He thought of his own department. The Excise had failed him. What about the Sûreté?
But a very little thought convinced him that he was even less likely to obtain help from this quarter. He could only base an appeal on the possibility of a future charge of conspiracy to murder, and he realized that the evidence for that was too slight to put forward seriously.
What was to be done? So far as he could see, but one thing. He must employ a private detective. This plan would meet the language difficulty by which he was so completely hung up.
He went to a call office and got his chief at the Yard on the long distance wire. The latter approved his suggestion, and recommended M. Jules Laroche of the Rue du Sommerard near the Sorbonne. Half an hour later Willis reached the house.
M. Laroche proved to be a tall, unobtrusive-looking man of some five-and-forty, who had lived in London for some years and spoke as good English as Willis himself. He listened quietly and without much apparent interest to what his visitor had to tell him, then said he would be glad to take on the job.
“We had better go to Bordeaux this evening, so as to start fresh tomorrow,” Willis suggested.
“Two o’clock at the d’Orsay station,” the other returned. “We have just time. We can settle our plans in the train.”
They reached the St Jean station at Bordeaux at 10.35 that night, and drove to the Hotel d’Espagne. They had decided that they could do nothing until the following evening, when they would go out to the clearing and see what a search of the mill premises might reveal.
Next morning Laroche vanished, saying he had friends in the town whom he wished to look up, and it was close on dinner-time before he put in an appearance.
“I have got some information that may help,” he said, as Willis greeted him. “Though I’m not connected with the official force, we are very good friends and have worked into each other’s hands. I happen to know one of the officers of the local police, and he got me the information. It seems that a M. Pierre Raymond is practically the owner of Raymond Fils, the distillers you mentioned. He is a man of about thirty, and the son of one of the original brothers. He was at one time comfortably off, and lived in a pleasant villa in the suburbs. But latterly he has been going the pace, and within the last two years he let his villa and bought a tiny house next door to the distillery, where he is now living. It is believed his money went at Monte Carlo, indeed it seems he is a wrong ’un all round. At all events he is known to be hard up now.”