enterprise unless the prize was worth having. It was unlikely that
1,000 pounds a year would compensate any one of them for the risk.
But that would mean a profit of from 4,000 to 6,000 pounds a year.
Hilliard realized that he was here on shaky ground, though the
balance of probability was in his favor.

It also seemed certain that the whole pit-prop business was a sham,
a mere blind to cover those other operations from which the money came.
But when Hilliard came to ask himself what those operations were, he
found himself up against a more difficult proposition.

His original brandy smuggling idea recurred to him with renewed force,
and as he pondered it he saw that there really was something to be
said for it. Three distinct considerations were consistent with the
theory.

There was first of all the size of the fraud. A theft of 4,000 to
6,000 or more a year implied as victim a large corporation. The
sum would be too big a proportion of the income of a moderate-sized
firm for the matter to remain undiscovered, and, other things being
equal, the larger the corporation the more difficult to locate the
leakage.

But what larger corporation was there than a nation, and what so
easy to defraud as a government? And how could a government be more
easily defrauded than by smuggling? Here again Hilliard recognized
he was only theorizing; still the point had a certain weight.

The second consideration was also inconclusive. It was that all
the people who, he had so far learned, were involved were engaged in