“Obviously Archer does that as soon as he learns how the first trip has got on. If the brandy was smuggled out on the first trip, it means that Fox is holding the brandy-bearing certificate for the second, and Archer enters brandy on his second block. If, on the contrary, Fox has had his first load examined, Archer will make his entry on the first block.”
“The scheme,” Willis declared, “really means this. If Archer wants to smuggle out one hundred gallons of brandy, he has to send out another hundred legitimately on the same day? If he can manage to send out two hundred altogether then one hundred will be duty clear, but in any case he must pay on one hundred?”
“That’s right. It works out like that.”
“It’s a great scheme. The only weak point that I can see is that an Excise officer who has held up one of the trips might visit the works and look at the certificate block before Archer gets it altered.”
Hunt nodded.
“I thought of that,” he said, “and it can be met quite easily. I bet the manager telephones Archer on receipt of the stuff. I am going into that now. I shall have a note kept at the Central of conversations to Ferriby. If Archer doesn’t get a message by a certain time, I bet he assumes the plan has miscarried for that day and fills in the brandy on the first block.”
During the next two days Hunt was able to establish the truth of his surmise. At the same time Willis decided that his co-operation in the work at Hull was no longer needed. For Hunt there was still plenty to be done. He had to get direct evidence against each severally of the managers of the five tied houses in question, as well as to ascertain how and to whom they were passing on the “stuff,” for that they were receiving more brandy than could be sold over their own counters was unquestionable. But he agreed with Willis that these five men were more than likely in ignorance of the main conspiracy, each having only a private understanding with Archer. But whether or not this was so, Willis did not believe he could get any evidence that they were implicated in the murder of Coburn.
The French end of the affair, he thought, the supply of the brandy in the first instance, was more promising from this point of view, and the next morning he took an early train to London as a preliminary to starting work in France.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE BORDEAUX LORRIES
Two days later Inspector Willis sat once again in the office of M. Max, the head of the French Excise Department in Paris. The Frenchman greeted him politely, but without enthusiasm.