Gregory shrugged. ‘Pretty enough, but quite brainless I should think. Anyhow, it was a bit of luck for us that she turned up when she did or we would have had to waste more time arguing with the old woman.’
When Mrs. Bird and the Inspector came down the stairs again Gregory asked her sharply:
‘What’s the name of this place?’
‘Quex Park, Birchington.’
‘Good, now before we go on any further I want you to satisfy yourself that our friend here really is a police inspector. The quickest way is for you to get on the telephone to Scotland Yard. You can describe him to them then and they’ll soon tell you if he’s one of their people, or not. D’you agree?’
‘That sounds sense,’ she said, a little subdued, now that she no longer had the whip hand over them.
Wells gave her the number, but Gregory insisted upon turning it up in the London Directory, so that she could have no grounds to think that they were trying to trick her; then he made her put through the call herself.
The result proving satisfactory her attitude changed at once from acute suspicion to apologetic interest.
‘Not another word, please,’ Gregory protested. ‘You were perfectly right to hold us up and you did it darned well into the bargain but now, joking apart, would it be troubling you too much if we asked you to make us a cup of tea? We’ve been up all night and I’m sure the others could do with one too.’
‘Certainly, sir, of course I will. Maybe you could do with a bite to eat as well. What about some nice scrambled eggs for an early breakfast?’
‘That’d be splendid and really kind of you. Rudd, you go along with Mrs. Bird and give her a hand. I want a word with the Inspector.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ said Rudd cheerily. ‘I’m a dab at scrambling eggs I am, as you know well enough from past experience.’
Mrs. Bird bridled. ‘You’ll do no cooking in my kitchen young man, but you can help with the plates and things.’
As they left the hall Gregory moved over to Wells, who had sat down on the settee again.
‘Now let’s try and get things straightened out a bit,’ he said. ‘I’m awfully sorry about having banged you over the head but it would never have happened if it hadn’t been for the stupidity of your own people in refusing to allow us to work together.’
‘Don’t worry about the knock you gave me.’ Well’s freckled face lit up with a boyish grin. ‘You were at the Yard this morning, weren’t you? I was talking to the Superintendent about your visit only a few minutes after you’d gone. Of course the position is a bit unusual and it’s against our principles to work in with civilians. That’s why the Super had to turn down your offer. But it’s quite clear now it would be wiser for us to come to some working arrangement.’
‘I’m glad you feel that way. You know most of my end of the story; what about yours?’
‘I know what you told them at the Yard this morning and that you’re acting on behalf of Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust but you didn’t give away what you’re investigating for him.’
‘Need we fence? I’m trying to get to the bottom of the international smuggling racket. It’s costing some of his companies a packet owing to unfair competition by the ring who’re dealing in illicit goods upon which no duty has been paid.’
‘Right. Well, I’m after the same thing. In the ordinary way the prevention of smuggling doesn’t come under the police. It’s the business of the Customs and Excise people to check up on suspected goods which have already been imported and the Inspector of Water Guard deals with prevention along the coasts. We’re only called in to make arrests, and so on, but the loss in revenue during the last year has mounted to such a fantastic figure that it’s got to be stopped. The Yard were asked to undertake a special inquiry and they’ve given me a chance at it as my first independent investigation. It looks to me like a biggish job too.’
‘A biggish job!’ Gregory echoed, a satirical edge to his tone. ‘I’ll say it is. The biggest that any policeman’s been called on to handle in the whale of a while. I’m not being rude. I mean that. If you handle this thing right you’ll be made for life, but, if you don’t, it’ll break you and lots of other people who’re higher up the ladder than you are, as well. But go on. I must know all you’ve done to date if I’m to give you any help.’
Wells did not like Gregory’s faintly contemptuous manner but he was shrewd enough to recognise that he was in contact with a far more dynamic personality than his own, and somehow, he could not help feeling attracted to Sir Pellinore’s rakish-looking representative. His professional admiration had been aroused too, by the swift efficient way in which Gregory had relieved Mrs. Bird of her revolver instantly the opportunity occurred, so he went on quietly:
‘I was put on to this special work about six weeks ago and, so far, I’ve spent most of my time trying to get a lead from the British end of it; working back from the retailers, who are cutting the prices of their goods, to the wholesaler and so, eventually, to the actual importers of contraband. It’s been an uphill job, because silk stockings and things like that are such universal commodities, and there’s no law which compels a retailer to keep an official record of his purchases or sales.
‘Take spirits now, they’re different, because there’s been a heavy duty on them for generations. Years ago a law was passed which compelled every dealer in spirits to keep an excise ledger. Say a man has five hundred gallons of whisky down from Scotland, or foreign spirits for that matter either, he gets a permit with it directly it’s checked out of bond, then he has to give a permit in his turn to every customer who buys the stuff, and enter the transaction in his book. Every few months an excise officer visits each dealer and examines his figures, which gives a pretty satisfactory check up, you see. It’s illegal for a dealer to sell spirits without passing on a permit to his customer and, if the amount permitted out exceeds that permitted in, the excise man would start asking awkward questions at once.’
‘How about odd bottles?’ Gregory inquired.
