"I know nothing of Pitsea," the doctor went on, "but I do know Hole Haven. When I was walking the hospital, three or four of us had a little sailing-boat, and used to go out from Saturday until Monday morning. Hole Haven was generally the limit of our excursions. It is a snug little harbor for small boats, and there is a comfortable old-fashioned little inn there, where we used to sleep. The coastguards were all sociable fellows, ready to chat with strangers and not averse to a small tip. Of course the same men will not be there now, nor would it be very safe to ask questions of them; for no doubt they are on friendly terms with the men on the barges which go up and down the creek. I might, however, learn something from them of the ways of these men, and I should think that, on giving my card to the petty officer in charge, I could safely question him. I don't suppose that he would know where this man Nibson has his headquarters. If he lives at Rochester, or Chatham, or at Limehouse, or Shadwell, he certainly would not know him; but if he lives at Pitsea he might know him. I fancy they keep a pretty sharp lookout on the barges. I know that the coastguard told me that there was still a good deal of smuggling carried on in the marshes between Leigh and Thames Haven. I fancy, from what he said, that the Leigh fishermen think it no harm to run a few pounds of tobacco or a keg of spirit from a passing ship, and, indeed, as there are so many vessels that go ashore on the sands below, and as they are generally engaged in unloading them or helping them to get off, they have considerable facilities that way. At any rate, as an old frequenter of the place and as knowing the landlord—that is to say if there has been no change there—no suspicion could fall upon me of going down there in reference to your affair. To-day is Friday. On Sunday morning, early, I will run down to Gravesend, hire a boat there, and will sail down to Hole Haven. It will be an outing for me, and a pleasant one; and at least I can be doing no harm."
"Thank you very much indeed, Dr. Leeds," Hilda said warmly; "that is a splendid idea."
On Sunday evening Dr. Leeds called at Hyde Park Gardens to report his day's work.
"I think that my news is eminently satisfactory. I saw the petty officer in command of the coastguard station, and he willingly gave me all the information in his power. He knew the bargee, Bill Nibson. He is up and down the creek, he says, once and sometimes twice a week. He has got a little bit of a farm and a house on the bank of the creek a mile and a half on this side of Pitsea. They watch him pretty closely, as they do all the men who use the creek; there is not one of them who does not carry on a bit of smuggling if he gets the chance.
"'I thought that was almost given up,' I said. 'Oh, no; it is carried on,' he replied, 'on a much smaller scale than it used to be, but there is plenty of it, and I should say that there is more done that way on the Thames than anywhere else. In the first place, Dutch, German, and French craft coming up the channels after dark can have no difficulty whatever in transferring tobacco and spirits into barges or fishing-boats. I need hardly say it is not ships of any size that carry on this sort of business, but small vessels, such as billy-boys and craft of that sort. They carry their regular cargoes, and probably never bring more than a few hundredweight of tobacco and a dozen or so kegs of spirits. It is doubtful whether their owners know anything of what is being done, and I should say that it is generally a sort of speculation on the part of the skipper and men. On this side the trade is no doubt in the hands of men who either work a single barge or fishing-boat of their own, or who certainly work it without the least suspicion on the part of the owners.
"'The thing is so easily arranged. A man before he starts from Ostend or Hamburg, or the mouth of the Seine, sends a line to his friends here, at Rochester or Limehouse or Leigh, "Shall sail to-night. Expect to come up the south channel on Monday evening." The bargeman or fisherman runs down at the time arranged, and five or six miles below the Nore brings up and shows a light. He knows that the craft he expects will not be up before that time, for if the wind was extremely favorable, and they made the run quicker than they expected, they would bring up in Margate Roads till the time appointed. If they didn't arrive that night, they would do so the next, and the barge would lay there and wait for them, or the fishermen would go into Sheerness or Leigh and come out again the next night.
"'You might wonder how a barge could waste twenty-four or forty-eight hours without being called to account by its owners, but there are barges which will anchor up for two or three days under the pretense that the weather is bad, but really from sheer laziness.
"'That is one way the stuff comes into the country, and, so far as I can see, there is no way whatever of stopping it. The difficulty, of course, is with the landing, and even that is not great. When the tide turns to run out there are scores, I may say hundreds, of barges anchored between Chatham and Gravesend. They generally anchor close in shore, and it would require twenty times the number of coastguards there are between Chatham and Gravesend on one side, and Foulness and Tilbury on the other, to watch the whole of them and to see that boats do not come ashore.
"'A few strokes and they are there. One man will wait in the boat while the other goes up onto the bank to see that all is clear. If it is, the things are carried up at once. Probably the barge has put up some flag that is understood by friends ashore; they are there to meet it, and in half an hour the kegs are either stowed away in lonely farmhouses or sunk in some of the deep ditches, and there they will remain until they can be fished up and sent off in a cart loaded with hay or something of that sort. You may take it that among the marshes on the banks of the Medway and Thames there is a pretty good deal done in the way of smuggling still. We keep a very close eye upon all the barges that come up here, but it is very seldom that we make any catch. One cannot seize a barge like the Mary Ann, that is the boat belonging to Nibson, with perhaps sixty tons of manure or cement or bricks, and unload it without some specific information that would justify our doing so. Indeed, we hardly could unload it unless we took it out into the Thames and threw the contents overboard. We could not carry it up this steep, stone-faced bank, and higher up there are very few places where a barge could lie alongside the bank to be unloaded. We suspect Nibson of doing something that way, but we have never been able to catch him at it. We have searched his place suddenly three or four times, but never found anything suspicious.'
"'May I ask what family the man has?' I said.