“Merriman said they had six lorries,” Willis remarked. “I wonder where the sixth is.”
“At the distillery, don’t you think?” the Frenchman returned. “Those drops prove that manager fellow has just been unloading this one. I expect he does it every night. But if so, Raymond must load a vehicle every night too.”
“That’s true. We may assume the job is done every night, because Merriman watched Coburn come down here three nights running. It was certainly to unload the lorry.”
“Doubtless; and he probably came at two in the morning on account of his daughter.”
“That means there are two tank lorries,” Willis went on, continuing his own line of thought. “I say, Laroche, let’s mark this one so that we may know it again.”
They made tiny scratches on the paint at each corner of the big vehicle, then Willis turned back to the office.
“I’d like to find that cellar while we’re here,” he remarked. “We know there is a cellar, for those Customs men saw the Girondin loaded from it. We might have a look round for the entrance.”
Then ensued a search similar to that which Willis had carried out in the depot at Ferriby, except that in this case they found what they were looking for in a much shorter time. In the office was a flat roll-topped desk, with the usual set of drawers at each side of the central knee well, and when Willis found it was clamped to the floor he felt he need go no further. On the ground in the knee well, and projecting out towards the revolving chair in front, was a mat. Willis raised it, and at once observed a joint across the boards where in ordinary circumstances no joint should be. He fumbled and pressed and pulled, and in a couple of minutes he had the satisfaction of seeing the floor under the well rise and reveal the head of a ladder leading down into the darkness below.
“Here we are,” he called softly to Laroche, who was searching at the other side of the room.
The cellar into which the two detectives descended was lined with timber like that at Ferriby. Indeed the two were identical, except that only one passage—that under the wharf—led out of this one. It contained a similar large tun with a pipe leading down the passage under the wharf, on which was a pump. The only difference was in the connection of the pipes. At Ferriby the pump conveyed from the wharf to the tun, here it was from the tun to the wharf. The pipe from the garage came down through the ceiling and ran direct into the tun.