Contraband

      She hesitated. 'Is it your custom to take a lady to your apartment on so brief an acquaintance?'

      He laughed. 'No, but ours is hardly an ordinary acquaintance. After all, we shared a bedroom and bathroom for the night in Deauville, didn't we, so surely you're not going to kick at having tea in my sitting room. We'll be more comfortable there than in the crowded lounge of some hotel.'

      'Perhaps, but did you not warn me that when that night was over you would become the Big Bad Wolf? And now it seems you propose to take me to your cave.'

      'Here it is,' he said, pulling up, 'and it's a very nice cave although it doesn't look much from the outside.'

      Sabine got out and stared for a moment at the grimy three storey house, one of a block of twenty or more, with its little grocery shop on the ground floor abutting on the sidewalk. 'You live here no!' she said in considerable surprise.

      'Yes. Queer looking place, isn't it, but my soldier servant who went all through the War with me, and saved my life more than once, owns it. His wife left it to him and this little bit of property is about the only thing he's got. I occupy the first floor and pay my rent regularly, which is more than most of the other tenants do, as they're poor students studying at the university round the corner. If I cleared out the poor chap might go broke and have to sell the place. That's why I stay on.'

      She regarded him doubtfully for a moment and then she smiled. 'I pay you a great compliment, for I do not t'ink that I would go into such a place with any other man that I had known only for so short a time but, you see, I trust you.'

      He opened the side door with his key and as she preceded him up the rickety stairs he thought, 'She trusts me, and I'm spying on her, ferreting out her affairs. What a rotten swine I am when one comes to think of it, but it's that devil Gavin Fortescue we're up against and we've got to save the country from unprincipled blackguards like him. I'm only using her as a stalking horse, after all, and somehow or other I'll have to get her out of it when the crash does come, else I'll never be able to look at myself in my shaving mirror any more.'

      'But how lovely!' Sabine exclaimed as he threw open the door of his sitting room and showed her in. The room was unexpectedly gay and cheerful after the blackened exterior of the house and Rudd had done his duty nobly at the florists by spending lavishly on flowers.

      Gregory guided her to the settee, stacked cushions round her and threw one at her feet. 'A cigarette,' he laughed, proffering an onyx box, 'then tea.'

      They had hardly settled down when Rudd came in wheeling a dumb waiter with half the contents of a baker's shop spread out upon it.

      'Mon dieu she exclaimed. 'Do you expect me to eat all this or have you a party of twenty people coming?'

      'No, it's just Rudd,' he laughed. 'Rudd's fond of cakes and he gets all the ones that we can't eat.'

      ' 'Arternoon, Miss,' Rudd said with a sheepish grin. 'You won't take too much notice of Mr. Gregory, I hope. He's always been a one what likes a leg pull.'

      She smiled up at him, pulling off her hat and throwing it carelessly on to a chair. 'But you are a genius, Mr. Rudd, to provide so heavenly a tea. Look now at those éclairs. I am greedy for éclairs always and shall not leave you a single one.'

      Rudd almost blushed with pleasure. 'That's the way, Miss. It's a real pleasure to find for a lady what likes it when you do your best.' He backed out of the doorway with a smile.

      'I understand now why you live here,' Sabine said, nipping off the end of one of the éclairs with her small white teeth. 'He is a character, that one, and I would bet, your devoted slave as well.'

      Gregory nodded. 'Yes, he's one of the very best and I'm a stupid sentimental fool but I'd go through hell to pull him out of a hole.'

      'I believe that. You persuade yourself always that you are hard, hard as iron nails, yet for your friends you are, I think, supremely good.'

      He looked at her for a moment searchingly. 'And do you count me a friend of yours, Sabine?'

      Yes. You are my friend, although why I do not know.'

      'Do we ever know these things?' He shrugged. 'Does it matter. We're a short time living and a long time dead. Believe me, I am your friend and that's why I wish to God you were out of all this.'

      'By this  you mean what?' Her eyes clouded quickly.

      'I don't know,' he lied, 'only that you're mixed up in some way with a pretty nasty crowd. You'll remember, no doubt, that the last time we were together, and I left you to get my car in the Guiilaume le Conquerant at Dives I was unavoidably detained; so I was unable to run you back to Deauville after all or even send you my apologies. I suppose you know what happened to me?'

      Sabine began to giggle; then she suddenly lay back and gave way to a fit of helpless laughter.

      'Go on! Laugh away,' Gregory chid her in mock anger, 'but it was devilish painful at the time.'

      'Forgive me,' she sighed, struggling to regain her breath. 'Of course I know and I was miserable until I learned that no serious harm had been done you. The Big Bad Wolf walked into the Tiger's den and got more than he bargained for n'est pas?'

      Gregory shrugged. 'I'm not grumbling. Your elderly friend sent me a note to the Normandie saying that he'd make trouble for me if I didn't send you back to him immediately after breakfast. And I know you had no hand in it because you warned me to keep an eye open for the Limper when you spotted him in the hotel courtyard. I asked for it and I got it that's all. What does worry me though is to know that you're associated with people who'd go to the length of staging a criminal attack when their wishes are thwarted. There was that assault on the young Scotland Yard man in Trouville the night before, too, you'll remember. As for the man you call your friend, I don't mind telling you now, that I recognised him the second I set eyes on him. It's Lord Gavin Fortescue, and I happen to know that he's unfit for any decent person to touch with a barge pole.'

      Sabine shook back her dark curls. 'It is he who has been so good to my mother and myself. But for him I would be perhaps a girl in a dress shop or in some Budapest nacht lokd.'

      'Maybe, but from now on I want you to watch your step. I've no idea how closely you're connected with him' in business but, whatever he may have done for you, don't let him involve you more than you can help in his own affairs else ill may come of it.'

      She shrugged. 'He is kind and generous.'

      'I know, I know/ Gregory muttered resignedly, well aware that he was trying to lock the stable door after the horse had escaped. 'But time will show, and it worries me stiff to think he may involve you in some ghastly trouble.'

      'Sufficient unto the day of the evil thereof,' she quoted solemnly, armoured in the belief that neither Gregory nor the police yet knew anything that really mattered about her secret business.

      It was after tea had been cleared away, and Gregory was hunting in the shelves behind the settee for a copy of a book of which they had been talking, when she said suddenly: 'Big Bad Wolf, come here.'

      He turned and came up behind her. 'What is it?'

      Suddenly she stretched up her arms towards him. 'I like you, Gregory,' she said. 'You are just my idea of what a man should be; very gay, very unconventional, very brave.'

      Her arms closed behind his bent head and she drew his face down to hers. Gregory's heart pounded in his chest as it had not done for a dozen years. His hands, trembling slightly, cupped themselves round her cheeks and his mouth fastened on her soft lips with all the pent-up hunger that was in him.