第82章

We boarded the ship by one of the many entrances and then proceeded down to a deck where apparently no one was working.It was more like a great house than a ship, I felt, and I wondered whether Kennedy's search was not more of a hunt for a needle in a haystack than anything else.Yet he seemed to know what he was after.

We had descended to what I imagined must be the quarters of the steward.About us were many large cases and chests, stacked up and marked as belonging to the ship.Kennedy's attention was attracted to them immediately.All at once it flashed on me what his purpose was.In some of those cases were the smuggled goods!

Before I could say a word and before Kennedy had a chance even to try to verify his suspicions, a sudden approach of footsteps startled us.He drew me into a cabin or room full of shelves with ship's stores.

"Why didn't you bring Herndon over and break into the boxes, if you think the stuff is hidden in one of them?" I whispered.

"And let those higher up escape while their tools take all the blame?" he answered."Sh-h."The men who had come into the compartment looked about as if expecting to see some one.

"Two of them came down," a gruff voice said."Where are they?">From the noise I inferred that there must be four or five men, and from the ease with which they shifted the cases about some of them must have been pretty husky stevedores.

"I don't know," a more polished but unfamiliar voice answered.

The door to our hiding-place was opened roughly and then banged shut before we realised it.With a taunting laugh, some one turned a key in the lock and before we could move a quick shift of packing cases against the door made escape impossible.

Here we were marooned, shanghaied, as it were, within sight if not call of Herndon and our friends.We had run up against professional smugglers, of whom I had vaguely read, disguised as stewards, deckhands, stokers, and other workers.

The only other opening to the cabin was a sort of porthole, more for ventilation than anything else.Kennedy stuck his head through it, but it was impossible for a man to squeeze out.There was one of the lower decks directly before us while a bright arc light gleamed tantalisingly over it, throwing a round circle of light into our prison.I reflected bitterly on our shipwreck within sight of port.

Kennedy remained silent, and I did not know what was working in his mind.Together we made out the outline of the freighter at the next wharf and speculated as to the location where we had left Herndon with the huge reflector.There was no moon and it was as black as ink in that direction, but if we could have got out I would have trusted to luck to reach it by swimming.

Below us, from the restless water lapping on the sides of the hulk of La Montaigne, we could now hear muffled sounds.It was a motor-boat which had come crawling up the river front, with lights extinguished, and had pushed a cautious nose into the slip where our ship lay at the quay.None of your romantic low-lying, rakish craft of the old smuggling yarns was this, ready for deeds of desperation in the dark hours of midnight.It was just a modern little motor-boat, up-to-date, and swift.

"Perhaps we'll get out of this finally," I grumbled as I understood now what was afoot, "but not in time to be of any use."A smothered sound as of something going over the vessel's side followed.It was one of the boxes which we had seen outside in the storeroom.Another followed, and a third and a fourth.

Then came a subdued parley."We have two customs detectives locked in a cabin here.We can't stay now.You'll have to take us and our things off, too.""Can't do it," called up another muffled voice."Make your things into a little bundle.We'll take that, but you'll have to get past the night-watchman yourselves and meet us at Riverledge."A moment later something else went over the side, and from the sound we could infer that the engine of the motor-boat was being started.

A Voice sounded mockingly outside our door."Bon soir, you fellows in there.We're going up the dock.Sorry to leave you here till morning, but they'll let you out then.Au revoir."Below I could hear just the faintest well-muffled chug-chug.Kennedy in the meantime had been coolly craning his neck out of our porthole under the rays of the arc light overhead.He was holding something in his hand.It seemed like a little silver-backed piece of thin glass with a flaring funnel-like thing back of it, which he held most particularly.Though he heard the parting taunt outside he paid no attention.

"You go to the deuce, whoever you are," I cried, beating on the door, to which only a coarse laugh echoed back down the passageway.

"Be quiet, Walter," ordered Kennedy."We have located the smuggled goods in the storeroom of the steward, four wooden cases of them.

I think the stuff must have been brought on the ship in the trunks and then transferred to the cases, perhaps after the code wireless message was received.But we have been overpowered and locked in a cabin with a port too small to crawl through.The cases have been lowered over the side of the ship to a motor-boat that was waiting below.The lights on the boat are out, but if you hurry you can get it.The accomplices who locked us in are going to disappear up the wharf.If you could only get the night watchman quickly enough you could catch them, too, before they reach the street."I had turned, half expecting to see Kennedy talking to a ship's officer who might have chanced on the deck outside.There was no one.The only thing of life was the still sputtering arc light.

Had the man gone crazy?

"What of it?" I growled."Don't you suppose I know all that?