Dennis Wheatley - Contraband

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.'