Dennis Wheatley - Contraband

'I am,' Gregory agreed. 'Damnably worried. If they pull her in with the rest of the gang she'll be sent to prison.3

'Her sentence will be considerably reduced on account of the fact that she enabled us to come to your assistance the other night.'

Gregory shrugged impatiently. 'That's no consolation. It might be for a down and out who's been used to sleeping in dosshouses and queuing up for charity grub. But think of a girl like Sabine in prison. Every month she gets will be like a year in hell. Have you ever visited a women's prison? I have. The smell of the place alone is enough to make you sick. Sour, sterile; cabbage soup, disinfectant, soapsuds all mixed up. Think of the irritation to her skin from the coarse garments they'll make her wear; how her stomach will heave when she has to swallow the skilly to keep herself alive, and her hands with broken nails, red and raw from the wash tubs and floor scrubbing. Think of the ghastly creatures she'll have to mix with too. It's well known that women criminals are ten times as vicious as male crooks. They'll torture her every moment of the day from sheer loathing of anyone better than themselves…'

'I know, I know,' Sir Pellinore broke in. 'I would do anything in my power to save her from that if I could; but even my influence is not sufficient to secure a free pardon for her unless she is prepared to turn King's Evidence.'

They did not speak again until they had entered the house and were seated in the big library overlooking the Mall; then Sir Pellinore rang the bell.

'Tell Garwood to send up a magnum of Roederer '20,' he said to the footman who answered his ring, then he turned back to Gregory.

'Nothing like champagne; only possible drink when you've been working overtime and are worried into the bargain. Gives you just the right fillip to carry on without doping you a hair's breadth. The twenties are getting on in age now, of course, but they're still grand wines if they've been well kept and, in my opinion, the Roederer was the best of 'em.'

Gregory nodded. 'It's been well kept all right if you've had it in your cellar for the last ten years.'

'Yes. Nothing like leaving good wine to rest quietly in the same temperature till you want to drink it. I always buy 'em when they first come out and forget 'em till they're drinkable.'

Garwood arrived, portly, priest like: preceding the footman who carried the double bottle in a bucket of ice and two large silver tankards on a big tray.

'Shall I open it, sir?' the butler asked. 'It hasn't had long on the ice but coming from the cellar it will be at quite a drinkable temperature.'

'Go ahead,' said Sir Pellinore, and the two tankards were filled till the bursting bubbles topped their brims.

'Good thought of yours to order a magnum,' Gregory remarked. 'Wine always keeps so much better in magnums than in bottles and in bottles than in pints. The only trouble with a magnum is, it's too much for one and not enough for two.'

Sir Pellinore brushed up his fine white moustache and smiled. 'Plenty more where it came from. We'll knock off another with our lunch if you feel like it.'

The servants had left the room; yet both men displayed curious reluctance to speak again of the topic which was really occupying their minds.

Gregory drank deep and sighed. 'How much better this stuff drinks out of a tankard,' he said slowly. 'The same thing in a footling little glass wouldn't be half as good.'

'You never said a truer word my boy. Think how horrid tea would taste in a port wine glass, or burgundy in anything except a big round goblet, just half full, so that one can get the aroma. Brandy too although, curiously enough, all the other liqueurs lose their flavour in big glasses and are better in thimbles provided one has the thimbles refilled often enough but champagne's a tankard wine, not a doubt of it.'

They fell silent again until Sir Pellinore said, at last, with a swift look at his guest:

'Well, what're you going to do?'

'Go down and get her out before they raid the place tonight.'

'Risky isn't it? Hundred to one they're watching you.

Some flatfoot in a bowler probably kicking his heels outside this house even now.'

'I know, that's the big difficulty. I can get rid of him all right. I've played tip and run before. Any tube station or big store with several entrances will provide the means for me to throw him off my track; but the devil of it is that these blokes know me. Another of them will pick me up on the station if I go by train or one of his pals will spot me if I motor down. I dare not move till after dark and we have no idea what time that clever old elephant Marrowfat will get to work.'

'You're taking a pretty nasty risk you know,' said Sir Pellinore quietly. 'Obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, aiding a known criminal to escape from the country, and all that sort of thing. You'll be a sitting pheasant for three months in prison yourself if you're not darned careful.'

'I know it. But what the hell! I've got to get her out of it somehow, haven't I?'

'Of course. I should feel just the same, but you've got your work cut out and I'll be devilled if I see how you're going to do it. Got any sort of plan?'

'No. I'm absolutely in the air at the moment and I'm not liking the situation one little bit. I'll tell you just how I stand.'

Gregory refilled his tankard, sat forward in the deep armchair, and told Sir Pellinore how things were between himself and Sabine; ending up with an account of her visit to his flat on the previous night.

When he had done Sir Pellinore looked unusually grave. 'From what you tell me the situation is worse than I imagined. You don't even know if the wench is willing to quit, so maybe you'll have to get her out of Gavin Fortescue's clutches against her will, as well as clear of the police.'

'I'll manage somehow,' said Gregory doggedly.

'You won't act too early and make the police campaign abortive, will you. It's frightfully important they should smash up Gavin Fortescue's organisation. Without any flag wagging it means a hell of a lot to the country that they should.'

'Don't I know it,' Gregory agreed. 'If it weren't for that

I shouldn't be here but snooping round the Park at Birchington by this time.'

Garwood appeared to announce that lunch was served.

Sir Pellinore stood up. 'AH right. I know I can leave the whole question of your private interests to your discretion/

Over luncheon they talked of indifferent things but neither had any real interest in the conversation and long periods of silence intervened between each topic that was broached. The air was electric with their unspoken thoughts.

It was after lunch, when they were well into the second magnum, Sir Pellinore having decreed that no liqueurs should be served, that a call from Wells came through.

Milly had been on the telephone to him from a call box in Birchington. She reported that Sabine and Lord Gavin Fortescue had had high and bitter words that morning after breakfast; 'a proper scene' was the way she phrased it, and Mrs. Bird, who had butted in on their quarrel inadvertently, described his little lordship as having been 'positively white with rage'. Half an hour later Sabine had been taken up to her room and locked in. She was virtually a prisoner there but Mrs. Bird had been allowed to take her lunch up on a tray and reported her to be pale and silent.

Milly's real reason for ringing up, however, was that she had overheard a scrap of conversation which she thought might prove useful. She had been passing an open window of the downstairs room in which Lord Gavin and the Limper had been sitting after lunch. She had heard Lord Gavin say: 'Tonight at Eastchurch Marshes I wish you to…' That was all, and she had not dared to linger, but had slipped out of the Park to telephone Wells from the village right away.