They were led along to a little wooden landing stage, running out above the mud, at the far end of which a stout looking rowing boat was moored. Another moment and they were hustled into its stern. Two of the men took the oars while the other two and the Limper crowded into the seats which ran round its after part.
The Limper sat in the middle with his pistol drawn, Gregory and Wells on either side of him, and beyond each of them one of the other men, holding them firmly by the back of their collars in case they attempted to jump overboard.
The ex pugilist, in the bow, cast off the painter and, without any effort on the part of the oarsmen, the boat was carried by the swift current towards the sea.
Dawn had broken and, as the boat emerged from between the two banks into Sandwich Haven on the southern portion of the bay, the captives saw the vast area of sand stretching before them. The river continued; its deep channel twisting and winding between the flat stretches which, at high tide, would be covered by the sea. Only the quiet splash of oars now broke the silence of the early morning. Not a soul was to be seen across all the wide expanse, or upon the steep cliff over a mile away to the northern extremity of the bay although Gregory and Wells both searched them with frantic glances.
Another few moments and they reached the spot where the river met the outgoing tide. It was rippling gently along the golden sand, yet running out with such speed that every little wavelet broke ten yards farther to the seaward, leaving a fresh stretch of damp, faintly shining sand exposed to view.
The men pulled vigorously and the boat began to heave a little on the gentle swell. Wells's face was now a mask of whiteness in the early morning light while Gregory's eyes were deeply sunk in his face on which the tan showed unnaturally grey.
The Limper produced a pocket compass and, steadying it as well as he could, took a rough bearing of Fairway Buoy which was just visible, a black bobbing patch in the far distance slightly to the right. Then he took a bearing of Bur Buoy; just as far away but almost directly upon the course which they were making.
'Turn her,' he said. 'We must do the job about fifty yards to the left from here.'
The men plied their oars again. The tide was now only a distant ripple so that its rapid approach was hardly perceptible. A few more agonising moments passed for the prisoners then the Limper jerked his head in Wells's direction.
'Undo his hands,' he said. 'If the sands shift and they're washed up later it'll look as though they were caught by the tide.'
The man obeyed while the Limper thrust his gun within two inches of Wells's mouth. 'Make a move,' he said, 'and I'll blow your head off.'
Gerry Wells's arms were free. His impulse was to lash out but his hands had been tied behind his back for over five hours. His muscles were cramped and stiff and when he tried to move he found that the effort only resulted in agonising pain.
The Limper gave a quick glance round. No boat was to be seen. There was no one on the shore. Full dawn had hardly come and the faint, still lingering, twilight must obscure their actions from any distant casual watcher.
'Over with him,' he grunted.
Too late Wells wrenched his arms forward. The man beside him stooped, placed a hand beneath his knees, and tipped him backwards over the gunwale.
The oarsmen were dipping their oars, keeping the boat more or less in position, so that it drifted only very slightly. The Limper jabbed his automatic against Gregory's face while the man beside him loosed his hands and pulled the cord away. Like Wells, his arms were almost paralysed from having been tied behind him for so long, but he jerked himself to his feet, his eyes wide and staring.
'I'll make it ten thousand he gasped.
The Limper only showed that he had heard by the sneer which lifted his upper lip and an added pressure from the muzzle of his pistol on Gregory's cheek.
For an instant Gregory's right leg twitched under him. If he could only knee the Limper in the groin, flashed through his mind, but the pistol would explode automatically with the contraction of the Limper's finger upon the trigger and the bullet would shatter his face into a bleeding mass of pulp.
He decided to duck and take the risk, but the man who had held him, and the other who had dealt with Wells, came at him simultaneously, pushing him violently upon the chest and shoulders so that his knees gave beneath him and he went overboard with a loud splash.
Spitting and choking he came up with his mouth full of sea water; shaking the drops from his eyes he glanced wildly round. The boat was already heading back towards the river mouth; its crew pulling lustily. Then he saw Wells, a dozen yards away, floundering about in the shallows.
