This was the state of things when the cigar robberies began. Parcels of cigars came up regularly from a certain firm and from a certain local station, sometimes for delivery in London, sometimes for transfer to another railway; one parcel in four reached its destination in good appearance outwardly, but with part of the contents abstracted. The firm made heavy claims, wrote furious letters, and at last managed to get a communication into the public press in which bitter reference was made to the supineness and slothful behaviour of the railway company. The Superintendent of the Line sent for Bellchambers, withdrawing him from easy duties on the station square. “The only question is—” said the high official. “Where do these robberies take place?” suggested Bellchambers. “That’s the point,” he added sagely, “that’s what we’ve got to get at.” “What is your opinion, Sergeant?” Sergeant Bellchambers made a fine pretence of taking thought before he answered. Then with red-ink pen he wrote on an envelope and passed it across the table. “Up Office,” read the Superintendent. “’Ush,” said Bellchambers warningly. “Do you think you can find the thieves?” “If I’m given a free hand,” said Bellchambers, “and no quibble raised, sir, about my petty disbursements.” “Go in and win,” said the Superintendent. “When do you start?” “This very night, sir?” “Let me have a report in the morning.” That evening the head of the department sent to the Up Office a new hand to assist the late-duty men. He was black-bearded with a very ruddy face, and he wore a uniform that had apparently belonged to a shorter and a slimmer person. His name, he said, was Edward Jones, but the Up Office seemed not contented with this and decided on the suggestion of a junior clerk to call him by the title of “Sunset.” He settled to the work with moderate determination, calling off parcels and sorting them into bins for delivery with perhaps more intelligence than the raw amateur usually showed: he spoke in a hoarse voice, and this he accounted for by confessing himself a slave to tobacco; he discussed the matter with the other men, between the arrival of trains, and seemed, not unnaturally, more interested in those who smoked than in the one or two who limited themselves to a cigarette a week, consumed after dinner on Sundays. The Up Office always had a composite scent, in which fruit, game, cheese, and other things mixed, with sometimes one gaining ascendancy, sometimes another; a new flavour of a more pleasant and a vaguer character was contributed presently by a small brown-paper-covered box, brought in from an arrival platform, bearing a proud label:— VALUABLE CIGARS. KEEP DRY. “’Ere’s a chance for some one,” said the porter, as he called it off. “Sunset, old chum, these’d do your palate good.”