opportunity occurred, so he went on quietly:

'I was put on to this special work about six weeks ago and, so far, I've spent most of my time trying to get a lead from the British end of it; working back from the retailers, who are cutting the prices of their goods, to the wholesaler and so, eventually, to the actual importers of contraband. It's been an uphill job, because silk stockings and things like that are such universal commodities, and there's no law which compels a retailer to keep an official record of his purchases or sales.

'Take spirits now, they're different, because there's been a heavy duty on them for generations. Years ago a law was passed which compelled every dealer in spirits to keep an excise ledger. Say a man has five hundred gallons of whisky down from Scotland, or foreign spirits for that matter either, he gets a permit with it directly it's checked out of bond, then he has to give a permit in his turn to every customer who buys the stuff, and enter the transaction in his book. Every few months an excise officer visits each dealer and examines his figures, which gives a pretty satisfactory check up, you see. It's illegal for a dealer to sell spirits without passing on a permit to his customer and, if the amount permitted out exceeds that permitted in, the excise man would start asking awkward questions at once.'

'How about odd bottles?' Gregory inquired.

'Oh, they're allowed a certain margin to cover that. The system's not altogether watertight as far as the pubs are concerned, where most of the stuff goes out in tots over the counter. There's a certain amount of smuggling in spirits still done but they can't operate on the grand scale; as they can with silks and other goods where there's no check up at all.'

'You didn't have much luck then?'

'Not much to begin with, but the police net's a wide one once it starts to operate, and this dealing in contraband has grown to such huge proportions recently that I knew I'd get what I was after in due time. We traced some goods from a dress shop in Birmingham to a wholesale house in Regent Street and I put the chap who runs it through his paces about a week ago. Of course he swore he had no knowledge there was anything fishy about the parcel he'd handled and said that it'd been sold him through a French house, by a woman representative, as bankrupt stock. That's why the price had been unusually low and he'd been glad to get the goods as a bargain.

'He hedged a lot about the French people he'd bought it from and then gave me the address of a firm in Lyons which had actually gone out of business a week or two before. I managed to rattle him pretty badly though by telling him that if he couldn't put me on to the woman who'd sold him the goods I'd have to run him as a dealer in contraband himself. Then I gave him twenty-four hours to think it over.

'Next day he gave me a description of the lady you met in Deauville. But I said that wasn't enough and I couldn't let him out unless he put me on to her. He didn't like the idea one little bit; seemed to think something unpleasant might happen to him if he blabbed. Well, as I pointed out, no one would know where I got my information so there was no reason to suppose they'd ever know who'd split. Then he told me the deal had been done in the lounge of the Carlton, where he went to meet the lady: evidently, of course, because she didn't want to be seen in his offices, and he believed that when she was in London she stayed at the hotel.

'My next move was to the Carlton and the management there gave me every assistance they could. The lady proved to be a Miss Sabine Szenty. We circulated her description through the usual channels and asked for the cooperation of the French police as well. They found her for us in Paris where she has some connection with a genuine silk stocking factory.'

Gregory frowned on learning that Sabine was so much more deeply involved than he had supposed; but Wells continued without a pause:

'That made the job fairly easy Headquarters have allotted me a plane for this special work, and I had no trouble in getting faked credentials from a respectable firm here, so I flew to Paris as their buyer.

'I presented myself at the firm's offices, said I was interested in their goods, and my people might be willing to do business with them. When it came to prices they were remarkably low and they told me the goods could be delivered from their warehouse in London. They haven't got one actually: I checked up on that, but they intended to supply me with contraband through one of their agents here, of course, so I decided to place an order anyhow, and get a fresh line on their methods of delivery, but I made a lot of fuss and bother as I didn't want to clinch the deal until I'd got in touch with the lady herself.

