Contraband gs-1 Read online

  'Monsieur?' said the girl, standing up and abandoning her knitting.

  Gregory asked for whisky, but she had none, so he changed his order to cognac and she poured two portions from an unlabelled bottle into thick glasses.

  He had become suddenly garrulous and friendly. Leaning across the bar he told her about their 'accident', and laughed somewhat hilariously at the thought of poor old Brown now trudging back to Calais. Then he went on to speak of their holiday; purposely refraining from using his best French and helping out his apparently scanty knowledge of the language with frequent vivid gestures.

  The girl proved a poor audience. She was a dull creature and her share in the conversation was limited to polite meaningless expressions and a series of nods.

  When the topic of their holiday was exhausted Gregory asked permission to remove the bottle to a table in the far corner and, with Rudd, parked himself at it.

  So far he had purposely refrained from even glancing at the other visitors; giving them ample time to accept this invasion of their haunt by strangers. They had settled down again now after having listened with one ear to the story he had told the girl behind the bar.

  When he had seated himself in the corner with his back to the wall, so that he could survey the whole of the low raftered room, he scrutinised each figure in turn while keeping up a desultory conversation with Rudd. He carefully hid his satisfaction as he noticed that one of the three men who were talking at a table near the doorway was the dark, curly haired young thug who had thrown a knife at him a few nights before in Trouville. Mr. Corot of the telegram, Gregory decided to assume for the moment.

  Pulling his raincoat up round his ears, and his hat down over his eyes, he shifted his chair a little so that Rudd should come between him and the Frenchman in case the fellow happened to glance round. He had no desire at all to be recognised at the moment.

  At a little before eleven the domino party broke up and the players left the estaminet. Only five others, including the curly headed knife thrower, now remained, and they were all seated together. Gregory and Rudd were halfway through the litre bottle of brandy. It was cheap, fiery stuff, but both of them possessed heads like rocks and if they had ceased drinking Gregory knew they would soon be informed that they had outstayed their welcome.

  They talked together in English but avoided all mention of the real reason for their presence at the cafe in case 'Corot' or one of his friends should understand the language.

  It was a dreary business waiting there for they did not know quite what, but something to happen, and Gregory was thankful when, at about a quarter past eleven 'Corot' stood up, obviously summoned by a few musical notes upon a motor horn, twice repeated, from a spot not far distant on the road outside.

  As he left the inn the notes on the motor horn were sounded again with evident impatience which gave Gregory the opportunity to say casually to the girl behind the bar, 'I wonder if that's our friend, poor old Brown, who's found our ditched car at last and is wondering what's happened to us. As he wouldn't know we're here I think we'd better go and see.'

  He pulled out a note and paid the bill in a leisurely way, treating the girl to some cheerful half tipsy badinage before he left, in order to avoid the appearance of deliberately following the other man.

  It was Rudd who, fearing that they would miss the fellow in the darkness unless they left without further delay, muttered something about 'not keeping old Brown waiting any longer', and pulling Gregory by the arm led him outside.

  'Good lad,' muttered Gregory directly they were clear of the cafe. 'We managed that exit splendidly. Now, where's our curly haired assassin got to?'

  They could not see the man but fifty yards down the road stood a car. Keeping in the shadows they made their way along the side of the estaminet and then by a wide detour through an adjoining field until they came opposite the place where it stood in the roadway.

  Like the majority of French roads, there was no hedge separating it from the field, behind which they could shelter, but only a ditch, so they had to get down on their hands and knees and crawl the last twenty yards to avoid being seen against the skyline.

  The car was a powerful limousine and 'Corot' was standing by its doorway on the side nearest the ditch. A faint light lit the interior of the car and Gregory smiled in the darkness as he recognised the small hunched figure on the back seat. Then he caught his breath for beyond Lord Gavin sat Sabine; looking even more beautiful than his memory of her. He grasped Rudd's arm and pressed it.

  'Take a good look at the old boy,' he whispered. 'That's the fellow we're after; Lord Gavin Fortescue's his name. Looks like an archbishop, doesn't he, but he probably deserves to die kicking at the end of a rope more than any man in Europe. Think you'd know him again?'

  'Sure thing, sir,' Rudd whispered back. 'Looks like a monkey on a stick ter me, but 'e's got a distinguished sort of dial I will say. And ain't his girl friend a bit of orlright.'

  Lord Gavin was talking in a quick low voice to 'Corot'. The watchers could not catch his words but they saw him pass over a sheaf of papers.

  The handsome knife thrower touched his checked cap; then closed the car door and it was driven away at a high speed towards Boulogne.

  For a second Gregory considered attacking the thug for the purpose of seizing the papers he had just received from Lord Gavin, but the chances were that, if they set on him, his shouts would bring his four friends tumbling out of the cafe before they could master him and get away. In any case, Gregory decided, more valuable information would probably be obtained by remaining under cover for the time being and following the man to see where he went.

  'Corot' only waited long enough for the dust, thrown up by the car, to disperse, then he returned to the estaminet; but only to poke his head inside the door.

