Contraband gs-1

by Dennis Wheatley

  'I'll manage somehow,' said Gregory doggedly.

  'You won't act too early and make the police campaign abortive, will you. It's frightfully important they should smash up Gavin Fortescue's organisation. Without any flag wagging it means a hell of a lot to the country that they should.'

  'Don't I know it,' Gregory agreed. 'If it weren't for that

  I shouldn't be here but snooping round the Park at Birchington by this time.'

  Garwood appeared to announce that lunch was served.

  Sir Pellinore stood up. 'AH right. I know I can leave the whole question of your private interests to your discretion/

  Over luncheon they talked of indifferent things but neither had any real interest in the conversation and long periods of silence intervened between each topic that was broached. The air was electric with their unspoken thoughts.

  It was after lunch, when they were well into the second magnum, Sir Pellinore having decreed that no liqueurs should be served, that a call from Wells came through.

  Milly had been on the telephone to him from a call box in Birchington. She reported that Sabine and Lord Gavin Fortescue had had high and bitter words that morning after breakfast; 'a proper scene' was the way she phrased it, and Mrs. Bird, who had butted in on their quarrel inadvertently, described his little lordship as having been 'positively white with rage'. Half an hour later Sabine had been taken up to her room and locked in. She was virtually a prisoner there but Mrs. Bird had been allowed to take her lunch up on a tray and reported her to be pale and silent.

  Milly's real reason for ringing up, however, was that she had overheard a scrap of conversation which she thought might prove useful. She had been passing an open window of the downstairs room in which Lord Gavin and the Limper had been sitting after lunch. She had heard Lord Gavin say: 'Tonight at Eastchurch Marshes I wish you to…' That was all, and she had not dared to linger, but had slipped out of the Park to telephone Wells from the village right away.

  In the library Sir Pellinore got out a big atlas, and soon discovered Eastchurch Marshes on the south coast of the Isle of Sheppey. The river Swale separated Sheppey from the mainland of the North Kent coast and a tributary of it marked Windmill Creek, just below Eastchurch Marshes, ran up into the island.

  'That's it,' said Sir Pellinore, placing a well manicured, square nailed finger on the spot. 'You'll see that apart’ from sandbanks, the Swale and Windmill Creek still carry five fathoms of water, even at low tide. That's the place they mean to make their landing and Wells said just now that the police will concentrate there after dark tonight.'

  Gregory heaved a sigh of relief. 'Thank God they'll be busy then and that the place is well over twenty miles from Quex Park, apart from being on the far side of the Swale. While they're on the job of rounding up the gang I'll have a free hand at the Park to get Sabine out of it before they come on there.'

  'They'll probably surround the Park as well,' suggested Sir Pellinore.

  'Perhaps, but it's a big place and well wooded. Marrowfat said himself this morning he wouldn't attempt to pull Gavin in until he mopped up the rest of the bunch. That should give me a chance to get clear of the house before they raid it.'

  Sir Pellinore nodded. 'I told Wells you were here and he asked me to pass it on to you that the Flying Squad are leaving London for Queenborough at seven o'clock. Do you intend to come with us?'

  Gregory shook his head. 'No. I've got a perfectly good excuse in the gruelling I received yesterday. I'd be grateful if you'd tell them I'm absolutely played out; so done up that I can't appear in the last act after all. If you'll give them that message, when you turn up at the Yard a little before seven, I can throw off any shadows they put on to my trail well before that and be down in Kent again. I think I'll leave now to get busy with my preparations.'

  'All right, my boy.' Sir Pellinore laid a kindly hand on Gregory's shoulder. 'Please remember me kindly to your very lovely lady. It would break my old heart too, I think, to see such a gracious child sent to prison; and she will be unless you can prevent it. If I can do anything to help you know I will'

  His eyes were troubled as he watched Gregory go, a lean bent figure, from the front door to which he had escorted him a few moments later.

