The Pit-Prop Syndicate

by Freeman Wills Crofts

The last train for Hull having left, he started to walk the six miles to the city. The weather had still further changed for the worse, and now half a gale of wind whirled round him in a pandemonium of sound and blew blinding squalls of rain into his eyes. In a few moments he was soaked to the skin, and the buffeting of the wind made his progress slow. But he struggled on, too well pleased by the success of his evening’s work to mind the discomfort.

And as he considered the affair on the following morning he felt even more satisfied. He had indeed done well! Not only had he completed what he set out to do—to discover the murderer of Coburn—but he had accomplished vastly more. He had brought to light one of the greatest smuggling conspiracies of modern times. It was true he had not followed up and completed the case against the syndicate, but this was not his business. Smuggling was not dealt with by Scotland Yard. It was a matter for the Customs Department. But if only it had been forged notes! He heaved a sigh as he thought of the kudos which might have been his.

But when he had gone so far, he thought he might as well make certain that the brandy was discharged as he imagined. He calculated that the Girondin would reach Ferriby on the following day, and he determined to see the operation carried out.

He followed the plan of Hilliard and Merriman to the extent of hiring a boat in Hull and sculling gently down towards the wharf as dusk fell. He had kept a watch on the river all day without seeing the motor ship go up, but now she passed him a couple of miles above the city. He turned inshore when he saw her coming, lest Captain Beamish’s binoculars might reveal to him a familiar countenance.

He pulled easily, timing himself to arrive at the wharf as soon as possible after dark. The evening was dry, but the south-easterly wind still blew cold and raw, though not nearly so strongly as on the night of his walk.

There were a couple of lights on the Girondin, and he steered by these till the dark mass of her counter, looming up out of the night, cut them off. Slipping round her stern, as Hilliard had done in the River Lesque, he unshipped his oars and guided the boat by his hands into the V-shaped space between the two rows of piles fronting the wharf. As he floated gently forward he felt between the horizontal props which held back the filling until he came to a vacant space, then knowing he was opposite the cellar, he slid the boat back a few feet, tied her up, and settled down to wait.

Though sheltered from the wind by the hull, it was cold and damp under the wharf. The waves were lapping among the timbers, and the boat moved uneasily at the end of her short painter. The darkness was absolute—an inky blackness unrelieved by any point of light. Willis realized that waiting would soon become irksome.

But it was not so very long before the work began. He had been there, he estimated, a couple of hours when he saw, not ten feet away, a dim circle of light suddenly appear on the Girondin’s side. Someone had turned on a faint light in a cabin whose open porthole was immediately opposite the cellar. Presently Willis, watching breathlessly, saw what he believed was the steel pipe impinge on and enter the illuminated ring. It remained projecting into the porthole for some forty minutes, was as silently withdrawn, the porthole was closed, a curtain drawn across it, and the light turned up within. The brandy had been discharged.

The thing had been done inaudibly, and invisibly to anyone on either wharf or ship. Marvelling once more at the excellence and secrecy of the plan, Willis gently pushed his boat out from among the piles and rowed back down the river to Hull. There he tied the boat up, and returning to his hotel, was soon fast asleep.

In spite of his delight at the discovery, he could not but realize that much still remained to be done. Though he had learned how the syndicate was making its money, he had not obtained any evidence of the complicity of its members in the murder of Coburn.