“Is that what you came to tell me?”
“No, sir, it was something queerer than that. After I’d given the barge a look over and tried to pull up some of the boards—which I didn’t manage to do—I went along and had a look at the factory. It’s not so easy to get in, because the entrance faces the house, but to get to it you have to go half round the building, and that gives you a certain amount of cover. There was nothing I could see in the factory itself. It was in a terrible mess, full of old iron and burnt-out boxes. I was coming round the back of the building,” he went on impressively, “when I smelt a peculiar scent.”
“A perfume?”
“Yes, sir, it was perfume, but stronger—more like incense. I thought at first it might be an old bale of stuff that had been thrown out, or else I was deceiving myself. I began poking about in the rubbish heaps—but they didn’t smell of scent! Then I went back into the building again, but there was no smell at all. It was very strong when I returned to the back of the factory, and then I saw a little waft of smoke come out of a ventilator close to the ground. My first idea was that the place was on fire, but when I knelt down, it was this scent.”
“Joss-sticks?” said Poiccart quickly.
“That’s what it was!” said the detective. “Like incense, yet not like it. I knelt down and listened at the grating, and I’ll swear that I heard voices. They were very faint.”
“Men’s?”
“No, women’s.”
“Could you see anything?”
“No, sir, it was a blind ventilator; there was probably a shaft there—in fact, I’m sure there was, because I pushed a stone through one of the holes and heard it drop some distance down.”