  Sir Pellinore had been right in his guess that the police were covering Gregory. He spotted two big men chatting together on the corner as he turned down past the Carlton Club into Pall Mall. Their boots were not unduly large and they both wore soft felts instead of bowler hats, but Gregory was quite certain that they were plainclothes men. He did not bother to throw them off his trail since he assumed, with good reason, that another couple would be watching his rooms as well. Instead, he walked as far as the Piccadilly tube quite openly and when he reached his flat he was not at all surprised to see that the shorter of the two men was only a hundred yards behind him.

  He had planned to repack his bags, collect his car and set off at about six o'clock, twisting through the streets of South East London to throw any following police cars off his track; then to drive by a circuitous route through Tonbridge, Cranbrook, Ashford, and so by byroads, northwest to his destination. But Rudd was waiting for him in his sitting room, hard at work polishing a brass ashtray cut from a 5.9 shell case: a souvenir of the old days of the war. He immediately produced a note which he said he had found half an hour before on the hall mat. It was unsigned, but Gregory realised at once that it had come from Gavin Fortescue, for it read:

  Dear Mr. Sallust,

  It seems that in spite of the almost foolproof precautions which I took to prevent your interfering any more in my affairs you are still active and impertinently curious.

  This is to inform you that Sabine is once more in my care and to warn you, very seriously, that if you presume to lift one finger to interfere further in my business the matter will be reported to me by my people who have you under observation.

  .If you value Sabine's happiness, as I have reason to suppose you do, and by happiness please understand that I refer to her capacity for ever enjoying anything in this world again, you will not only refrain from troubling me further yourself; you will also use your best endeavours to persuade your friends at Scotland Yard that, for any reason which you care to invent, it would be wiser for them to defer any visit which they may contemplate paying to myself, or my various bases, for the next few days.

  If you fail in this, you may be quite sure that you will never see Sabine alive again.

  21

  The Trap is Sprung

  When Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust arrived in Superintendent Marrowfat's room at Scotland Yard that evening at seven o'clock he was naturally a little taken aback to find Gregory there. He hid his surprise under an affable greeting to the Superintendent, Wells, and some other men who were present; assuming, quite rightly, that some new occurrence had caused Gregory to alter his plans completely.

  Gregory sat silent in front of the Superintendent's desk puffing a little more rapidly than usual at a cigarette. Lord Gavin's letter had shaken him worse than any other incident that had occurred in his decidedly exciting career.

  For an hour he had wrestled with himself once more; turning over in his mind again and again all the possibilities which might develop from the alternative sequence of actions he might take. Sabine was now a prisoner and he had not the faintest doubt that the soulless, deformed, little monstrosity, round whom the whole conspiracy centred, meant to 'kill her out of hand if he had the least suspicion that his warning had been disregarded.

  In the face of that all Gregory's courage had temporarily ebbed away and, single-handed as he was, he had felt that he simply dare not risk raiding Quex Park. Lord Gavin would almost certainly be protected by his gunmen; Sabine was a prisoner in an upstairs room and in addition the situation was horribly complicated by the presence, outside the Park, of members of the police force who would have been told off to watch for him.

  Later, he had. been sorely tempted to throw discretion to the winds, go in bald-headed,
and chance what might happen; but in his saner moments he realised that the odds were so terribly against him that it would be sheer madness to do so. If Sabine were taken by the police it meant that she would receive a prison sentence; but by making a premature move he would place her life itself in jeopardy.

  Cursing the necessity of deferring personal action, he had decided that his only hope now lay in leading the police to suppose that he was completely loyal to them. Lord Gavin could know nothing of the projected raid on Eastchurch Marshes; by participating in it Gregory saw that he would at least learn of all new developments at first hand. Such information might prove invaluable and he just trust to his judgment, once the raid was made, as to the best moment to slip away from the police and act independently. He had brought Rudd with him to Scotland Yard knowing he could rely upon that loyalist's cooperation in any circumstances; now he sat listening intently, but saying nothing, as the big Superintendent outlined his plans.

