Gregory and Wells considered it unlikely that the smugglers would undertake any operations much before midnight, but Sabine would do the journey to Quex Park in a couple of hours and so should arrive there by a quarter past ten, or a little after. She might remain only long enough to make fresh arrangements then leave again by plane so, as it was essential to keep track of her, they decided to lose no time following her down into Kent.
They had spent barely a quarter of an hour in reviewing the situation, and Gregory reckoned that even allowing for a return to his flat and a scratch meal on the surplus of the supplies got in for Sabine’s tea he could reach Croydon, where Wells’s plane was stationed, by 9.30, if he was quick changing into more suitable clothes.
He left the Inspector to call at the Yard and go on down to Croydon ahead of him, then he secured a likely looking taxi and promised the driver double fare if they reached Gloucester Road in under twelve minutes. The man earned his extra money with thirty seconds to spare.
On arriving there Gregory sent Rudd for his car while he changed and ate simultaneously. Once he was out of his tails and clad in his battle equipment he sat down to the wheel of his long two-seater with Rudd beside him to bring it back. Taking the short cut across the river through Battersea, Wandsworth and Tooting, he drove out to Croydon at a speed which shocked onlookers but was actually quite safe for a really expert driver.
Wells was awaiting him, now dressed in airman’s kit, beside a single engine 120 h.p. two-seater Tiger Moth.
‘Hello! Open cockpit,’ said Gregory. ‘Wish I’d known; I’d have put on warmer clothes.’
‘You’ll be all right,’ Wells assured him. ‘It isn’t a long trip and there’s a rug inside. Here …’ he held out a flat neatly packed bundle with arm straps attached. ‘Your parachute. It’ll help to keep your back warm.’
‘Parachute! What the hell do I want with a parachute?’ Gregory grunted.
‘Nothing, I hope, but I’m afraid you’ve got to wear it if you’re coming in my plane. Government regulations.’
‘Oh, well!’ Gregory pushed his arms through the loops and fastened the gear about his waist, then climbed into the observer’s seat. He never wasted his breath on unnecessary arguments when there was work to be done.
The sun had set at a little before nine. It was nearly dark now and the stars were coming out again for what promised to be another almost cloudless August night.
Gregory had flown a good deal in his time, but he had never quite got accustomed to the amazing speed by which one could cover an actual point to point distance by plane, as compared with road or rail. Twenty-five minutes after leaving Croydon he picked out the great mile-wide belt of trees which gave Quex Park such shelter, yet threw it up from the air in the flat surrounding landscape. Wells kept well to the south of it, passing over the little village of Acol, then veered northward towards the sea. After a moment a single beam of light showed in the fields to the east of the park and he came down towards it.
‘I wasn’t taking any chances this time,’ he shouted back to Gregory as they bumped to a standstill. ‘I gave orders for one of my men to show a light here—where you came down before.’
The torch had disappeared but a voice came out of the darkness: ‘Mr. Wells?’
‘Yes, Simmons, what’s the latest?’
‘Thompson reported twenty minutes ago, sir. There’s nothing fresh, so he’s gone back to watch the house again.’
‘Good.’ The Inspector smiled over his shoulder towards Gregory. ‘We’ve beaten her to it then but she ought to be here fairly soon. Simmons will look after the plane while we go inside and give the lady a silent welcome.’
Gregory grunted non-committally as he climbed out. True, he wanted desperately to get in touch with Sabine again, but not when he was in the Inspector’s company. Wells had quite enough evidence upon which to arrest her any moment he chose and Gregory knew that she was only being left at liberty so long as she might prove a useful lead to further evidence which would incriminate Lord Gavin. Once the net closed it would be beyond his power to help her.
It was a dark sultry night again; the very centre of the dark period between moons, which the smugglers were using for their operations. Hence, Gregory felt certain, their intense activity and swift journeying, which would continue for another forty-eight hours at least. After which, unless the weather broke, they would probably not run further cargoes until the moonless period in September.
With Wells beside him he made his way through the pitch-black wooded belt along the east drive to the fringe of the lawn, from where, knowing now the direction of the house, he could distinguish its outline among the surrounding trees less than a hundred yards away.
The hoot of an owl came from some bushes nearby and to Gregory’s surprise Wells mimicked the cry in reply. Immediately there was a stirring in the shadows to their left and a figure tiptoed across the gravel path towards them.
‘All quiet, Inspector,’ said the newcomer in a low voice.
‘Thanks, Thompson, you’d better stay here while we go round to the back of the house.’ Keeping in the shadow of the trees they tiptoed down a narrow path through the shrubbery until they came out at the rear of the building. A light was burning in the scullery window where Gregory had attempted to break in the night before.
Wells moved along the wall of the house to the doorway and knocked gently on it. There was no reply. He knocked again, louder this time, and there was a sound of footsteps in the stone-flagged passage. The door swung open and Milly’s slender form was revealed on the lighted threshold.
‘Hullo,’ she said in pleased surprise. ‘I didn’t expect to see you so soon again.’
