It was flat except for the low bank, four or five
feet high, on which lay the railway tracks. There were clumps of trees
farther inland, but none along the shore, and the nearest building, a
large block like a factory with beside it a cottage, was at least three
hundred yards away in the Hull direction.

"Seems an element of design in that, eh, Hilliard?" Merriman remarked
as they turned to continue their walk. "Considering the populous country
we're in, you could hardly find a more isolated place."

Hilliard nodded as they turned away.

"I've just been thinking that. They could carry on any tricks they liked
there and no one would be a bit the wiser."

They moved on towards the factory-like building. It was on the inland
side of the railway, and the lane swung away from the line and passed
what was evidently its frontage. A siding ran into its rear, and
there were connections across the main lines and a signal cabin in the
distance. A few yards on the nearer side stood the cottage, which they
now saw was empty and dilapidated.

"I say, Hilliard, look there!" cried Merriman suddenly.

They had passed along the lane until the facade of the building had come
into view and they were able to read its signboard: "Ackroyd & Bolt,
Licensed Rectifiers."

"I thought it looked like a distillery," continued Merriman in
considerable excitement. "By Jove! Hilliard, that's a find and no
mistake! Pretty suggestive, that, isn't it?"

Hilliard was not so enthusiastic.

"I'm not so sure," he said slowly. "You mean that it supports my brandy
smuggling theory? Just how?"

"Well, what do you think yourself? We suspect brandy smuggling, and
here we find at the import end of the concern the nearest building in
an isolated region is a distillery--a rectifying house, mind you! Isn't
that a matter of design too? How better could they dispose of their
stuff than by dumping it on to rectifiers?"

"You distinguish between distillers and rectifiers?"

"Certainly; there's less check on rectifiers. Am I not right in saying
that while the regulations for the measurement of spirit actually
produced from the stills are so thorough as to make fraud almost
impossible, rectifiers, because they don't themselves produce spirit,
but merely refine what other firms have produced, are not so strictly
looked after? Rectifiers would surely find smuggled stuff easier to
dispose of than distillers."

Hilliard shook his head.

"Perhaps so, theoretic