It was a matter of seconds only before his feet touched the sand. He tripped upon it, regained his balance, and stood up. The water was only up to his middle, but instantly he stood he felt the sand giving beneath his feet, so that he was in to his ankles before he could pull them out again.
He flung himself flat and began to swim out to sea, knowing that his only chance lay in reaching deeper water, but the tide was ebbing with terrifying swiftness. As he lunged out his toes kicked the bottom; interfering with his stroke so that his hands swept downwards and his nails scraped on the sand below him.
Gerry Wells was staggering from side to side, trying to fight his way towards the shore, but at every step he took the sand gave like oozy mud under his feet and he felt himself sucked down.
'On your face you fool,' shouted Gregory desperately. 'Try and reach the deeper water, then we'll swim for it.'
'I can't!' gasped Wells. 'I can't swim. But the tide's running out! If I can reach firm sand I'll get those devils yet.'
The depth of the water had now decreased to a couple of feet. Gregory floundered on but at every stroke he took the sand was churned up by his feet behind him.
Wells stuck. He could advance no farther. He stood there in the shallow water waving his arms wildly as he endeavoured to fling himself forward, but his feet had sunk right in and the sand had him in its grip up to the calves of his legs.
'Help,' he bellowed. 'For God's sake give me a hand to pull me out.'
Gregory turned a little and splashed towards him but his knees were now touching bottom at every movement that he made.
The light was brighter now; almost full day. In the distance the Limper's boat appeared; a cockle shell heading to landward up the channel.
Gregory could swim no farther. He began to crawl forward on his stomach knowing that to distribute his weight was the best way of preventing himself from sinking.
Wells had gone down to above his thighs and was still shouting wildly.
At last Gregory reached him and, although he knew that he could never pull him out, extended a hand towards him. The Inspector grabbed it, drawing Gregory towards him, but the suction of the sand was so powerful that he could not free his legs.
Gregory's knees and elbows were embedded. Every second he shifted his position so that the sands should not get a grip on him. 'Lean forward, distribute your weight,' he bellowed, but Wells had been sucked down to the waist and could only scrabble at the low water in front of him with outstretched hands.
Both of them could see the mark of the receding tide as it approached now by leaps and bounds… At one moment they were struggling in six inches of water, the next it was down to three and, almost before they had time to realise it, the sea was gone, leaving them stranded in the glittering sand.
Gregory felt it well up about his thighs and, wriggle as he would, there was no way to free himself of it. The tiny particles formed a glutinous mud which would not even bear his weight, more or less distributed as it was. His knees were buried and it trickled over the hollows behind them. Wells had sunk up to his armpits.
Both of them visualised the awful moment when the sand would be above their chins, when they could no longer lift their arms and were dragged down by the constant sucking motion, so that the sand reached their lips and entered their mouths in spite of all their efforts, choking them as they sank.
They began to scream at the top of their voices, yelling for help with all the force of their lungs, but not a sound came back to them from the desolate wastes that spread upon either hand, and no human figure appeared upon the distant cliff tops.
17
The Raid on Barter Street
Both men had sunk up to their chests. Waving their arms frantically above their heads they bellowed for help, but the Limper's boat had rounded a bend in the creek, where it met the land, so that it could no longer be seen from the shore and there was now no soul within sight or hearing.
Their field of view had narrowed as they sank and their eyes were now no more than twelve inches above the sand. Facing inshore they could only just see the lower coastline to the south of the bay, where it runs along to Sandwich flats and golf course; while to the north the steep white chalk cliffs reared up, naked and distant. Squirming and twisting they caught glimpses of the sea behind them. It was no longer running out at a great pace for it had almost reached low water level. About two hundred yards away the little wavelets broke with a gentle hissing noise but, from the line of vision of the desperate men, they appeared to have increased to the size of Atlantic rollers, cutting off the view to seaward.
