“Very soon robbery number three was discovered. Mrs Flowers’s watch and chain had disappeared. Two days later three bank notes of £10 each were missing. These Mr Flowers was sure he had first locked in a cashbox, then in the office safe. After watching the departure of his two clerks, and the office boy, he carefully looked to the safety of the windows, to which some patent burglar alarms had lately been attached, then he locked and double-locked the office door, taking all the keys upstairs with him, and putting them under his pillow. “Yet, strange to say, on entering the office next morning, before the arrival of his clerks, he found the notes missing. All the doors and locks were exactly as he had left them, yet, on opening the cashbox, it was found to be empty. By this time both he and those in his employ were thoroughly scared, and one of the clerks told me this morning that he and his colleagues had only refrained from giving Mr Flowers notice to leave because they feared their reluctance to stay might be construed into a virtual admission of their own participation in the mysterious thefts. “This morning matters reached a climax when Mr Flowers, on rising, discovered his own watch to have disappeared as completely as that of his wife had done. I was sent for to see if I could throw any light on this strange affair. I found Mr Flowers looking the picture of rage and mystification, and his clerks were sulkily proceeding with their work, their expressions almost indicating a dawning disbelief in the extent of their employer’s losses. The office boy struck me as looking rather jubilant. He evidently revels in the sensational. “In the more private part of the establishment things looked no better. The lady of the house was in hysterics, and the housemaid was packing up her clothes, and vowing that if they locked her up for it she wouldn’t stay any longer in a place that was haunted. Asked if she had seen anything that could warrant her assertion that the house was haunted, she replied that nothing but a ghost could take the money and jewellery out of locked-up places without having been near the keys, the latter being invariably found where they had been put before the master went to bed. “I managed to persuade the housemaid into a more pliant frame of mind by promising to bring her an associate to help in the work, and keep the cook and herself company until all the mystery had been made clear. The cook was easier to deal with, for she had arrived at a pitch of unbelief that was positively amusing. “‘I’m about sick of all the fuss and bother there has been lately,’ she said. ‘And I won’t be worried any more over it. It’s my opinion that there ain’t never been a single thing stole, and that the master’s trying to get up a sensation all for nothing.’ “‘But where are the things, if they haven’t been stolen?’ I asked.