“No, you don’t have to swear to it,” he said.  “You used to do that, but now you simply sign your name—­and take a chance,” he added, smiling and showing a row of perfect teeth.

“Number 156,” Herndon noted as the collector detached the stub and handed it to her.  “That was Mademoiselle Gabrielle.”

The couple passed out to the deck, still chatting gaily.

“In the old days, before they got to be so beastly particular,” I heard him say, “I always used to get the courtesy of the port, an official expedite.  But that is over now.”

The ship was now under way, her flags snapping in the brisk coolish breeze that told of approaching autumn.  We had passed up the lower bay and the Narrows, and the passengers were crowded forward to catch the first glimpse of the skyscrapers of New York.

On up the bay we ploughed, throwing the spray proudly as we went Herndon employed the time in keeping a sharp watch on the tall, thin man.  Incidentally he sought out the wireless operator and from him learned that a code wireless message had been received for Pierre, apparently from his partner, Lang.

“There is no mention of anything dutiable in this declaration by 140 which corresponds with any of the goods mentioned in the first cable from Paris,” a collector remarked unobtrusively to Herndon, “nor in 156 corresponding to the second cable.”

“I didn’t suppose there would be,” was his laconic reply.  “That’s our job—­to find the stuff.”

At last La Montaigne was warped into the dock.  The piles of first-class baggage on the ship were raucously deposited on the wharf and slowly the passengers filed down the plank to meet the line of white-capped uniformed inspectors and plain-clothes appraisers.  The comedy and tragedy of the customs inspection had begun.

We were among the first to land.  Herndon took up a position from which he could see without being seen.  In the semi-light of the little windows in the enclosed sides of the pier, under the steel girders of the arched roof like a vast hall, there was a panorama of a huge mass of open luggage.

At last Number 140 came down, alone, to the roped-off dock.  He walked nonchalantly over to the little deputy surveyor’s desk, and an inspector was quickly assigned to him.  It was all done neatly in the regular course of business apparently.  He did not know that in the orderly rush the sharpest of Herndon’s men had been picked out, much as a trick card player will force a card on his victim.

Already the customs inspection was well along.  One inspector had been assigned to about each five passengers, and big piles of finery were being remorselessly tumbled out in shapeless heaps and exposed to the gaze of that part of the public which was not too much concerned over the same thing as to its own goods and chattels.  Reticules and purses were being inspected.  Every trunk was presumed to have a false bottom, and things wrapped up in paper were viewed suspiciously and unrolled.  Clothes were being shaken and pawed.  There did not seem to be much opportunity for concealment.