o a hazardous
nocturnal visit to the distillery. But he wished he had thought of it
himself.

"We might try it," he admitted, without enthusiasm. "It couldn't do much
harm anyway."

They returned to the garage, opened the secret lid beneath the lorry,
and with a cloth moistened with petrol cleaned the fittings. Then after
a look round to make sure that nothing had been disturbed, they let
themselves out of the shed, regained the lane and their machine, and
some forty minutes later were in Bordeaux.

On reconsideration they decided that as Raymond might have obtained
Willis's description from Captain Beamish, it would be wiser for Laroche
to visit the distillery. Next morning, therefore, the latter bought
a small writing block, and taking an inside leaf, which he carefully
avoided touching with his hands, he drew a cross-section of a
wood-burning fire-box copied from an illustration in a book of reference
in the city library, at the same time reading up the subject so as to be
able to talk on it without giving himself away. Then he set out on his
mission.

In a couple of hours he returned.

"Got that all right," he exclaimed, as he rejoined the inspector. "I
went and saw the fellow; said I was going to start a distillery in the
Ardennes where there was plenty of wood, and wanted to see his plant. He
was very civil, and took me round and showed me everything. There is a
shed there above the still furnaces with hoppers for the firewood to go
down, and in it was standing the lorry--the lorry, I saw our marks on
the corner. It was loaded with firewood, and he explained that it would
be emptied last thing before the day-shift left, so as to do the stills
during the night. Well, I got a general look round the concern, and I
found that the large tuns which contain the finished brandy were just at
the back of the wall of the shed where the lorry was standing. So it is
easy to see what happens. Evidently there is a pipe through the wall,
and Raymond comes down at night and fills up the lorry."

"And did you get his finger-prints?"

"Have 'em here."

Locking the door of their private room, Laroche took from his pocket the
sketch he had made.

"He held this up quite satisfactorily," he went on, "and there should be
good prints."

Willis had meanwhile spread a newspaper on the table and taken from his
suitcase a small bottle of powdered lamp-black and a camel's-hair brush.
Laying the sketch on the newspaper he gently b