Contraband gs-1

by Dennis Wheatley

  'Then she's not expecting you. She may be out.'

  'I doubt it. She couldn't have got in till about three o'clock this morning so the chances are all against her being up and doing before midday. Anyhow, I thought the risk small enough to snatch a few hours' sleep. Not that I needed them particularly but it's my old campaigner's habit of taking a nap while the going's good. Quite sound really, as I may be up again all night tonight.'

  Smart and fresh in a double-breasted light grey summer suit Gregory certainly did not look as though he had spent a good portion of his night crawling over Calais down land and scrambling through the coppices of a Kentish park.

  'I don't quite see, though,' Sir Pellinore said after a moment, 'where I come in about this luncheon business. What the deuce d'you want to drag me into it for?'

  Gregory grinned. 'For one thing, it might amuse you; but, for another, I can't just go and hang around the Carlton on my own. Sabine's a clever woman and she'd smell a rat at once; guess the police had run her to earth there, and that I was acting with them. That's the one thing we've got to keep out of her lovely little head at all costs. My plan of campaign is to walk round the corner now and park myself in the lounge; tip a bellhop to keep his eyes open for her then, when she turns up, I shall be just as surprised and delighted as though I had really run into her casually. I shall immediately inform her I am waiting there for you and that we're lunching together. Then you come on the scene proving that I'm not a liar and my meeting with her a pure coincidence.'

  Sir Pellinore grunted. 'And what do I do if you please? Stand about in the street looking like a loony until you come and whistle for me?'

  'Certainly not. You'll be in Justerini's office, next door. You always get your drink there so they'll be delighted to see you and refresh you with another ration of this excellent sherry. Immediately the bellhop lets me know that Sabine's come down in the lift he'll slip out of the Pall Mall entrance and fish you out of Justerini’s. Then you will stroll in to find me doing my stuff with her in the lounge.'

  'Say she's already got a luncheon appointment?'

  'In that case, you'll have to content yourself with my company I'm afraid. We've got to chance that but unless it's a very important appointment indeed you can put your money on my persuading her to break it.'

  'Conceited young devil,' laughed Sir Pellinore. 'All right, you win. But what's the procedure saying we manage to get this wench as far as the luncheon table?'

  'You order the best lunch that you can think of, which should be pretty good, and later on you pay for it. Then you go off to your club, or the house here, for a nice afternoon nap, suitable to a man of your years, leaving me in sole possession of the lady.'

  'What happens then?'

  'Allah, who knows all things, will give me inspiration, but my main policy is to stick to her as long as I possibly can on one excuse or another. Tonight's the seventh and in our now famous telegram the numbers 43 and 47 follow that date, so presumably they'll be operating again, but from different bases. If I can hang on to Sabine long enough maybe she'll telephone while I'm with her or let slip some little bit of information which will give me a chance to follow her up when I can't keep her with me any longer.'

  Sir Pellinore stroked his fine white moustache and stood up. 'What a lucky young dog you are. If I had my way the company wouldn't pay you a cent for this investigation;, you're going to get far too much fun out of it.'

  'On the contrary they'll have to pay extra as compensation for the damage I'm doing to my conscience.' Gregory laughed cynically but there was no laughter in his heart. To conceal his troubled thoughts he pursued the jest. 'Here I am having to force myself into following up some rotten game by taking advantage of the confidences of the girl I'm in love with.'

  'You! In love! Never been in love in your life.'

  'Well, I'm not too old to learn,' countered Gregory modestly, 'and I certainly don't want to see Sabine sent to prison.'

  'Yes; awkward that very awkward but I won't have you going romantic. It's bad for the health, bad for business, and it doesn't suit you.'

  'On the contrary, the very thought that I may be lunching with Sabine in about half an hour puts me right on the top of the world. Come along now or you won't have time for that glass of sherry at Justerini's.'

