Hickory Dickory Dock

"Smuggling goes on all the time, of course, in one form or another. We clear up one lot of operators and after a due interval things start again somewhere else. Speaking for my own branch, there's been a good lot of the stuff coming into this country in the last year and a half. Heroin mostly-a fair amount of coke. There are various depots dotted here and there on the continent. The French police have got a lead or two as to how it comes into France-they're less certain how it goes out again." "Would I be right in saying," Poirot asked, "that your problem could be divided roughly under three heads.

There is the problem of distribution, there is the problem of how the consi innents enter the country, and there is the problem of who really runs the business and takes the main profits?" "Roughly I'd say that's quite right. We know a fair amount about the small distributors and how the stuff is distributed. Some of the distributors we pull in, some we leave alone hoping that they may lead us to the big fish. It's distributed in a lot of different ways, night clubs, pubs, drugstores, an odd doctor or so, fashionable women's dressmakers and hairdressers. It's handed over on race courses, and in antique dealers", sometimes in a crowded multiple store.

But I needn't tell you all this. It's not that side of it that's important. We can keep pace with all that fairly well. And we've got certain very shrewd suspicions as to what I've called the big fish.

One or two very respectable wealthy gentlemen against whom there's never a breath of suspicion. Very careful they are; they never handle the stuff themselves, and the little fry don't even know who they are. But every now and again, one of them makes a slip-and then-we get him." "That is all very much as I supposed. The line in which I am interested is the second line-how do the consignments come into the country?" "Ah. We're an island. The most usual way is the good old fashioned way of the sea. Running a cargo. Quiet landing somewhere on the East coast, or a little cove down South, by a motor boat that's slipped quietly across the Channel. That succeeds for a bit but sooner or later we get a line on the particular fellow who owns the boat and once he's under suspicion his opportunity's gone. Once or twice lately the stuff's come in on one of the air liners. There's big money offered, and occasionally one of the stewards or one of the crew proves to be only too human. And then there are the commercial importers. Respectable firms that import grand pianos or what have you!

They have quite a good run for a bit, but we usually get wise to them in the end." "You would agree that it is one of the chief difficulties when you are running an illicit trade-the entry from abroad into this country?" "Decidedly. And I'll say more. For some time now, we've been worried. More stuff is coming in than we can keep pace with." "And what about other things, such as gems?" Sergeant Bell spoke.

"There's a good deal of it going on, sir.

Illicit diamonds and other stones are coming out of South Africa and Australia, some from the Far East.

They're coming into this country in a steady stream, and we don't know how. The other day a young woman, an ordinary tourist, in France, was asked by a casual acquaintance If she'd take a pair of shoes across the Channel. Not new ones, nothing dutiable, just some shoes someone had left behind. She agreed quite unsuspiciously. We happened to be on to that. The heels of the shoes turned out to be hollow and packed with uncut diamonds." SuperinterWent Wilding said, "But look here, Mr. Poirot, what is it you're on the track of, dope or smuggled gems?" "Either. Anything, in fact, of high value and small bulk. There is an opening, it seems to me, for what you might call a freight service, conveying goods such as I have described to and from across the Channel. Stolen jewelry, the stones removed from their settings, could be taken out of England, illicit stones and drugs brought in. It could be a small independent agency, unconnected with distribution, that carried stuff on a commission basis. And the profits might be high." "I'll say you're right there! You can pack ten or twenty thousand pounds' worth of heroin in a very small space and the same goes for uncut stones of high quality." "You see," said Poirot, "the weakness of the smuggler is always the human element. Sooner or later you suspect a person, an air liner steward, a yachting enthusiast with a small cabin cruiser, the woman who travels to and fro to France too often, the importer who seems to be making more money than is reasonable, the man who lives well without visible means of support. But if the stuff is brought into this country by an innocent person, and what is more, by a different person each time, then the difficulties of spotting the cargoes are enormously increased." Wilding pushed a finger towards the rucksack.