"Well, it ought to be and I'm going to consider it now. The lugger might have been at St. Malo, or Granville, or Cherbourg, or any port along that bit of coast. Or she might have been in St. Helier, or Peter's Port, or some little bay in one of the Channel Islands. And if she was—mind I'm only saying if—I suppose you might make a nice little sum over a few dozen cases of French brandy that didn't pay duty. And your friend Linker could do with a consignment of French silk, duty free. I could manage along with a case or two of champagne and a few silk stockings for these young ladies. You see how the thing works out, Hinton. Immense crowds on shore. All the most eminent and respectable people looking on. Lugger comes in. Motor engine on board, not a Pallas Athene sports model engine, but one something more on the lines of your Ford. Flag flies at truck, skull and crossbones and all that. Thrills. Cheers. Newspaper men writing like fury. Photographers snapping their camera shutters. Publicity. Widest possible publicity. Dummy cargo landed. Pack horses loaded. Bales carried into cave. Cheers die down. Show over. Crowds disperse to eat and drink. Then you and I and Linker land another little cargo."
"That, my lord, would, I fear, be smuggling."
"You might call it that."
"The penalties for smuggling are very severe, my lord."
"I'm disappointed in you, Hinton. I thought you were a sportsman. Lord Dollman said you were a sportsman, and I believed him. But here you are funking a little flutter, when it's odds on, positively odds on. I should say nine to one on."
"The custom house officers are very alert, my lord, very alert indeed, and they're sure to be particularly suspicious of a pageant like this. The very word smuggling, advertised as we hope to advertise it, is enough to make them watch us."
"That's just where you're wrong," said Jimmy. "It's our advertising which will put them off. Nobody who wanted to smuggle would put a paragraph to say so in every paper in England. Nobody who meant to smuggle would invite Uncle Evie and the bishop and all the other political and legal swells to be directors in the company. Don't you see, Hinton, that's just the sort of thing that puts the intelligent custom house officer off the scent, and the more intelligent he is the certainer he's bound to be that there's nothing in it."
The reasoning was perfectly sound and ought to have convinced Hinton. Perhaps it did. Perhaps he had thought it all out himself before. But there was another difficulty which seemed less easy to deal with.
"You'll excuse me, my lord, but neither Mr. Linker nor I would care to take part in a scheme for defrauding the Revenue."
"Rot!" said Jimmy. "You really can't expect me to believe that, Hinton. Nobody could take that line. Just think how the good old Revenue defrauds us. It was only the other day I caught it at it. At least another fellow to whom I gave over the job caught it for me. And the thing had been going on for years. Income Tax. Hundreds of pounds that I oughtn't to have paid. I expect it's been doing the same thing to you and to Linker and Uncle Evie and everyone. So far as I can make out it defrauds everyone it can, and when it's caught doesn't even apologise. Now what's wrong about getting a bit of our own back? That's all we intend to do."