All things come to him who waits, however, and time brought Sheridan to Willie. After the distressed lad had almost given up hope of seeing him, the Secret Service man appeared. Willie was too much agitated to remain quietly aboard the boat, and was pacing up and down the pier, when he heard a voice speaking to the watchman at the pier entrance. He recognized the voice instantly and raced down the pier to greet the Secret Service man.
“Well,” smiled Sheridan, “do you still want to go with me? Haven’t got cold feet, have you?”
“Want to go with you?” repeated Willie. “Why, I was almost sick for fear you had passed me up.”
Sheridan laughed. “I should have told you just when to expect me,” he said. “But the fact is that a fellow in this business never knows where he will be from hour to hour. However, I might have told you that this auction was set for nine o’clock.”
“Auction!” cried Willie. “Aren’t we going after the wool smugglers? I don’t want to go to any auction.”
“You will want to go to this one, all right. It’s going to be an auction of bled wool.”
“An auction of bled wool! What do you mean? Has it anything to do with those smuggling bargemen?”
“Everything. That’s the way they get rid of their wool. You see they steal it while they are carrying it on their barges. The wool comes into this port in great bales, weighing hundreds of pounds. A barge is loaded with, say, five hundred bales of it. The barge captain ‘bleeds’ the bales. Perhaps he takes only a pound from each bale. When he reaches his destination, he has to deliver the five hundred bales. He does it, of course, but each bale is just a little short in weight. Perhaps the bargeman has taken enough in all to make a bale for himself.”
“I see,” said Willie. “And then he sells this stolen wool at auction.”
“Exactly.”