  A few moments later the two men left the house and sauntered down Pall Mall together in the bright August sunshine. Gregory was a tallish man but his queer cultivated stoop made him seem almost short beside Sir Pellinore's magnificent height and upright figure. At the Pall Mall entrance of the Carlton they parted; Gregory disappearing into the hotel and Sir Pellinore into the door of his wine merchants which was less than a dozen yards away.

  It was a little after half past twelve and an inquiry at the hotel office assured Gregory that he had been justified in not hurrying; Sabine was still in her room. He secured a page boy and, tipping the lad lavishly, gave him his instructions, posting him near the florists and within sight of the lift. Next, he spoke to the porters, both at the Pall Mall and Haymarket entrances of the hotel, describing Sabine to them as' an additional precaution in case she slipped by the page unrecognised, and told them that if she went out they were to fetch him at once from the lounge. Then he parked himself at a small table and ordered a double gin fizz which he felt to be a particularly suitable drink in such sultry weather.

  Nearly three quarters of an hour went by and he was beginning to fear that Sabine might be lunching quietly in her suite when the page came hurrying along to inform him that she had just come down and was leaving her key. Without losing an instant Gregory strode from the lounge and into the street by the Pall Mall exit, raced round the corner into the Haymarket, and came sauntering gaily into the hotel's other entrance, just as Sabine was about to sally forth.

  'Hello!' he cried, throwing wide his arms to bar her passage. 'What heavenly luck. Is it really you or am I dreaming things?'

  She smiled as he seized her hand and kissed it. 'But yes, it is most surprising that we should meet so soon again.'

  'Not really,' he assured her, 'since you chance to be in London. It's such a tiny world for people like ourselves who always move around the same old haunts. You were going out but you mustn't. I can't possibly let you.'

  Her face grew serious.

  'You have no reason to detain me, as you had in Deauville.' Under her statement lay the suggestion of a suspicion.

  'Only the reason that was at the bottom of everything before my frantic desire to be with you, unless, of course, you've blotted your copy book again and want me now to save you from the London police. Come in and have a cocktail.'

  She shook her head. 'That would be nice but, really, I must not. I have to lunch at Claridges and I am already late.'

  'Ring up and put them off please do. It seems a thousand years since I've seen you but I've been dreaming of you ever since. Now I've found you again I absolutely refuse to let you go.'

  'But this is business,' she protested.

  He laughed. 'What in the world can so lovely a person as yourself have to do with such a dreary thing as business; or do you mean that you have some job to do for that old devil I saw you with in Deauville?'

  'Mais non, when I say business I mean commerce. You, see, I am a business woman. Representative, you say, of a house in Paris, but that you could not know.'

  'Really? How extraordinary!' Gregory's face expressed blank astonishment at this gratuitous information but he added blandly: 'Somehow it seems so out of keeping that anyone like you should have to face the daily grind, but then everybody's in business these days, aren't they?'

  She shrugged. 'It has become necessary that most people should work since old families lost their money in the war years, and after, but I should be miserable if I had to lead always an idle life.'

  'Well, you're going to take an hour or two off today anyhow,' he declared. 'Surely you can put off your appointment until tomorrow. Nobody could possibly want to do business on a lovely sunny d
ay like this.'

  He saw her hesitate and pressed home his advantage. 'Come on now. I'm lunching here with a friend of mine, but you'll find him charming a delightful person Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust. He's one of the grandest old men in Europe. Put business out of your mind today and let us entertain you. I give you my word you won't regret it.'

  'Sil vous voules,' she surrendered. 'You are such a tempestuous person. It is difficult to refuse you, and that business lunch, it would have been boring anyway.'

  'Page,' Gregory beckoned, 'tell the operator to get me Claridges.' Then he turned to Sabine. 'What's your friend's name? I'll make your excuses for you a little taxi accident in Bond Street this morning I think. Nothing serious but you're a bit shaken and resting now until you've recovered from the shock. How'll that do?'

  She shook her head. 'No. Your powers of invention are quite marvellous but I will speak myself.' She turned and followed the boy away to the telephone booth.

