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After a pause Hilliard went on: "I'm not very clear, but I'm inclined to think we can do no more good here at present. I think we should try the other end." "The other end?" "Yes, the unloading of the ship and the disposal of the pit-props.

From there they would come out to the clearing by road, and from the observation post they had already used keep a close eye on the arrival of the ship and subsequent developments. At night they might be even able to hide on the wharf itself. In any case they could hardly fail to see if anything other than pit-props was loaded.

As far as they could make out in the gloom, the arrangement here also was similar to that in France. Lines of narrow gauge tramway, running parallel from the hut towards the water, were connected along the front of the wharf by a cross road and turn-tables. Between the lines were stacks of pit-props, and Decauville trucks stood here and there. But these details they saw afterwards.

The walls and ceiling of both cellar and passages were supported by pit-props, discolored by the damp and marked by stains of earthy water which had oozed from the spaces between. They glistened with moisture, but the air, though cold and damp, was fresh.

"When we started here the Baltic trade, which was, of course, the big trade before the war, had not revived. Now we find the Baltic competition growing keener, and our margin of profit is dwindling. We are handicapped also by having only a one-way traffic. Most of the Baltic firms exporting pit-props have an import trade in coal as well.

So we may take it that whatever else they're up to, they're not carrying brandy in faked pit-props. Nor, so far as I can see, in anything else either." The three men smoked in silence for some time and then Hilliard spoke. "I suppose, Leatham, you can't think of any other theory, or suggest anything else that we should do."

"The next day," concluded the Australian colonel, "the captain had to go and make all sorts of apologies to get his sergeant-major off. The other people agreed, provided the officer ransomed him with half a dozen pit-props and ten sheets of corrugated iron.

Behind it was the same kind of galvanized iron shed, but this one, besides having windows in the gables, seemed the smaller of the two. Its back was only about a hundred feet from the railway, and the space between was taken up by a yard surrounded by a high galvanized iron fence, above which appeared the tops of many stacks of pit-props. Into the yard ran a siding from the railway.

Hardly was he there when the men came out of the cabin to the deck beneath the bridge, then with a brief exchange of "Good-nights," Coburn and the lorry driver passed down the ladder, crossed the gangway and disappeared behind a stack of pit-props on the wharf.

Coburn, also, gave them his views on the enterprise, and these seemed so eminently reasonable and natural that Hilliard's suspicions once more became dulled, and he began to wonder if their host's peculiar manner could not have been due to some cause other than that he had imagined. "There is not so much money in the pit-props as I had hoped," Mr. Coburn explained.