The Problem Club

By Barry Pain

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Title: The Problem Club

Author: Barry Pain

Illustrator: Arthur Garratt

Release date: March 12, 2025 [eBook #75598]

Language: English

Original publication: London: W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1919

Credits: Brian Raiter


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROBLEM CLUB ***


The Problem Club

by Barry Pain

published by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. (London)
Copyright 1919



Contents

    I. The Giraffe Problem
   II. The Kiss Problem
  III. The Free Meal Problem
   IV. The Win-and-Lose-Problem
    V. The Handkerchief Problem
   VI. The Identity Problem
  VII. The Shakespearean Problem
 VIII. The Impersonation Problem
   IX. The Alibi Problem
    X. The Threepenny Problem
   XI, The Q-Loan Problem
  XII. The Pig-Keeper’s Problem



[Frontispiece: A bus-conductor with passengers on a bus. The conductor
carries a pad of tickets and a change purse, and stands before a
passenger wearing a clerical collar and hat. Another passenger looks
over his newspaper at the bus-conductor and smirks. Caption: ‘“Oh
yes,” he said, “I heard. If you want all them threepennies, you’d
better get them out of the blanky offertory-bag next Sunday.”’]



No. I.

The Giraffe Problem

Prefatory Note

The general public knows little about the Problem Club. Many are not
even aware that it has now been in existence for several years. Nor
can it be said that the references to it which have appeared from time
to time in the Press have been very enlightening, or even reasonably
accurate.

For instance, a paragraph in a recent issue of a society paper (which,
it may be admitted, is generally well informed) makes various
statements as to the Problem Club. It says that the club has its
premises underground in Piccadilly, that a former Premier is a member
of it, that all the members are required to swear a most solemn oath
to act with scrupulous honour in the monthly competitions, and that
high play frequently goes on. The actual truth is that there are no
club premises. The famous but old-fashioned restaurant that reserves
two rooms on the first floor for the club’s monthly meetings is not
situated in Piccadilly. No Premier has ever been a member. The story
of the solemn oath is even more absurd. After all, the members are
gentlemen. They would as soon think of taking a solemn oath not to
cheat at cards or at golf. The ‘scrupulous honour’ is taken for
granted. Lastly, there is no high play in the accepted sense of the
term. The amount that a member can win or lose in the monthly
competitions will be stated presently, and any betting on the results
is prohibited.

Silly misrepresentations of this kind have caused some annoyance, and
it is now thought that a discreet but authorised account of some part
of the proceedings of the club would be preferable.

The club consists of twelve members, and the annual subscription is
one hundred and thirty-four pounds. Of this sum twenty-four pounds is
allotted to the club expenses, including the club dinners which are
held on the first Saturday in every month. Each member in turn acts as
chairman at one dinner in the year, afterwards adjudicating upon the
problem competition for that month; while at the other eleven meetings
he is himself a competitor, the remaining one hundred and ten pounds
of his subscription being treated as eleven entrance fees of ten
pounds each. The problems are not of a mathematical nature, and were
for some time invented and propounded by Leonard, the ingenious
head-waiter of the restaurant. The winner receives the whole of the
entrance fees, amounting to one hundred and ten pounds; if there is
more than one winner this amount is divided equally between them. Thus
for his investment of one hundred and ten pounds it is possible that a
member may in one year obtain a return of one thousand two hundred and
ten pounds, if he is the sole winner of the eleven competitions for
which he is eligible. But the minute-books of the club show that in
actual practice this has never happened; indeed, the record, made by
Mr Pusely-Smythe in 1911, is seven wins, and on two occasions out of
the seven he had to share the prize with another successful
competitor.

It may be admitted that the club has necessarily been of the nature of
a secret society. Some of the problems set have been rather curious,
and it has occasionally happened that in the course of their practical
solution members have been led to do things which might prejudice them
in their domestic or social relations, or even subject them to the
penalties of the law.

It is permitted to add an account of some of the pre-war meetings of
the club, various natural precautions being taken to prevent the
discovery of the identity of members.

It was the forty-third meeting of the Problem Club. Dinner was over,
and the members had adjourned to the lofty and comfortable room where
the business of the evening was transacted. A side-table was suitably
equipped with provision for smokers—all the members were smokers—and
for such other refreshments as might be required in the course of the
evening. One or two waiters still lingered—removing a coffee-cup,
handing a liqueur, or placing an ash-tray and matches conveniently on
one of the small tables. A hum of conversation went on through the
blue haze of the cigar-smoke. Mr Pusely-Smythe, with his usual
lugubrious manner, was just coming to the end of a screamingly funny
story. Any reference to the competition to be settled is by an
unwritten law forbidden until the chairman has opened the proceedings,
but it was noticeable that Major Byles was once more talking of
resigning his membership. He was not taken very seriously. He was an
original member, and, though he lived in the country for the greater
part of the year, had never been known to miss a single meeting of the
club. His continuous bad luck in the competitions had irritated him,
but nobody believed in his threat of resignation, and it may be
doubted if he quite believed in it himself.

The waiters left the room, and Sir Charles Bunford, an elderly
gentleman of distinguished appearance, who was chairman for the
evening, took his place at his table and arranged his papers. Among
them the club cheque-book showed temptingly. In accordance with the
club custom by which the chairman at one meeting acted as secretary at
the next, Dr Alden took his seat beside Sir Charles and prepared to
make a note of the proceedings for the club minute-book. Conversation
ceased. The other members seated themselves informally in a semicircle
of easy-chairs. There was, indeed, a marked absence of formality at
the Problem Club. There was no order of precedence. The chairman did
not rise when he spoke, nor did members rise when they answered him.

‘Now, gentlemen,’ Sir Charles began, ‘we have before us to-night the
Giraffe Problem. I will read it out to you as worded by our esteemed
friend Leonard: “It is required to induce a woman who is unaware of
your intention to say to you, ‘You ought to have been a giraffe.’”
Now, of course, I’m not a competitor, but I must say that I’m sorry
I’m not. Upon my word, I don’t think Leonard has ever given us
anything quite so easy.’

There were several dissentient voices: ‘Not a bit of it.’ ‘Can’t agree
with you there, Bunford.’ ‘Wish I’d found it so.’ ‘Leonard knew what
he was doing this time.’

‘Oh, very well,’ said Sir Charles smiling. ‘I should have thought
there were a score of conversational openings to which the inevitable
reply would be, “You ought to have been a giraffe.” I may be wrong,
but I still expect that the prize to-night will have to be divided
between four or five of you. However, we’ll see what luck you’ve had.
I’ll begin with you, doctor, and then go on in the direction of the
sun and the wine.’

Dr Alden shook his head. He had a strong head, an alert expression,
and a bright eye. ‘No good,’ he said. ‘There was too much to do in
Harley Street this month for me to be able to give the proper time to
it. I made an attempt. It has probably cost me the esteem of an
excellent woman; these excellent women never think you’re serious
except when you’re joking. I gave her the chance to tell me I ought to
have been a giraffe, but she never took it. Enough said. Try the next
man.’

‘The next is our only member of Parliament, Mr Harding Pope.’

‘Not competing this month,’ said Mr Pope rather pompously. ‘My
constituency has made great demands upon me, and I’m unable to defend
my entrance fee. Fortunately, the pleasure of the company in which I
find myself is worth far more.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Sir Charles warningly, ‘but don’t get too
slack. We’ve got a long waiting list. What about you, Major Byles?’

‘My usual luck,’ said the Major. ‘I worked the whole thing out
completely and made all the necessary preparations. I was down at my
cottage at the time. I assure you that during the whole of breakfast
one morning I talked about practically nothing except giraffes and the
way that they can pull down fruit from a tree, thanks to their
thundering long necks. My wife, the children’s governess, and Mrs
Hebor, who was stopping with us, all heard me, though I can’t say that
they seemed particularly interested. Afterwards my wife and I were in
the garden, and I pointed to a tree full of ripe cherries.

‘“I like fruit,” I said, “but I hate climbing trees.”

‘Now, considering the ground-bait that I had been putting down at
breakfast, I consider the betting was ten to one that she would reply
that I ought to have been a giraffe. Instead of that, she said that
Wilkins would get them for me, and then seemed surprised that I was
annoyed. A few minutes later I tried the governess with precisely the
same remark, and she asked me if I would like to have a ladder
fetched. (I often wonder what I pay that woman her salary for.) Then
Mrs Hebor came out—as dependable a woman as I know in a general way;
you nearly always know what she is going to say before she says it—and
I told her that I liked cherries, but hated climbing to get them.

‘“You ought,” she began—and this time I thought I really had got
it—“to be able to reach some of those without climbing.”

‘After that I gave up. No amount of intelligence can contend against
luck like that. Matter of fact, I’m tempted to give up this problem
business altogether.’

