Contraband

by Dennis Wheatley

  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 shootable, 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 some-thing-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 11 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 Rothschilds 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 arm-chair. ‘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 cob-webbed 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 café 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 story-teller and always save the tit-bit 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 king-pin 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, fool-proof 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 fool-proof 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 Café de la Cloche in Calais tomorrow night.’

  ‘Good, but as the police are already mixed up in this I think you ought to co-operate 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.<
br />
  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.’