"Jim Pavely, the poor fellow whom these accursed foreigners murdered, was my brother-in-law. The night before he was killed he slept at my house. He was drunk, but he told me something that at first I didn't believe. He told me that on the previous day, spending so much time about this place, he had stumbled on the fact that a certain German timber-ship was in the habit of bringing up among its cargo a quantity of saccharine which was smuggled ashore at night and stored in the cellars below here. He had had words with the landlord Bramberger, but the latter had made him promise to keep his secret till next morning, when he would pay him a certain sum to say nothing to the Customs officers. Next afternoon at four o'clock he went to the 'Goat and Binnacle' to receive the money, and I entered after him, intending to assist him in getting all he could out of the German. But that fellow Freeman, yonder—whom I know to be also a German—was with his compatriot, and the three had consultation together in the back room. Half an hour later Jim Pavely came back to my house and showed me fifty pounds, and a written agreement signed by Bramberger to pay one hundred and fifty pounds more in gold in Calais, on condition that he remained abroad and held his tongue."
Then the informer paused.
"Go on," I urged. "What then?"
"Pavely told me something—something he had discovered. But I foolishly laughed his statement to scorn. He added that he was to sail in a French schooner that night, and that Freeman, who was in partnership with Bramberger, was to go over to Latchingdon with him that evening and introduce him to the skipper, who would land him at Calais. When he had gone, the story he had told me struck me as very astounding; therefore I resolved to follow him. I saw him come with Freeman out of this place just after midnight, and I followed them. When they got to Button's Hill, on that lonely stretch of road, I saw with my own eyes Freeman suddenly attack him with a life-preserver, and having smashed his skull before I could interfere, he stole the German's undertaking from his pocket."
At this, the man accused, standing in the corner covered by several revolvers, turned livid. He tried to protest, but his voice was only faint and hollow before the living witness of his crime.
He had collapsed.
"My first impulse was to denounce the assassin, but what the dead man had told me caused me to hesitate, and I resolved to first get at the truth, which I have done with Mr. Raymond's aid," Richardson went on. "The story of the schooner was true," he added, "except that it was a steam schooner-rigged yacht which was about to land some stuff for another depôt at Burnham."
"What stuff?" I asked quickly.
"Ammunition ready for the German army when it lands upon this coast. It was that fact which Pavely had discovered and told me. After agreeing to keep the secret of the saccharine, it seems that he discovered that the boxes really contained cartridges, a fact which he urged me to communicate to the War Office after he had secured the German's bribe."
"Yes," declared Raymond, "the extensive cellaring under this place is packed to the ceiling with ammunition ready for the Day of Invasion. See this, which has just been brought!"