  Marrowfat's oration was brief. With a map spread before him he pointed with a stubby finger to various places on it. The Kent constabulary were cooperating with them; special levies drawn from Rochester, Chatham, Sittingbourne and Maidstone would take up their positions on Sheppey Island directly dusk had fallen. The Thames River Police had also been called in. With launches manned to capacity they would slip down the north coast of the island after dark, rendezvousing near the Ham Fishery buoy in the deeper water a couple of miles or more to the north of Shell Ness. Sound detectors would be on board some of the launches and they would lie in wait there until the motor barges of the smugglers passed south of them up the channel of the East Swale; upon which they would move in and close the mouth of the river. The Superintendent's own party, consisting of some Special Branch men, Sir Pellinore, Gregory and Wells would leave by car immediately and, crossing the West Swale to Sheppey, rendezvous at Queenborough. Small arms and ammunition were then to be served out.

  A quarter of an hour after Sir Pellinore's arrival at the Yard the little crowd of muscular big chinned men shouldered their way out along the passageway from the Superintendent's room, down the stairs, and into the waiting line of swift supercharged cars.

  Gregory had brought his own car for his own perfectly good reasons. He got into the back with Sir Pellinore; leaving Rudd to drive it and a plain clothes man beside him to decide on the route they were to take.

  As they ran out of the courtyard behind the others Gregory found his thoughts distracted from Sabine for a moment by admiration for the police organisation. There was no fuss or bother; no disturbance of the traffic. The fleet of cars did not form a procession, but separated immediately, all taking different prearranged routes down into the City and through Southwark, on the south side of the Thames, to the scene of their midnight activities.

  They were at Queenborough before half past eight and, having already had his instructions, the plainclothes man beside Rudd conducted them to the police station which served the docks. Wells and Marrowfat had just driven up but there was no sign of the squad of Special Branch men who had left the Yard with them.

  Sir Pellinore and Gregory got out and followed the Superintendent into the station. In the private office there he introduced them to the Chief Constable of Kent and a number of local officers from Chatham, Rochester and Maidstone. Standing in front of a large scale map, which hung upon the wall of the plainly furnished room, the police chiefs spent half an hour discussing the positions which were soon to be taken up by their various bodies of men on both banks of Windmill Creek and along the southern coast of the Isle of Sheppey.

  A local Inspector who had reconnoitred Eastchurch Marshes that afternoon gave them a brief description of the terrain where the landing was expected.

  'We shall proceed to Eastchurch village,' he said, 'and leave our cars there; parked out of sight in garages for which I've already arranged. We shall then go on foot down the byway leading south from the village. It's about a two-mile walk through low-lying unwooded country. There's a little cultivated land here and there; but it's mostly marsh which is waterlogged in winter. However, fortunately for us, it's dry enough to walk on without any danger of being bogged this time of the year.

  'You'll see from the map the track I'm speaking of doesn't run right down to the water so, at the bend, just at point 13 which marks a slight rise in the ground, we shall turn right and cross the fields for about five hundred yards until we strike that second track which actually leads to the creek. That's probably the road they'll use. That, or the third track half a mile to the right again, which ends at the creek where it's marked "Hook Quay".

  'The only buildings between the second and third tracks are a collection of empty tumbledown sheds near Hook Quay and a new cottage on the river bank about two hundred yards south of it which was only built a few months ago. The cottage is inhabited but, as the people who live there may be in with the crowd we're after, I didn't like to risk rousing their suspicions by going near the place when I was having a look round this afternoon.'

  The whole party then left the station and, piling into four cars, drove off along the good road to the north of the island until they came to the little village of Eastchurch.

  Having garaged the cars they began their walk, crossing the railway line at Eastchurch Station half a mile south of the village, and proceeding after that into the gathering dusk which had now descended upon the lonely stretch of country before them.

  They left the lane at point 13 and struck across the low-lying ground with its coarse tufts of high marsh grass, found the road to the east and turned south along it, until they arrived on the banks of the creek; a sluggish stream set between sloping muddy levels.