  Gregory smiled with self-congratulation as he watched her take the call. He had failed in a quick attempt to find out with whom she had meant to lunch, but he had achieved his main objective in making his presence there seem accidental and securing, at all events, an hour or two of her company for himself. When they walked into the lounge Sir Pellinore was already there; and rose to meet them. '

  'I'm sure you won't mind,' Gregory said, 'but I've brought a friend, whom I had no idea was in England until I ran into her here five minutes ago. I couldn't possibly let the opportunity slip so I've asked her to join us. This is Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust, a very old friend of mine, Mademoiselle Sabine…' he paused, remembering that he was not supposed to know her other name, and looked away with an excellent imitation of slight embarrassment.

  'Szenty,' she added calmly.

  Gregory repeated the name.

  Sir Pellinore bent over her hand, 'Mademoiselle Szenty's presence could never need an apology. On the contrary I consider it a very great piece of good fortune that anyone so lovely should consent to grace the table of an old man like myself.'

  As they passed up the steps to the restaurant he murmured her name again. 'Surely you are Hungarian. There was a Grof Szenty whom I knew long ago. A delightful feller; a Captain in one of the crack regiments of the old kingdom, who used to bring his horses over, and came within an ace of winning the cup for jumping one year at Olympia.'

  'But, of course,' she smiled, 'that was my father. He would be about the same age as you.'

  'By jove now! Is he…' Sir Pellinore hesitated.

  She shook her head. 'No, he was killed on the Russian front in the early days of the war.'

  Sir Pellinore nodded sadly. 'That damnable war. It robbed me of my only son and countless dear fellows of both our generations. As I watched them go under one by one I thought that I would not have a single friend left in the world by the time it was over.'

  Gregory tactfully turned the conversation to the ordering of the meal and then said quietly: 'Mademoiselle Szenty tells me that she is now in business.'

  'Indeed?' Sir Pellinore looked up. 'Well, most of us have had to come to it, and perhaps that's not a bad thing in a way, but I hope the estates still remain in your family my dear. That beautiful old castle upon the River Theiss which I remember well. I went out to stay there once with the Count, your father, for the shooting. You have the finest partridge shooting in the world in Hungary.'

  'But how interesting,' she smiled, 'that you should know Schloss Scany. When were you there?'

  'Nineteen seven, no nineteen eight it must have been, I think.'

  'Ah, that was before I was born, so you would not have seen me, even as a baby. I remember it well, of course, although we had to leave it when I was nine.'

  'You have lost it then?'

  'Yes. All our money went in the deflation and for a little time my mother and I were almost paupers living in a back street in Pest.'

  'Your luck's turned since though I gather.' Gregory smiled. 'How did you come to go into business?'

  'It was through an old friend of my mother's. The man whom you saw me with at Deauville. He is very rich and very generous. He was in Budapest in 1922 and he took us from the slum where we were living, gave my mother a very nice allowance, and sent me to France and England to be educated. We owe him everything, and when he offered me a position in a French firm in which he was interested, a few years ago, I was very happy to take it.'

  Gregory nodded. Philanthropist seemed a strange role for Lord Gavin Fortescue but obviously the man had his reasons for displaying this unusual generosity. Even at the age of twelve or thirteen, Gregory thought, Sabine must’ have displayed promise of unusual beauty. Lord Gavin had evidently decided to invest a fraction of his surplus millions in tying the mother and daughter to him by bonds of gratitude with the idea that the girl would prove useful to him later on. Doubtless it was true that she had been glad to accept a well paid job in this Paris firm which Lord Gavin had acquired, with his usual farsightedness, in preparation for his vast smuggling campaign; probably soon after England went off gold and brought in Protection. Later, of course, she would have found out that the business was not all it appeared at first sight but her position would have made it practically impossible for her to quarrel with her benefactor.

  'Is your mother still alive?' he asked after a moment.

  She nodded. 'Yes, and she lives now, not as in her youth of course, with a great household, but in every comfort. While I was at school and finishing she had quite a pleasant little apartment in Buda, but since I have been in business, and my salary is a very generous one, I have been able to rent a nice house with a pretty garden for her just outside the city.'

