When a man is worried, however, he is apt to forget the little niceties. Two gang robberies and a murder within ten days, and not a particle of evidence to go on, would fret most policemen's tempers, to say nothing of receiving one's reports back from the Resident minuted, "The police appear to be doing their duty in a somewhat perfunctory manner." I had to trust to my detectives, and they had failed to help me.
The following morning Barton, the Collector of Land Revenue, came to my office.
"Morning, old chap," he said. "You might send a detective to my house to see if he can find out anything. A burglary was committed last night, but the beggar must have been disturbed, for he only took away a Bee clock."
"I'll go myself," I said. I would show Sergeant Cassim how easily a crime could be detected, I told myself.
Like most of the houses in the place, Barton's was a bungalow. The upper halves of all the outer doors were venetianed, the doors themselves being merely fastened by bolts top and bottom. We did not go in for locks.
The burglary seemed quite simple of explanation. The "boy" must have forgotten to bolt one of the doors, and a midnight thief had simply walked in. Of course, the "boy" denied having failed in his duty—a Chinaman naturally would do so. But why the thief was contented with a clock, value two dollars, when he could have taken twenty times that amount beat me entirely.
As we left the compound to return to the office the doctor met us on his pony.
"You are the very man I was looking for," he said to me. "I had a thief in my house last night. One of the veranda doors was found open, but the queer part of the business is that he only took a clock. Thank goodness, he did not walk off with the Sultan's Cup."
"That's funny!" I replied. "Exactly the same thing happened to Barton last night, even to the article stolen. Let's go and have a look."