'At my third call I was lucky. They'd evidently come to the conclusion I was a troublesome sort of bird and called her in to vamp me into signing up. She's the goods all right I'll give her that but not quite the type that appeals to me and, anyhow, when I'm on a case I'm about as cold as Mount Everest. I asked her if she'd take lunch with me just to celebrate this new business tie-up we were making between her firm and mine. She didn't want to, I could see, although butter wouldn't have melted in her mouth to all outward appearances. I don't flatter myself I'm the sort of chap a woman like that would waste her time on out of office hours either, but this was business and the order I was proposing to give made it worth her while to treat me nicely, so she came along. Seeing the sort of woman she was I took her to the Meurice.'

'The devil you did.' Gregory grinned. 'Lunched her at the Meurice, eh. By Jove! If that's the way the police treat suspected persons I shall consider turning crook myself.'

Wells laughed a little ruefully. 'Lord knows I'll never get that back on my expenses account. The prices just made me shudder; but she's a sport all right. As far as talk and apparent interest in me were concerned she really did me proud. If I hadn't known what was behind the scenes, and been a genuine buyer of ladies' underwear, I might almost have thought she'd fallen for me; but being a policeman puts you wise to the way women can act pleasant when they want to and not think another thing about it the second you've gone out of the door.

'After that lunch I hadn't got much for'arder, but she was paged wanted on the telephone outside and she left her bag behind. That was my big opportunity. You bet I took it. You'd be surprised how quick trained fingers can go through a lady's bag in an open restaurant with everybody looking on but no one noticing; and inside was the telegram addressed to Corot.

She'd evidently written it out ready to send off just before leaving her office.

'I had no time to make a copy so I pinched it. Only thing to do. Then when she got back, although I'd paid the bill and we were just about to make a move, she asked for a liqueur and more coffee, so we sat on until the restaurant was nearly empty. She had warmed up quite a lot by then and really started in to vamp me properly.'

Gregory kept a perfectly straight face but his humour was intensely tickled by the vision of the delectable Sabine stooping to conquer this nice but unsophisticated young policeman in complete ignorance that he already had her taped.

'She asked me if I'd ever been to Deauville.' Wells smiled. 'I had it as a matter of fact. Then she told me she was off there that afternoon and began to chip me about being a staid unadventurous English businessman: "Why not come too?" she said. "Take a few days' holiday. I shall be there and the bathing is delicious on that long sunny beach. I have many engagements but I like you and would put some of them off in order to be with you. Tonight now, I have to dine with a friend but I have no engagement for supper. You tell me that you are not married? All right then; forget your business for a few hours and meet me at midnight tonight in Deauville to give me supper. That is romance."

'Well, it might have been romance, if she'd really meant it that way, though of course I knew she didn't. I was wondering what the game was and couldn't guess what she was after but the opportunity to follow her up seemed far too good to miss. As I had a plane at my disposal I put it to her that I'd fly her down to Deauville if she liked.

'She said, "yes" to that and we had another ration of Cointreau on it. I met her again at Le Bourget at half past five, by arrangement, and flew her to the sea. We took a taxi from the airport to the town and she pointed out the place where she would meet me that night. I’d asked her already where she'd like to have supper but she said she knew a little place that would just suit us. In the meantime, there were all sorts of reasons why we should not be seen together; which of course, if I'd been the businessman she thought I was, would have added to the romantic mystery of the game. I turned up at the Customs sheds that night just as she had told me and she picked me up a few moments later. You know the rest.'

Gregory nodded: 'So that's why the telegram was on a sending form and had never been despatched. Obviously she missed it from her bag almost immediately after you'd pinched it and made up her mind that she must get it back. It would have been easy enough for her to send a duplicate but she didn't want you to retain possession of the original and, I suppose, she had to have a bit of time to make her plans before she could arrange to have you laid out.'

'That's about it,' Wells agreed. 'If I hadn't been a fool I should have made a copy of it and mailed it off to the Yard that evening; but she was so charming after lunch that I don't mind confessing she really made me half believe she'd developed one of these sudden passions for me as I've heard some foreign women do. It never occurred to me she was after the telegram, but you got that in the end, didn't you? Although you never told the Superintendent so.'