‘Oh, don’t do that,’ said Sir Charles soothingly. ‘It was hard lines,
but we shall see you a prize-winner one of these days. Now, Mr
Cunliffe, what have you to tell us?’

‘I failed,’ said the Rev. Septimus Cunliffe, an elderly cleric who
specialised in broad-mindedness. ‘Plausible strategy, but
disappointing results. Nothing of interest to report.’

‘Did you do any better, Mr Matthews?’

Mr Matthews was a man of forty, bald, round-faced, rubicund, and
slightly obese. The task of ordering the club dinners and the wines to
be drunk therewith was always left in his hands with a confidence
which was invariably justified. His knowledge as an epicure was
considerable, and it is possible that his intelligence was less
considerable, but more than once he had been lucky in a competition.
He was the richest man in a club where nobody was very poor, and was
good-tempered and popular.

‘Well, you know,’ said Matthews, ‘I feel as if I ought to have won
this. At one time it looked as if I simply had it chucked at me. I was
talking to Lady Amelia, who does a lot in the East End and is always
nosing round for subscriptions.

‘“Why do you men drink?” she asked in her blunt way.

‘The question of this competition occurred to me, and it looked like a
good chance.

‘“Well,” I said, “the pleasure begins in the palate, but I fancy that
it continues in the throat. I often wish I had a longer throat.”

‘You would have hardly thought she could have missed it, but she did.
Said that she was sure I was not so bad as I made myself out to be,
and milked me of a fiver for some rotten “good cause.”’

‘Look here,’ said Major Byles, returning from a fruitless visit to the
side-table, ‘I’ll ask the chairman for a minute’s interval. They’ve
not put out any seltzer, though they must know that I always take
seltzer with mine.’

‘Certainly, Major; certainly. Would somebody kindly touch the bell?’

The seltzer-water was brought and business was resumed.

‘Your turn next, Jimmy,’ said Sir Charles.

The Hon. James Feldane, a rather weary young man, said, ‘Well, I claim
to be a winner, but there’s a shade of doubt about it, and I’ll ask
for your ruling. All I can say is that if I don’t touch the money my
luck’s even worse than the Major’s. Like him, I was systematic about
it. My first step was to buy some of the highest collars that could be
got for money—two inches or so too high for me and beastly
uncomfortable. I put one of them on, and looked like a bad
freak—something out of a back number of _Punch_. My next step was to
call on my married sister. She told me to go home and dress myself
properly, as I knew she would. So I asked in my innocent way what was
wrong, and she said I seemed to have mistaken my neck for the Nelson
Column.

‘“Alluding to my collar?” I said. “Well, I like plenty. I’d wear a
collar three feet high if I could.”’

‘And then my fool of a brother-in-law stuck his oar in, and said, “You
ought to have been a giraffe”; and I’m absolutely certain Dora would
have said it if he hadn’t got in first.

‘So there it is—the words were all right, but they were used by a man.
Still, for some purposes—bankruptcy and things of that kind—a man and
his wife count as one, don’t they? What’s the ruling?’

‘My ruling,’ said Sir Charles, ‘is that your claim fails. It is
required that the words should be used by a woman, and your
brother-in-law is not a woman.’

‘Yes, I was afraid you’d think so,’ said Jimmy, ‘but it was worth
trying. Anybody want any rotten high collars?’

‘Now, Mr Pusely-Smythe,’ said the chairman.

Mr Pusely-Smythe was a man of middle age, with dark, cavernous eyes
and an intellectual forehead. He was pale and thin, and was less
solemn than he seemed.

‘I claim to have won,’ he said in a melancholy voice. ‘My method was
not the most obvious or direct, and might easily have failed, but the
luck was with me. I must tell you that I happen to know a Mrs
Magsworth, who of late years has given way a good deal to Nature
Study. She haunts the Zoo and the Botanical Gardens. She understands
about the habitat of the hyena, and if cockroaches devour their young,
and which end of the tree the onion grows—all that kind of thing. She
is rather severe with people who, as she phrases it, “show an abysmal
ignorance of the simplest facts.” She has got a face like a horse,
though that is not germane to the question. I arranged with a kindly
hostess to let me take in Mrs Magsworth to dinner one evening—I gather
that there was no particular rush for the job.

‘I said: “I’m so glad to meet you again, Mrs Magsworth. With your
knowledge you will be able to settle a point that has been worrying me
for days. My little nephew asked me which was the tallest animal. And,
do you know, I couldn’t be quite sure.”

‘“Then, Mr Smythe,” she said, “you ought to have been. A giraffe is
much the tallest of the mammals.”

‘So I claim to have won. She, being a woman ignorant of my intention,
was induced to say to me the words required in the order required and
without the interpolation of any other word.’

‘But there’s the interpolation of a full stop,’ said Mr Harding Pope,
and was at once called to order—only the chairman has the right to
comment and to adjudicate.

Sir Charles took a few moments to consider his decision, and then gave
his ruling as follows:—

‘My ruling is that Mr Pusely-Smythe’s claim is conditionally allowed.
It is true that Mrs Magsworth used other words both before and after
the words required, but that is not precluded by the terms of the
problem. The only other possible objection is that there was the
interpolation of a full stop. Now, there is no full stop in spoken
speech: it is represented by a pause. In this case the pause indicated
the end of a sentence. In another case the pause might have indicated
that the woman could not for a moment think of the word giraffe. In
that case I am sure that no objection would have been raised. Yet
there, too, a sign could be used to represent it in print or writing.
Leonard requires certain words in a certain order, but he does not
forbid a pause to be made between them. Unless some member has induced
a woman to use the same words with no pause whatever—which I should
rule to be a still better solution—Mr Pusely-Smythe’s claim is
allowed.’

As no other member had met with any success at all, a cheque for one
hundred and ten pounds was drawn to the order of Mr Pusely-Smythe and
handed to him with the congratulations of the chairman.


The chairman’s next duty was to open the sealed envelope containing
the problem set by the ingenious Leonard for the ensuing month. This
was entitled ‘The Kiss Problem,’ and when its conditions were read out
both Major Byles and the Rev. Septimus Cunliffe objected to it, though
on totally different grounds, and urged that Leonard should be asked
to substitute something else. However, on a vote being taken, it was
agreed by a considerable majority that ‘The Kiss Problem’ should be
retained, although, as the chairman pointed out, it looked excessively
dangerous.

Mr Pusely-Smythe was reminded that it was his turn to be chairman at
the next meeting. And then, the business of the evening being at an
end, the card-tables were brought in, and members addressed themselves
to bridge at moderate points.



No. II.

The Kiss Problem

Mr Pusely-Smythe’s air of saturnine melancholy was pronounced as he
took the chair at the forty-fourth monthly meeting of the Problem
Club.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ he began, ‘the waiters are supposed to have left
the room, but in view of the nature of the problem before us to-night
you would probably wish to be quite sure on the point. Will somebody
kindly examine the screen by the waiters’ entrance?’

Mr Quillian, K.C., reported that no waiter was concealed, and further
that the door was locked.

‘Thank you, my learned friend. Leonard—admirable as a head-waiter,
ingenious and generally innocuous as the inventor of our problems—has
on this occasion undergone a moral lapse. I will give you the words of
this lamentable problem: “It is required within the space of one hour
to kiss upon the cheek ten females of the age of courtship and not
cousins or any nearer relative of the kisser, without giving offence
to any one of them.”

‘Major Byles protested against this problem on the ground that it gave
an unfair advantage to the young and unattached. The Rev. Septimus
Cunliffe seconded the protest on the ground that, broad-minded though
he was, after all there was a limit. A vote being taken, it was
found—to the eternal shame of the club, if I may say so—that there was
a considerable majority in favour of the problem being retained.’

Every member being well aware that the chairman himself had voted with
the majority, there was some hilarious interruption.

‘Gentlemen,’ said the chairman severely, ‘this is not the spirit in
which to approach stories of wrecked homes and blasted reputations,
and these stories we must now hear. I observe that Mr Quillian has had
his face scratched recently, doubtless the work of outraged modesty,
but before I——’

‘I really must protest,’ said Mr Quillian. ‘The slight marks on my
left cheek are not scratches, but were caused—as they say at the
inquests—by some blunt instrument, to wit, a safety razor.’

‘Well,’ the chairman continued, ‘you will have an opportunity later to
explain how the girl got hold of the razor. I will begin with some of
our younger Lotharios. What have you to tell us, Mr Feldane?’

The Hon. James Feldane put down his cigarette, and spoke wearily:
‘It’s like this, you know. I claim to have won unless my score’s
beaten. Ten in an hour is an impossible demand on the part of our
friend Leonard, and I doubt if bogey would be more than four. May I
take it that I win, if I am nearest to Leonard’s figure?’

‘That is so. Continue your loathsome confessions.’

‘It’s strictly masonic and all that, ain’t it?’

