The Pit Prop Syndicate by Freeman Wills Crofts (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📕

been going the pace, and within the last two years he let his villa and bought a tiny house next door to the distillery, where he is now living. It is believed his money went at Monte Carlo, indeed it seems he is a wrong 'un all round. At all events he is known to be hard up now.”

“And you think he moved in so that he could load up that brandy at night?”

“That's what I think,” Laroche admitted. “You see, there is the motive for it as well. He wouldn't join the syndicate unless he was in difficulties. I fancy M. Pierre Raymond will be an INTERESTING study.”

Willis nodded. The SUGGESTION was worth investigation, and he congratulated himself on getting hold of so excellent a colleague as this Laroche seemed to be.

The Frenchman during the day had hired a motor bicycle and sidecar, and as dusk began to fall the two men left their hotel and ran out along the Bayonne road until they reached the Lesque. There they hid their vehicle behind some shrubs, and reaching the end of the lane, turned down it.

It was pitch dark among the trees, and they had some difficulty in keeping the track until they reached the clearing. There a quarter moon rendered objects dimly visible, and Willis at once recognized his surroundings from the description he had received from Hilliard and Merriman.

“You see, somebody is in the manager's house,” he whispered, pointing to a light which gleamed in the window. “If Henri has taken over Coburn's job he may go down to the mill as Coburn did. Hadn't we better wait and see?”

The Frenchman agreeing, they moved round the fringe of trees at the edge of the clearing, just as Merriman had done on a similar occasion some seven weeks earlier, and as they crouched in the shelter of a clump of bushes in front of the house, they might have been interested to know that it was from these same shrubs that that disconsolate sentimentalist had lain dreaming of his lady love, and from which he had witnessed her father's stealthy journey to the mill.

It was a good deal colder tonight than on that earlier occasion when watch was kept on the lonely house. The two men shivered as they drew their collars higher round their necks, and crouched down to get shelter from the bitter wind. They had resigned themselves to a weary vigil, during which they dared not even smoke.

But they had not to wait so long after all. About ten the light went out in the window and not five minutes later they saw a man appear at the side door and walk towards the mill. They could not see his features, though Willis assumed he was Henri. Twenty minutes later they watched him return, and then all once more was still.

“We had better give him an hour to get to bed,” Willis whispered. “If he were to look out it wouldn't do for him to see two detectives roaming about his beloved clearing.”

“We might go at eleven,” Laroche proposed, and so they did.

Keeping as much as possible in the shelter of the bushes, they approached the mill. Willis had got a sketch-plan of the building from Merriman, and he moved round to the office door. His bent wire proved as efficacious with French locks as with English, and in a few moments they stood within, with the door shut behind them.

“Now,” said Willis, carefully shading the beam of his electric torch, “let's see those lorries first of all.”

As has already been stated, the garage was next to the office, and passing through the communicating door, the two men found five of the ponderous vehicles therein. A moment's examination of the number plates showed that on all the machines the figures were separate from the remainder of the lettering, being carried on small brass plates which dropped vertically into place through slots in the main castings. But the joint at each side of the number was not conspicuous because similar vertical lines were cut into the brass between each letter of the whole legend.

“That's good,” Laroche observed. “Make a thing unnoticeable by multiplying it!”

Of the five lorries, two were loaded with firewood and three empty. The men moved round examining them with their torches.

“Hallo,” Laroche called suddenly in a low voice, “what have we here, Willis?”

The inspector crossed over to the other, who was pointing to the granolithic floor in front of him. One of the empty lorries was close to the office wall, and the Frenchman stood between the two. On the floor were three drops of some liquid.

“Can you smell them?” he inquired.

Willis knelt down and sniffed, then slowly got up again.

“Good man,” he said, with a trace of excitement in his manner. “It's brandy right enough.”

“Yes,” returned the other. “Security has made our nocturnal friend careless. The stuff must have come from this lorry, I fancy.”

They turned to the vehicle and examined it eagerly. For some time they could see nothing remarkable, but presently it gave up its secret The deck was double! Beneath it was a hollow space some six feet by nine long, and not less than three inches deep. And not only so. This hollow space was continued up under the unusually large and wide driver's seat, save for a tiny receptacle for petrol. In a word the whole top of the machine was a vast secret tank.

The men began measuring and calculating, and they soon found that no less than one hundred and fifty gallons of liquid could be carried therein.

“One hundred and fifty gallons of brandy per trip!” Willis ejaculated. “Lord! It's no wonder they make it pay.”

