It seemed an age since he had sprung off the plane; an eternity since he had begun his fight against the up rushing air to force his hand into the ripcord. At last he found it and, half choking from relief, jerked it with all his might.
Nothing happened. He pulled again but the cord was hanging loose now in his hand. Still nothing happened. He made a desperate effort to force his head round so that he could look over his shoulder. The movement flung him out of his spin and he was facing the earth head downwards again. The 'T' of flares was much bigger now. It seemed like some fiery group of stars rushing up out of the darkness which would roar past him over his right shoulder with the speed of an express train at any second. But it wouldn’t he knew that. When his right shoulder came level with the flares he would hit the earth. It would be as though some giant, greater than any fabled hero, had flung the whale world at him. He would be broken, burst, shattered into a thousand fragments by that appalling impact.
Almost sick with horror, he pulled and pulled at the useless rip cord, while he alternately cursed his utter folly in flinging himself to his death and gasped breathless prayers to God to save him.
Time ceases to exist at such awful moments. He was still plunging downwards at a fantastic speed and had virtually given himself up as finished when, without a second's warning, his arms were nearly torn from their sockets and a violent jerk at the belt round his middle drove the breath out of his body.
He had forgotten that a short interval must elapse between releasing the parachute and its opening to its full spread when it would arrest his headlong descent. Now, as that thought flashed into his agonised mind, he could still hardly believe that the safety device had begun to function efficiently the second he had pulled the cord.
His feet sank down lower than his head and before he knew quite what had happened he was standing upright, swaying a little from side to side, his long legs dangling.
Almost collapsing with relief he found he could look upwards and saw the dome of the fully opened parachute like a great dark mushroom against the starlit sky above.
For the first time since leaving the plane he was able to gasp in a full breath and look about him consciously. The 'T' of flares towards his right was still larger now but only the blackness of the land below had caused him to think he was so near it. His terror had been engendered by his complete inexperience; for he had made a good take off, although he had lost some seconds before being able to pull the rip cord, but when he had done so the parachute had opened perfectly normally.
The swaying motion increased, until he was covering an arc of about thirty degrees; as if he were the pendulum of some huge clock. He knew he should try to check the movement, otherwise he might make a bad landing, but he did not know how to, not realising that a pair of ropes now dangling one at each side of him were for that purpose. Apart from the fear that he might suddenly be swung into a tree he found the motion rather enjoyable. The lights were now rising gently towards his right, but he did not seem to be coming any nearer to them, and he judged that he would make his landing quite a long way from the smugglers' secret base.
As they came low on the horizon it warned him that he was nearing earth and he gathered his muscles taut together, so that as his feet touched he might spring into the air again, in order to reduce the force of the impact. A faint shimmer showed to his left and he realised that it was the reflection of the starlight upon a winding creek of water. Next moment the flares disappeared from view; blotted out by an unseen crest. Then his right foot hit something with a thud and instantly he was sprawling on the ground with every ounce of breath knocked out of his body.
He clutched wildly at the grass as he felt himself moving still, but sideways now, dragged by the parachute. Bumping over a ditch he was pulled into some low bushes. There was a sharp crackling as the dry twigs snapped and he thrust up his arms to protect his face, then the dragging ceased, for the parachute had sunk to earth.
For a moment he remained there, bruised and breathless, then he struggled into a sitting position and wriggled out of his harness. Only a dull glow, coming from over a crest of rising ground to the north, now indicated the smugglers' landing place. He stood up and pulled his big torch from his pocket then cursed aloud as he found that his fall had broken the bulb. He had meant to bundle up the expensive parachute and hide it somewhere but time was precious and he dared not waste it fumbling round for something that he could not see. Except for the lighter patch of sky low on the horizon to the northward, caused by the flares and the faint starlight, the whole countryside was shrouded in darkness. Abandoning the parachute he set off towards the north. Only the deeper patches of blackness indicated the taller grass and low bushes when he was almost upon them while there was nothing at all to show the frequent ditches which intersected the marshes.
Pressing forward warily, he stumbled at almost every step, and was compelled by some obstacle to alter his course every ten yards or so. He thanked his gods at least that it was August. Most of the smaller water courses now had dry beds and the marshland squelched under foot only in the lower places. To have attempted to cross this wild country in winter would have been impossible; he would have been bogged for a certainty.
As it was, he had to cross two creeks; stagnant, scummy bands of water with muddy bottoms which dragged and sucked at his boots when he floundered through them and thrust his way among the tall knifelike reeds that fringed their banks.
It was a nightmare journey. Wet to the waist, tired, bruised and angry, he struggled onward; yet the glow from the flares seemed little nearer and the going so difficult he doubted if he had traversed more than half a mile in twenty minutes. Then he came to a wire fence, climbed over, and found a steep grassy bank, up which he crawled on all fours. The top was level; next moment he tripped over a sleeper and came down heavily between two railway lines.
Picking himself up with renewed curses, he found he could now see the flares some distance away on the far side of the embankment, and turned northwest along it.
