Dennis Wheatley - Contraband

On the corner he managed to get a place in a Canterbury bus, already crowded with happy trippers off to see the old cathedral town and the bloodstained stone where Thomas a Becket had been foully done to death by the three Knights so many hundreds of years ago.

He dropped off at Birchington churchyard in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti lies buried but he did not pause to visit the poet's grave. Instead he turned up Park Lane; his thoughts very much with the living. Outside the west gate of Quex Park he met his man who was keeping in touch with Mrs. Bird.

'Anything fresh, Thompson?' he asked.

'No, sir, nothing. There've been no more visitors since you left last night and Mrs. Bird tells me the lady who came down by car slept in the place. She's still there as far as I know.'

Wells nodded and walked on up the wooded driveway then, skirting the back of the museum, he reached the side entrance to the house.

Mrs. Bird appeared from the kitchen garden with a basket full of runner beans just as he reached the door, and she confirmed Thompson's report.

'When the foreign lady turned up she had her bit of supper,5 she said, 'and told me she meant to stay the night. I always keep a couple of bedrooms ready because that's his lordship's orders. After her meal she went straight up without a word except that I wasn't to call her until she rang for breakfast.'

Milly came out at that moment and smiled shyly at the Inspector. He nodded to her cheerfully.

'We're on the right track now, but it's a matter of waiting until midday, or rather until Mr. Sallust turns up again and I doubt if he'll be here much before then. I've got to kick my heels around for the next few hours and so I was wondering.

'Wondering what?' Milly asked him.

'Well, my plane's at Manston aerodrome, only a couple of miles away and I was wondering if you meant what you said about liking to come up for a flip some time

Milly paled a little under her creamy skin. 'II think it would be rather fun with you.'

'You don't mind, Mrs. Bird?' he asked the older woman.

'As long as you bring her back safe I don't, but aeroplane's are tricky things, aren't they?'

'Not if they're looked after properly. Night landings in unknown country aren't much fun, but it's no more risky than going for a ride in a car on a lovely day like this.'

'All right, I'll get my hat.' Milly turned away, but he stopped her.

'You don't need that only get it blown off as mine's an open plane. I'll borrow a leather jacket for you from one of the pilots.'

Milly looked at Mrs. Bird. 'You're sure you don't mind, Aunty?'

'Of course I don't, my pet, as long as you take care. Run along now and enjoy yourself.'

Gerry and the girl left the back of the house and made their way by the side path through the shrubbery out on to the ' east drive. Both were silent for a few minutes, racking their brains for a subject of conversation. Then Gerry glanced towards the old tower which rose out of a coppice some hundred yards away to their right with the steel structure on its top, which looked like a miniature Eiffel Tower and could be seen above the treetops of the park for many miles in all directions.

'What's that place?' he asked. 'Apart, I mean, from the fact that they may use it now as a signal station to guide their planes in.'

'It's called the Waterloo tower, I think,' she said, 'built in the year of the battle you know, and it has a peal of bells, twelve of them, the finest in Kent up to a few years ago. Canterbury Cathedral had only ten, until they added another couple and came equal with this lot here. There's another tower over there too,' she glanced towards their left where a tall brick building crowned a low fenced in mound that rose from the grass land. 'The old gardener told me that Major Powell Cotton’s father was awfully keen on ships and things; so he used to signal from it to his friends in the navy when they sailed across the bay. The sea is hidden from us here by the trees but it's only a mile away.'

'I see he made a collection of old cannons too,' Wells remarked, looking at the six deep semicircle of ancient guns which occupied the mound.

'That's right. Some of them came from the Royal George, I'm told, and the little baby ones were taken from Kingsgate Castle. The mound itself is an old Saxon burial ground, raised in honour of some great chief, and it's supposed to be the reason we have a ghost here. She's called the "White Lady and walks along a path through the woods behind the tower at night, until she reaches the mound, then 'she disappears. They say she's the chief's young wife and she haunts the place where he was buried.'

'Ever seen her?'

'No, and I don't think anyone has for a long time now; all the same I wouldn't walk along that path at night for anything.'

'Not if I were with you?' Gerry asked, smiling at her.

She blushed a little. 'Well, I might then that would be different.'

A few moments later they reached the park gates and took the byroads through the open cornfields towards Manston. They were silent for a good portion of their two-mile walk but strangely happy in each other's company.

At the aerodrome a friendly artificer lent Milly a flying coat and she was soon installed in the observer's seat of Wells's Tiger Moth, a little scared, but even more excited at starting on her first flight.

For nearly an hour they cruised over eastern Kent, first along the northern shore over Birchington, Herne Bay and Whitstable, then southeast to Canterbury, where the towers of the ancient cathedral, lifting high above the twisting streets of the town, were thrown up by the strong sunlight which patterned the stonework like delicate lace against the black shadows made by its embrasures. Ten minutes later they had reached the coast again and were circling over Hythe on the southern shore of the county. Turning east they visited Sandgate, Folkestone and Dover, flying low round the tower of the old castle upon its cliff, while below them the cross Channel steamers and the destroyers in the Admiralty basin looked like toy ships that one could pick up in the hand and push out with a stick upon a voyage across a pond. Away over the Channel the white cliffs of Calais showed faintly in the summer haze. From Dover they sailed on to Walmer, Deal and Sandwich, then across Pegwell Bay to Ramsgate, and completed the circle of the Thanet coast by passing low over the long beaches of Broadstairs, Margate and Westgate, where the holiday crowd swarmed like black ants in their thousands and countless white faces stared up towards the roaring plane, waving hands and handkerchiefs in salutation as it soared low overhead.

'Well, how did you like it?' Gerry Wells turned to glance over his shoulder as he brought the plane to a halt once more on the Manston landing ground.

'It it was fine,' Milly said a little breathlessly. She had feared that she might be airsick, but the thrill of watching the tiny human figures in the sunlit fields, and town after town as they circled above them, with some new interest constantly arising out of the far horizon had made her completely forget her fear after the first few moments. Her cheeks were glowing now with a gentle flush from the swift wind of their flight and her blue eyes were sparkling in her delicate little face with happy exhilaration.

As Wells helped her out of the plane he had not the least twinge of conscience at having neglected his duties for an hour or so to give her the experience. He had no regular hours and his work often kept him up all night so he felt perfectly justified in taking this little break which had given Milly and himself so much pleasure.

Having seen his plane into its borrowed hangar they set out again for Quex Park and arrived back at the east gate by half past eleven. Their friendship had now grown to such a state that talking no longer proved a difficulty and Milly was giving him an account of her childhood which, although utterly lacking in all interest for most people, he found quite absorbing.