'No, since he wouldn't cooperate,' Gregory smiled, 'I kept it dark, but I acted on it and went over to the Cafe de la Cloche last night.'

'The Super guessed you'd got it so he had you shadowed all yesterday. I left Heston only about ten minutes after you and I sat around the Grand Hotel doing my best to comfort myself with sandwiches while you had a damned good dinner; because I was afraid that you'd recognise me if I went into the restaurant. When you left I went after you in a taxi but, as a little time elapsed before I could get one, the fool driver failed to pick you up and took the wrong road, so the only thing I could do was return to the airport and keep your plane under observation. That was a cold and miserable job enough but I stuck it until you turned up hours later and I was in the air within two minutes of your leaving the ground. I hadn't the ghost of an idea what you were up to, but I thought there was a real chance you were on to something, so I sat on your tail until you landed here outside the park.'

Gregory grinned. 'D'you mean to tell me that you never even saw the smugglers' fleet?'

'Not a sign of it. I didn't even know there was one although, of course, I assumed they were running the stuff in by air.'

'No. I suppose you had your eyes glued on my plane all the time and that's how you missed spotting the others.'

'Why in the world didn't you follow them?' Wells expostulated. 'It was a chance in a thousand to find the place where they actually land the stuff.'

'Naturally I meant to but it wasn't quite as easy as all that. I lost them in the clouds somewhere south of Ramsgate and I only picked up a single plane that landed here when I came down low over Thanet later on.'

'This is one of their receiving bases then?'

'I don't think so.' Gregory shook his head. 'The plane I followed in wasn't a cargo carrier. I had to land outside the park, as you know, but I managed to get into the grounds in time to see Lord Gavin Fortescue, Mademoiselle Sabine, and a couple of men, who were probably pilots, leave by car.',

'By jove, your night's work wasn't wasted after all.'

'Far from it as I've managed to locate one of their bases on the other side as well.'

'Good man. Where was it?'

Gregory's eyes narrowed a fraction. 'Before I let you in on that I want you to promise me something.'

'What?'

'That if we succeed in rounding up this mob you'll take no action against Mademoiselle Sabine Szenty.'

'Sorry, I can't. It would be more than my job's worth. I don't bear the lady any ill will for the way she led me up the garden path at Deauville; but she's in this thing up to the neck. She's operating a stocking factory in Paris as cover for supplying contraband, she's actively assisting in running the goods, and even travelling them this end as well.'

'Know anything about Lord Gavin Fortescue?' Gregory asked casually.

'Not much. Of course we have it on the records that he's been mixed in with all sorts of shady deals but we've never been able to get enough evidence to bring a case against him.'

'Well, believe me, he's a devil incarnate and while I'll give it you that the girl's probably acting the way she does largely from sheer love of adventure, she was probably forced into it originally through some hold that the old man's got over her. Now, I'm not boasting when I say that I can give you some real help in clearing this thing up. You'll admit yourself that I've done more in twenty-four hours than you have in six weeks; discovered one of their bases on the other side, and run this place, to earth, which is obviously Lord Gavin's forward operation headquarters. As the price of my further help I want you to give Sabine a break when you pull these people in.'

'You've been lucky tonight,' Wells said thoughtfully, 'though it wasn't all luck I'll admit. But what further help can you give me?'

'The location of one of their French bases to start with and for future operations my association with Mademoiselle Sabine. If you arrest her prematurely, on some minor charge, you'll ruin the whole shooting match, and you can't work her yourself now because she's already aware that you're a Scotland Yard man. On the other hand I can. I got her out of a nasty hole in Deauville and we parted on a very friendly footing, so if your people can locate her in London tomorrow morning, assuming that she's on her way there now, I can get in touch with her again and follow up the whole business without her suspecting what I'm after. See the line of country?'

