“Have you caught them yet?” asked Freda with curiosity.
“No. Everybody seems banded together in a league to help them.”
“How are you sure there are any?”
“Well, we’ve had suspicions for years of a great organisation for smuggling, admirably planned and carried out, defrauding the revenue to the extent of thousands of pounds annually. The plans of these wretches were so well laid that, though we have again and again caught the receivers of smuggled spirits and tobacco, we have never yet been able to lay hands upon the big offenders, and it is only lately that we have had information pointing to the Yorkshire coast as the probable centre of the trade. I have been sent down to investigate.”
“And what will be done to these men if they are caught?”
“Well, the usual punishment for smuggling is by fines; to be strictly correct it is the value of the article smuggled and three times the duty on it. But if, as we suspect, we get hold of a chief or chiefs of a regular gang, why, then, he or they, whichever it proves to be, will have to be proceeded against by some method more convincing.”
“Oh, yes,” said Freda.
“I am going southward for a few days, to visit two or three places further down the coast. When I come back I shall call at the Abbey to see you: will you make me welcome for an hour?”
“Indeed I would if I might, if I could,” said she mournfully. “But I don’t feel that I am the real mistress there; there are Crispin and his wife.”
Her friend frowned and spoke with kindly impatience.