Purse there was none, a thing that bewildered them; not even a portmonnaie, until, to their mingled astonishment and joy, some one acuter than the rest discovered in a mass of seals at his watch chain, a little globular receptacle which opened with a spring, and revealed no less than four sovereigns. It was a poor haul, but the clothes remained. Not for long. They were all removed, and that not with roughness but, he was glad to note, tenderly: less perhaps from the respect they bore him than from a consideration of the value of the cloth. The precise manoeuvre whereby the difficulty of the ankles and the wrists was eliminated, I leave to those of my readers who are better acquainted with such problems than I. There are several well-known methods, I understand, whereby a man may have his trousers and his coat removed and yet his hands and feet preserved in custody. His boots (they were astonished to note) were elastic-sided. They were under the impression that among the wealthy buttoned boots alone were tolerated at the evening meal and thenceforward until such hours as the wealthy seek repose. But they were good mess boots, and take it all in all, his clothing, every single article of which was soon folded and put into its bundle, made the best part of their booty. Then there was a considerable movement of feet, a murmur of voices purposely low; there seemed to be one person left, agile and rapid in movement ... perhaps two: at any rate after these or this one had held him for some thirty seconds, during which he had the sense and prudence to lie still, there was a sharp sliding of feet, the quick but almost noiseless shutting of a door, and he found that he was free. His first act was to disembarrass himself of his stinking head-gear, but his captors had laid their trap with science, and it was precisely this which was destined to give them the leisure for their escape. The sheet was tied to his head by a series of small hard knots which took him, between them, quite a quarter of an hour to undo. At last he was free. He tore the filthy thing from his head and the bunch of it from his mouth with the same gesture, overcame a strong desire to vomit, and looked round him. He found himself seated upon a sort of narrow bench attached by iron clamps to the wall of a small and exceedingly noisome room, which even at that moment he had the wit to think that he would certainly have dealt with by the local inspector when he should have assumed what he had heard called the reins of office.