'I do and it's a good one. All the same I can't promise to let her off. The best I can do is to say that we won't press the case against her more than we have to and we'll see to it that she gets the maximum benefit of any extenuating circumstances which she may be able to plead before the court.'

Gregory stood up, pulled out a cigarette, lighted it, and began to walk up and down impatiently. 'But you can't understand!' he burst out. 'This girl's only a pawn in the game.'

'She's engaged in smuggling and I can prove it Wells said doggedly. 'She is running a permanent business in order to evade the customs and facilitate the importation of contraband silk.'

'Silk!' Gregory swung upon him angrily. 'Haven't your people told you the truth about what's at the bottom of all this?'

The Inspector's eyes opened wider. 'What on earth d'you mean?' he asked in a puzzled voice.

'Know anything about the present situation in China?'

'No. What's that got to do with it anyway?'

'Only that the Japs have organised smuggling gangs to break down the customs barriers of Northern China that are costing the Chinese Government a hundred million dollars a year in revenue, wrecking their home industries, and making it utterly impossible for the duty paid goods of other nations to compete in the same market. It's the same sort of thing we're up against here. Britain's been a free market too long for our business rivals to submit tamely to our protective laws. Our enemies are engaged in a desperate attempt to smash up the whole of our new commercial system. If, consciously or unconsciously, Sabine can enable us to defeat their ends what the devil does it matter if she has been cajoled or trapped into placing her stocking factory at Gavin Fortescue's disposal as a blind.5

Wells hesitated. 'How d'you know that is so?'

'I don't, but do you never use deduction?'

'I prefer to stick to facts and I know she's smuggling silk into this country.

Gregory stared at the younger man stonily. 'Is that all you're after? Good God, you're in the Special Branch. You know where the Bolsheviks last concentrated all their energies don't you Spain, and Spain went Red in consequence. Having done their work there they're concentrating now on France. Any fool could see that who reads his daily paper. Next it will be our turn and you sit there talking about silk!'

'I'm afraid I'm rather dense,' confessed the Inspector. 'You've just said yourself that the smugglers are out to wreck our protective barriers. Surely silk now constitutes one of the most important items in our tariffs?'

'Of course. But don't you see that if silk can be smuggled in other things can as well. To bankrupt our business houses and cut our customs revenue in half is only their first objective. Unless we can checkmate them they'll start dumping anarchists and agitators here by the hundred all the scum whose fulltime job it is to spread discontent and ruin. Then they'll send cargoes of illicit arms to. their secret depots, and bombs, and poison gas and every sort of foulness to desecrate England's green and pleasant land. For God's sake man! Forget petty larceny for a bit and give me a free hand to stop that arch traitor Gavin Fortescue staging a Red Revolution.'

10

The Strange Tenant of Quex Park

Five minutes later Mrs. Bird put her head round the door and announced: 'Baked beans and very good butter, all good people come to supper.'

Gregory smiled at the old tag as they followed her out of the hall and down the stone flagged passage. He had managed to convince the Inspector of the real menace to Britain which lay behind the modern smuggling racket, and given him particulars of the secret depot on the Calais downs, after an agreement had been reached that they should pool their intelligence for the future.

Those were the best terms he could get, as he had never intended for one moment to withhold such vital information and he had demanded immunity for Sabine only in the hope that he might be able to trap the Inspector into making some promise which might prove useful later, while knowing quite well that the officer had no power to release her once she had been arrested.

In Mrs. Bird's cosy sitting room they found Rudd busily dishing up generous portions of scrambled eggs on to large squares of thick hot toast.

All four of them set to with gusto having acquired a remarkable appetite from their night's adventures. When they had done the Inspector turned to their hostess.

'Now you're satisfied that I'm a police officer, Mrs. Bird, I'm sure you won't object to my asking you a few questions.'

'Ask away young man,' she said cheerfully. 'Being a law-abiding woman it's my duty to answer.'

