'Yes, sir. Sounds like a first-class pub crawl, without the crawl in it, ter me. I've often wished there weren't no early closing hours in England.'
While Gregory was speaking they had driven clear of the last houses of the town and were now out in the open country with the rolling down land all about them. A few minutes later a solitary building came into view at the roadside on the brow of a low hill.
'That'll be it, unless I'm much mistaken,' said Gregory, 'so I think it's about here we'll ditch the car.'
He slowed down and ran it off the road into a shallow gully, then climbed out, remarking: 'I don't want to leave her on the road in case some fool breaks his neck by crashing into her. We'll say we had to run into the bank to avoid a speed maniac and that the jolt snapped something. We don't know what as we're not mechanics, only holidaymakers who've bought a cheap car for our trip.'
Side by side they trudged up the slope to the solitary building. It proved to be no more than a couple of ancient flint walled cottages knocked into one, but a creaking sign above the doorway established the fact that it was the Cafe de la Cloche. Before it, on the stony ground, stood a few rusty iron tables and battered chairs. The place was shuttered but lights came through the cracks of two windows and from beneath the heavy door. No other sign of life showed about the place and it was wrapped in a deep silence.
It was so old and tumbledown that Gregory allowed his vivid imagination to play upon it. He felt that it had probably already been an inn in Napoleon's day, frequented by gay Hussars and Chasseurs of the Guard from that mighty 'Army of the Ocean' that the Emperor had assembled on the nearby downs for his projected invasion of England in 1802. It was just the sort of place too, where spies might have met by night in those far-off times, to exchange secret intelligence about activities in the Channel ports after having run the gauntlet of the British fleet in some lightless lugger, while ten years earlier, aristocrats escaping from the Red Terror might have made rendezvous there before their final dash into exile and safety.
Dismissing his romantic speculations, Gregory kicked open the door and walked in with Rudd behind him. Inside, the place was like a hundred small estaminets which they had visited behind the lines, years before in the Great War. A bar ran down one side of the room; behind it on the shelves was a meagre collection of bottles, mostly fruit syrups, many of which, from their tattered labels, looked as though they had stood there for generations. A dark, blowzy, sullen eyed French girl sat behind the bar knitting. A handful of men occupied three out of the five cheap wooden tables covered with red and white checked clothes. One group was playing dominoes;, the rest were talking in subdued voices. All of them had the appearance of French peasants or fishermen. The air was heavy with stale tobacco smoke, the fumes of cheap spirits, and the odour of unwashed humanity.
'Monsieur?' said the girl, standing up and abandoning her knitting.
Gregory asked for whisky, but she had none, so he changed his order to cognac and she poured two portions from an unlabelled bottle into thick glasses.
He had become suddenly garrulous and friendly. Leaning across the bar he told her about their 'accident', and laughed somewhat hilariously at the thought of poor old Brown now trudging back to Calais. Then he went on to speak of their holiday; purposely refraining from using his best French and helping out his apparently scanty knowledge of the language with frequent vivid gestures.
The girl proved a poor audience. She was a dull creature and her share in the conversation was limited to polite meaningless expressions and a series of nods.
When the topic of their holiday was exhausted Gregory asked permission to remove the bottle to a table in the far corner and, with Rudd, parked himself at it.
So far he had purposely refrained from even glancing at the other visitors; giving them ample time to accept this invasion of their haunt by strangers. They had settled down again now after having listened with one ear to the story he had told the girl behind the bar.
When he had seated himself in the corner with his back to the wall, so that he could survey the whole of the low raftered room, he scrutinised each figure in turn while keeping up a desultory conversation with Rudd. He carefully hid his satisfaction as he noticed that one of the three men who were talking at a table near the doorway was the dark, curly haired young thug who had thrown a knife at him a few nights before in Trouville. Mr. Corot of the telegram, Gregory decided to assume for the moment.
Pulling his raincoat up round his ears, and his hat down over his eyes, he shifted his chair a little so that Rudd should come between him and the Frenchman in case the fellow happened to glance round. He had no desire at all to be recognised at the moment.
At a little before eleven the domino party broke up and the players left the estaminet. Only five others, including the curly headed knife thrower, now remained, and they were all seated together. Gregory and Rudd were halfway through the litre bottle of brandy. It was cheap, fiery stuff, but both of them possessed heads like rocks and if they had ceased drinking Gregory knew they would soon be informed that they had outstayed their welcome.
They talked together in English but avoided all mention of the real reason for their presence at the cafe in case 'Corot' or one of his friends should understand the language.
It was a dreary business waiting there for they did not know quite what, but something to happen, and Gregory was thankful when, at about a quarter past eleven 'Corot' stood up, obviously summoned by a few musical notes upon a motor horn, twice repeated, from a spot not far distant on the road outside.
As he left the inn the notes on the motor horn were sounded again with evident impatience which gave Gregory the opportunity to say casually to the girl behind the bar, 'I wonder if that's our friend, poor old Brown, who's found our ditched car at last and is wondering what's happened to us. As he wouldn't know we're here I think we'd better go and see.'
He pulled out a note and paid the bill in a leisurely way, treating the girl to some cheerful half tipsy badinage before he left, in order to avoid the appearance of deliberately following the other man.
It was Rudd who, fearing that they would miss the fellow in the darkness unless they left without further delay, muttered something about 'not keeping old Brown waiting any longer', and pulling Gregory by the arm led him outside.
'Good lad,' muttered Gregory directly they were clear of the cafe. 'We managed that exit splendidly. Now, where's our curly haired assassin got to?'
They could not see the man but fifty yards down the road stood a car. Keeping in the shadows they made their way along the side of the estaminet and then by a wide detour through an adjoining field until they came opposite the place where it stood in the roadway.
Like the majority of French roads, there was no hedge separating it from the field, behind which they could shelter, but only a ditch, so they had to get down on their hands and knees and crawl the last twenty yards to avoid being seen against the skyline.
The car was a powerful limousine and 'Corot' was standing by its doorway on the side nearest the ditch. A faint light lit the interior of the car and Gregory smiled in the darkness as he recognised the small hunched figure on the back seat. Then he caught his breath for beyond Lord Gavin sat Sabine; looking even more beautiful than his memory of her. He grasped Rudd's arm and pressed it.