‘Nor I you. I thought you’d be in bed by this time.’
‘It’s not very late, only just ten, although often I go to bed earlier and listen to the wireless.’
‘I like the wireless too,’ he smiled, ‘but I don’t often get the chance of listening to it in bed.’
Gregory, growing impatient at this unimportant conversation, stepped forward out of the shadows and she started back, realising his presence for the first time. He had seen her the night before, but she had not seen him as she had been walking in her sleep. Wells introduced them.
‘Won’t you both come in?’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’d like some supper. I ought to have thought of that.’
‘No; thanks all the same.’ Wells shook his head. ‘We fed less than an hour ago, and we’d better not come in, I think, in case somebody comes along to this wing of the house. Our presence might take a bit of explaining as your aunt’s not supposed to have visitors.’ There was marked regret in his voice as he added: ‘We only knocked you up to let you know that some of the people we’re after will be here again tonight. Nothing unusual’s likely to happen, but I thought it would be a bit of a comfort to know we were close handy here, keeping an eye on things.’
‘That was nice of you.’ She smiled up at him. ‘We knew they were coming though. The foreign lady telephoned only a few minutes ago to say that Aunty was to get her some supper. I was just going out to tell your man about it when you turned up.’
‘D’you know where she telephoned from?’
‘Canterbury. She didn’t speak herself. It was a man at some garage who rang up for her.’
‘She’ll be here pretty soon then?’
‘I expect so, but there’ll be time for you to have a quick cup of tea, if you’d care to come in for a moment.’
‘Better not.’ Wells shook his head again. ‘Although I’d like to. We’ll get back to the bushes I think. Remember me kindly to your aunt.’
‘All right. Will I be seeing you again tonight? If so, I’ll—well I might stay up for a bit.’
‘I’m afraid it’s rather unlikely so I’d hop off to bed if I were you. Happy dreams.’
‘Same to you. That is if you get any sleep—as I hope you will. Good night.’
When the two men turned away she stood at the half-open door reluctantly watching Wells’s retreating back as he disappeared beside Gregory round the corner of the house.
Ten minutes later, from their cover among the bushes, they saw the glimmer of lights between the trees, and the big limousine that Gregory had seen set out for London the night before, roared up the drive with a single dark muffled figure seated inside it.
‘Gavin’s not with her,’ Gregory whispered, as he saw Sabine descend from the car. ‘I wonder where he’s got to.’
‘Lord only knows,’ Wells muttered. ‘He left the Carlton shortly after midday. I had a man tailing him, of course, but the fool mucked it when they were caught in a traffic block. When I last heard our people hadn’t yet been able to pick him up again.’
Lights appeared in the downstair windows of the main part of the house and they guessed that Sabine had settled down to her supper. Meanwhile, they remained behind the bushes; Gerry Wells with the trained patience of a man who spends many hours of his life waiting perforce for things to happen, but Gregory fidgeting a little after the first half hour, wanting to walk up and down to stretch his limbs and won dering if he dare light a cigarette, but deciding against it.
An hour crawled by; then the lights in the downstair rooms went out and fresh lights appeared in one of the upper windows. Another twenty minutes and those went out as well.
‘We’ve come on a wild goose chase,’ muttered Gregory, half glad, half angry. ‘There’s nothing doing here tonight after all. Evidently she only cleared out of the Carlton in order to get away from me; and decided to sleep here.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Wells replied noncommittally, ‘but don’t forget the telegram. From that it looked as though they were on the job tonight as well—didn’t it?’
‘Perhaps, but they may have a dozen hide-outs and rendezvous as almost all the numbers in the damn thing were different.’
‘Sssh, what’s that?’ Wells caught Gregory’s arm and pressed it. The faint low note of a motor engine came clearly to them in the silence. They glanced upwards, half-expecting the approach of a plane, but a moment later realised that a car had entered the west gate of the park a quarter of a mile away. Then they caught the gleam of its headlights flickering through the trees.
It was a long powerful sports model with two men in its bucket seats and it did not stop at the front of the house but went straight round to the garage.
Gregory and Wells slipped through the fringe of trees in order to get a view of the new arrivals but by the time they had reached a point from which they could see the garage the headlights of the car had been switched off.
A torch glimmered in the darkness. By it they could see that the big doors of the garage had been closed upon the car; then the light moved towards them and there was the sound of approaching footsteps. They shrank back into the blacker shadows. The two men passed, the nearest dragging one of his feet a little, and crossed the lawn to the shed that housed Lord Gavin’s plane.
A bright light inside the hangar was switched on. In its glare the two figures, in airman’s kit, stood out clearly, one nearly a head taller than the other.
‘The Limper,’ Gregory whispered. ‘How I’d like to get my hands on the brute’s throat. He might have blinded me with that bag of pepper he threw in my face at Dives.’
The plane was run out on to the lawn, the lights in the shed switched off, and the two men boarded the machine. The engine roared and spat; then the plane glided forward.
‘Come on,’ snapped Gregory. ‘We’ve got to run for it or we’ll lose them.’