  A moment later, the four others joined him outside and, as the whole party set off together up the road, Gregory saw that all five of them were now carrying things that looked like fat cylinders or oil drums, slung across their backs.

  He gave them a few minutes' start; then followed. It was easy to keep the group in view as the road switched backed towards the rising ground and on each low crest they stood out plainly silhouetted against the starlit sky. After a mile they left the main road and took a track leading in the direction of the coast. Along this Gregory and Rudd had more difficulty in keeping sight of them as it wound in and out among the dips and hillocks of the deserted down land.

  No lights were to be seen in any direction and Gregory knew that they were now well inside that desolate windswept triangle, entirely lacking in roads and villages, which lies between the three points; Boulogne, Calais and Cape Gris Nez.

  A good two miles were covered, then the Frenchmen turned in the direction of Boulogne again, leaving the track to trudge over the short coarse grass. There was little cover in this open country which made the shadowing of them more difficult. Gregory had to drop much further behind, allowing them time to mount each gentle slope and disappear into the next shallow valley before he and Rudd dared to move on again, in case one of them should turn suddenly and realise that they were being followed.

  Twice Gregory lost his quarry for a moment "but on each occasion he managed to pick them up again because, all unsuspicious, they were laughing and talking as they walked, and their voices carried clearly on the light airs of the still warm night.

  They had long since left behind the last twinkling lights of Calais Town. It was over an hour since they had left the inn and in all that time they had not passed a single farmstead or seen a human being. As the slopes began to rise more steeply Gregory realised that they were moving towards the high ground which dominates that uninhabited area and is known as Mont Couple.

  The group in front suddenly fell silent and must have turned off in a new direction for Gregory lost the shadowy blur of their moving figures in the semidarkness for the third time, and now, although he chanced discovery by trotting forward a hundred yards he failed to re
gain touch with them.

  Cursing his ill luck he stumbled up a low mound and, pulling his night glasses from his raincoat pocket, began to scan the surrounding country. For ten minutes or more, with Rudd beside him, he swept the darkened down lands, first in one direction then in another, without success, until he suddenly caught sight of a faint glow which had just appeared a quarter of a mile away, throwing the line of the next ridge up into sharp relief.

  For a moment he thought it might be caused by the lighthouse at Boulogne, but that had a sweeping beam, whereas this remained steady. With a word to Rudd he thrust his night glasses back in his pocket and they set off towards it.

  As they advanced the silvery glow grew perceptibly brighter, throwing all the surrounding country into a heavier darkness. Halfway up the ridge Gregory suddenly slipped to his knees pulling Rudd down beside him. From that point they wriggled up the last hundred yards on their stomachs. At the crest Gregory caught Rudd's arm to stop him proceeding further and gave a low chuckle.

  Below them stretched a broad shallow dip in the very centre of the high ground they had been traversing. The men they had followed had already set up two of their cylinders, from which there now hissed bright acetylene burners, and were busy with a third at the far end of the valley bottom. Soon they had completed their work and had all five flares going, spaced at irregular intervals, but marking out a fiery T at one end of a fine stretch of level grassy land hidden from any casual observer beyond its ring of encircling hills.

  Suddenly Gregory pricked up his ears. He had caught the hum of an aeroplane. A moment later the noise ceased and a big bomber passed low overhead outlined in black silhouette against the starry sky then, sinking rapidly, came to land over the flares, taking its wind direction from their formation.

  Its pilot taxied it towards the further slope and there the five men met it; but Gregory's attention was taken from it momentarily by the sound of another plane coming up from a different quarter which circled slowly overhead, came down into the wind, and taxied up alongside the first arrival.

  For the next quarter of an hour plane after plane arrived at little more than minute intervals; but Gregory's eyes were now riveted upon the activities of the men on the ground. Their number had increased to half a hundred and these had not landed from any of the planes. They were emerging from a shadowy patch at the far side of the valley and all carried cases or bales upon their shoulders which they were busily loading into the first few aeroplanes to arrive at this secret depot.

  At first Gregory was puzzled as to where the men with supplies were coming from. There were no roads or tracks within a couple of miles of this lonely spot so they could not have been brought by motor or lorry and no dumps were to be seen; although the men kept disappearing into the shadows in an irregular chain to return each time carrying a fresh load of cargo for the waiting fleet.

  Touching Rudd on the arm he began to crawl stealthily along the crest of the ridge, keeping just within the belt of shadow, until he could get a better view of the place from which this chain of supplies continued to make its mysterious appearance.

  After covering two hundred yards he was able to view the proceedings from a fresh angle and noticed what looked like a black slit in the seaward slope of the natural basin below them. It must be, he guessed, the entrance to an underground passage leading down through the old chalk caves to one of the little fishing villages, Sandgatt or Wissant, on the coast a mile or so away.

  Rudd had been drilled to silence in the old days when, as Gregory's batman, they had gone out together time and again into 'no man’s land' on the western front; but now he could restrain his curiosity no longer.

