'Colonel' Slocumb, owner of a touring Wild West show, is robbed of the tour's takings on his last evening in England and left bound in his caravan. Marriott, in the audience, begins the investigation and suspects one of the few members of the tour not in the finale of the show; looking for one of them, Zac Ledbetter, in a nearby pub he is just in time to stop him from being forced to join the crew of a ship. The following day Superintendent Rodway learns a debt collector had merely obtained the money, something Slocumb had sought to hide from the rest of the tour. Slocumb, though, is not the only member of the troupe with a secret.