“Now, as nearly as any one can get the story, there seems to have been a mysterious, phantom boat, very swift, without lights, and with an engine carefully muffled down which has been coming up to the old dock for the past few nights when the tide was high enough. A light has been seen moving on the dock, then suddenly extinguished, only to reappear again. Who carried it and why, no one knows. Any one who has tried to approach the place has had a scare thrown into him which he will not easily forget. For instance, one man crept up and though he did not think he was seen he was suddenly shot at from behind a tree. He felt the bullet pierce his arm, started to run, stumbled, and next morning woke up in the exact spot on which he had fallen, none the worse for his experience except that he had a slight wound that will prevent his using his right arm for some time for heavy work.
“After each visit of the phantom boat there is heard, according to the story of the few neighbours who have observed it, the tramp of feet up the overgrown stone walk from the dock and some have said that they heard an automobile as silent and ghostly as the boat. We have been all through the weird old house, but have found nothing there, except enough loose boards and shutters to account for almost any noise or combination of noises. However, no one has said there was anything there except the tramp of feet going back and forth on the old pavements outside. Two or three times shots have been heard, and on the dock where most of the alleged mysterious doings have taken place we have found one very new exploded shell of a cartridge.”
Craig took the shell which O’Connor drew from another pocket and trying to fit the bullet and the cartridge together remarked “both from a .44, probably one of those old-fashioned, long-barrelled makes.”
“There,” concluded O’Connor ruefully, “you know all we know of the thing so far.”
“I may keep these for the present?” inquired Kennedy, preparing to pocket the shell and the bullet, and from his very manner I could see that as a matter of fact he already knew a great deal more about the case than the police. “Take us down to this old house and dock, if you please.”
Over and over, Craig paced up and down the dilapidated dock, his keen eyes fastened to the ground, seeking some clue, anything that would point to the marauders. Real persons they certainly were, and not any ghostly crew of the bygone days of harbour pirates, for there was every evidence of some one who had gone up and down the walk recently, not once but many times.
Suddenly Kennedy stumbled over what looked like a sardine tin can, except that it had no label or trace of one. It was lying in the thick long matted grass by the side of the walk as if it had tumbled there and had been left unnoticed.
Yet there was nothing so very remarkable about it in itself. Tin cans were lying all about, those marks of decadent civilisation. But to Craig it had instantly presented an idea. It was a new can. The others were rusted.
He had pried off the lid and inside was a blackish, viscous mass.
“Smoking opium,” Craig said at last.