‘Certainly, sir. It will be a pleasure to have you with us,’ Marrowfat assured him.
On that the conference broke up; Sir Pellinore and Gregory leaving the room together.
From Scotland Yard they crossed Whitehall, entered St. James’s Park at Birdcage Walk and, turning left, crossed the Horse Guards Parade towards Carlton House Terrace.
The fine spell was over. London had had her week of summer and, although the weather continued warm, grey clouds hung low overhead. The Park looked dry and dusty; the flowers had wilted in the recent heat wave. Most of them were fading and, as the gardeners had not yet had time to clear the beds for fresh varieties, many of them presented only a tangle of overgrown greenery. A spattering of idlers lay sprawled upon the tired parched grass and here and there a handful of children played within sight of their knitting nursemaids. The atmosphere was heavy and depressing.
Gregory and Sir Pellinore did not exchange a word as they walked on side by side until they reached Waterloo steps and were ascending them towards the terrace.
‘You’ll lunch with me?’ asked Sir Pellinore. ‘That will pass a little of the time while we’re waiting.’
‘Thanks, I’d like to. D’you think they’ll raid Quex Park tonight?’
‘I haven’t a doubt of it. Marrowfat is not a fool and Gavin Fortescue must realise by now that the tide is running swiftly against him. He’s probably making his preparations for departure at this moment. If the police don’t rope him in tonight they will have lost an opportunity which may not recur for months to come.’
‘In that case I may not be with you.’
Sir Pellinore grunted. ‘I had an idea that might be so. You’re a clever feller, Gregory, and I doubt if they spotted anything at the Yard but I know you so well. You’re worried about that young Hungarian baggage, aren’t you?’
‘I am,’ Gregory agreed. ‘Damnably worried. If they pull her in with the rest of the gang she’ll be sent to prison.’
‘Her sentence will be considerably reduced on account of the fact that she enabled us to come to your assistance the other night.’
Gregory shrugged impatiently. ‘That’s no consolation. It might be for a down and out who’s been used to sleeping in doss-houses and queueing up for charity grub. But think of a girl like Sabine in prison. Every month she gets will be like a year in hell. Have you ever visited a women’s prison? I have. The smell of the place alone is enough to make you sick. Sour, sterile; cabbage soup, disinfectant, soap-suds—all mixed up. Think of the irritation to her skin from the coarse garments they’ll make her wear; how her stomach will heave when she has to swallow the skilly to keep herself alive, and her hands with broken nails, red and raw from the wash tubs and floor scrubbing. Think of the ghastly creatures she’ll have to mix with too. It’s well known that women criminals are ten times as vicious as male crooks. They’ll torture her every moment of the day from sheer loathing of anyone better than themselves.…’
‘I know, I know,’ Sir Pellinore broke in. ‘I would do anything in my power to save her from that if I could; but even my influence is not sufficient to secure a free pardon for her unless she is prepared to turn King’s Evidence.’
They did not speak again until they had entered the house and were seated in the big library overlooking the Mall; then Sir Pellinore rang the bell.
‘Tell Garwood to send up a magnum of Röederer ’20,’ he said to the footman who answered his ring, then he turned back to Gregory.
‘Nothing like champagne; only possible drink when you’ve been working overtime and are worried into the bargain. Gives you just the right fillip to carry on without doping you a hair’s breadth. The twenties are getting on in age now, of course, but they’re still grand wines if they’ve been well kept and, in my opinion, the Röederer was the best of ’em.’
Garwood arrived, portly, priestlike: preceding the footman who carried the double bottle in a bucket of ice and two large silver tankards on a big tray.
‘Shall I open it, sir?’ the butler asked. ‘It hasn’t had long on the ice but coming from the cellar it will be at quite a drinkable temperature.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Sir Pellinore, and the two tankards were filled till the bursting bubbles topped their brims.
‘Good thought of yours to order a magnum,’ Gregory remarked. ‘Wine always keeps so much better in magnums than in bottles and in bottles than in pints. The only trouble with a magnum is, it’s too much for one and not enough for two.’
Sir Pellinore brushed up his fine white moustache and smiled. ‘Plenty more where it came from. We’ll knock off another with our lunch if you feel like it.’
The servants had left the room; yet both men displayed curious reluctance to speak again of the topic which was really occupying their minds.
Gregory drank deep and sighed. ‘How much better this stuff drinks out of a tankard,’ he said slowly. ‘The same thing in a footling little glass wouldn’t be half as good.’
‘You never said a truer word my boy. Think how horrid tea would taste in a port-wine glass, or burgundy in anything except a big round goblet, just half-full, so that one can get the aroma. Brandy too—although, curiously enough, all the other liqueurs lose their flavour in big glasses and are better in thimbles—provided one has the thimbles refilled often enough—but champagne’s a tankard wine, not a doubt of it.’
They fell silent again until Sir Pellinore said, at last, with a swift look at his guest:
‘Well, what’re you going to do?’
‘Go down and get her out before they raid the place tonight.’
‘Risky—isn’t it? Hundred to one they’re watching you. Some flatfoot in a bowler probably kicking his heels outside this house even now.’
‘I know, that’s the big difficulty. I can get rid of him all right. I’ve played tip and run before. Any tube station or big store with several entrances will provide the means for me to throw him off my track; but the devil of it is that these blokes know me. Another of them will pick me up on the station if I go by train or one of his pals will spot me if I motor down. I dare not move till after dark and we have no idea what time that clever old elephant Marrowfat will get to work.’
‘You’re taking a pretty nasty risk you know,’ said Sir Pellinore quietly. ‘Obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, aiding a known criminal to escape from the country, and all that sort of thing. You’ll be a sitting pheasant for three months in prison yourself if you’re not darned careful.’
‘I know it. But what the hell! I’ve got to get her out of it somehow, haven’t I?’
‘Of course. I should feel just the same, but you’ve got your work cut out and I’ll be devilled if I see how you’re going to do it. Got any sort of plan?’
‘No. I’m absolutely in the air at the moment and I’m not liking the situation one little bit. I’ll tell you just how I stand.’
Gregory refilled his tankard, sat forward in the deep armchair, and told Sir Pellinore how things were between himself and Sabine; ending up with an account of her visit to his flat on the previous night.
When he had done Sir Pellinore looked unusually grave, ‘From what you tell me the situation is worse than I imagined. You don’t even know if the wench is willing to quit, so maybe you’ll have to get her out of Gavin Fortescue’s clutches against her will, as well as clear of the police.’
‘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. ‘All 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 plain-clothes 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, 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 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 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 co-operation 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 co-operating 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 pre-arranged routes down into the City and through Southwark, on the south side of the Thames, to the scene of their midnight activities.
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