Knowing how quickly the smugglers completed their operations, he began to hurry; fearing that with all the time he had lost plunging into ditches and over tussocks of coarse grass he would be too late to find out what was going on.
He had barely covered another two hundred yards when he caught the sound of a train puffing up behind him from Dungeness and, jumping off the permanent way, slid down the bank to conceal himself while it passed.
A short goods train of no more than half a dozen closed wagons rumbled by shaking the embankment. The sparks from its engine and glare of the furnace temporarily lit up a small section of the surrounding country.
When the train had gone past Gregory stumbled on to the permanent way again and set off after it. To his surprise he saw it pull up ahead of him, opposite the flares, so he broke into a jog trot, spurred on by the thought that his gruelling experiences of the last hour might,’ after all, have been well worth while.
Five minutes later he was within fifty yards of the train's rear wagon and, slipping down the far side of the embankment, he crawled along under its cover still nearer, until he could see by the bright light of the landing flares the business which was proceeding. Beyond the flares were a couple of big planes and the smaller one in which the Limper had arrived from Quex Park. The others had already left and big stacks of boxes at intervals on a level stretch of ground showed where they had unloaded their cargoes. One of the large planes took the air as he watched and he was able to see enough of it to recognise it as a 240 h.p. twin-engine de Havilland Dragon, which would normally carry eight passengers, but in their place was capable of transporting about half a ton of cargo.
From the sound of the engine, as the plane circled in the air, he knew that something of its cruising speed, which should have been 140 m.p.h., had been sacrificed by the appliance of the latest silencing devices, so that the noise of even a fleet of these machines, crossing the coastline at six thousand feet, would barely be noticeable and
certainly not sufficient to attract undue attention.
At the bottom of the embankment he wriggled through the fence and found a dry gully which offered such excellent cover that he determined to risk crawling even nearer; soon he was crouching in it no more than twenty yards from the landing ground.
About forty men were working with frantic speed unloading the goods train; pitching dozens of wooden boxes from it down the embankment. They had already cleared the first three wagons and, while a number of them attacked the rest, the others went off to the dumps which had been unloaded from the planes, then began to carry the boxes towards the empty wagons.
For ten minutes Gregory remained a silent spectator of their intense activity. By the end of that time the contraband cargo had all been loaded on to the train, the wagons relocked, the last big plane was gone, and all the flares except one had been put out.
The train moved off and, rapidly gathering speed, disappeared in the direction of London. The men then flung themselves upon the great higgledy-piggledy pile of boxes which had been thrown out of it, and started to hump them across the landing ground, disappearing into the belt of shadows beyond which the flare did not penetrate.
'What now?' thought Gregory. 'My luck's been in so far and I'm not chucking up till I find out what they do with the stuff.' Crawling back by way of the ditch, he began to make a detour outside the lighted patch of ground and, after going a hundred yards, he stumbled through some low bushes, up a small bank and on to a road. Having crossed it, he slid down the slope on the other side and proceeded to follow the line of the lane, which curved slightly. The flare was some distance away, but he could hear muffled voices carried on the night wind to the front of him and, a moment later, came upon a thick hedge which barred his passage.
Scrambling up the bank again he got round the corner of the hedge and saw that it hid the kitchen garden of a solitary house, which loomed up before him, abutting on the road. A faint square of light filtering through a heavy curtain marked one of its down stair windows.
He got down on his hands and knees and crawled forward under cover of the hedge which here fringed the roadside. The voices of the men grew louder as he advanced and then he saw the dark outline of a lorry. There were others behind it and on these the men were busily loading the boxes that had come off the train.
From this new position he could see some of the smugglers in the distance, silhouetted against the light of the flare, as with the boxes on their shoulders they trudged in Indian file across the grassland. Suddenly the last flare was put out and two minutes later the loading of the lorries was completed. The men climbed into them and the lightless convoy set off in the direction of New Romney.
One by one they crawled past Gregory, where he crouched in the shadows, and shortly after the last one had disappeared a sudden vibrant hum, which grew lower and then receded, told him that the Limper had departed unseen in his plane. The rumble of the lorries faded in the distance and an utter silence closed down upon the deserted stretch of country. Not a sign or sound remained to show the illegal activity which' had been going on there so recently.
Gregory came out into the lane and tiptoed along it towards the front of the silent house The light in the ground floor room had gone out but there was now one showing in a front window upstairs. The heavy curtains had been carelessly drawn and a bright ray filtered through between them. The window was too high for Gregory to see into the room, but a wooden sign above the doorway of the place showed that it was a wayside inn and, by the light which came from the crack between the curtains he was just able to make out the lettering upon it. Thankful that he would be able to find the place again in this desolate stretch of country he read the faded lettering on the weather-beaten board. It was the Brown Owl Inn and he knew that it must lie within a few hundred yards of the railway line south of Romney.
