ry had taken place the night before, and Sir James himself had
been the one to discover it. Complication number one (as you'll see in a
minute).

He, being now "demobbed" and a man of leisure, instead of reopening his
flat in town, had taken up quarters at Courtenaye Coombe to superintend
the repairs at the Abbey. His ex-cowboy habits being energetic, he
usually walked the two miles from the village, and appeared on the scene
ahead of the workmen.

This morning he arrived before seven o'clock, and went, according to
custom, to beg a cup of coffee from Mrs. Barlow. She and her husband
occupied the bedroom and sitting room which had been the housekeeper's;
but at that hour the two were invariably in the kitchen. Sir Jim let
himself in with his key, and marched straight to that part of the house.
He was surprised to find the kitchen shutters closed and the range
fireless. Suspecting something wrong, he went to the bedroom door and
knocked. He got no answer; but a second, harder rap produced a muffled
moan. The door was not locked. He opened it, and was horrified at what
he saw: Mrs. Barlow, on the bed, gagged and bound; her husband in the
same condition, but lying on the floor; and the atmosphere of the closed
room heavy with the fumes of chloroform.

It was Mrs. Barlow who managed to answer the knock with a moan. Barlow
was deeper under the spell of the drug than she, and--it appeared
afterward--in a more serious condition of collapse.

The old couple had no story to tell, for they recalled nothing of what
had happened. They had made the rounds of the house as usual at night,
and had then gone to bed. Barlow did not wake from his stupor until the
village doctor came to revive him with stimulants, and Mrs. Barlow's
first gleam of consciousness was when she dimly heard Sir James
knocking. She strove to call out, felt aware of illness, realized with
terror that her mouth was distended with a gag, and struggled to utter
the faint groan which reached his ears.

As soon as Sir Jim had attended to the sufferers, he hurried out, and,
finding that the workmen had arrived, rushed one of them back to
Courtenaye Coombe for the doctor and the village nurse. The moment he
(Sir Jim) was free to do so, he started on a voyage of discovery round
the house, and soon learned that a big haul had been brought off. The
things taken were small in size but in value immense, and circumstantial
evidence suggested that the thief or thieves knew