The Poisoned Pen [110]
two other flexible wires which led to a couple of dry cells and a cylinder with a broadened end, made of vulcanised rubber. It might have been a telephone receiver, for all I could tell in the darkness. While I was still speculating on the possible use of the enormous parabolic reflector, a slight commotion on the opposite side of the pier distracted my attention. A ship was coming in and was being carefully and quietly berthed alongside the other big iron freighter on that side. Herndon had left us. "The Mohican is here," he remarked as he rejoined us. To my look of inquiry he added, "The revenue cutter." Kennedy had now finished and had pointed the reflector full at La Montaigne. With a whispered hasty word of caution and advice to Herndon, he drew me along with him down the wharf again. At the little door which was cut in the barrier guarding the shore end of La Montaigne's wharf Kennedy stopped. The customs service night watchman - there is always a watchman of some kind aboard every ship, passenger or freighter, all the time she is in port - seemed to understand, for he admitted us after a word with Kennedy. Threading our way carefully among the boxes, and bales, and crates which were piled high, we proceeded down the wharf. Under the electric lights the longshoremen were working feverishly, for the unloading and loading of a giant transAtlantic vessel in the rush season is a long and tedious process at best, requiring night work and overtime, for every moment, like every cubic foot of space, counts. Once within the door, however, no one paid much attention to us. They seemed to take it for granted that we had some right there. 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