Almost before the plane was in the air Gregory and Wells were sprinting across the soft springy turf behind it. They dived into the belt of trees and stumbled forward tripping and jumping over vaguely seen patches of undergrowth. Then the darkness of the thick leafy branches above blacked out everything.
Stumbling and cursing they blundered on from side to side between the tree trunks until they reached the meadow, then raced on again, heads down, towards the east gate of the park. Breathless and panting they tore across the field to the spot where Simmons was waiting beside Wells’s plane. The roar of its powerful engine shattered the silent night and Gregory was only settling in his seat as it sailed into the air.
They knew from the sound of the other machine, before Wells’s engine had been turned on, that it was heading south-westward and took that direction. By the time they were up two hundred feet Gregory was scanning the starry sky with his night glasses.
‘Got ’em …’ he shouted down the voice pipe a moment later, ‘… little more to the south. Towards that very bright star low on the horizon.’
The plane in front was climbing and for a few moments Wells flew on at five hundred feet to make up the distance. Both planes were flying without lights and it was difficult to pick up their quarry, but soon, with the aid of Gregory’s shouted directions, he caught sight of it.
Five minutes after taking off they picked up the few scattered lights of late-workers or pleasure parties in Canterbury, upon their right, but after that, flying south-west by south, they passed over a stretch of country containing only small villages, from which the glimmers of light were few and far between at this late hour.
Another five minutes and on their left they sighted another little glimmering cluster far below them which both knew, from their course, to be Folkestone, After that the country seemed to become blank and lightless; for once they had passed over the Ashford-Folkestone road they were above the low sparsely inhabited lands of the Romney Marshes.
Wells had climbed to two thousand feet, but the leading plane was just as fast a machine, and flying at a still greater altitude. For three hectic minutes, while Gregory frantically searched the sky with his night glasses, they lost sight of it but, keeping to their course, they flew on over the deserted, lightless, marshlands until a star blacked out for an instant and enabled them to pick up the trail again.
An intermittent revolving beam showed as a pinpoint miles away to their left, and Gregory knew that they were now opposite the Dungeness light, A moment later Wells shouted to him and pointed downwards straight ahead. Two rows of lights were just visible, forming a ‘T’ in the blackness of the marshes. The other plane was descending towards them and Wells swerved away to the westward in order to avoid being spotted from below. The roar of his engine would, he knew, merge into that of the other plane as long as it remained in the air. He flew on until he was almost over Tenterden, climbing all the time, then turned and came back again to the southeast, climbing still. He was now at five thousand feet when, flying seaward, they passed again the tiny ‘T’ of lights below.
‘Got them,’ he yelled to Gregory through the voice pipe.
‘But they’ll hear us if we fly lower; and away from the “T” of lights it’s too risky to make a landing,’ Gregory shouted back.
‘You’ll make the landing,’ Wells bawled. ‘What’s your parachute for, man! Out you go.’
‘Not likely,’ Gregory bawled. ‘Never made a parachute jump in my life—not going to start now. Think I’m going to risk my neck?’
‘Dammit, you must,’ yelled the Inspector as he banked, circling still higher, over the secret landing ground. ‘We’ll never find this place in daylight. It’s our one chance to register their base. You’ve got to do it: don’t let me down.’
Gregory stared over the side of the plane at the little cluster of lights seeming now so infinitely far below. He was no coward in a fight. All his life he had taken a grim delight in facing odds and winning through where battle with other human beings was concerned—but this was different. To jump from the safety of the plane into thin air with the horrible uncertainty as to whether the parachute would open, or if he would be dashed, a bleeding mass of pulp, on to the distant ground. Was the risk worth it? Why the hell should he? And then the heart-shaped face of Sabine came clear before his eyes.
‘If I do, will you let Sabine out?’ he cried.
‘I can’t. You know I can’t.’ Wells’s voice just reached him above the roar of the engine, angry at this frustration when he was so near securing evidence of real importance.
‘You must.’ Gregory’s voice pierced the wind and thunder of the engine; ‘otherwise I won’t play.’
‘Will you—if I agree?’ Wells shouted.
‘Yes, damn you!’ Gregory screamed back.
‘I can’t speak for my superiors,’ bawled Wells.
Gregory was already fumbling at his back, seeing that the parachute was in position. He stood up uncertainly swaying as the plane soared through the air at 150 miles an hour. ‘You’ve got to let her off,’ he thundered, leaning over Wells’s shoulder, his mouth close to the Inspector’s ear.
‘Go on, I’ll do my best,’ Wells turned his face up, shouting, ‘won’t arrest her myself anyhow.’
Gregory peered over the side again. The thought of leaping into that black immensity of space made his heart contract but he climbed out on to the fuselage. The wind rushed past him tearing at every corner of his garments as though it would strip him naked. For a second there was an awful pain which stabbed him in the pit of the stomach. He felt sick and giddy as he clung on with all his might to prevent the force of the blast ripping his clutching fingers from their precarious hold. Then he took a breath—screwed his face up into a rueful grin—and jumped.