Strickland was a man of few words where his business was concerned. I had never seen a Police officer robbed before, and I expected some excitement; but Strickland held his tongue. He took the groom's deposition and retired into himself for a time, evolving thieves. Then he sent Kennedy, of the Pathankot charge, an official letter and an unofficial note. Kennedy's reply was purely unofficial, and it ran thus: "This seems a compliment solely intended for you. My wonder is, you didn't get it before. The men are probably back in your district by this time. The Dhunnera and foot-hill people are highly respectable cultivators, and seeing my Assistant is an unlicked pup, and I can't trust my Inspector out of my sight, I am not going to turn their harvest upside down with a police investigation. I am run off my feet with vaccination police work. You'd better look at home. The Shubkudder Gang were through here a fortnight back. They laid up at the Amritsar Serai, and then worked down. No cases against them in my charge, but remember you lagged their malik for receiving in Prub Dyal's burglary. They owe you one." "Exactly what I thought," said Strickland. "I had a notion it was the Shubkudder Gang from the first. We must make it pleasant for them at Peshawur, and in my district too. They are just the kind that would lie up under Imam Din's shadow." >From this point onward the wires began to he worked heavily. Strickland had a very fair knowledge of the Shubkudder Gang, gathered at first hand. They were the same syndicate that had once stolen a Deputy Commissioner's cow, put horse-shoes on her, and taken her forty miles into the jungle before they lost interest in the joke. They added insult to insult by writing that the Deputy Commissioner's cows and horses were so much alike that it took them two days to find out the difference, and they would not lift the like of such cattle any more. The District Superintendent at Peshawur replied to Strickland that he was expecting the gang, and Strickland's Assistant in his own district, being young and full of zeal, sent up the most amazing clues.