‘Mr Feldane may be assured that his hideous secret will die with us,’
said the chairman. ‘The club rule of secrecy has never yet been
broken.’

‘That being so, I’ll get on. I’d planned it all for a dance I was
going to, and I’d put in a deal of conscientious preliminary work,
getting certain girls up to a certain mark, if you understand what I
mean. On the appointed night a perfectly dear old thing with two
daughters some years older than myself called to take me on to that
dance. They’ve known me all my life. They knew me when I’d got golden
curls and played with a wool rabbit. They’re no sort of relation, and
so they count for the purpose of this competition. Well, I’ve always
kissed them when we met, and I kissed them that time as soon as I
boarded the car. So when we got to the house where the dance was I was
three up and still had fifty-three minutes to go.’

Here Feldane was interrupted by an appeal to the chairman. It was made
by his friend Hesseltine, a tall and dark young man, as good-looking
as Feldane himself, though of a very different type.

‘Mr Chairman,’ said Hesseltine, ‘before Jimmy goes any further I
should like to ask for your ruling. The mother of those two girls is
to my certain knowledge sixty-two years of age. I claim that Jimmy
cannot score her, as she is above the age of courtship.’

‘Sorry, Mr Hesseltine, but your claim is disallowed. It has been well
observed that a man is as old as he feels, but that a woman is rather
younger than she doesn’t look. There is no historical instance of any
woman being over the age of courtship.’

‘Then I’m pipped,’ said Hesseltine gloomily. ‘Go on, Jimmy.’

‘I kissed four more in the time left me, but one of them told me that
she would never speak to me again, and so I can’t count her, though
it’s what she always says. I was done by the time limit. You can’t in
decency kiss a girl and then do an immediate bunk. You must keep on
telling her how maddeningly beautiful she is for a few minutes.
Besides, at a dance you can’t always find the girl you want at the
moment you want her. Still, I claim a score of six.’

‘The claim is allowed. And what was your sad experience, Mr
Hesseltine?’

‘Much the same as Jimmy’s. I went to the same dance. I also played the
friends-of-my-childhood, but I could only raise five of them. So
Jimmy’s one ahead. If you had disallowed his old lady we should have
tied. I might add that, being rather carried away, I got engaged to
two different girls in the course of the hour, and though it’s all
right now, I don’t monkey with a buzzsaw again. The next kiss problem
will find little Bobby seated with the spectators.’

‘Possibly,’ said the chairman, ‘the finesse and experience of riper
years will have accomplished more than the attractions of untutored
youth. May I interrupt your secretarial duties, Sir Charles?’

Sir Charles laid down his pencil, smiled, and shook his head. ‘This
time you must place me also with the spectators,’ he said, and quoted
an apt line of Horace.

‘It is seldom that you miss. I wish Mr Harding Pope, that I could say
the same of you. What have you done this time to redeem yourself?’

‘What could I do?’ said Mr Pope, with an oratorical gesture. ‘I
represent a Nonconformist constituency which is not tolerant of the
least laxity in the private life of its member. The mere suspicion
that I had taken part in a competition of this kind might end my
political career.’

‘Possibly. Failure to take part in the next competition will actually
end your career as a member of this club, as you will see if you refer
to rule eleven. The club does not regard onlookers as sportsmen. I
suppose, Major Byles, since you protested against the problem, that
for the first time in your membership you have failed to compete.’

‘That is so, but my protest had very little to do with it. Matter of
fact, I had a superstitious idea that it might change my luck if I
gave a miss this time.’

‘Then I will turn to Dr Alden. What was your adventure, doctor?’

‘Mine was more a tragedy than an adventure,’ said the doctor. ‘On the
evening of Sunday the twelfth, acting on information received, I
presented myself at the residence of my married sister. She said that
I must have forgotten that she was entertaining the girls of her
Tennyson Club that night, and that she had never wanted me less, but
that, as I was there, I could stop. I stopped, that being what I had
come for. Her suggestion that her husband and myself, the only two
males present, should go off to the billiard-room after supper, was
negatived by both of us. In accordance with plan I then directed the
conversation to the subject of face-powder, condemning it on
scientific grounds and maintaining that it deceived nobody. My sister
said that it was not intended to deceive, but that as a matter of fact
no man would ever detect it unless it had been put on with a shovel. I
said that, on the contrary, given a certain condition, any man with a
scientific training could detect it with his eyes shut.

‘Several of the girls asked me how. This was not unexpected.

‘I replied that he would only have to touch with his lips a cheek on
which there was face-powder and he would know it instantly and
infallibly.

‘My sister said she did not believe a word of it.

‘My answer was that I could easily prove it. Let them blindfold me.
Then twelve times in succession let a cheek touch my lips. In each
case I would state whether or not face-powder had been used, and would
employ no other means of detection. I was so certain of it that I
would gladly contribute a guinea to the charitable fund of the
Tennyson Club for every mistake that I made.

‘My sister said that it was very easy to make an impossible offer that
could not be accepted. Somewhat to my surprise the prettiest girl
there said that she did not think it an impossible offer at all. It
was a scientific experiment and might benefit a very good cause. I
would never know the identity of the twelve who took part in the
experiment. Its very publicity made it innocuous. But I should have to
give them a little time to settle which were the twelve to be
sacrificed and the order in which they were to present themselves. To
this I at once agreed.

‘I was put in a chair and blindfolded—really blindfolded. I need
hardly tell the members of this club that my claim to be able to
detect the presence of face-powder in the way indicated was a piece of
monumental spoof. This did not alarm me. I could not lose more than
twelve guineas, and I was out to win our prize of one hundred and ten
pounds. I could assign my mistakes to the fact that I had just smoked
a cigarette, thus spoiling the delicacy of my perception.

‘I heard a sound of whispering and suppressed laughter as the girls
held their consultation, and then the experiment began in silence,
broken only by the rustle of feminine garments. Twelve times in
succession I felt a gentle touch upon my lips, and never once did I
fail to take advantage of it. I gave six decisions for face-powder and
six against, and was just thinking how I would spend the hundred and
ten pounds when I heard a roar of laughter. I tore off the bandage and
asked what was the matter.

‘As soon as they could speak they told me. The only person that I
had kissed on all twelve occasions was my own sister. Sometimes she
had touched my lips with her cheek, on which there was face-powder,
and sometimes with the back of her hand, on which there was none.
And nine times I had been mistaken in my diagnosis. The treasurer
of the charitable fund—she was the pretty girl of whom I have
spoken—collected the money. Then they all resumed their merriment, and
no excuse for my mistakes was ever heard.

‘All things considered, I think I have a fair claim for a consolation
prize.’

‘The club does not give prizes of that description,’ said the
chairman. ‘But I can offer you our sympathy, which is more valuable
than mere money. I will now call upon Mr Quillian.’

Mr Quillian adjusted his pince-nez. ‘I will ask the chairman’s
permission to argue that the whole of this competition is null and
void, and that the prize should be added to that for the next
competition.’

‘I will hear you, Mr Quillian, but you must be brief and to the point.
You are not in court now, you know.’

‘If you please, I submit that a kiss has a psychical as well as a
physical side, and that kisses for competition purposes are so
deficient on the psychical or emotional side that they cannot be
considered as kisses in the ordinary sense of the word.’

‘I do not admit that. Possibly the competition kiss does not come up
to the standard demanded by a voluptuary like my learned friend, but
it is still a kiss. If he kissed this match-box, it would be a kiss
and could not be described otherwise, although presumably the
emotional side would be absent. Enough of these legal quibbles. I will
now ask Mr Matthews if he has been as successful in the part of
Lothario as he invariably is in that of Lucullus.’

Mr Matthews, the club epicure, said that a decent upbringing had
caused him to fail in a shameful enterprise, and gave his account of
it.

He advertised in the name of Mrs Elsmere Twiss, giving an
accommodation address, for a companion to an elderly lady. The salary
offered was magnificent, and it was intimated that accomplishments
would be less valued than youthful charm and an affectionate nature.
Applicants were to enclose photographs.

Ten of the applicants—and it is to be feared that they were the ten
whose photographs were the most attractive—were given an appointment
with Mrs Elsmere Twiss at a West End hotel on a certain day. On the
morning of that day Mr Matthews placed himself in the hands of a
famous costumier, who had guaranteed to convert him into such an
excellent imitation of an old lady that even at close quarters the
disguise would not be detected. The costumier spent two hours on
effecting a most artistic transformation and then, after submitting
himself to the photographer in attendance, Mr Matthew drove off to the
hotel. A passer-by who had happened to glance into the cab might have
observed a sweet-looking old lady smoking a large cigar.

[Illustration: An older person wearing a Victorian-era hat with a
train, a black dress with a fur collar, and white gloves, with a lit
cigar in ‘her’ mouth. Caption: ‘A sweet-looking old lady smoking a
large cigar.’]