‘Oh, they’re allowed a certain margin to cover that. The system’s not altogether watertight as far as the pubs are concerned, where most of the stuff goes out in tots over the counter. There’s a certain amount of smuggling in spirits still done but they can’t operate on the grand scale; as they can with silks and other goods where there’s no check up at all.’
‘You didn’t have much luck then?’
‘Not much to begin with, but the police net’s a wide one once it starts to operate, and this dealing in contraband has grown to such huge proportions recently that I knew I’d get what I was after in due time. We traced some goods from a dress shop in Birmingham to a wholesale house in Regent Street and I put the chap who runs it through his paces about a week ago. Of course he swore he had no knowledge there was anything fishy about the parcel he’d handled and said that it’d been sold him through a French house, by a woman representative, as bankrupt stock. That’s why the price had been unusually low and he’d been glad to get the goods as a bargain.
‘He hedged a lot about the French people he’d bought it from and then gave me the address of a firm in Lyons which had actually gone out of business a week or two before. I managed to rattle him pretty badly though by telling him that if he couldn’t put me on to the woman who’d sold him the goods I’d have to run him as a dealer in contraband himself. Then I gave him twenty-four hours to think it over.
‘Next day he gave me a description of the lady you met in Deauville. But I said that wasn’t enough and I couldn’t let him out unless he put me on to her. He didn’t like the idea one little bit; seemed to think something unpleasant might happen to him if he blabbed. Well, as I pointed out, no one would know where I got my information so there was no reason to suppose they’d ever know who’d split. Then he told me the deal had been done in the lounge of the Carlton, where he went to meet the lady: evidently, of course, because she didn’t want to be seen in his offices, and he believed that when she was in London she stay
ed at the hotel.
‘My next move was to the Carlton and the management there gave me every assistance they could. The lady proved to be a Miss Sabine Szenty. We circulated her description through the usual channels and asked for the co-operation of the French police as well. They found her for us in Paris where she has some connection with a genuine silk stocking factory.’
Gregory frowned on learning that Sabine was so much more deeply involved than he had supposed; but Wells continued without a pause:
‘That made the job fairly easy. Headquarters have allotted me a plane for this special work, and I had no trouble in getting faked credentials from a respectable firm here, so I flew to Paris as their buyer.
‘I presented myself at the firm’s offices, said I was interested in their goods, and my people might be willing to do business with them. When it came to prices they were remarkably low and they told me the goods could be delivered from their warehouse in London. They haven’t got one actually: I checked up on that, but they intended to supply me with contraband through one of their agents here, of course, so I decided to place an order anyhow, and get a fresh line on their methods of delivery, but I made a lot of fuss and bother as I didn’t want to clinch the deal until I’d got in touch with the lady herself.
‘At my third call I was lucky. They’d evidently come to the conclusion I was a troublesome sort of bird and called her in to vamp me into signing up. She’s the goods all right—I’ll give her that—but not quite the type that appeals to me and, anyhow, when I’m on a case I’m about as cold as Mount Everest. I asked her if she’d take lunch with me just to celebrate this new business tie-up we were making between her firm and mine. She didn’t want to, I could see, although butter wouldn’t have melted in her mouth to all outward appearances. I don’t flatter myself I’m the sort of chap a woman like that would waste her time on out of office hours either, but this was business and the order I was proposing to give made it worth her while to treat me nicely, so she came along. Seeing the sort of woman she was I took her to the Meurice.’
‘The devil you did.’ Gregory grinned. ‘Lunched her at the Meurice, eh. By Jove! If that’s the way the police treat suspected persons I shall consider turning crook myself.’
Wells laughed a little ruefully. ‘Lord knows I’ll never get that back on my expenses account. The prices just made me shudder; but she’s a sport all right. As far as talk and apparent interest in me were concerned she really did me proud. If I hadn’t known what was behind the scenes, and been a genuine buyer of ladies’ underwear, I might almost have thought she’d fallen for me; but being a policeman puts you wise to the way women can act pleasant when they want to and not think another thing about it the second you’ve gone out of the door.
‘After that lunch I hadn’t got much farther, but she was paged—wanted on the telephone outside and she left her bag behind. That was my big opportunity. You bet I took it. You’d be surprised how quick trained fingers can go through a lady’s bag in an open restaurant with everybody looking on but no one noticing; and inside was the telegram addressed to Corot.
She’d evidently written it out ready to send off just before leaving her office.
‘I had no time to make a copy so I pinched it. Only thing to do. Then when she got back, although I’d paid the bill and we were just about to make a move, she asked for a liqueur and more coffee, so we sat on until the restaurant was nearly empty. She had warmed up quite a lot by then and really started in to vamp me properly.’
Gregory kept a perfectly straight face but his humour was intensely tickled by the vision of the delectable Sabine stooping to conquer this nice but unsophisticated young policeman in complete ignorance that he already had her taped.
