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 nightwatchman 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.”