He now proceeded to interview the selected ten, it being his
abominable intention to kiss each applicant as he said good-bye to
her.

The first applicant to be brought in from the waiting-room was Miss
Grace Porter. Everything went well until the moment came for the
affectionate good-bye. But then it chanced that Miss Porter dropped
her handkerchief.

Now Mr Matthews had from the nursery upwards been taught habits of
politeness, and his decent upbringing now proved his undoing.
Forgetting that he was supposed to be an elderly lady and the girl’s
prospective employer, he flew to pick up that handkerchief. And as he
stooped his hat and wig fell off. For a few awful moments he remained
stooping, waiting for Miss Porter’s scream. But no scream came. She
had realised that Mrs Elsmere Twiss wore a wig, but not that she was a
man. And the tactful Miss Porter had retired from the room.

Mr Matthews was safe, but his nerve was gone. He replaced the hat and
wig, and sent a waiter with a message to the remaining applicants.

When Mr Matthews had finished his story two other members narrated how
they had conspired together to get the game of kiss-in-the-ring played
at a rectory garden party and had failed miserably.

‘Now the only member left,’ said the chairman, ‘is Mr Cunliffe, and as
he protested against the problem, and will not have competed——’

‘Pardon me,’ said the sonorous and ecclesiastical voice of the Rev.
Septimus Cunliffe. ‘I have not only competed, but I claim to be the
winner.’

‘One moment. This is a shock, and some restorative seems indicated.’
The chairman fetched himself a brandy-and-soda from the side-table and
resumed. ‘Now, if the reverend gentleman will continue the account of
his exploits——’

‘It has pained me to hear to-night aspersions on the character of our
admirable Leonard. I admit that when I first heard the problem I was
myself inclined to misjudge him. But on examining it more closely I
saw that never had he risen to a higher pitch of austere, though
cynical, morality. I saw that he intended that this prize should be
won by the most high-minded member of the club—by the man whose mind
was the least obsessed by thoughts of frivolity or flirtation.’

‘Might I suggest,’ said the chairman, ‘that you should stop throwing
bouquets to yourself, and tell us about these ten women that you’ve
kissed?’

‘That is precisely my point. Leonard does not say women. He does not
say girls. He says females. My aunt is interested in smoke-gray
Persian cats. She breeds them and deals in them on behalf of a
charity, and you will generally find thirty or forty of them at her
house. It is unhygienic to kiss cats, but I kissed ten of them, and my
aunt was greatly pleased at this unusual demonstration of affection
for her pets. Some of them seemed slightly bored, but not one was
offended. When a cat is offended it tells you so. They were of an age
for courtship—by males of their own species. Briefly, the cats and I
conformed in all respects with the requirements of the problem.’

‘Gentlemen,’ said the chairman, ‘the subtlety of our theologian has
overcome you. Our cheque for one hundred and ten pounds will be drawn
to the order of Mr Septimus Cunliffe.

‘I will now read out the problem which will next engage your
attention. It is entitled “The Free Meal Problem.” It is required
within the space of twenty-four consecutive hours to be the guest of
one person at breakfast, of another at luncheon, and of a third at
dinner, the host being in each case a person whom the competitor has
not to his knowledge seen, and with whom he has held no communication
previous to the sunrise preceding the meal. No direct request for a
meal may be made and no remuneration may be given in return for any
meal.

‘The adjudicator will be my learned friend Mr Quillian.’



No. III.

The Free Meal Problem

Probably no member of the Problem Club enjoyed his evening of
chairmanship more than Mr Quillian, K.C., who occupied the chair at
the forty-fifth meeting. He liked the position of authority, and he
liked the opportunity to exercise the nicety and precision of his
legal mind. In the Free Meal Problem, on which he was to adjudicate,
the ingenious head-waiter Leonard had made the following demand:—

‘It is required within the space of twenty-four consecutive hours to
be the guest of one person at breakfast, of another at luncheon, and
of a third at dinner, the host being in each case a person whom the
competitor has not to his knowledge seen, and with whom he has held no
communication, previous to the sunrise preceding the meal. No direct
request for a meal may be made, and no remuneration may be given in
return for any meal.’

‘Now, gentlemen,’ said Mr Quillian, when he had read this out, ‘this
is a problem where the question of definition may arise. For instance,
a child in a railway carriage offers a traveller a small piece of
deteriorated bun. We will suppose that the hour is eight in the
morning and that the traveller has not partaken of food since the
previous midnight. In the improbable event of his consuming
the—er—proffered dainty, he has undoubtedly broken his fast. But can
he be said to have breakfasted? All I can say is that if the question
of definition should arise to-night I will do my best to deal with it
on common-sense lines, accurately but without pedantry.’

The chairman then called upon Mr Wildersley, A.R.A., to give his
experiences.

Wildersley was a man of middle age who, like many artists, retained
something of the child in his composition. He was a big, good-tempered
man of rather rugged appearance. The cigars provided by the club, good
though they were, had no attraction for him. He was a pipe-smoker, and
between his sentences he contrived to keep his pipe alight.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I mayn’t be a winner, but I can’t be far out. I’ll
tell you how I set about it. You may have noticed that chaps in the
country with little places—three or four acres—are often very keen
about them. In fact, the smaller the place the keener they are. My
frame-maker, who lives near Harrow, used to spend most of his Sunday
afternoon sitting behind a curtain with the window open, listening to
what passers-by had to say about the godetias in his front garden. His
daughter sometimes sits for me, and she told me that if the
compliments on the garden came in nicely it put him in such a good
temper that he used to let the family off church in the evening. I
decided to work on the pride that the owner or tenant has in his
place. I went down to the outer suburban belt—the part that they call
the real country—and put up at an hotel. Then bright and early one
morning I started out with my painting contraptions. I very soon
spotted a place that I knew must be picturesque, because it had got
some clipped yews and a sun-dial; besides, as the gate informed me, it
was called the Dream House, and that proved it. So in I went, pitched
my easel half-way up the drive, and got to work. An old gardener came
up and asked me if I knew that I was trespassing. So I gave him a
shilling, my card, and my apologies. I told him to keep the shilling
and to deliver the card and apologies to his master as soon as that
gentleman got down. That seemed to meet the case. In half an hour I
had knocked off something showy, and then down the drive towards me
came the owner, all smiles and Norfolk jacket, with a Cocker spaniel
trailing behind him. I gave him the sketch, and he was as pleased as
Punch about it. He took me round the garden to point out other
picturesque spots, and then brought me into the house to introduce me
to his family. Nice people, very. Almost before I knew it I was
breakfasting with them, and being hungry I was pleased to find that
they took breakfast seriously. They’d have kept me there all day if I
could have stopped, but the business of this problem required me to
move on.

‘At half-past twelve I played the same trick again six miles up the
road. Once more it worked perfectly. My hostess was an old lady of the
almost extinct type that knows how to live. Everything about the place
was just exactly. The luncheon was just exactly. And she gave me a
very fine old Amontillado—a wine that we don’t see enough of nowadays.
I can’t say whether it was the sherry or the success, but when I left
I felt that I had got the club’s cheque for one hundred and ten pounds
in my pocket and was listening to the chairman’s kindly words of
congratulation. My mistake, of course. Begin well, but not too well.
If you begin too well, mistrust it.

‘About seven that evening I was painting a garden which was really
rather good in that light. (I’d sent in my card and got permission.)
As I was finishing the job and rather wrapped up in it I heard a
Scotch accent behind me, saying that the sketch was “no bad” and
“verra like.” He and I discussed the comparative merits of painting
and photography. For accuracy he “prefaired the photograph, but then
it didna give the colours.” As before, I presented the sketch, and I
still think that he was pleased with it. He asked me to sign it, so as
to prove to his friends that he “wasna lying” when he said that it was
by a professed painter, and admitted that he would not grudge the
money it would cost for framing and glazing. He then said he made no
doubt I would be hurrying home for my dinner, and he would wish me
good-evening. And so, in a manner of speaking, I fell at the last
hurdle. Still, I suppose I score the breakfast and luncheon.’

The Hon. James Feldane addressed the chairman:—

‘I’d like your ruling on that point, sir. And it’s quite impartial,
because I am not competing myself this time.’

‘Not competing?’ said the chairman. ‘Might I ask what stopped you?
Hitherto you have been one of the keenest and most sporting of our
members, in spite of your air of—er—lassitude.’

‘What stopped me,’ said Jimmy simply, ‘was breakfast. Breakfast is bad
enough at any time, especially if you’ve been rather late and busy the
night before. But to breakfast with an absolute stranger on chance
food, and to go out and dig for the invitation first—well, it was
unthinkable. I’m sorry to spoil old Wildersley’s score, and if he’d
bunged me one of his sketches instead of chucking them about the
suburbs I might have been able to stifle the voice of conscience. As
it is, I feel bound to raise the objection that he gave remuneration
for the breakfast and luncheon—to wit, two sketches.’