‘She asked me if I’d ever been to Deauville.’ Wells smiled. ‘I hadn’t as a matter of fact. Then she told me she was off there that afternoon and began to chip me about being a staid unadventurous English businessman: “Why not come too?” she said. “Take a few days’ holiday. I shall be there and the bathing is delicious on that long sunny beach. I have many engagements but I like you and would put some of them off in order to be with you. Tonight now, I have to dine with a friend but I have no engagement for supper. You tell me that you are not married? All right then; forget your business for a few hours and meet me at midnight tonight in Deauville to give me supper. That is romance.”
‘Well, it might have been romance, if she’d really meant it that way, though of course I knew she didn’t. I was wondering what the game was and couldn’t guess what she was after but the opportunity to follow her up seemed far too good to miss. As I had a plane at my disposal I put it to her that I’d fly her down to Deauville if she liked.
‘She said, “yes” to that and we had another ration of Cointreau on it. I met her again at Le Bourget at half-past five, by arrangement, and flew her to the sea. We took a taxi from the airport to the town and she pointed out the place where she would meet me that night. I’d asked her already where she’d like to have supper but she said she knew a little place that would just suit us. In the meantime, there were all sorts of reasons why we should not be seen together; which of course, if I’d been the business-man she thought I was, would have added to the romantic mystery of the game. I turned up at the Customs sheds that night just as she had told me and she picked me up a few moments later. You know the rest.’
Gregory nodded: ‘So that’s why the telegram was on a sending form and had never been despatched. Obviously she missed it from her bag almost immediately after you’d pinched it and made up her mind that she must get it back. It would have been easy enough for her to send a duplicate but she didn’t want you to retain possession of the original and, I suppose, she had to have a bit of time to make her plans before she could arrange to have you laid out.’
‘That’s about it,’ Wells agreed. ‘If I hadn’t been a fool I should have made a copy of it and mailed it off to the Yard that evening; but she was so charming after lunch that I don’t mind confessing she really made me half-believe she’d developed one of these sudden passions for me as I’ve heard some foreign women do. It never occurred to me she was after the telegram, but you got that in the end, didn’t you? Although you never told the Superintendent so.’
‘No, since he wouldn’t co-operate,’ Gregory smiled, ‘I kept it dark, but I acted on it and went over to the Café de la Cloche last night.’
‘The Super guessed you’d got it so he had you shadowed all yesterday. I left Heston only about ten minutes after you and I sat around the Grand Hotel doing my best to comfort myself with sandwiches while you had a damned good dinner; because I was afraid that you’d recognise me if I went into the restaurant. When you left I went after you in a taxi but, as a little time elapsed before I could get one, the fool driver failed to pick you up and took the wrong road, so the only thing I could do was return to the airport and keep your plane under observation. That was a cold and miserable job enough but I stuck it until you turned up hours later and I was in the air within two minutes of your leaving the ground. I hadn’t the ghost of an idea what you were up to, but I thought there was a real chance you were on to something, so I sat on your tail until you landed here outside the park.’
Gregory grinned. ‘D’you mean to tell me that you never even saw the smugglers’ fleet?’
‘Not a sign of it. I didn’t even know there was one although, of course, I assumed they were running the stuff in by air.’
‘No. I suppose you had your eyes glued on my plane all the time and that’s how you missed spotting the others.’
‘Why in the world didn’t you follow them?’ Wells expostulated. ‘It was a chance in a thousand to find the place where they actually land the stuff.’
‘Naturally I meant to but it wasn’t quite as easy as all that. I lost them in the clouds somewhere south of Ramsgate and I only picked up a single plane that landed here when I came down low over Thanet later on.’
‘This is one of their receiving bases
then?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Gregory shook his head. ‘The plane I followed in wasn’t a cargo carrier. I had to land outside the park, as you know, but I managed to get into the grounds in time to see Lord Gavin Fortescue, Mademoiselle Sabine, and a couple of men, who were probably pilots, leave by car.’
‘By jove, your night’s work wasn’t wasted after all.’
‘Far from it as I’ve managed to locate one of their bases on the other side as well.’
‘Good man. Where was it?’
Gregory’s eyes narrowed a fraction. ‘Before I let you in on that I want you to promise me something.’
‘What?’
‘That if we succeed in rounding up this mob you’ll take no action against Mademoiselle Sabine Szenty.’
‘Sorry, I can’t. It would be more than my job’s worth. I don’t bear the lady any ill will for the way she led me up the garden path at Deauville; but she’s in this thing up to the neck. She’s operating a stocking factory in Paris as cover for supplying contraband, she’s actively assisting in running the goods, and even travelling them this end as well.’
‘Know anything about Lord Gavin Fortescue?’ Gregory asked casually.
‘Not much. Of course we have it on the records that he’s been mixed in with all sorts of shady deals but we’ve never been able to get enough evidence to bring a case against him.’
‘Well, believe me, he’s a devil incarnate and while I’ll give it you that the girl’s probably acting the way she does largely from sheer love of adventure, she was probably forced into it originally through some hold that the old man’s got over her. Now, I’m not boasting when I say that I can give you some real help in clearing this thing up. You’ll admit yourself that I’ve done more in twenty-four hours than you have in six weeks; discovered one of their bases on the other side, and run this place to earth, which is obviously Lord Gavin’s forward operation headquarters. As the price of my further help I want you to give Sabine a break when you pull these people in.’
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