shore when he saw her coming, lest Captain Beamish's binoculars might
reveal to him a familiar countenance.

He pulled easily, timing himself to arrive at the wharf as soon as
possible after dark. The evening was dry, but the south-easterly wind
still blew cold and raw, though not nearly so strongly as on the night
of his walk.

There were a couple of lights on the Girondin, and he steered by these
till the dark mass of her counter, looming up out of the night, cut them
off. Slipping round her stern, as Hilliard had done in the River Lesque,
he unshipped his oars and guided the boat by his hands into the V-shaped
space between the two rows of piles fronting the wharf. As he floated
gently forward he felt between the horizontal props which held back the
filling until he came to a vacant space, then knowing he was opposite
the cellar, he slid the boat back a few feet, tied her up, and settled
down to wait.

Though sheltered from the wind by the hull, it was cold and damp under
the wharf. The waves were lapping among the timbers, and the boat moved
uneasily at the end of her short painter. The darkness was absolute--an
inky blackness unrelieved by any point of light. Willis realized that
waiting would soon become irksome.

But it was not so very long before the work began. He had been there,
he estimated, a couple of hours when he saw, not ten feet away, a dim
circle of light suddenly appear on the Girondin's side. Someone had
turned on a faint light in a cabin whose open porthole was immediately
opposite the cellar. Presently Willis, watching breathlessly, saw what
he believed was the steel pipe impinge on and enter the illuminated
ring. It remained projecting into the porthole for some forty minutes,
was as silently withdrawn, the porthole was closed, a curtain drawn
across it, and the light turned up within. The brandy had been
discharged.

The thing had been done inaudibly, and invisibly to anyone on either
wharf or ship. Marvelling once more at the excellence and secrecy of the
plan, Willis gently pushed his boat out from among the piles and rowed
back down the river to Hull. There he tied the boat up, and returning to
his hotel, was soon fast asleep.

In spite of his delight at the discovery, he could not but realize that
much still remained to be done. Though he had learned how the syndicate
was making its money, he had not obtained any evidence of the complicity
of its members in the murder of Coburn.

Who