‘The gift of the sketches was precedent to the meals and was
unconditional, as we see by the fact that the third sketch produced no
meal. The sketches were a lure, and the use of a lure is not
prohibited. They were not remuneration given in return for a meal. I
should not even say that the meals were remuneration for the sketches;
they were merely an expression of gratitude. Mr Feldane’s objection is
disallowed.’

That habitual non-starter Mr Harding Pope, M.P., was now asked if he
had made his choice between competition or resignation.

‘I have competed, of course. But I have only the most dismal of
failures to record. I was down at my constituency, and I picked out
three new residents on whom I had a plausible excuse for calling. I
’phoned the first to ask if he could see me at nine, apologising for
the earliness of the hour. He said that the time suited him very well,
and that, as a matter of fact, he always breakfasted at seven, so as
to begin work early. The man whom I called on at lunch-time could only
give me ten minutes, he said, as he was lunching out. The third did
ask me to dinner, but not on that day. And probably all three have put
me down as a man who calls at tactless and inconvenient times. I can
only say that I am ready to suffer far worse things for the privilege
of retaining my membership.’

Sir Charles Bunford had perhaps shown rather more strategy, but had
only one degree less of failure to report. He had obtained letters of
introduction to three noted food-cranks, all of them ardent
proselytisers. To the first he represented himself as suffering from a
list of symptoms. Sir Charles had memorised them carefully from the
advertisement of a patent pill. He said that he was sorry to call at
so early an hour, but after a night of suffering he had determined
that he would begin on a new system of diet at once.

‘For instance,’ he said, ‘what ought I to have for breakfast this
morning? What do you have yourself?’

The food-crank said that he would not only tell him; he would ask him
to share his simple but healthful fare.

At this point in his narrative the chairman interposed.

‘This is a case where the question of definition may arise. I must ask
you to tell us, Sir Charles, what the food-crank gave you for
breakfast.’

‘It was not so much breakfast as a premature dessert with a hospital
flavour to it. It consisted of uncooked fruit and lessons in the
difficult art of mastication. With that we drank a special sort of
coffee, from which all deleterious matter, including the taste of
coffee, had been entirely removed. But the question of definition need
not worry you, as I can’t claim to have won. The second food-crank,
whom I visited at lunch-time, told me that his chief secret was never
to eat in the middle of the day. The third, whom I tackled in the
evening, was so ascetic in his conversation and so extremely anxious
to keep me out of his dining-room, that I formed a suspicion, perhaps
unworthy, that the man’s practice differed somewhat from his
preaching. So I’ve failed, but it was quite an amusing day.’

That great epicure, Mr Matthews, had not competed, and gave his
reasons with a solemnity that contrasted with his usual cheeriness.

‘Thank Heaven,’ he said, ‘I have a sophisticated appetite! Thank
Heaven again I have an over-educated palate! Starvation for
twenty-four hours I might have possibly faced. But the horrors of
casual hospitality were more than I could risk.’

‘Ah, well,’ said the chairman, ‘I must turn to Mr Pusely-Smythe, who
is acting as secretary for us to-night. I presume he has added one
more to his list of triumphs.’

‘The pangs of failure,’ said that saturnine gentleman, ‘are increased
by the jeers of the learned chairman. I ought to have won. I claim to
have won. But I confess that it will not surprise me if I am reduced
to an equality with my artist friend. I shall have a melancholy
pleasure in sharing the prize with him. He tried to work upon
gratitude, and so did I. The particular brand of gratitude that I
decided to exploit for my purpose was the gratitude that a woman feels
for the return of her lost pet dog. It seems to vary inversely as the
value of the dog, but it is always great.

‘You will perhaps remember that about a year ago Leonard set us a
peculiarly sinful problem, which he styled the Substitution Problem,
and that in the complicated and unjustifiable operations by which I
succeeded in winning the prize I made the acquaintance of James Tigg,
and did him a good turn. Now James, known to his intimate friends as
“Kidney,” is by profession a French polisher, but does not practice,
and his favourite occupation is the appropriation of dogs, his gifts
in that direction amounting almost to genius.

‘I sent for James. I told him that I thought it likely that three
ladies, living in different suburbs, would lose their pet dogs and
that I should know where to find them, and should be enabled by the
address on the dog-collar to return each of the little darlings to its
owner. At the same time I put five golden sovereigns on the table.

‘“Likely?” said James. “It’s a ruddy certainty.” He then picked up the
coins in an absent-minded way and instructed me as to details.

‘Two days later, at an early hour in the morning, I called on Lady
Pingle at her house at Epsom with her ladyship’s alleged Pekingese
under my arm. I told her how I had found the poor little thing
wandering on Wimbledon Common late the night before almost in a state
of collapse, had given it food and shelter, and had taken the earliest
opportunity to relieve her anxiety by its return.

‘Her gratitude was almost frantic. She kissed the dog ardently, and at
one moment I was almost afraid she was going to kiss me too. She did
not do that, but she did insist on my breakfasting with her, and I
accepted. And let me tell that over-educated sybarite Matthews, with
his sneers at casual hospitality, that he himself never breakfasted
better.

‘I lunched with Mrs Hastonbury at her residence at Leatherhead. In
this way she showed her gratitude for the return of “Bimby”—a
chocolate-coloured Pom with a short temper. But I must confess that
she was not nearly as quick off the mark as Lady Pingle. I had to
inquire about hotels in the neighbourhood before she saw which way her
duty lay.

‘The third dog that I had to deliver, a mouldy little pug, belonged to
the wife of a curate living much nearer home. She was grateful and she
was hospitable. She said that they never dined but that they were just
sitting down to high tea, and she hoped I would join them. It was an
evening meal substituted for dinner, and I contend that I am entitled
to count it as dinner.’

‘Kindly tell us what you had,’ said the chairman.

‘What? The internal evidence? Certainly. I had cocoa, scrambled eggs,
and seed-cake. And I hope you will take a lenient view of it.’

‘Your hostess herself maintained that it was not dinner, and the
internal evidence, as you call it, entirely supports her view. Your
career of crime will only give you a score of two. The high tea is
disallowed. I will now call upon Major Byles.’

‘The sacrifice that I made to luck on the occasion of our last
competition,’ said Major Byles, ‘has brought me success at last. I
claim to be a winner, and await your decision with confidence. It
happened that two of my friends both wanted a furnished house at
Brightgate for the winter, and did not want the bother of going down
to make their selection. I saw my chance at once. I might never have
thought of it, but I didn’t miss it when it was shoved at me. I said
at once that I was thinking of running down to Brightgate for a day or
two, and that it always interested me to look over houses. They told
me their requirements and let me take on the job for them.

‘The house-agent at Brightgate had only six houses on his books that
were at all suitable. He gave me orders to view, and I started
business at eight one morning. I started badly.

‘At the first house a proud but pretty parlour-maid told me that it
was not usual to show furnished houses at that hour, but I could call
again at eleven. At the second house there was only a caretaker. That
left me with, so to speak, four cartridges and three birds to kill. I
hurried on to the third house, which was half a mile away. By a bit of
luck I met the owner on the doorstep, and told him my alleged
business.

‘“You’re very early,” he said. “Why, we haven’t had breakfast yet.”

‘“No more have I,” I said. “But last year I lost a good house through
being too late, and I thought I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.”

‘He was a genial old chap. He said the best thing I could do was to
come in and breakfast with him, and by the time I had finished the
servants would have got the bedrooms tidied up. I did my best to
accept with decent hesitation.

‘At lunch-time I tried the fourth house on my list and struck another
caretaker. I couldn’t afford another miss. I got lunch at the fifth
house, but I had to be no end complimentary before I could get them up
to the point. In fact, it wasn’t till I told the woman that her
pimply-faced son was a fine upstanding young fellow that she decided
to order the extra chop.

‘But at the sixth house I had no trouble about dinner. The owner
turned out to be a friend of a friend of mine. He fetched up a bottle
of the ’87 in my honour and insisted on my stopping the night.

‘They were all _pukka_ meals, and all the conditions were observed. Am
I a winner, Mr Chairman?’

‘Certainly. Does anybody else claim to be a winner?’

‘I do,’ said Dr Alden. ‘The day before yesterday a doctor rang me up
and asked me to see a patient of his—a woman with a wealthy, devoted,
and very nervous husband. That was at eight in the morning. My car
happened to be at the door, and it suited me to go right away. I saw
the patient, was able to reassure the husband, and had breakfast with
him. Later in the morning a man was introduced to me who was
interested in old glass and had heard of me as a collector. He was
very keen that I should lunch with him and see what he had got. He was
a pleasant chap and I accepted. When I got back, a doctor, quite an
old pal of mine, said that he was going to take me to dine that night
with a man I had never seen before. It seemed that the stranger had
staying with him for one night a French specialist in my own line. The
Frenchman was anxious to meet me, and his host was anxious to please
him. So he had tried to arrange it through a mutual friend. I was
myself keen to meet that Frenchman, and so he succeeded.