'Good; perhaps you'd tell us then, in your own words, how long you've been here and what you know about the owners of this house.'

'I don't know a thing about them except what I've heard from the gardeners who keeps the place in order. He's a Major Powell Cotton; a fine gentleman and a great hunter, so they say. There's a museum next to the house where he keeps his trophies, lions and tigers and all sorts of fearsome looking beasts, though stuffed of course. He and his wife shot every one themselves, and they're away now in some unchristian place looking for white leopards, if you ever heard of such a thing have been for months and may be for another year so meantime the Park's been let through an agent.'

'I see. Then you're not employed by the owner, but by the tenant.'

'That's right. Lord Gavin Fortescue's his name. He took the place from the March quarter and engaged me himself a few weeks later. Bit of luck for me he did too.'

'Why particularly?'

Mrs. Bird's thick eyebrows shot up into her lined forehead. 'Why you're asking. Well, I'd had a worrying time before. You see, I was housekeeper to a Doctor Chalfont who lived at Dulwich. That was his daughter, Milly, you saw walking in her sleep, poor lamb. Her mother died when she was a baby and I was her nurse. We lived very happy at Dulwich, the Doctor and Milly and me, but last November the Doctor died and when we went into things we found he'd left next to nothing. He was such a generous soul, always a' giving and a' giving and refusing payment from poor patients who couldn't afford it. If we'd ever thought we might have known he never had much chance to save. He was only fifty-two so he probably expected to live a lot longer and put something by, or maybe he thought that Milly would be married before he died.

'Anyhow, we found the house didn't belong to him and the few bits of furniture didn't bring in much after the lawyer was paid, and Milly having no relatives at all it was for me to do the best for her I could. Fortunately I've been a careful woman so I had a bit tucked away in the bank for me old age as you might say, but not enough for the interest on 'it to keep the two of us, even living very quiet, and my money would have gone in a year or so if I hadn't been able to get a job.'

Wells nodded sympathetically and the broad bosomed Mrs. Bird went on: 'One day I saw an advertisement in the paper "Caretaker wanted for country house, occasionally visited by tenants, must be able to cook, no other staff kept." Well, that might not have suited everybody as it looked a lonesome sort of post and most caretakers aren't much good in the kitchen, but it suited me all right so I put on my bonnet and went up to apply, as the advertisement said, to the office of the Carlton Hotel.

'I was shown up to a private sitting room where there was a funny little deformed creature who told me he was Lord Gavin Fortescue and that the advertisement was his. He asked me no end of questions about the doctor and the life I'd led, but in the end he seemed satisfied and agreed that Milly might live in the house with me too. He made a point of it that I was to have no other visitors though, even for a cup of tea, because there's all sorts of valuables in the house. He was afraid that if people came to the place they might speak about them to other folk outside and that might lead to a visit from the burglars. Very scared of having burglars in his absence, he was, and he asked me if I was afraid of handling firearms.

'I said I wasn't afraid of burglars or firearms and that seemed to please him quite a lot because he told me he would have put a man in; except that it was so difficult to find a man who could cook. As he flew backwards and forwards from France quite a lot on business he'd be landing in the grounds, sometimes late at night, and want a meal. He put me through it proper about the cooking too, as to what I could do and what not. A very particular gentleman he seemed but it wasn't for me to argue about that so Milly and I moved in last February.'

'That's all nice and clear Mrs. Bird,' the Inspector nodded. 'Now, will you tell us what's been happening since.'

'He didn't come near the place for a month, except to settle us in. It was then he gave me the revolver with instructions that if I saw anybody in the grounds at night I was to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. He said the police wouldn't make any trouble about it, me being a lone woman in a house like this, and that my first duty was to protect the property.

He said too, he'd prefer me not to go into Birchington or any of the other places round about, or make friends with the local people and that I'd have no cause to bother with the tradesmen calling because all our food would be sent down from London, except fresh vegetables and fruit, as it is in big cases marked "Fortnum" and very good food too. Towards the end of April '

'You hardly see a soul apart from the gardeners then?' Gregory interrupted.

