Riding-crops, both leaded and loaded, exploded on the moor around us as a young man in a tailcoat and top hat ran up to our dog-cart and climbed aboard.

"Drive like the devil, you touts!" the young man commanded.

"Stay where you are!" a fierce-eyed elderly gentleman commanded from behind a nearby fence. He levelled a large crop-gun in our direction. "I am Slyass Ballgown, and this man is to marry my daughter, Bigass Ballgown!"

"What has this to do with the missing Modesty Blaze?" I asked Sunblock Hose. "Runaway fiances don't figure in this story, do they?"

"Elementary, my dear Whacko. This man's a groom."

A leaded riding crop blasted the side of the dog-cart.

"No stinky puns!" Slyass Ballgown cried. "Dawdlun, get back to the chapel and get to saying your 'I damn well do's. You other two, be off, or you'll find one of these large deer at your heels!"

He gestured to indicate the large, big-nosed deer that grazed nearby, their long-haired tails idly flicking the occasional fly.

"A word with you, good sir," Sunblock Hose said to Ballgown and alighted from the dog-cart. "Give me just a minute alone, Whacko."

Hose then walked over to Slyass Ballgown and whispered something in his ear. Ballgown's eyes were wide with horror, and I hoped that Hose had not made another of his indecent proposals, one of which had led to him spending the night alone upon the moor of demi and reducing his bank account by the sum of one million haypence. Eventually, Ballgown let his crop-gun fall to the ground and Hose returned to the dog-cart.

"I am your servant, Mr. Hose," Ballgown called after Hose as we drove off.

"You've hired him as a butler, Hose?" I asked. "About time we replaced that page-boy Willy. He's forty-eight now."

"No, Whacko, I have other plans for Mr. Slyass Ballgown," Hose explained. "Let us return to London for a week. I am done here."

"Isn't there any matter to which you would draw Scotland Yard's attention, only to have them ignore it?"

"Well, Whacko," Hose replied. "If I were going to tell them anything, I would direct their attention to the singular epidemic of toothaches among Ballgown's deer."

Indeed, I had noticed that all the large deer on Ballgown's land had bandages wrapped from their jaws to the base of their antlers. I planned to look up dental ailments in deer as soon as we returned to London, and we headed for the railroad tracks to hop a freight car back to London.

IS THIS THE END?

WILL SUNBLOCK HOSE FIND SOME WAY TO PROFIT OFF THE SEEMINGLY MEANINGLESS SERIES OF EVENTS OF THIS CASE?