Gregory was still fighting, against his better judgment, as the sands seemed to suck at him more fiercely with each new effort that he made; but he would not surrender life until the last breath was choked out of him by the gritty slime covering his mouth and nose.
It was then, when both men felt all hope was gone, that then; heard the muffled drumming of a petrol engine rapidly approaching. Suddenly it ceased and a loud report, like the crack of a small cannon, shattered the silence.
They stopped struggling instantly and wrenched their shoulders round towards the left. Thirty yards away a group of men appeared to be standing knee deep and rocking gently in the sand. From them a long black snakelike rope was whizzing through the air: a lifeline fired from a rocket gun. It twisted a moment overhead and then came hurtling down with a plop on to the sands between the two almost buried men; the lead disc at its end piercing the morass a good twenty yards beyond them.
With almost unendurable relief they grabbed the rope and held it. The gun was fired again and another lifeline hissed through the air above them. Gregory could just reach it as it fell so he left the first for Wells. With their last remnants of strength, fortified by the frantic will to live, they hauled the slack end of the ropes in and coiled them round their bodies, beneath their armpits, by thrusting them through the unresisting sand which had welled up to their shoulders.
'Ready?' came a hail from the group by the rocket gun.
'Heave away,' shouted Gregory and the strain was taken up upon the ropes.
There followed the most ghastly struggle between the rescuers and those evil sands which were so loth to give up their prey. The imprisoned men thought that their bodies would be torn in half. They moaned in agony as the lifelines gripped them like wire springs about their chests; cutting into their bodies and forcing the breath out of their lungs. They were lying at an angle now, with their heads towards their rescuers, their shoulders only supported by the pulling ropes, their torsos and feet still buried deep in the shifting sands.
For what seemed an eternity they were stretched as though upon a rack, striving with the tired muscles of their legs for even a fraction of movement which would free them, but it seemed that they were too firmly embedded ever to be drawn out.
It was Gregory who, through a mist of pain, realised that now their heads and shoulders were supported there was no longer any danger of their arms becoming permanently imprisoned if they chose to use them, so he plunged his hands down and began to heave out handfuls of the soft semi liquid silt from in front of his chest.
Almost as fast as he relieved the pressure the sand seeped back, but the movement at least eased the weight from his chest a little and, when he lifted his head again, he found that he could see more of the men who were heaving on the rope. Their lower extremities were hidden by the gunwale of a boat which was just visible now above the flat expanse of sand. Then he remembered the creek and realised that the motor boat must have come up into it from the sea.
The struggle lasted for nearly an hour; the treacherous sands pulling and plucking at their victims' limbs until the very last moment, when they were drawn out with a sudden plop and dragged face downwards towards the boat:
Gregory was free ten minutes before Wells. As the lifeline drew him over a steep bank of sand he slithered into the water. Then he was hauled aboard a big flat-bottomed speedboat, where he collapsed on the bottom boards, unconscious.
When he came to Wells was beside him and their rescuers were applying restoratives. The ordeal had been such an appalling one that they were unable to speak and could not move a muscle without acute pain. Both of them lapsed into unconsciousness again as the speedboat's engine began to stutter. With a puff of blue smoke in its wake it roared out to sea.
They Were vaguely conscious of being carried up the steps of a stone pier and bundled into a car, then through the side door of an hotel and up the back stairs into bathrooms, where friendly hands relieved them of their sodden sand loaded garments. Then came the glorious ease of relaxing their exhausted bodies in clear warm water.
Figures moved in a mist about them: skilful fingers tended their hurts, then there came the joy of fresh cool linen about their bruised bodies and a merciful darkness.
It was late afternoon when they were aroused from the deep black slumber which follows intense fatigue, to find themselves in single beds in the same room, with Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust and Superintendent Marrowfat standing beside them.
'How're you feeling now, my boy,' Sir Pellinore inquired, his hand on Gregory's shoulder.
Gregory gazed round the strange room with a vacant stare. 'Where-where are we?' he asked after a moment.
'Granville Hotel, Ramsgate. By Jove you've had a gruelling. Wouldn't have been in your shoes for a mint of money but you're safe out of it all now.'
'For God's sake go away and let me sleep again,' Gregory muttered.
'Sorry,' said Superintendent Marrowfat abruptly. 'We let you lie as long as we dare, but I must have any information you've got to give us. Come along, Wells, let's have your story.'
Gerry Wells moaned as he hoisted himself up against his pillows. His body seemed to be one large burning ache, and, he felt that under a pair of strange pyjamas his back and chest were bandaged, although he could still feel the vicelike grip of the lifeline round his body.
Slowly and painfully he told his superior of the evil chance that had brought about their capture the night before and of the manner in which they had very nearly lost their lives.
Gregory had been gathering his strength. He looked up at Sir Pellinore. 'What brought you on the scene so opportunely. If you hadn't turned up when you did we'd both be fiddling in heaven now or stoking up the coals.'
Sir Pellinore grinned. 'No thanks to me, my boy. What women see in you I never could make out, but you've got to thank some hidden charm that you're here in bed in Ramsgate, and not a dozen feet under those ghastly sands by now. Sabine telephoned to me from Quex Park a little after midnight. She said they had caught you both and that Gavin Fortescue had just left for Ash Level. She seemed to know the drill too and gave a pretty good forecast of what they were likely to do with you.'
Gregory frowned. 'A little after midnight! Why the hell weren't you there before then! In a fast car you could have made that place in a couple of hours; whereas you took darned near six and very nearly turned up too late into the bargain.'
The fat Superintendent coughed. 'I'm afraid that's my fault, Mr. Sallust. Sir Pellinore got on to the Yard at once and they reached me at my home. We were down here by a little before three, so we could have raided that cottage, if we'd wanted to. But this thing's such a terrible threat to the wellbeing of the country we've just got to get all the threads in our hands before we act. If we'd rushed that place we would have got you out all right, but we'd have been too late to pinch Lord Gavin and, apart from that, we haven't yet succeeded in getting on to the London organisation.'
A sardonic smile twitched at Gregory's thin lips. 'So you took a chance…'
The Superintendent laughed. 'Not a very big one. We knew they wouldn't shoot you unless you did something stupid. The lady made it quite clear about the way they'd bump you off. You didn't know, of course, but there were some of my chaps within a stone's throw of that cottage from three o'clock on, with orders to rush it if anything went wrong. Meantime Sir Pellinore and I went off into Ramsgate and fixed a boat all ready with lifelines; so as to get you out after they'd done their stuff.'