Dennis Wheatley - Contraband

'As you will.' She allowed him to lead her out on to the plage and they walked the few hundred yards to the other hotel. At the entrance he paused and faced her.

'Listen Sabine!' he spoke with unusual firmness. 'Any argument will draw attention to us. I am staying here, so there must be no fuss you understand? Do as I say or else the police will get us and we shall both spend the night in some uncomfortable gaol.'

'But…' She was about to make a protest.

'Stop it,' he cut her short abruptly. 'I hate to remind you of the fact, but it was you who took the fellow who was attacked to the maison de rendezvous, so it is you whom the police will want to talk to. Remember, he may have been murdered by now for all we know.'

'All right,' she murmured and when he took her straight over to the lift and upstairs to his room she made no further protest.

'Now,' he said, having closed the double doors behind him and thrown his coat upon the bed, 'I think you had better tell me what you know.'

Again she regarded him with her large, calm, unfrightened eyes. 'How?' she asked.

'There's something going on, and I want to know about it.' Gregory's chin jutted out as he faced her in the quiet room, shut off from the corridor by the private bathroom, clothes closet and miniature hall, with its toile de jouy hangings and rose du barri colouring, warm in the pink lights of the shaded lamps.

He took the worn notecase from his pocket again and added quietly: 'Perhaps this will help us.'

The case contained 2,440 francs in notes of various denominations, the document which Gregory had already scanned at the Metropole, and a telegram. He spread out the latter and read it carefully.

'This is written out in pencil; by a woman I should judge. It's on a sending form so it has not yet been despatched; it says:

COROT CAFE DE LA CLOCHE CALAIS SIXTH 41 44 II 15 THENCE 46 SEVENTH 43 47 EIGHTH 43 AGAIN 47

Well, that doesn't help us much, since it's in code,' he added. 'But it's interesting all the same, and confirms my ideas about your charming self. Now, once again, what do you know?'

She stared at him with a lazy insolence in her hazel eyes.

'If I knew anything why should I tell? Also, I do not regard the chance of being questioned by the police as of sufficient importance to risk my reputation by remaining in your room.'

A sudden smile that could on occasion make Gregory's lean face so attractive flashed over it. 'Why?' he said softly with a new note in his voice. 'We are both bad hats anyway aren't we?'

'Of course,' she murmured with an answering smile. 'And you are how shall I say? well, emotionant in your way one does not often meet an Englishman with your personality see how frank I have become. But I fear I have no time for gallantry at the moment.'

'Haven't you? I think you have.' Gregory took one of her hands and kissed it.

'No no,' she shook her head. 'You are a nice person but at this time such follies are apart from me.'

'Are they?' He pressed nearer to her and his eyes said infinitely more than his words conveyed. But at that moment the telephone which stood on a little table near the bed shrilled loudly.

It was just behind her and she picked it up without the least hesitation. 'Ullo,' she said, 'merci… ah bon!… Adieu.' Then she replaced the receiver.

'As I thought,' she turned back to him. 'That call was for me. My friend whom you have seen with me in the Casino has many ways of knowing what I do. Someone in this hotel has told him of my presence here. He assures me that all is arranged so that there is no further likelihood of my being troubled by the police.'

She smiled a little mocking smile of triumph at Gregory. 'You understand? I must return to my friend. This little adventure has been quite amusing and I thank you for your courtesy, but now, Monsieur it is over.'

Gregory smiled too. 'I hate,' he said, 'to seem to press you; but I think you will see the wisdom of remaining here in hiding when I tell you I know from his papers that the man whom you lured to that dive tonight was an officer from Scotland Yard. If the French police knew that they would renew their desire to interview you despite anything that your very clever friend can do. So it seems to me that you are wrong, Mademoiselle, and that this adventure has only just begun.'

3

An Interrupted Idyll

'You mean to keep me here against my will?' For the first time the self-confidence faded from Sabine's eyes. Almost instinctively she glanced behind her to see if there was another exit from the room.

Gregory faced her across the broad low bed. His back was to the only door which gave on to the miniature hallway of the suite. Tall, lean, the suggestion of a smile pulling at his thin lips, he noted with quiet satisfaction that he had at last broken through her armour of casual ease.

It was now well after one o'clock. Many of the wealthy crowd staying at the Normandie would, he knew, still be at the casino; while those who did not gamble or dance would already be in bed. The double doors, with the small hallway in between, separating the big room from the corridor, muffled the loudest sounds even in the day time; now, the unbroken hush of midnight hours pervaded the great hotel. In the soft light of the rose du barri shaded lamps against the back' ground of the toile de jouy hangings Sabine's dark beauty glowed warm and alluring.

Not a flicker of an eyelid betrayed Gregory's determination to take with both hands this golden hour which it seemed that the Gods had decreed for him. The girl was no bread and butter miss but an adventuress, perhaps even a poule de luxe, one of those rare exotic women for the sake of whose caresses millionaires commit crazy follies and sometimes come to ruin, disgrace, and suicide. He had caught her fairly; he was even running some risk of trouble with the police for deliberately concealing her. She must pay toil but she should do so of her own free will in an hour or two. Gregory was by nature the joyful cynic and far too old a hand to rush his fences. He moved round the bed towards her.

'Listen!' he said. 'You lured that chap in the airman's coat down to that dive where he was set upon.'

''Monsieur, that is not true.'

Gregory dismissed her protest with a wave of his thin muscular hand. 'Owing to the break I gave him he may have got clean away. On the other hand, those thugs may have run him down and knifed him.'

'No no. If so my friend would have told me of that when he telephoned just now.'

'Toucher Gregory exclaimed, his smile broadening into a grin. 'A confession, my dear Sabine, that those cutthroats were in your friend's employ, and that you knew it.'

Her dark eyes flashed. 'Monsieur is clever but it is sometimes dangerous to know too much.'

'A threat, eh? Come, that's ungenerous, since you'd be in Deauville police station at this moment if I hadn't got you out of that cafe. More, it's rank ingratitude when I propose to keep you here all night to save you from arrest.'

'My friend has said that I am in no danger of arrest.'

'You forget that your description will have been given to the police by the patron of the cafe. They'll nab you for certain if you try and leave this hotel.'

'Nab what is that?'

'Pinch arrest. All the hotel porters and taxi men in Deauville will have been warned to keep a look out for you by this time. Remember, the man whom your friend's thugs tried to do in was an officer from Scotland Yard. When our special branch men operate on the continent they always keep in touch with the local police, so if he has escaped he will have made his report by now, and the authorities will be wanting you pretty badly.'