'No, and not much of them either. All but one old deaf chap and a couple of lads who look after the glass houses and keep the place tidy have been lent to a charity institution by the owner of the estate while he's away. It's for a big new building they're putting up near Canterbury and a lovely place they're making of it too I'm told. They have to live near their work, of course, so the head gardener's cottage has been empty since we've been here and he only comes over once in a while for an hour or so to see that the others is not neglecting their job.'

'How about the lodge keeper? I suppose there is one in a place like this.'

'Well, he had an accident poor man, soon after we got here.'

'What sort of accident?' Gregory asked quickly.

'Knocked down by a motor car, he was, just outside the park gates, but his Lordship behaved very decent about that. Sent him away to have treatment at Bournemouth, and his wife and children with him all expenses paid.'

Gregory exchanged a significant glance with Wells. 'Then apart from your foster daughter and yourself there is not a single person sleeps on the estate now.'

'That's so, sir.'

'You were going to tell us what happened at the end of April.'

'Well, his little Lordship came down and stayed the night. Then next day a gang of workmen arrived to build a big shed at the edge of the trees on the far side of the house. A few days later he turned up again in an aeroplane which was garaged in the shed. Since then he's been backwards and forwards quite a lot, mostly at night time, and he never stays more than a few hours. Sometimes there's a tall gentleman with him, who's got a game leg and sometimes a dark lady. Very lovely she is; but some sort of foreigner. She was with him tonight and he always has two men too who fly his plane. He gives very little trouble and pays my wages regular as clockwork. Always very civil, too, though silent, and it never entered my head that there could be anything tricky about him until tonight. You wouldn't think it yourself, would you, him being a lord and a rich one into the bargain?'

The Inspector smiled noncommittally. 'And is that all you can tell us Mrs. Bird?'

'It is. And now it's my turn. It's funny somehow that it never struck me as queer before, this landing in aeroplanes at night and him not wanting me to make friends with the people round about. Isn't he a lord at all?'

'Oh, his name is Lord Gavin Fortescue,' Gregory assured her, 'but the fact of a man having a title doesn't necessarily prevent him being a criminal.'

'The sooner we get out the better then. It's hard to lose an easy job but I've got Milly to think of.'

'I hope you won't decide to do that, Mrs. Bird,' Wells said quickly. 'There's not the least likelihood of these people doing you or Miss Chalfont any harm and if you say nothing about our visit they won't have any reason to suspect you of knowing that the police are interested in their activities. If you can see your way to stay on here just as though nothing had happened it'd be a very great help to us. You see, I'd send a man down to keep in touch with you outside the Park and through him you could let us know each time Lord Gavin or his people come and go from here.'

'That's all very well, young man, but if they're criminals, as you say, they might murder us both in our beds one night.'

'No, no! Their business is smuggling silks and other dutiable goods over from France and I feel certain that they won't do you the least harm. There's another point too, if you leave at once you'll be out of a job again, whereas if you're prepared to stay on and give us your help I think I can promise we'll be able to find a comfortable billet in a decent family for you, when it's all over, through the police organisation.'

Mrs. Bird considered for a moment. 'It'd be a big load off my mind if you could. All right, I'll stay then.'

'Splendid.' The Inspector stood up. 'Well now, I haven't got a search warrant but since you're going to give us your help you won't mind if I have an unofficial look round the house, will you? I just might spot something which would be useful to us later on.'

Mrs. Bird nodded agreement, but Gregory shrugged. 'As they only use this place for secret landings, and never stay here more than an hour or two, I doubt if you'll find anything of interest. Anyhow, I'm going to leave you to it and get back to London. Poor old Rudd looks as though he could do with an hour or two's sleep.'