‘Of course, I didn’t arrange all this—couldn’t have arranged it. As a
matter of fact, I had never intended to compete this time. But destiny
decided to take a hand in this competition. I claim to be a winner.’

‘An interesting point,’ said the chairman. ‘Can a man be said to win
who has never competed? I shall decide in Dr Alden’s favour. Leonard
says nothing of intention. He only demands certain facts. And these
facts the doctor by an amazing stroke of luck has been able to
provide. The prize of one hundred and ten pounds will be divided
equally between him and Major Byles, unless there is any further
claim.’

No further claim was forthcoming. The chairman then announced that Mr
Matthews would preside at the next meeting, and read out the problem
set for the following month, called ‘The Win-and-Lose Problem,’ and
there was a general feeling that it would take some doing.



No. IV.

The Win-and-Lose Problem

At the forty-sixth meeting of the Problem Club, the waiters having
left the room, Mr Matthews, smiling and rubicund, took his place as
chairman. He finished his glass of an old and veritable cognac, lit
with care and a cedar-wood spill a cigar that can only be obtained by
the favour of the planter, and read out the terms of the Win-and-Lose
Problem.

‘It is required to win an even bet of one pound, resulting in a net
loss of one pound to the winner; and to lose an even bet of one pound
resulting in a net gain of one pound to the loser. No competitor is to
make more than two bets.’

‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Mr Matthews, ‘I’m supposed to make one or two
preliminary observations. Now here’s a thing that strikes me. You may
remember that when we tackled the Kiss Problem, our reverend friend Mr
Cunliffe said that it revealed the artful Leonard as an apostle of
morality. Of course, the padre took the jack-pot on that occasion, and
so he may have been prejudiced, but it looks to me now as if he may
have been right. See for yourselves. You’ve got to win a bet and lose
money by it, and then you’ve got to lose a bet and make money by it,
and at the end of it you’re left just where you were when you started.
There’s not much deadly fascination and excitement about that—why,
it’s enough to make you lose your taste for gambling.

‘Yes, and there’s one more point. I noticed a good deal of
preoccupation at dinner to-night. Very few of you seemed to be putting
your heart into the work, and I believe I was the only man who had the
_vol-au-vent_ brought back to him for further reference. Great mistake
that of yours. Some of you tried to work out sums on the back of your
menus. I detected Major Byles, with corrugated brows, in the act of
making pencil calculations on the tablecloth. Yes, there’s not a doubt
that Leonard has given you a worrying time, and some of you were
wrestling with it right up to the last moment. It won’t surprise me if
there’s not a winner among the whole lot of you. However, we’ll begin
with a likely chance. You, Sir Charles, have got a reputation as a
learned man; can I ask the secretary to draw a cheque in your favour?’

‘I’d be sorry to stop you,’ said Sir Charles, ‘but I’m afraid I can’t
claim it. Archæology don’t help with arithmetic. As an eminent
classical scholar once observed, I’ve not got the low cunning that
makes a mathematician. The only thing I could think of was to insure
the chances of each bet appropriately, but it seemed to me that you
would regard such insurance as being in itself a bet.’

‘I certainly should. You don’t change a thing by changing its name.
You are limited to the two bets, and I shall not allow four even if
you call two of them insurance. Come now, Jimmy, have you profited
sufficiently by your racing experiences to have won the prize
to-night?’

‘Profited by my racing experiences?’ said the Hon. James Feldane
wearily. ‘If you’d go and talk to the bank that has charge of my
overdraft you wouldn’t use words like those. But backing horses,
though it’s a mug’s game, is, at any rate, easy. There are too many
complications in Leonard’s fancy work for a simple child of Nature
like myself. I can’t engineer a two-cylinder gamble with a double
back-jump actuated by the cam-shaft. The only man I know who could
face it without mental overstrain is my bookmaker. He’s a wonder. He’d
give you fifteen different ways of perforating this problem inside a
minute. No juggle with figures can beat him. I don’t know if you’d
call it a talent or a disease, but I’ve not got it. As a competitor,
I’ve failed, but I don’t mind admitting that I’ve made a little actual
money out of the competition.’ Jimmy smiled reminiscently.

‘May we have the details?’ asked the chairman.

‘I’d sooner you got them from Hesseltine.’

The chairman called upon Mr Hesseltine.

‘I don’t wonder,’ said that young man, ‘that Jimmy don’t like to tell
you. If I’d stolen money from a crossing-sweeper in St James’s Street
I shouldn’t be proud of it myself. The silly ass thinks he’s scored
off me, but as I was out to lose a quid anyhow——’

‘May we have the actual facts?’ suggested the chairman.

‘Certainly. I was thinking about this problem and I got a sudden
brain-wave. I saw how to do the first half—to win a bet of a pound
that would leave me one pound down when I’d won it. Well, I happened
to be going up St James’s Street with Jimmy later that morning, and by
way of leading up to it I asked him what he generally gave to a
street-beggar. “Nix,” he said. “What do you?” So I told him that I
generally gave a sovereign. He told me in his coarse sort of way that
he didn’t believe it. That was what I had expected. “All right,” I
said, “I’ll bet you a pound that I give two golden sovereigns to the
next beggar or crossing-sweeper I come across.” He thought about it
and then said: “I’ll take that, and to guard against accidents I’ll be
the next beggar. Give me a little assistance, kind sir?”

‘Of course, in that way he put himself on velvet. Whether I decided to
win my bet or to lose it, Jimmy had to make one sovereign out of me.
Didn’t affect me at all, for according to Leonard I’d got to win my
bet and lose a pound by it, which I did. The only person hit was the
crossing-sweeper up the street, who would otherwise have made two
quid. Of course, what I ought to have done was to have handed Jimmy
over to the police for begging—wish I’d thought of it.

‘Well, I negotiated the first half of the problem, but the second half
beat me. I’m inclined to think the sting of the beast is in its tail.
It takes two people to make a bet. I’m not a poet or any sort of
imaginative chap, but I could think of a bet which for a dead
certainty it would pay me to lose. I couldn’t think of anybody, even
including that rotter Jimmy, who would be fool enough to take it. You
must try somebody else, Mr Chairman.’

‘Major Byles?’ the chairman suggested.

‘As a head-waiter,’ said the Major, ‘I’ve got nothing against Leonard.
As a setter of problems he’s given general satisfaction, but this time
I should like to back my bill to the effect that he has mixed up too
much arithmetic with the sport. I’ve spent a month on this
win-and-lose business, all the time with the feeling that a boy fresh
from school would work out the whole thing on the back of an envelope
in ten minutes, and I’ve done nothing. I spent the first fortnight at
home, and at the end of it I had contracted insomnia, headache, and
what you might call pardonable irritability. At the end of that time
my wife said that of course she had noticed the change, and that I
seemed to be doing sums all day, and that if we were ruined I had
better say so and she would face it bravely. I reassured her and came
to town on important business. I used tons of the club notepaper for
my calculations, put an undue strain on the club wastepaper-baskets,
quarrelled with two of my best friends, was sarcastic in addressing
club servants, and am expecting a letter from the committee to ask for
my resignation. The amazing thing is that all the time I have been on
the very point of getting the solution. In my opinion it’s the most
horribly worrying thing that Leonard has ever given us.’

‘Well,’ said the chairman, ‘artists are not generally supposed to be
particularly strong at arithmetic, but I’ll ask Mr Wildersley what
he’s done about it.’

‘Can’t say I agree with the Major,’ said Wildersley. ‘I call it a
jolly easy problem, and I claim to be a winner. It didn’t take me any
time to think of it, either. I got a man into my studio, to see
alleged works of art, and I said to him that I would bet him a pound I
would give him two pounds. He took me. “You’ve lost,” I said. “Pay up,
and then I’ll pay up.” He handed me a sovereign and I handed him two
pounds of potatoes in a paper bag. So I’d won a pound in money and
lost two pounds in potatoes. If you win one pound and lose two, that
makes a net loss of one pound on the transaction, and so I’d done the
first half of the problem.

‘The chap seemed to be grumbling rather. “What’s the matter with you?”
I said. “The green-grocer told me that they were the kind he eats
himself, and that he could guarantee them.”

‘“I don’t want the beastly potatoes,” he said. “The whole thing’s a
dirty swindle.” I thought he’d say that. So I told him that it was no
swindle and I would be quite willing to take the same bet myself. He
jumped at it, but to make sure he said he would bet me a sovereign he
would give me two pounds. I took him, lost, paid the sovereign, and
got back my two pounds of potatoes. That finished the second half of
the problem. I’d lost a bet of one pound, and had made two pounds,
giving a net gain of one pound. Naturally he wanted to know what I had
done it for, and I said it was to stop him from trying to talk about
art—the chap’s a critic.’

