spot where the great arches, with their scanty lights,
make a gloomy thoroughfare into Bermondsey. In the shadow of the first
of these he paused and looked steadfastly across the street. There were
few people passing, and practically no traffic. In front of him was a
row of warehouses, all save one of which was wrapped in complete
darkness. It was the one where some lights were still burning which de
Grost stood and watched.

The lights, such as they were, seemed to illuminate the ground floor
only. From his hidden post he could see the shoulders of a man
apparently bending over a ledger, diligently writing. At the next window
a youth, seated upon a tall stool, was engaged in, presumably, the same
avocation. There was nothing about the place in the least mysterious or
out-of-the-way. Even the blinds of the offices had been left undrawn.
The man and the boy, who were alone visible, seemed, in a sense, to be
working under protest. Every now and then the former stopped to yawn,
and the latter performed a difficult balancing feat upon his stool. De
Grost, having satisfied his curiosity, came presently from his shelter,
almost running into the arms of a policeman, who looked at him closely.
The Baron, who had an unlighted cigarette in his mouth, stopped to ask
for a light, and his appearance at once set at rest any suspicions the
policeman might have had.

"I have a warehouse myself down in these parts," he remarked, as he
struck the match, "but I don't allow my people to work as late as that."

He pointed across the way, and the policeman smiled.

"They are very often late there, sir," he said. "It is a Continental
wine business, and there's always one or two of them over time."

"It's bad business, all the same," de Grost declared pleasantly.
"Good-night, policeman!"

"Good-night, sir!"

De Grost crossed the road diagonally, as though about to take the short
cut across London Bridge, but as soon as the policeman was out of sight
he retraced his steps to the building which they had been discussing,
and, turning the battered brass handle of the door, walked calmly in. On
his right and left were counting-houses framed with glass; in front, the
cavernous and ugly depths of a gloomy warehouse. He knocked upon the
window-pane on the right and passed forward a step or two, as though to
enter the office. The boy who had been engaged in the left-hand
counting-house came gliding from his place, passed silently behind the
vi