As they came out again from the Mairie in the evening sunlight he remarked to Rudd: ‘Our birds won’t operate until after dark in any case so there’s no sense in making ourselves conspicuous. We’ll go to the Hotel Terminus. So few people stop in Calais that I cannot think why it should be worth the proprietor’s while, but it’s a fact that it has a first-class cellar, and the fresh-caught local soles cooked a special way are a thing to dream over.’
‘That’s O.K. by me, sir,’ agreed Rudd, ‘although I’d rather have a good steak and chips. I never was one for these frenchi-fied foods, in a manner of speaking.’
‘You shall have a Château Briand, which is French for an outsize steak, to your own cheek, and a bottle of vin rouge to wash it down.’
The strangely assorted couple obtained an excellent meal, entirely satisfactory to both their divergent tastes and, by the time they had finished, darkness had fallen.
During dinner Gregory had been carefully considering the problem of how he could best install himself at the Café de la Cloche without arousing suspicion. To visit it was simple enough, but he might have to remain there for several hours, and from the description which the old woman at the Mairie had given him of the place, it hardly seemed one at which a well-dressed traveller would choose to linger. True, he had brought a disreputable looking old raincoat for just such a possibility—the pockets of which bulged with his gun, night glasses, and a big torch—but that hardly seemed enough.
The fact that Rudd was so obviously an Englishman, and could hardly speak a word of French was also certain to raise comment in such an out-of-the-way spot. He could leave Rudd outside, of course, but he preferred to have him with him so that he could send him off at once to shadow anybody whom he wished to have followed. Moreover, if this estaminet were the headquarters of a gang there was a possibility that one of the thugs who he had come up against in Trouville might be there and, if he were recognised, a rough house was certain to ensue. Gregory was perfectly capable of taking care of himself but all the same it would be a comfortable thought to know that Rudd was with him. From past experience he knew well that the excellent Mr. Rudd could prove a magnificent ally and an extremely ugly sort of customer in any fracas.
After dinner, by an offer of lavish payment, he managed to hire a car to drive himself from a garage. It was a Citroën and had seen better days but that suited his purpose admirably.
At ten o’clock they packed themselves into its worn seats and Gregory drove slowly out of the town; explaining to Rudd his plan of campaign as he did so.
‘I want to snoop around at this place a bit,’ he said, ‘and unless I can get what I’m after I don’t want to leave until they chuck us out. We’re on a motoring holiday—you and I—and another bloke named Brown. We intended to move on to Boulogne tonight, but this wretched old bus let us down a few hundred yards from the estaminet. We’ve sent poor old Brown to footslog it back into Calais and come out with a mechanic to do the necessary repairs.
‘In the meantime we’ve dined damn well, and that’s the truth God knows, but we’ll give them the impression we’ve dined a damn’ sight better; not tight you know, but just about half a one over the odds, so what’s more natural than we should knock off a few more drinks at this place while we’re waiting for old Brown and the motor merchant.
‘If he fails to turn up in an hour or so we may think it a bit strange, in fact even funny that the poor blighter’s lost his way, but by that time we’ll be fairly well ginned up and not caring two hoots in hell for anybody. We’ll start talking of making a night of it as we refresh ourselves with further potions of the local poison. Round about midnight we’ll agree that old Brown’s lost himself and obviously returned to the hotel in Calais, where we spent last night. Then we’ll say, for the benefit of anyone who’s listening, that we’ll do the same ourselves and foot it back when we feel like bed. It’s not likely they’ll turn us out as long as we look like buying another drink off them since there are none of these fool early closing laws in France. If they do, we’ll know that there’s something fishy going on, then we’ll have to continue our watch outside. Get the idea?’
‘Yes, sir. Sounds like a first-class pub crawl, without the crawl in it, ter me. I’ve often wished there weren’t no early closing hours in England.’
While Gregory was speaking they had driven clear of the last houses of the town and were now out in the open country with the rolling downland all about them. A few minutes later a solitary building came into view at the roadside on the brow of a low hill.
‘That’ll be it, unless I’m much mistaken,’ said Gregory, ‘so I think it’s about here we’ll ditch the car.’
He slowed down and ran it off the road into a shallow gully, then climbed out, remarking: ‘I don’t want to leave her on the road in case some fool breaks his neck by crashing into her. We’ll say we had to run into the bank to avoid a speed maniac and that the jolt snapped something. We don’t know what as we’re not mechanics, only holiday-makers who’ve bought a cheap car for our trip.’
Side by side they trudged up the slope to the solitary building. It proved to be no more than a couple of ancient flint-walled cottages knocked into one, but a creaking sign above the doorway established the fact that it was the Café de la Cloche. Before it, on the stony ground, stood a few rusty iron tables and battered chairs. The place was shuttered but lights came through the cracks of two windows and from beneath the heavy door. No other sign of life showed about the place and it was wrapped in a deep silence.
It was so old and tumbledown that Gregory allowed his vivid imagination to play upon it. He felt that it had probably already been an inn in Napoleon’s day, frequented by gay Hussars and Chasseurs of the Guard from that mighty ‘Army of the Ocean’ that the Emperor had assembled on the nearby downs for his projected invasion of England in 1802. It was just the sort of place too, where spies might have met by night in those far-off times, to exchange secret intelligence about activities in the Channel ports after having run the gauntlet of the British fleet in some lightless lugger, while ten years earlier, aristocrats escaping from the Red Terror might have made rendezvous there before their final dash into exile and safety.
Dismissing his romantic speculations, Gregory kicked open the door and walked in with Rudd behind him. Inside, the place was like a hundred small estaminets which they had visited behind the lines, years before in the Great War. A bar ran down one side of the room; behind it on the shelves was a meagre collection of bottles, mostly fruit syrups, many of which, from their tattered labels, looked as though they had stood there for generations. A dark, blowzy, sullen-eyed French girl sat behind the bar knitting. A handful of men occupied three out of the five cheap wooden tables covered with red-and-white checked clothes. One group was playing dominoes; the rest were talking in subdued voices. All of them had the appearance of French peasants or fishermen. The air was heavy with stale tobacco smoke, the fumes of cheap spirits, and the odour of unwashed humanity.
‘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 café 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.
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 café 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 downland.
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 blurr of their moving figures in the semi-darkness for the third time, and now, although he chanced discovery by trotting forward a hundred yards he failed to regain 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 downlands, 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 hi
gh 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.
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