"Can they be landing anything from the yacht?" said Marion.
"I don't think so," I said. "Yachts do not carry cargoes, and if they did they wouldn't land them in the middle of the night."
I looked at my watch. It was almost twelve o'clock. Then another noise was added to the rattling of oars. A cart, unmistakably a cart, lumbered across the stones at the end of the pier. After a while this cart emerged from the black shadows of the houses and we could see it toiling up the hill which leads out of the town. A very slight southerly breeze was setting across the bay from the town to us. We could hear the driver shouting encouragement to his horse as he breasted the hill. The cart was evidently heavily loaded.
"The boats haven't been out," said Marion. "There cannot have been a catch of mackerel."
When there is a catch of mackerel the fish are packed in boxes on the pier, and carts, laden like the one we watched, climb the hill. There is a regularly organized service of those carts under the control of Crossan.
"It can't be fish," I said, "unless the _Finola_ has been making a catch and has come in here to land them."
Another cart bumped its way off the pier, and in a minute or two we saw it climbing the hill. Then the lights on the _Finola's_ deck went out one by one. The boats ceased plying between the yacht and the shore.
"I don't see why they should land fish in the middle of the night," said Marion.
The activity of the people on the pier increased. More lights appeared there and moved very rapidly to and fro.
"Unless they're landing what they're ashamed of," said Marion, "I don't see why they're doing it at night."
Mysteries always irritate me. I answered Marion impatiently.
"You can't be so foolish as to suppose that Conroy is smuggling. It wouldn't be any temptation to a millionaire to cheat the revenue out of the duty on a few pounds of tobacco."
Several more carts followed each other in a slow procession up the hill. It seemed as if Crossan's entire staff of men and horses was engaged in this midnight transport service.
"Mr. Conroy might not know anything about it," said Marion. "It may be done--"
"There was another man on board," said Marion, "and Godfrey seemed to think that he was--well, not a very nice kind of man."