The Pit-Prop Syndicate - Freeman Wills Crofts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📗

miles above the city. He turned inshore when he saw her coming, lest Captain Beamish’s binoculars might reveal to him a familiar countenance.

He pulled easily, timing himself to arrive at the wharf as soon as possible after dark. The evening was dry, but the southeasterly wind still blew cold and raw, though not nearly so strongly as on the night of his walk.

There were a couple of lights on the Girondin, and he steered by these till the dark mass of her counter, looming up out of the night, cut them off. Slipping round her stern, as Hilliard had done in the River Lesque, he unshipped his oars and guided the boat by his hands into the V-shaped space between the two rows of piles fronting the wharf. As he floated gently forward he felt between the horizontal props which held back the filling until he came to a vacant space, then knowing he was opposite the cellar, he slid the boat back a few feet, tied her up, and settled down to wait.

Though sheltered from the wind by the hull, it was cold and damp under the wharf. The waves were lapping among the timbers, and the boat moved uneasily at the end of her short painter. The darkness was absolute⁠—an inky blackness unrelieved by any point of light. Willis realised that waiting would soon become irksome.

But it was not so very long before the work began. He had been there, he estimated, a couple of hours when he saw, not ten feet away, a dim circle of light suddenly appear on the Girondin’s side. Someone had turned on a faint light in a cabin whose open porthole was immediately opposite the cellar. Presently Willis, watching breathlessly, saw what he believed was the steel pipe impinge on and enter the illuminated ring. It remained projecting into the porthole for some forty minutes, was as silently withdrawn, the porthole was closed, a curtain drawn across it, and the light turned up within. The brandy had been discharged.

The thing had been done inaudibly, and invisibly to anyone on either wharf or ship. Marvelling once more at the excellence and secrecy of the plan, Willis gently pushed his boat out from among the piles and rowed back down the river to Hull. There he tied the boat up, and returning to his hotel, was soon fast asleep.

In spite of his delight at the discovery, he could not but realise that much still remained to be done. Though he had learned how the syndicate was making its money, he had not obtained any evidence of the complicity of its members in the murder of Coburn.

Who, in addition to Archer, could be involved? There were, of course, Beamish, Bulla, Benson, and Henri. There was also a man, Morton, whose place in the scheme of things had not yet been ascertained. He, Willis realised, must be found and identified. But were these all? He doubted it. It seemed to him that the smuggling system required more helpers than these. He now understood how the brandy was got from the ship to the distillery, and he presumed it was loaded at the clearing in the same manner, being brought there in some unknown way by the motor lorries. But there were two parts of the plan of which nothing was yet known. Firstly, where was the brandy obtained from originally, and, secondly, how was it distributed from the distillery? It seemed to Willis that each of these operations would require additional accomplices. And if so, these persons might also have been implicated in Coburn’s death.

He thought over the thing for three solid hours before coming to a decision. At the end of that time he determined to return to London and, if his chief approved, lay the whole facts before the Customs Departments of both England and France, asking them to investigate the matter in their respective countries. In the meantime he would concentrate on the question of complicity in the murder.

He left Hull by an afternoon train, and that night was in London.

XVII “Archer Plants Stuff”

Willis’s chief at the Yard was not a little impressed by his subordinate’s story. He congratulated the inspector on his discovery, commended him for his restraint in withholding action against Archer until he had identified his accomplices, and approved his proposals for the further conduct of the case. Fortified by this somewhat unexpected approbation, Willis betook himself forthwith to the headquarters of the Customs Department and asked to see Hilliard.

The two men were already acquainted. As has been stated, the inspector had early called at Hilliard’s rooms and learned all that the other could tell him of the case. But for prudential reasons they had not met since.

Hilliard was tremendously excited by the inspector’s news, and eagerly arranged the interview with his chief which Willis sought. The great man was not engaged, and in a few minutes the others were shown into his presence.

“We are here, sir,” Willis began, when the necessary introductions had been made, “to tell you jointly a very remarkable story. Mr. Hilliard would doubtless have told you his part long before this, had I not specially asked him not to. Now, sir, the time has come to put the facts before you. Perhaps as Mr. Hilliard’s story comes before mine in point of time, he should begin.”

Hilliard thereupon began. He told of Merriman’s story in the Rovers’ Club, his own idea of smuggling based on the absence of return cargoes, his proposition to Merriman, their trip to France and what they learned at the clearing. Then he described their visit to Hull, their observations at the Ferriby wharf, the experiment carried out with the help of Leatham, and, finally, what Merriman had told him of his second visit to Bordeaux.

Willis next took up the tale and described the murder of Coburn, his inquiries thereinto and the identification of the assassin, and his subsequent discoveries at Ferriby, ending up by stating the problem