were here last night after one o'clock--the men I
sent from Princetown when Mrs. Pendean gave the alarm," he said.
"They looked round with an electric torch and found the blood. One
came back; the other stopped on the spot all night. I was out here
myself before the masons and carpenters came to work, and I forbade
them to touch anything till we'd made our examination. Mr. Pendean
was in the habit of doing a bit himself after hours."

"Can the men say if anything was done last night--in the way of
work on the bungalow?"

"No doubt they'd know."

Brendon sent for a mason and a carpenter; and while the latter
alleged that nothing had been added to the last work of himself and
his mate, the mason, pointing to a wall which was destined to
inclose the garden, declared that some heavy stones had been lifted
and mortared into place since he left on the previous evening at
five o 'clock.

"Pull down all the new work," directed Brendon.

Then he turned to examine the kitchen more closely. A very careful
survey produced no results and he could find nothing that the
carpenters were not able to account for. There was no evidence of
any struggle. A sheep might as easily have been killed in the
chamber as a man; but he judged the blood to be human and Halfyard
had made one discovery of possible importance. The timbers of the
kitchen door were already set up and they had received a preliminary
coat of white paint. This was smeared at the height of a man's
shoulder with blood.

Brandon then examined the ground immediately outside the kitchen
door. It was rough and trampled with many feet of the workmen but
gave no special imprints or other indications of the least value.
For twenty yards he scrutinized every inch of the ground and
presently found indications of a motor bicycle. It had stood
here--ten yards from the bungalow--and the marks of the wheels and
the rest lowered to support it were clear enough in the peat. He
traced the impressions as the machine was wheeled away and observed
that at one soft place they had pressed very deeply into the earth.
The pattern of the tire was familiar to him, a Dunlop. Half an hour
later one of the constables approached, saluted Mark, and made a
statement.

"They've pulled down the wall, sir, and found nothing there; but
Fulford, the mason, says that a sack is missing. It was a big sack,
in the corner of the shed out there, and the cement that it
contained is all poured out; but the sac