Mr Lockyer remained away from his office during the whole afternoon, the reason being that he found some friends waiting him, and had no particular press of business to call him away. Late in the evening, however, he remembered suddenly of the three £50 notes left so carelessly in his desk at the office, and started up and whispered to his wife that he would have to go out on business for half an hour. “I have left some money in the place which should have been in the bank or here,” was his explanation, “and I must go and get it, for the place is a mere shed;” and as the word “money” rouses the strongest instincts of some wives, he was suffered to depart in peace. He reached his office in ten minutes, and found it to all appearance exactly as he left it. It was then quite dark, but he was so sure of the spot on which he had placed the three notes that he did not trouble to strike a light, but merely raised the lid of the desk and groped for the notes. His fingers did not touch the soft, greasy papers, but the harder and smoother pile of accounts which had been beneath them. He groped and groped; he struck a light—first only a match, then the gas—but in vain. The three bank-notes were gone. “Did I leave them here? Did I not put them in my pocket?” was his first wild thought, followed by a hurried groping and searching for his pocket-book. The notes were not there. Then he distinctly remembered placing them in the desk, and the fact that he had never removed them. He searched the whole desk, turned out every scrap of paper and article that it contained, carefully examined the room from floor to ceiling, turned over everything in the other desk, and finally sat down with his hands in his pockets, thoroughly baffled and puzzled. He had locked the notes in that small apartment; the key had never been out of his pocket, yet, on returning a few hours later, he found that they had vanished.