  Gregory saw that his surmise had been correct. If Sabine quarrelled with Lord Gavin now her fine salary would cease immediately and the old lady, who doubtless adored her creature comforts, would be faced with poverty again.

  The lunch proved a cheerful and successful meal. Just before it was over Gregory smiled into Sabine's eyes and said: 'now, what for the afternoon? How would you like me to motor you down to Hampton Court or somewhere where we could have tea on the river?'

  'I am sorry,' she said gravely, 'but that is quite impossible. I have my business to attend to. A buyer from one of the big Kensington stores meets me at the Royal Palace Hotel at half past three.'

  'Put him off; like you did the other fellow.'

  'No, I cannot. It is the same man. When I telephoned before lunch I made this new appointment.'

  'How about tonight. Will you dine with me?'

  'No. Unfortunately I am engaged once more.'

  'Tomorrow then?'

  'I return to France. This is a flying visit only.'

  Gregory suppressed a grin, knowing that it was probably a flying visit in more senses than one. 'But I can't let you go so soon,' he protested. 'How about tea after you've seen this fellow?'

  'Yes. That I can manage if you wish.'

  'Fine. I'll run you down to the Royal Palace then and pick you up afterwards. Say four o’clock how would that do?'

  'Nicely, I t'ink. My business should not take more than half an hour.'

  They sat over their liqueurs for a little, then Sir Pellinore expressed his intention of leaving them, yet from his excuses made them both believe that he did it with regret.

  As they thanked him for the meal he took Sabine's hand and said with unusual seriousness: 'My dear, as an old friend of your father's I want you to extend the privilege of your friendship to me too. I live at number 64 Carlton House Terrace. Any time you are in England my house and my servants are entirely at your disposal so please do not hesitate too ring me up, either day or night, if I can be of any service to you.'

  A warm smile lit her limpid eyes. 'Such hospitality makes me think of Hungary. I mean, not all English people are so very kind to strangers.'

  'That is true I fear. Nevertheless we can prove good friends on occasion. Strangers here sometimes have little difficulties with the authorities and I am in the
fortunate position of being able to smooth such things over A ;

  'I will not forget, Sir Pellinore,' she promised, and a few moments later she was seated beside Gregory in a taxi on the way to Kensington.

  He dropped her at the hotel and took the taxi on to his rooms in Gloucester Road. There he pressed a five pound note into Rudd's hand and told him to go out and buy flowers, fruit, cakes and all things requisite to entertain a lady. 'And if you give away by so much as a blink of an eyelid that you've ever seen her before I'll wring your neck my lad,' he ended gaily.

  'It ain't the popsy we seen with old monkey face in that car on the Calais road, is it sir?' Rudd asked with quick interest.

  'It is, my boy, and you'll kindly refrain from referring to her as a popsy, unless you want to take a journey in a hearse.'

  'No offence, sir, but my! Ain't you the lucky one, and no bloomin' error. Think she'd like éclairs for 'er tea?'

  'Yes, éclairs and lots of other things. Go on now, get out and buy them. We'll be back in half an hour.'

  Gregory cast a hasty glance round the comfortable book lined room, straightened the cushions on the settee quite unnecessarily, and then dashed out to get his car.

  By four o'clock he was back again in it, outside the Royal Palace, ready to pick up Sabine.

  She did not keep him waiting long and soon appeared with a short tubby little man to whom she said goodbye on the pavement. Gregory studied his face carefully and felt quite sure that he would know him again; but the chances were that the fellow was some quite innocent buyer who had no idea whatsoever that he had just been purchasing a line of contraband.

  As soon as Sabine was in the car Gregory let in the clutch and headed west but a few hundred yards farther on he turned it, dexterously avoiding an omnibus, and shot down Gloucester Road.

  'Where are you taking me?' she asked, 'or is this a better way to avoid the traffic before we reach again the West End?'