Dennis Wheatley - Contraband

The girl was now halfway down the flight. She was quite young, eighteen or nineteen perhaps, slim as a boy, with only faintly rounded breasts and hips. The lines of her beautifully moulded figure showed clearly through the thin flowered chiffon nightdress. Her face was small and delicately chiselled; her creamy cheeks were slightly flushed in sleep. Above her short straight nose and white forehead the great oriel of plaited hair formed a shimmering golden crown. There was something ethereal and fairylike about her as she moved slowly down towards them which made it seem hardy possible that she was warm flesh and blood. The young Inspector's mouth hung a little open as he gazed up at her, completely fascinated; he thought that in all his days he had never seen anything quite so lovely, either human or in a work of art.

Mrs. Bird mounted a few stairs and took the girl very gently by the arm. With hardly a pause she turned in her tracks and began to walk up the stairs again; led now by the elder woman.

'Wells,' said Gregory in a sharp whisper.

'Eh?' The Inspector started as though he had been woken from a trance.

'Go up with them. There may be another telephone upstairs.'

Wells nodded and with one hand on the banister rail began to tiptoe upstairs after the two women.

As the little procession disappeared from sight Gregory let out a sharp sigh of relief, released the catch of Mrs. Bird's revolver, broke it open, and emptied out the bullets.

'Weren't she a pretty kid?' murmured Rudd. 'Almost like a fairy orf a Christmas tree; only wanted a wand and a couple of wings.'

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.'