Turning away, he walked up the road for a hundred yards and lit a cigarette. He was unutterably tired and now he had to trudge he didn't know how many miles before he could get a lift into Ashford. That seemed the nearest place where there would be any chance of his picking up an early train. He could sleep there, of course, or knock up some pub which he might pass on his road, but that did not fit in with his way of doing things. Wells would be anxious about him and eager to hear the result of his night's work. The extra hour or two in passing on the information he had secured might make all the difference so, tired as he was, he hardly thought of bed, but determined to get back to Quex Park at the earliest possible moment. Chin down, and in his long loping stride, he set off up the road inland.
15
Glorious Day
Inspector Gerry Wells was the lucky one this time. He very definitely had the soft side of the deal and, while the wretched Gregory was still hurtling through the air in fear of an imminent and horrible death, the Inspector turned his plane north-westward heading back towards Thanet. He was not risking any more night landings in the fields outside Quex Park without adequate reason so he came down on the well lit landing ground of the Royal Air Force Depot at Mansion, about midway between Quex Park, Margate and Ramsgate. Having presented his official card to the officer on duty, the courtesy of accommodation for his plane was extended to him and he managed to get a lift in a car to Margate where, feeling that he had earned a comfortable night's rest, he went straight to the Queen's Highcliffe Hotel.
One of the hotel guests had had to return to London suddenly that evening because his son had been taken dangerously ill. It was only this fortuitous chance which enabled the night porter to give the detective a bed at the height of the August season with every room booked for a month ahead.
Early rising was a habit with Gerry Wells. He was as fit as a fiddle in wind and limb and a few hours of deep healthy sleep were all he needed to prepare him for another almost indefinite period of activity.
Splashing in his bath at half past six he only controlled the impulse to burst into song at the thought of the other guests who were still sleeping. He was not unduly worried about Gregory because he knew the care with which service parachutes are packed and inspected; it never even occurred to him that the great silk balloon might fail to open.
He thought that Gregory might perhaps have had a bit of a shaking when he landed, owing to the fact that he had never had any instruction in parachute jumping, but Mr. Sallust was a tough customer to the Inspector's mind and, therefore, should come to little harm. Moreover, Wells had made certain that his unofficial colleague would drop well away from the smugglers' base so there was no likelihood of his descending in the midst of their illegal activities and being bumped on the head for his pains.
As the Inspector rubbed himself vigorously with his towel his thoughts turned to Milly Chalfont at the Park. What a delightful little thing she was, so slight and graceful, so utterly unspoiled, and so friendly too in spite of her apparent shyness. Gerry was rather a shy fellow himself where women were concerned and although he could admire Sabine as a work of art he would have been terrified of having anything to do with her outside his official business.
While he dressed he reviewed the situation and found it good. His investigation had progressed by leaps and bounds in the last forty-eight hours, thanks of course largely to that lean, queer, cynical devil, Gregory Sallust, but Wells had no stupid pride about the matter. It was his job to run Lord Gavin's crew to earth and he was only too grateful for any help which might be given him. He assumed, quite reasonably, not knowing what a tiger Gregory could be when he had got his teeth into a thing, that his ally, stranded in Romney Marshes, would spend the night at some local inn, whether he had secured any information or not and, therefore, it was most unlikely that he would put in an appearance again much before midday. There was nothing Wells could do to further his inquiry until Gregory turned up and the golden August morning lay before him. His thoughts gravitated again towards Milly and Quex Park. Had Sabine spent the night there or gone off again after all? In any case it obviously seemed his business to go o
ver and find out.
After an early breakfast he paid his bill and left the hotel. Crowds of holiday makers had risen early too. Family parties, the children with their spades and pails, the elders with their towels and bathing costumes slung across their shoulders, were already making their way from boarding houses and apartments down Petman's Gap to play cricket on the sands, or bathe in the shallow waters of the low tide, which sparkled in the sunlight, ebbing and rippling in little chuckling waves a quarter of a mile away from the tall white cliffs. Gerry Wells watched them with a smile. He liked to see people happy, but he wondered what they would think if they knew of his last night's adventure. That he was a Scotland Yard man they might credit easily enough; that he was on a special inquiry and had been allotted an aeroplane to undertake it, would cause interest and a pleasant feeling that they were in the know about the police not being such a slow-witted lot as some people were inclined to think; but if he had told them that this international smuggling racket was something far more important than anyone could suppose; that it might lead to dangerous criminals and agitators being landed secretly by night, and so evading the immigration officers at the ports; that bombs and poison gas might be imported, which would lead to civil war, to the destruction of their homes, and perhaps the loss of their lives caught up into street fighting that was none of their seeking, they would certainly think that he was romancing or an unfortunate fellow who ought to be locked up in an asylum.
On the corner he managed to get a place in a Canterbury bus, already crowded with happy trippers off to see the old cathedral town and the bloodstained stone where Thomas a Becket had been foully done to death by the three Knights so many hundreds of years ago.
He dropped off at Birchington churchyard in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti lies buried but he did not pause to visit the poet's grave. Instead he turned up Park Lane; his thoughts very much with the living. Outside the west gate of Quex Park he met his man who was keeping in touch with Mrs. Bird.
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