Rudd yawned. 'You've said it, sir, but you're looking fresh as a daisy yourself. How you manage to keep going at times like this has always bin a poser ter me.'

Wells came out to see them on their way and accompanied them through the shrubbery at the side of the house round to its front. It was past four o'clock and in the faint light of the early summer dawn the coppices and broad meadows of the park now showed up clearly. To their left, from a group of trees a few hundred yards away, a turret rose, crowned by an openwork steel spire which looked like a small replica of the Eiffel Tower or a wireless mast, adding an extra fifty feet to its height. On the fringe of another group of trees, a little nearer, to their right, they could now see a big wooden shed.

Gregory jerked his head towards it. 'That's the hangar where they house the plane. Having all those trees "behind it explains why I failed to spot it last night.'

'They've certainly got the very place for their job here,' Wells commented. 'That steel mast above the tower must be visible for miles. It's perfect for a signal light to bring in other planes that don't know the lie of the land.'

'Well, what does A. do now?' asked Gregory, preparing to move off.

The young Inspector laughed. He was in high good humour as a result of his night's work. 'A., being you, calls at the Carlton tomorrow and endeavours to make contact with B., the lady in the case. It looks like more than even chances she's staying there again and I daren't go near the place. She'd flit at the bare sight of me, knowing now that I'm a policeman, while C, being myself, returns to dull routine, sending a junior here to keep in touch with Mrs. Bird and the Park under observation.'

'Right, then. So long, Inspector.' Gregory turned away with Rudd beside him and set off down the east drive towards the field where he had left his plane.

Wells went back into the house and his inspection of it soon assured him that Gregory's view had been correct. It was only used as a port of call from which Lord Gavin and his associates came and went without arousing the suspicions of the residents in Birchington. No papers which might throw further light upon the conspiracy seemed to be kept there. The drawers of all the desks and bureaux were unlocked and empty and there was no safe in the house.

The two tall windowless buildings behind the conservatories to the west, which Gregory had thought might be squash or tennis courts, proved to be the Museum holding the magnificent collection of Major Powell Cotton, the absent owner of the estate. Vast cases, occupying in some instances the fall length of the walls and twenty feet or more in height, contained jungle scenes where the great stuffed beasts, elephant, rhino, sable antelope, baboon, kudu, giraffe, and countless other varieties of wild beasts were mounted in lifelike postures, plunging through tall grass or wallowing in muddy streams, so that they could be seen in all the splendour of their natural habitation.

On other walls of the buildings were ranged smaller cases containing native costumes and weapons, the grotesque masks, of African witch doctors, collections of fearsome looking beetles and a thousand other items of interest, brought from every corner of Africa, India and Tibet by the great hunter.

As Wells could make no further move of importance in his investigation until he learned whether Gregory had managed to get in touch with Sabine, he saw no necessity to hurry back to London, so he spent over an hour admiring the great beasts and studying the curiosities in the smaller cases. It was half past six before he got back to Mrs. Bird's kitchen again and with her he found Milly.

The girl had been woken early by the crunch of his feet on the gravel under her window an hour before. Looking out and seeing a strange man in the grounds she had rushed to tell her foster mother who told her of the surprising events which had happened during the night.

Milly was dressed now in a light blue summer frock that enhanced the blue of her eyes and set off to perfection her delicate colouring and golden hair. When Wells was introduced she was agog with excitement at meeting a real detective from Scotland Yard.

Mrs. Bird, who was cooking breakfast for the girl, suggested that the Inspector could do with another cup of tea before he left and that, while she was getting it ready, the pair of them should go out and pick some fresh raspberries in the garden.

Nothing loath, the Inspector left the house again with Milly and she took him along a path behind the Museum buildings to a big walled garden.

She seemed a shy young creature and he found himself unaccountably tongue-tied, although he had an inward desire to start a conversation which might prolong the pleasure of being with her alone in the great garden, now made more lovely by the hush of the early summer morning.

'Your work must be awfully interesting,' she said at last.

