The Pit-Prop Syndicate by Freeman Wills Crofts (readict books TXT) ๐
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The Pit-Prop Syndicate is a story from the beginning of the golden age of crime fiction. Seymour Merriman, a British wine merchant on business in France, happens upon a syndicate manufacturing pit-propsโbeams used to prop up mine tunnelsโbut his eye is caught by one odd detail: their lorryโs numberplate mysteriously changes. With the help of his friend Hilliard from the Excise department they dig deeper and uncover a dangerous conspiracy.
Freeman Wills Crofts was a civil engineer, turned author of crime fiction. Though somewhat forgotten today, his style was widely appreciated at the time, and still finds fans of those who like a puzzle where all the loose ends are tied up. During his career he wrote over thirty crime novels; The Pit-Prop Syndicate, published in 1922, was his third.
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- Author: Freeman Wills Crofts
Read book online ยซThe Pit-Prop Syndicate by Freeman Wills Crofts (readict books TXT) ๐ยป. Author - Freeman Wills Crofts
Willis, much interested, bent forward eagerly as the other, after a pause to relight his pipe, continued:
โAnother common method is to send out liquor secretly, without a permit at all. This may be done at night, or the stuff may go through an underground pipe, or be hidden in innocent looking articles such as suitcases or petrol tins. The pipe is the best scheme from the operatorโs point of view, and one may remain undiscovered for months, but the difficulty usually is to lay it in the first instance.
โA third method can be used only in the case of rectifiers and it illustrates one of the differences between rectifiers and distillers. Every permit for the removal of liquor from a distillery must be issued by the excise surveyor of the district, whereas rectifiers can issue their own certificates. Therefore in the case of rectifiers there is the possibility of the issuing of forged or fraudulent certificates. Of course this is not so easy as it sounds. The certificates are supplied in books of two hundred by the Excise authorities, and the blocks must be kept available for the supervisorโs scrutiny. Any certificates can be obtained from the receivers of the spirit and compared with the blocks. Forged permits are very risky things to work with, as all genuine ones bear the government watermark, which is not easy to reproduce. In fact, I may say about this whole question of liquor distribution generally, that fraud has been made so difficult that the only hope of those committing it is to avoid arousing suspicion. Once suspicion is aroused, discovery follows almost as a matter of course.โ
โThatโs hopeful for us,โ Willis smiled.
โYes,โ the other answered, โthough I fancy this case will be more difficult than most. There is another point to be taken into consideration which I have not mentioned, and that is, how the perpetrators of the frauds are going to get their money. In the last resort it can only come in from the public over the counters of the licensed premises which sell the smuggled spirits. But just as the smuggled liquor cannot be put through the books of the house selling it, so the money received for it cannot be entered either. This means that someone in authority in each licensed house must be involved. It also carries with it a suggestion, though only a suggestion, that the houses in question are tied houses. The director of a distillery company would have more hold on the manager of their own tied houses than over an outsider.โ
Again Willis nodded without replying, and Hunt went on:
โNow it happens that these Ackroyd & Holt people own some very large licensed houses in Hull, and it is to them, I imagine, that we should first direct our attention.โ
โHow do you propose to begin?โ
โI think we must first find out how the Ferriby liquor is sent to these houses. By the way, you probably know that already. You watched the distillery during working hours, didnโt you?โ
The inspector admitted it.
โDid you see any lorries?โ
โAny number; large blue machines. I noticed them going and coming in the Hull direction loaded up with barrels.โ
Hunt seemed pleased.
โGood,โ he commented. โThatโs a beginning anyway. Our next step must be to make sure that all these lorries carry certificates. We had better begin tomorrow.โ
Willis did not quite see how the business was to be done, but he forbore to ask questions, agreeing to fall in with his companionโs arrangements.
These arrangements involved the departure from their hotel by taxi at six oโclock the next morning. It was not fully light as they whirled out along the Ferriby road, but the sky was clear and all the indications pointed to a fine day.
They dismounted at the end of the lane leading to the works, and struck off across the fields, finally taking up their position behind the same thick hedge from which Willis had previously kept watch.
They spent the whole of that day, as well as of the next two, in their hiding-place, and at the end of that time they had a complete list of all lorries that entered or left the establishment during that period. No vehicles other than blue lorries appeared, and Hunt expressed himself as satisfied that if the smuggled brandy was not carried by them it must go either by rail or at night.
โWe can go into those other contingencies later if necessary,โ he said, โbut on the face of it I am inclined to back the lorries. They supply the tied houses in Hull, which would seem the obvious places for the brandy to go, and, besides, railway transit is too well looked after to attract the gang. I think weโll follow this lorry business through first on spec.โ
โI suppose youโll compare the certificate blocks with the list I made?โ Willis asked.
โOf course. That will show if all carry certificates. But I donโt want to do that yet. Before alarming them I want to examine the contents of a few of the lorries. I think we might do that tomorrow.โ
The next morning, therefore, the two detectives again engaged a taxi and ran out along the Ferriby road until they met a large blue lorry loaded with barrels and bearing on its side the legend โAckroyd & Holt Ltd., Licensed Rectifiers.โ When it had lumbered past on its way to the
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