To their left the channel cut through the fiat expanse of sand by the river Stour was still filled with deep, fast flowing water, but their eye level was too low for them to see it, although it lay only some thirty yards away.
They ceased to shout, conscious that their cries for help were unavailing, and that every ounce of breath was precious in their fight for life. The constant strain upon their muscles was appalling; bent forward from their waists they clawed at the treacherous sand, churning it into liquid silt in their fierce endeavours to hoist themselves out of the horrid ooze that gripped them.
The quicksand seemed to have become alive; as though imbued with some evil spirit of its own. It sucked and chuckled as they fought it; creeping up about them with gentle uncheckable persistence.
Their legs and torsos were fast embedded in its stranglehold so that they could no longer move a muscle of their lower limbs. It pressed upon them from every side seeming to weigh a ton. Their arms and shoulders were now sodden with it from their struggle; weighed down so that they could only move them with great effort.
Wells had almost given up; buried to the armpits, his head thrown back, he moved his arms only sufficiently to prevent their submergence as long as possible, while the sweat of the terror of death streamed off his face.
Gregory was still fighting, against his better judgment, as the sands seemed to suck at him more fiercely with each new effort that he made; but he would not surrender life until the last breath was choked out of him by the gritty slime covering his mouth and nose.
It was then, when both men felt all hope was gone, that then; heard the muffled drumming of a petrol engine rapidly approaching. Suddenly it ceased and a loud report, like the crack of a small cannon, shattered the silence.
They stopped struggling instantly and wrenched their shoulders round towards the left. Thirty yards away a group of men appeared to be standing knee deep and rocking gently in the sand. From them a long black snakelike rope was whizzing through the air: a lifeline fired from a rocket gun. It twisted a moment overhead and then came hurtling down with a plop on to the sands between the two almost buried men; the lead disc at its end piercing the morass a good twenty yards beyond them.
With almost unendurable relief they grabbed the rope and held it. The gun was fired again and another lifeline hissed through the air above them. Gregory could just reach it as it fell so he left the first for Wells. With their last remnants of strength, fortified by the frantic will to live, they hauled the slack end of the ropes in and coiled them round their bodies, beneath their armpits, by thrusting them through the unresisting sand which had welled up to their shoulders.
'Ready?' came a hail from the group by the rocket gun.
'Heave away,' shouted Gregory and the strain was taken up upon the ropes.
There followed the most ghastly struggle between the rescuers and those evil sands which were so loth to give up their prey. The imprisoned men thought that their bodies would be torn in half. They moaned in agony as the lifelines gripped them like wire springs about their chests; cutting into their bodies and forcing the breath out of their lungs. They were lying at an angle now, with their heads towards their rescuers, their shoulders only supported by the pulling ropes, their torsos and feet still buried deep in the shifting sands.
For what seemed an eternity they were stretched as though upon a rack, striving with the tired muscles of their legs for even a fraction of movement which would free them, but it seemed that they were too firmly embedded ever to be drawn out.
It was Gregory who, through a mist of pain, realised that now their heads and shoulders were supported there was no longer any danger of their arms becoming permanently imprisoned if they chose to use them, so he plunged his hands down and began to heave out handfuls of the soft semi liquid silt from in front of his chest.
Almost as fast as he relieved the pressure the sand seeped back, but the movement at least eased the weight from his chest a little and, when he lifted his head again, he found that he could see more of the men who were heaving on the rope. Their lower extremities were hidden by the gunwale of a boat which was just visible now above the flat expanse of sand. Then he remembered the creek and realised that the motor boat must have come up into it from the sea.
The struggle lasted for nearly an hour; the treacherous sands pulling and plucking at their victims' limbs until the very last moment, when they were drawn out with a sudden plop and dragged face downwards towards the boat:
Gregory was free ten minutes before Wells. As the lifeline drew him over a steep bank of sand he slithered into the water. Then he was hauled aboard a big flat-bottomed speedboat, where he collapsed on the bottom boards, unconscious.