Mr Matthews took two minutes and a brandy-and-soda before giving his
decision as follows:—

‘Ingenious, but it won’t do. Mr Wildersley professes to have
subtracted money to the value of a sovereign from two pounds by weight
of potatoes, and to have got a result of one pound. Of what did that
pound consist? Even after dinner we can’t have mental confusion of
this kind. The claim is disallowed.’

Mr Harding Pope, M.P., made an uninteresting confession of failure,
and the chairman then called upon Mr Quillian, K.C., who was acting as
secretary for the evening.

Mr Quillian removed his pince-nez and glanced round the room with that
look of amiable superiority that some people found irritating.

‘I claim to have won this fairly simple competition,’ he said. ‘Of
course, it has a psychological as well as an arithmetical side; the
bets have to be actually made and not merely worked out on paper. I
made my plan one afternoon, and then went over to my club to see if I
could find my friend Blenkinsop. He is generally at the club at that
hour, and I felt sure that he would accept the two bets that I had to
propose.

‘Well, as it happened, Blenkinsop was not at the club, but I found Mr
Pusely-Smythe alone in the smaller reading-room. I’ve had to submit to
a good deal of chaff—not particularly amusing—from Pusely-Smythe, and
by way of return it seemed appropriate that he should help me to win
our one hundred and ten pound prize. Also, if he will forgive me for
saying so, he has just the commonplace shrewdness that I required in
my victim.

‘After a little preliminary conversation, I produced my
sovereign-case. I told him that there was a certain sum of money in
gold in that case, and that I was willing to bet him a sovereign I
would make him a present of it. He said, as I knew he would, that this
meant that the sum of money in the case was half a sovereign, and that
in consequence he would lose ten shillings on the transaction if he
took the bet.

‘“Yes,” I said, “there is that possibility, but I am willing to
protect you against it by a second bet. We will agree that the loser
by the first transaction shall have the option to give the other man
double what he has lost for double the sum now in my sovereign-case.
And I will bet you a sovereign that he will not exercise that option.
You see how it works out. If the sum in my sovereign-case is half a
sovereign, as you suppose, you will lose ten shillings on the first
transaction, but you will win a sovereign on the second transaction by
exercising an option to exchange twenty shillings for twenty
shillings.”

‘Without taking the time to think, he accepted both bets. I then
opened my sovereign-case and showed him that it contained two pounds.
I gave them to him, and as by so doing I had won my bet he gave me one
of them back again. Kindly observe that I had now solved the first
part of Leonard’s problem. I had won an even bet of one pound the net
result of which was that I had lost a pound. Having made myself the
loser on the first transaction, I now had the option to exchange twice
my loss against twice the sum that had been in the sovereign-case—that
is, to exchange two pounds for four pounds. I had bet that the loser
would not exercise this option. I lost the bet and exercised the
option. Thus, I lost an even bet of one pound with the net result that
I made one pound. This settles the second half of the problem. I
await, sir, with confidence, your decision in my favour.’

Mr Matthews referred once more to the terms of the problem. ‘Yes,’ he
said, ‘it seems to me that you have met all Leonard’s requirements.
Very smart bit of work, in my opinion. You take the club cheque for
one hundred and ten pounds, unless, of course, some claim to share it
with you is substantiated. Is there any such claim?’

‘Naturally, there’s mine,’ said Pusely-Smythe, with his deceptive air
of melancholy.

‘Yours? How did you do it?’

‘My learned friend has just been telling you. I was going away for a
brief and well-earned holiday, and I had decided to give the
competition a miss this time. As I was sitting in the club, studying a
guide-book, in came Quillian looking like a thimble-rigger who has
just set up his little plush-covered table. He offered me his first
bet. I put it aside. He offered the second, and he says I didn’t take
time to think. Thought with me does not take the prolonged period of
gestation that it does in the case of the nobler animals, such as
K.C.’s. I thought two thoughts. The first was that Quillian was out
after this competition. The second was that when two men gamble
together what one wins the other loses and vice versa. That was
enough. I took him. He won the first bet but lost a pound by it. It
follows that I lost the first bet but won a pound by it. Similarly,
when he lost the bet but won a pound I won the bet and lost a pound.
It’s all very simple and elementary. I hope he’s going to make a
victim of me again soon. This time without any effort on my part he
has shoved fifty-five pounds at me. I’ve only had to take it. And I
don’t care whether it was benevolence or mental short-sightedness—I’m
going to thank him just the same.’

‘The claim’s allowed, of course,’ said the chairman. ‘The thing that
makes me mad is that I didn’t see it myself until you pointed it out.
It’s obvious. It simply shrieks at you. My mind must be going.’

‘The menu that you devised for our dinner to-night, sir,’ said
Pusely-Smythe, ‘was sufficient proof of the contrary. Those that study
the recondite must sometimes find the obvious out of their focus.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mr Matthews. ‘I’ll learn the last sentence by
heart—it’ll make a ripping excuse next time I do a dam’ silly thing.’

Cheques were drawn for Quillian and Pusely-Smythe, and the chairman
then opened the envelope containing the problem that Leonard had set
for the following month. It was entitled ‘The Handkerchief Problem,’
and on the face of it scarcely supported the theory that the ingenious
Leonard was a Great Moral Teacher. The Hon. James Feldane was reminded
that it would be his duty to preside on the next occasion and to
adjudicate on this problem, which was as follows: ‘It is required to
steal as many handkerchiefs as possible from a member or members of
the Problem Club. Violence may not be used and thefts detected in the
act will not score. Restitution will be made of the stolen
handkerchiefs within twenty-four hours of the adjudication, but
felonious intent is to be presumed in every case.’

‘Rotten luck,’ said Feldane, to his friend, Hesseltine. ‘I should have
enjoyed working on this problem. It appeals to my natural instincts. I
should probably have won it, and in that case might have given one or
two of them something on account. And so this has to be the occasion
when I’m shut out of the competition and have to act as chairman.’

‘Yes,’ said Hesseltine. ‘Nobody’s so sure of himself as the
non-starter.’



No. V.

The Handkerchief Problem

At the forty-seventh meeting of the Problem Club, the chair was taken
by the youngest member, the Hon. James Feldane. That weary young
gentleman having provided himself with a double portion of green
Chartreuse, for the purpose, as he said, of supporting the dignity of
the position, opened his adjudication a little informally.

‘Let’s get started,’ he said. ‘The first job is to read out the
particular teaser with which the wily Leonard has been worrying you
poor old things during the past month. Here goes.’

The terms of the Handkerchief Problem were then read out. They were as
follows: ‘It is required to steal as many handkerchiefs as possible
from a member or members of the Problem Club. Violence may not be used
and thefts detected in the act will not score. Restitution will be
made of the stolen handkerchiefs within twenty-four hours of the
adjudication, but felonious intent is to be presumed in every case.’

‘I wish I could have been a competitor this time,’ the chairman
continued, ‘instead of being stuck up here to give the momentous
decision. I should have had some sport, and handkerchief-sneaking
falls nicely within my line of intellect; I might have scooped the
prize. But as I’m debarred from scoring off you, I’ve taken jolly good
care that none of you should score off me. For the past month every
handkerchief I’ve used has been attached to the interior of the pocket
by a steel chain and swivel, and those not in use have been locked
away in a safe. My valet thinks I’ve gone off my head, of course, but
then he’d have been bound to have thought that sooner or later,
anyhow. The great point is that not one of you low pickpockets has
been able to get a handkerchief out of me. We’ll now pursue the
inquiry. Hesseltine, are you guilty or not guilty?’

‘Guilty, m’lord,’ said young Hesseltine cheerfully. ‘I may not be
winner, but I think it would be safe to back me for a place. I struck
early. At our last meeting, as soon as this problem was announced, I
slipped stealthily and unobserved from the room. I had rightly
concluded that there would be no attendant in the cloak-room at that
hour. If there had been I should have sent him away to get me a box of
matches. From the overcoats of members I secured a nice little haul of
nine handkerchiefs. One of them, a silk bandanna, the property of
Major Byles, was big enough for two, and ought to count as two.’

‘Might count two on a division, as they say at the elections,’ said
the chairman. ‘But in the undivided state it counts one. Anything
further to say?’

‘That was my only _coup_. The only thing to add is that one of the
nine belonged to a gentleman who did not start keeping them in the
safe quite soon enough.’

‘All right,’ said Jimmy. ‘Speaking entirely _sotto voce_ and _ex
officio_, I’ll be even with you for that one of these days. Meanwhile,
Mr Matthews, it will be your painful duty as secretary to give that
thief a score of nine.’

The chairman then called upon Mr Quillian, K.C., whose story was
connected with the story of Mr Pusely-Smythe. In both cases it was a
story of failure. Both men had hit on precisely the same idea.