They next tackled the problem of how the tank was filled and emptied, and at last their perseverance was rewarded. Behind the left trailing wheel, under the framing, was a small hinged door about six inches square and fastened by a spring operated by a mock rivet head. This being opened, revealed a cavity containing a pipe connected to the tank and fitted with a stop-cock and the half of a union coupling.

“The pipe which connects with that can't be far away,” Laroche suggested. “We might have a look round for it.”

The obvious place was the wall of the office, which ran not more than three feet from the vehicle. It was finished with vertical tongued and V-jointed sheeting, and a comparatively short search revealed the loose board the detectives were by this time expecting. Behind it was concealed a pipe, jointed concertina-wise, and ending in the other half of the union coupling. It was evident the joints would allow the half coupling to be pulled out and connected with that on the lorry. The pipe ran down through the floor, showing that the lorry could be emptied by gravity.

“A good safe scheme,” Laroche commented. “If I had seen that lorry a hundred times I should never have suspected a tank. It's well designed.”

They turned to examine the other vehicles. All four were identical in appearance with the first, but all were strictly what they seemed, containing no secret receptacle.

“Merriman said they had six lorries,” Willis remarked. “I wonder where the sixth is.”

“At the distillery, don't you think?” the Frenchman returned. “Those drops prove that manager fellow has just been unloading this one. I expect he does it every night. But if so, Raymond must load a vehicle every night too.”

“That's true. We may assume the job is done every night, because Merriman watched Coburn come down here three nights running. It was certainly to unload the lorry.”

“Doubtless; and he probably came at two in the morning on account of his daughter.”

“That means there are two tank lorries,” Willis went on, continuing his own line of thought. “I say, Laroche, let's mark this one so that we may know it again.”

They made tiny scratches on the paint at each corner of the big vehicle, then Willis turned back to the office.

“I'd like to find that cellar while we're here,” he remarked. “We know there is a cellar, for those Customs men saw the Girondin loaded from it. We might have a look round for the entrance.”

Then ensued a search similar to that which Willis had carried out in the depot at Ferriby, except that in this case they found what they were looking for in a much shorter time. In the office was a flat roll-topped desk, with the usual set of drawers at each side of the central knee well, and when Willis found it was clamped to the floor he felt he need go no further. On the ground in the knee well, and projecting out towards the revolving chair in front, was a mat. Willis raised it, and at once observed a joint across the boards where in ordinary circumstances no joint should be. He fumbled and pressed and pulled, and in a couple of minutes he had the satisfaction of seeing the floor under the well rise and reveal the head of a ladder leading down into the darkness below.

“Here we are,” he called softly to Laroche, who was searching at the other side of the room.

The cellar into which the two detectives descended was lined with timber like that at Ferriby. Indeed the two were identical, except that only one passage—that under the wharf—led out of this one. It contained a similar large tun with a pipe leading down the passage under the wharf, on which was a pump. The only difference was in the connection of the pipes. At Ferriby the pump conveyed from the wharf to the tun, here it was from the tun to the wharf. The pipe from the garage came down through the ceiling and ran direct into the tun.

The two men walked down the passage towards the river. Here also the arrangement was the same as at Ferriby, and they remained only long enough for Willis to point out to the Frenchman how the loading apparatus was worked.

“Well,” said the former, as they returned to the office, “that's not so bad for one day. I suppose it's all we can do here. If we can learn as much at that distillery we shall soon have all we want.”

Laroche pointed to a chair.

“Sit down a moment,” he invited. “I have been thinking over that plan we discussed in the train, of searching the distillery at night, and I don't like it. There are too many people about, and we are nearly certain to be seen. It's quite different from working a place like this.”

“Quite,” Willis answered rather testily. “I don't like it either, but what can we do?”

“I'll tell you what I should do.” Laroche leaned forward and checked his points on his fingers. “That lorry had just been unloaded. It's empty now, and if our theory is correct it will be taken to the distillery tomorrow and left there over-night to be filled up again. Isn't that so?”

Willis nodded impatiently and the other went on:

“Now, it is clear that no one can fill up that tank without leaving finger-prints on the pipe connections in that secret box. Suppose we clean those surfaces now, and suppose we come back here the night after tomorrow, before the man here unloads, we could get the prints of the person who filled up in the distillery.”

“Well,” Willis asked sharply, “and how would that help us?”

“This way. Tomorrow you will be an English distiller with a forest you could get cheap near your works. You have an idea of running your stills on wood fires. You naturally call to see how M. Raymond does it, and you get shown over his works. You have prepared a plan of your proposals. You hand it to him when he can't put it down on a desk. He holds it between his fingers and thumb, and eventually returns it to you. You go home and use powder. You have his finger-prints. You compare the two sets.”

Willis was impressed. The