obability was in his favor.

It also seemed certain that the whole pit-prop business was a sham, a
mere blind to cover those other operations from which the money came.
But when Hilliard came to ask himself what those operations were, he
found himself up against a more difficult proposition.

His original brandy smuggling idea recurred to him with renewed force,
and as he pondered it he saw that there really was something to be said
for it. Three distinct considerations were consistent with the theory.

There was first of all the size of the fraud. A theft of 4,000 to 6,000
or more a year implied as victim a large corporation. The sum would
be too big a proportion of the income of a moderate-sized firm for the
matter to remain undiscovered, and, other things being equal, the larger
the corporation the more difficult to locate the leakage.

But what larger corporation was there than a nation, and what so easy
to defraud as a government? And how could a government be more easily
defrauded than by smuggling? Here again Hilliard recognized he was only
theorizing; still the point had a certain weight.

The second consideration was also inconclusive. It was that all the
people who, he had so far learned, were involved were engaged in
transport operations. The ostensible trade also, the blind under which
the thing was worked, was a transport trade. If brandy smuggling were in
progress something of precisely this kind would have to be devised. In
fact anything more suitable than the pit-prop business would be hard to
discover.

The third point he had thought of before. If brandy were to be smuggled,
no better locality could have been found for the venture than this
country round about Bordeaux. As one of the staple products of the
district, brandy could be obtained here, possibly more easily than
anywhere else.

The converse argument was equally inconclusive. What hypothesis other
than that of brandy smuggling could meet the facts? Hilliard could not
think of any, but he recognized that his failure did not prove that none
existed.

On the other hand, in spite of these considerations, he had to admit
that he had seen nothing which in the slightest degree supported the
theory, nor had he heard anything which could not equally well have
referred to something else.

But whatever their objective, he felt sure that the members of the
syndicate were desperate men. They were evidently too far committed to
hesitate over fresh