  The opposite bank was about a hundred and fifty yards away and, although scores of police were now lurking in the neighbourhood, not a soul was visible in the failing light. The only life apparent in that desolate waste was an oyster catcher pecking in the mud and a few screaming seagulls which wheeled overhead.

  The Chief Constable's party turned inland along the bank towards Hook Quay, making a detour to avoid passing within sight of the new brick cottage which the local inspector had described, and arriving just before ten o'clock at the cluster of empty sheds.

  It was dark now and producing their torches, once they were inside the ramshackle buildings, the police made a thorough investigation of them.

  They were quite empty but showed signs of recent use. Their windows had been boarded over so that no lights could show and gaps in the wooden walls had been pasted over with brown paper. The earthen floors showed marks where heavy cases had been thrown down upon them and in two of the larger sheds cartwheel tracks were visible.

  'It looks as if they work things differently here and store the stuff instead of getting it away immediately,' Wells remarked. 'Although, of course, a fleet of lorries may come rumbling down the lane outside to meet them when they turn up.'

  '1 doubt it,' replied the Superintendent. 'A dozen lorries rumbling along the Ashford road or anywhere behind all those coast towns in Thanet wouldn't call for special comment. But here in Sheppey it's different. The roads don't lead anywhere so convoys passing in the middle of the night, even once or twice a month, would be certain to arouse some inquisitive person's suspicions. They wouldn't dare risk that. In my opinion they store the stuff here and local farm carts come along later to collect it. The carts probably deliver the goods to some other depot on the west end of the island, south of Queenborough, where it would be easy to transfer them to the railway with so much goods traffic passing from the docks there up to London.'

  Gregory drew Rudd outside and into a smaller shed near by where they were quite alone together. Kneeling down on the floor he spread out his map and shone his torch upon it.

  'See where we are now Hook Quay?' he said in a low voice.

  'Yes sir,' muttered Rudd.

  'Right. Think you can find your way back to the village?'

  'Easy. Straight up the track that leads from here. 'Crorst t
he railway at the level crossin'. Turn right along that second-class road south of the one we come to Eastchurch by for half a mile and there we are. Simple as kiss me 'and.'

  'Good lad.' Gregory patted his arm affectionately. 'Now I want you to fade out when no one's looking. Go back to Eastchurch, collect the car, and drive it to the farm marked "Old Hook" on the map. That's just halfway up the track between these sheds and the railway. I daren't let you bring it nearer in case the people here catch the sound of the engine, send a man to investigate, and finding it's my car tumble to what I'm up to. When you reach Old Hook turn the car round and park it at the roadside, facing north, ready for an instant getaway. If one of the local coppers who're playing hide and seek all over the countryside tonight ask what you're up to just say you're acting on Superintendent Marrowfat's orders. We must risk their disbelieving you and coming over to report. When you're through, leave the car and join me here again to let me know everything's all right. That clear?'

  'You bet it is. I'll be back under the hour sir.'

  Rudd slipped out of the hut and vanished in the darkness. Gregory folded up his map and rejoined the others. Just outside the largest shed Wells was standing; peering down at the small wharf which jutted out from the bank into the sluggish stream.

  'What about having a quiet look at that cottage the local man mentioned,' Gregory suggested, coming up behind him.

  Wells nodded. 'Righto. It's very unlikely anything will happen for an hour or more, so we've plenty of time.'

  The two left the shed together and made their way cautiously along the bank of the creek. Six hundred yards from the shacks they came round a sharp bend and saw a light directly ahead a little way in front of them.

  'That'll be it,' muttered Gregory. 'I'll bet the earth whoever lives there is in this thing.'

  Picking their way carefully they approached nearer to the small two storied house. It had no garden, only a back yard filled with rubble that the builders had left, and no road or lane led to it. The light came from a downstairs window; covered by a thin cretonne curtain.