  'What's the game, sir?' he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  'Smugglers, my boy,' said Gregory grimly. 'For the last two years this outfit has been costing Britain half a million pounds a month in revenue but there's more to it than that. These birds are out to wreck the old firm of J. Bull, Home, Dominions and Colonial unless we can stop 'em. D'you feel like running a marathon?'

  "Orders is orders and got to be obeyed,' said Mr. Rudd 'Come on then.' Gregory drew back into the deeper shadows and stood up. 'We're going to run now run as we've never run in our lives. We've got to be in the air again before Gavin Fortescue's fleet starts on its way to England.'

  7

  In the Silent Hours

  Ordinarily Gregory was a lazy devil in fact he prided himself upon being a master of the gentle art of idling gracefully. He never ran when he could walk, stood when he could lean, leaned when he could sit, or sat when he could more comfortably lie down. He loathed every form of exercise and had been regarded as a crank at his public school because of his open hatred of all ball games. He would, perhaps, have proved highly unpopular on that account if nature had not endowed him with other assets; a lean sinewy body, which made him a dangerous opponent in a scrap, and a bitter caustic wit to which the games enthusiasts found it difficult to reply. Moreover, he was quixotically generous and the ringleader in any devilry which could alleviate the monotony of the dull scholastic round. In consequence, he had been forgiven his idiosyncrasy and let off the penalties which would have been meted out during their first terms to most youngsters who had such heretical tendencies and, later, he established a definite reputation as a 'bad man' which earned him much admiration among the younger boys.

  Perhaps it was the very fact that he had made it a life rule never to exert himself unnecessarily which accounted for his continued fitness. It so often happens that footballers and rowing blues run to seed and put on fat when they are compelled to abandon their regular hours of sport through the ties of business or professional life, whereas Gregory, never having put himself to any strain, had retained his supple figure and his wind unimpaired.

  He could not, of course, compete with a trained athlete but he had a wonderful reserve of strength and when he felt it necessary to use it he could put up a far better performance than the average man of his age.

  As soon as they were clear of the slope he broke into a long loping trot which Rudd, who was half a head shorter, but of far more muscular build, found it difficult to keep up with.

  The going for the first mile over the coarse grass was tiring and tricky, as they felt it too risky to show a light, but when they reached the track Gregory produced his big army torch and lit the way as they ran on side by side.

  Luck was with them when, panting and breathless, they reached the road, for they had hardly gone two hundred yards along it in the direction of Calais when a lorry loaded with fresh vegetables came rattling up behind them. Gregory hailed the driver in French and offered fifty francs for a lift into the town. The man blessed his luck and, gasping from their exertions, they scrambled on to the back of the vehicle.

  'So it's smugglers we're after,' said Rudd when he had regained his wind. 'I thought smugglers was a back number since we beat old Boney at Waterloo.'

  'Not a bit of it,' Gregory assured him. 'Free trade put them practically out of business for several generations but since protection came in with the National Government the whole racket has started up again. You see, there's a packet of money to be made now for anyone who can get silks and cameras and a score of other things into England duty free; and for the last year or two smuggling has assumed enormous proportions. The big concerns won't handle the stuff, but any amount of contraband is jobbed off cheap through some organisation in the East End to scores of little shops all over the country, which enables them to undercut the big corporations. That's why Sir Pellinore's people are getting so het up. Their turnover's been going down thousands a week in the last eighteen months and this new smuggling racket is the reason. But there's a more sinister side to it than that. I've been put on to try and run this dangerous organisation to earth; so that we can hand particulars over to the authorities and have it mopped up.'

  'Seems like you've succeeded pretty quick, sir.'

  'Good Lord no! What we've seen tonight is only one thread in the tangled sk
ein. These people must be operating on a huge scale. They've probably got half a dozen bases on this side, because if they sent every cargo from that dip in the downs the French police would get wind of it before long. We've got to find out where they land their stuff in England and how they distribute it afterwards too.'

  'Seems a chancy game ter me, anyhow, with all the planes there are flying about these days. Some bloke might fly over casual like any old night 'nd spot those flares.'

  Gregory shook his head. 'Didn't you notice the flares were placed irregularly so that the valley would not have the appearance of a proper landing ground from the air? Besides, Gavin Fortescue is as wily as the traditional serpent: we've got to give him that. If anybody visited that base in the day time there wouldn't be a thing to show what's going on, not even a cart track, because the goods are all consigned to one of the little fishing villages on the coast and brought up underground through the caves.'

  'Maybe, Mr. Gregory sir, but what abart all them planes? They've got ter have 'angars, ain't they? Though I didn't see none.'

  'Of course you didn’t because the planes are not kept there. Each one is probably registered as a privately owned machine and housed separately somewhere between here and Paris. Then, when these night birds get their orders, they go up, only land here long enough to take on their cargo and are away again over the sea. I doubt if the whole operation takes more than half an hour so, if they don't use any one base too frequently, the chances are all against their being rumbled in an almost uninhabited stretch of country like this.'

  'Half an hour, eh! Blimey, we'll have to make it snappy then if we're to be in the air before they hops it.'