'Rather,' said Gerry Wells. 'I've been lucky, too. I'm the youngest Inspector that's ever been seconded to the Special Branch.'

'You must be very clever then,' she said shyly.

He found himself blushing as he met the candid gaze of her large admiring eyes. 'Oh, no,' he hastened to protest, 'lucky that's all. I did quite well at school though, managed to get a scholarship and, as a matter of fact, I owe a great deal to my dad. He was a mechanic in the R.A.F. in the Great War. Now, he's a clever fellow if you like; so good at his job they kept him on afterwards in the technical department where the new planes are designed. He taught me all I know about engines and how to fly when I was quite a boy. That's one of the things that's led to my promotion because, you see, we haven't got a great many pilots in the force, but nowadays we have to move with the times and flying comes in useful.'

'It must be wonderful to fly,' she murmured.

'Take you up sometime,' said Gerry, 'that's if you'd care to go.'

'I've always thought I'd be frightened to fly but I wouldn't be frightened with you. If you'd like to take me.'

A happy grin spread over his freckled boyish face. 'That's a date then, although I may not be able to take you up for a bit yet, not till this business is over.'

'Is it a very dangerous business?'

'Well, perhaps you might say so in a way, but I've seen a good few rough houses in the last ten years and I can look after myself fairly well. Three crooks set on me a few nights ago over in Trouville but I managed to get away.' The Inspector felt a twinge of conscience as he failed to mention Gregory's assistance; but he refrained from doing so from the very human desire to impress the girl.

Milly's eyes grew larger and rounder than ever. 'You must be very brave and very strong,' she said.

He drew himself up instinctively among the raspberry canes and tensed the muscles of his fine shoulders. 'All in the day's work,' he said casually, 'and of course police training helps a lot. We're taught jujutsu you know, and various wrestling holds, which gives us a bit of an advantage. I rather like a rough and tumble now and again. It keeps me fit. Are you are you interested in cricket?'

'I love it,' said Milly, who had once in her life been taken to the Oval. 'I think it's a splendid game, don't you?'

'Yes. I'm pretty keen myself. As a matter of fact I play for the first eleven of the Flying Squad.'

'Fancy your being in the Flying Squad; that must be awfully thrilling. You have to chase car bandits, don't you?'

'Yes. I've done quite a lot of that, but it's not so interesting as this special job I've just been given. It's a real big thing, this ' is, and if I pull it off it might mean promotion again.'

'Oh, I do hope you do. Wouldn't it be wonderful if they made you a Commissioner?'

Gerry smiled. 'That's a bit too much to hope for yet I'm afraid, but you never know if I might not end up as an A.C., in another twenty years or so.'

If the truth be told they ate more of the raspberries than they picked yet the little basket that Milly carried was full now and there was not room in it for another one. They would both have liked to linger longer but there did not seem to be any excuse to do so and for the moment neither could think of another line of conversation so, in an embarrassed silence, they returned to the big house.

Mrs. Bird met them with the news that Milly's breakfast was ready and pressed the Inspector to join her for a second meal. He accepted for the pleasure of remaining a little longer, managed two cups of tea and a further ration of raspberries, then when there no longer seemed any reasonable excuse for delaying his departure another moment he reluctantly said goodbye, but Milly volunteered to walk with him as far as the gate of the Park and see him off.

In a silence that was almost painful they walked down the east drive side by side and leaving the park crossed the field to the Inspector's plane. He unscrewed the pickets and stowed them in the cockpit then turned to say goodbye.

Milly held out a frail little hand and laid it in his big brown one. 'Shall we shall we be seeing you again soon? she asked

He smiled. 'I hope so; just as soon as I can manage it. With crooks in this place it's part of my job now to keep my eye on it.'

'Well, knowing that, we shan't be the least bit frightened/ she said simply. 'But do take care of yourself, won't you?'

'Rather,' he grinned, 'as you've been nice enough to ask me to.