When he came to Wells was beside him and their rescuers were applying restoratives. The ordeal had been such an appalling one that they were unable to speak and could not move a muscle without acute pain. Both of them lapsed into unconsciousness again as the speedboat's engine began to stutter. With a puff of blue smoke in its wake it roared out to sea.
They Were vaguely conscious of being carried up the steps of a stone pier and bundled into a car, then through the side door of an hotel and up the back stairs into bathrooms, where friendly hands relieved them of their sodden sand loaded garments. Then came the glorious ease of relaxing their exhausted bodies in clear warm water.
Figures moved in a mist about them: skilful fingers tended their hurts, then there came the joy of fresh cool linen about their bruised bodies and a merciful darkness.
It was late afternoon when they were aroused from the deep black slumber which follows intense fatigue, to find themselves in single beds in the same room, with Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust and Superintendent Marrowfat standing beside them.
'How're you feeling now, my boy,' Sir Pellinore inquired, his hand on Gregory's shoulder.
Gregory gazed round the strange room with a vacant stare. 'Where-where are we?' he asked after a moment.
'Granville Hotel, Ramsgate. By Jove you've had a gruelling. Wouldn't have been in your shoes for a mint of money but you're safe out of it all now.'
'For God's sake go away and let me sleep again,' Gregory muttered.
'Sorry,' said Superintendent Marrowfat abruptly. 'We let you lie as long as we dare, but I must have any information you've got to give us. Come along, Wells, let's have your story.'
Gerry Wells moaned as he hoisted himself up against his pillows. His body seemed to be one large burning ache, and, he felt that under a pair of strange pyjamas his back and chest were bandaged, although he could still feel the vicelike grip of the lifeline round his body.
Slowly and painfully he told his superior of the evil chance that had brought about their capture the night before and of the manner in which they had very ne
arly lost their lives.
Gregory had been gathering his strength. He looked up at Sir Pellinore. 'What brought you on the scene so opportunely. If you hadn't turned up when you did we'd both be fiddling in heaven now or stoking up the coals.'
Sir Pellinore grinned. 'No thanks to me, my boy. What women see in you I never could make out, but you've got to thank some hidden charm that you're here in bed in Ramsgate, and not a dozen feet under those ghastly sands by now. Sabine telephoned to me from Quex Park a little after midnight. She said they had caught you both and that Gavin Fortescue had just left for Ash Level. She seemed to know the drill too and gave a pretty good forecast of what they were likely to do with you.'
Gregory frowned. 'A little after midnight! Why the hell weren't you there before then! In a fast car you could have made that place in a couple of hours; whereas you took darned near six and very nearly turned up too late into the bargain.'
The fat Superintendent coughed. 'I'm afraid that's my fault, Mr. Sallust. Sir Pellinore got on to the Yard at once and they reached me at my home. We were down here by a little before three, so we could have raided that cottage, if we'd wanted to. But this thing's such a terrible threat to the wellbeing of the country we've just got to get all the threads in our hands before we act. If we'd rushed that place we would have got you out all right, but we'd have been too late to pinch Lord Gavin and, apart from that, we haven't yet succeeded in getting on to the London organisation.'
A sardonic smile twitched at Gregory's thin lips. 'So you took a chance…'
The Superintendent laughed. 'Not a very big one. We knew they wouldn't shoot you unless you did something stupid. The lady made it quite clear about the way they'd bump you off. You didn't know, of course, but there were some of my chaps within a stone's throw of that cottage from three o'clock on, with orders to rush it if anything went wrong. Meantime Sir Pellinore and I went off into Ramsgate and fixed a boat all ready with lifelines; so as to get you out after they'd done their stuff.'
'But what the hell did you want to wait till the last minute for?' Gregory snapped. 'Apart from what we went through you were darned nearly too late to get us out at all.'
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