from the left hand
end of the shed. The manager evidently was still about.

"We'll go back to the boat and wait," Hilliard whispered, and they crept
down the steps.

At intervals of half an hour one or other climbed up and had a look at
the windows. On the first two occasions the light was unchanged, on the
third it had moved to the first and second windows, and on the fourth
it had gone, apparently indicating that the manager had moved from his
sitting-room to his bedroom and retired.

"We had better wait at least an hour more," Hilliard whispered again.

Time passed slowly in the darkness under the wharf, and in a silence
broken only by the gentle lapping of the water among the piles. The boat
lay almost steady, except when a movement of one of its occupants made
it heel slightly over and started a series of tiny ripples. It was not
cold, and had the men not been so full of their adventure they could
have slept. At intervals Hilliard consulted his luminous-dialed watch,
but it was not until the hands pointed to the half-hour after one that
they made a move. Then once more they softly ascended to the wharf
above.

The sides of the structure were protected by railings which ran back to
the gables of the tin house, the latter stretching entirely across the
base of the pier. Over the space thus enclosed the two friends passed,
but it speedily became apparent that here nothing of interest was to be
found. Beyond the stacks of props and wagons there was literally nothing
except a rusty steam winch, a large water butt into which was led the
down spout from the roof, a tank raised on a stand and fitted with a
flexible pipe, evidently for supplying crude oil for the ship's engines,
and a number of empty barrels in which the oil had been delivered. With
their torch carefully screened by the black cloth the friends examined
these objects, particularly the oil tank which, forming as it did
a bridge between ship and shore, naturally came in for its share of
suspicion. But, they were soon satisfied that neither it nor any of the
other objects were connected with their quest, and retreating to the
edge of the wharf, they held a whispered consultation.

Hilliard was for attempting to open one of the doors in the shed at the
end away from the manager's room, but Merriman, obsessed with the idea
of seeing the unloading of the Girondin, urged that the contents of
the shed were secondary, and that their efforts should be confined t