Quillian called on Pusely-Smythe at a time when he knew he would be
out, but would be expected back shortly. He, as he anticipated, was
recognised by the servant and asked if he would wait. During the
period of waiting Quillian made a swift and silent excursion to
Pusely-Smythe’s bedroom with a view to abstracting his available store
of handkerchiefs. But the chairman was not the only member who had
taken the precaution of keeping his handkerchiefs in an unlikely
place. Not one solitary handkerchief could Quillian find. And while he
was thus engaged Pusely-Smythe had been calling on Quillian with
similar intentions, similar practice, and a similar result.

‘You’re both too clever to live,’ observed the chairman, ‘but you’ve
cancelled one another for once. Mr Harding Pope, as a politician, you
should be familiar with the paths of dishonesty. How did you get on?’

The Member of Parliament gave a somewhat sickly smile.

‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that I have not competed. I represent a Dissenting
constituency, which is careful—almost to the point of being
inquisitorial—as to my character and private life. Had I competed, it
is easily possible that I might have been arrested. I could have
explained, but all explanations come too late. It would have done me
great injury. In the circumstances I have decided to resign my
membership of this club, and my resignation will be in the chairman’s
hands at the next meeting. I have enjoyed these meetings immensely,
but I have been—and am likely to be—too often debarred from taking an
active part in the competition as a member should. The delightful but
unscrupulous Leonard asks too much of me. Should I ever find myself in
a position of greater freedom and less responsibility, I shall
certainly crave the honour of re-election.’

‘Sorry,’ said the chairman. ‘I’m sure we all are. But the rules of the
club do require that members shall be workers and not merely
onlookers. If ever the political cat jumps the other way, and you’re
thrown out of Westminster into the cold, cold night, I make no doubt
that at the first vacancy we shall welcome the lost sheep back to the
nest. I will now call upon Major Byles.’

The Major lived in the country. There were unusually good golf links
in the neighbourhood, and he was both a good player and a good host.
He had used his opportunities as he explained.

‘I worked on a system. I waited till my man was absolutely wrapped up
in the game, meanwhile locating his handkerchief carefully. Then, at
the moment when he was following the ball with the eye, I put in some
swift finger-work. It was not always successful. The Doctor, for
instance, bowled me out twice—he’s got eyes in the back of his head.
But I got six handkerchiefs that way, and a seventh from a rain-coat
that had been left in my hall. I’ve good reason to know that I’m not a
winner, but it’s not bad—eh?’

‘A good sporting game,’ said the chairman. ‘These thefts from the
person ought really to count more than easy overcoat-shots. They want
more dexterity. The others only require brain-work. Still, I have to
administer the law as Leonard lays it down. So far Hesseltine wins.’

‘But he won’t win,’ said the Major mysteriously. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve got
good reason to know it.’ And he proceeded to compound for himself a
due measure of whisky and seltzer-water.

Dr Alden, who was next called upon, could claim a score of only two.
But so far as it went, it was brilliant and audacious work. One of the
handkerchiefs had been taken from Sir Charles Bunford and one from Mr
Matthews, and in both cases the theft had been committed in Piccadilly
in broad daylight and under the eyes of the police.

‘It’s clear where your real talent lies,’ said Jimmy. ‘You’re wasted
in Harley Street. However, time’s getting on, and a few bad men would
like a rubber of bridge before we part. Will any member who claims to
have beaten Hesseltine’s score kindly hold up a hand?’

The Rev. Septimus Cunliffe and Mr Wildersley, A.R.A., both held up
hands.

‘What?’ said the chairman. ‘Our padre in the sneak-thief business? Has
he no respect for his cloth? Leonard has a lot to answer for. However,
we will hear you, Mr Cunliffe.’

[Illustration: Three gentlemen in a smoking-room, smoking and
drinking. One man is wearing a clerical vest and collar; the other two
are dressed in tuxedo dinner suits and have monocles. One man is
speaking, addressing the room at large. He leans casually against a
table upon which can be seen a cigar box, a whisky bottle, and
drinking glasses. Caption: ‘“Has he no respect for his cloth?”’]

‘Leonard,’ said that broad-minded cleric in his sonorous voice, ‘has
once more revealed himself as a great moralist. He has shown us that
the thief, a bad man, must none the less have good qualities, and has
taught us to differentiate the good from the bad. The spirit of
adventure, the clever planning, the manual dexterity displayed by the
thief, are all worthy of praise. It is solely to his felonious
intentions that we should take exception. Leonard has expressly
provided that for the purposes of this competition the felonious
intentions are to be purely imaginary; they are to be supposed.
Consequently, I could approach the problem with a clear conscience.
And I admit that in compiling a score of fourteen my cloth has been of
assistance. Suspicion does not attach readily to a man in clerical
attire.

‘To proceed to my story, one Saturday, early in the month, I had been
down to play golf with our friend, the Major. (By the way, you’ll send
me back my handkerchief, Major. Already in the post? Thanks.) On
leaving his house I noticed at the back entrance a laundry van, in
charge of a sleepy-looking rustic. The name and address of the laundry
were proclaimed on the van in large letters. My knowledge of the
country showed me that in approaching the Major’s house that van would
pass an inn called the Royal George, at a distance of two miles from
the house, and a turning to the railway-station at a distance of one
mile. That made everything easy. On the following Saturday I was on
that road three miles from the house. My boots were dusty and I looked
as tired as I could. I waited till the van came along, hailed it, and
asked the driver to give me a lift as far as the station turning. He
was not averse to making an extra shilling, and I climbed up. For the
first mile I was talking to the man and making friends with him. When
we reached The Royal George I suggested that a pint at my expense
would not come amiss to him, and that I would look after the horse
while he was inside. He was good enough to say that I was a parson
after his own heart, and handed me the reins. The horse did not need
any looking after; it was not that kind of horse. In the interior of
the van I explored a laundry basket, and annexed fourteen of the
Major’s handkerchiefs. (I have left them in the cloak-room for you,
Major.) When the driver came out I was holding the reins and looking
pensive. I stepped off at the station turning. What is your decision,
Mr Chairman?’

‘Brainy piece of work, and a fair score of fourteen. My idea was that
nobody would get beyond fifteen. Did you beat that, Wildersley?’

That large but child-like artist smiled. ‘I claim a score of one
hundred and forty-four.’

‘Gee-whizz! I didn’t know there were so many handkerchiefs in the
world. Which members did you get them from?’

‘I got the whole lot from you, in spite of the steel chain and the
locked safe.’

‘But I’ve not got as many. It’s an impossibility. However, let’s have
the yarn.’

‘You’ll find it’s all right, Mr Chairman. You young men are so
careless that you don’t know what you’ve got. Some time ago I had to
execute a Deed of Gift—making over a rotten-cotton picture of mine to
a provincial gallery. Up to that time I didn’t know the difference
between a Deed of Gift and a hole in a wall, but you learn things as
you go on living. When this problem was set, I saw that by a Deed of
Gift and a small investment I could do myself good. My first step was
to buy twelve dozen handkerchiefs—top quality and deucedly expensive.
I had a monogram of the chairman’s initials excellently designed by
myself and embroidered by the shop on all those handkerchiefs. This
having been done, I collected my parcel of lingerie and went off to my
solicitor, who is of the old-established, eighteen-carat type. I told
him what I wanted, and the shock nearly killed him. When he got better
I explained that it was a joke, but that it was essential in order to
get the laugh that the Deed of Gift making over the handkerchiefs
should be all correct, water-tight, and copper-bottomed. He does not
understand jokes and will believe anything about them. So he
engineered me a lovely Deed. I then addressed the parcel to the Hon.
James Feldane, and went off with it in a taxi to Jimmy’s place. I
deposited the parcel, with the address downwards, on a chair in the
hall, and put my overcoat and hat on the top of it. I then went in and
had a few words with Jimmy about a bridge-problem. I had now made the
handkerchiefs Jimmy’s property by Deed of Gift. I had delivered them
at his residence. It only remained to steal them, and that was easy.
It’s always easier to steal a thing if the owner doesn’t know he’s got
it. Besides, as it was half-past eleven in the morning, Jimmy’s
costume consisted of a bath-gown, a Turkish cigarette, and a bad
headache, which excused him from coming out into the hall with me when
I left. I picked up my hat and coat, and a parcel containing one
hundred and forty-four handkerchiefs, the property of the chairman,
and went off. He will find the parcel returned to him when he gets
home to-night. And I should like his decision.’

‘Much obliged to you, Wildersley. It’s ironical that I can make a bit,
as long as I’m not competing. All the same, the decision must be held
up a moment. The fact that you’ve provided me with more handkerchiefs
than I shall ever use this side of the silent tomb might influence my
judicial mind. I must have a second opinion—counsel’s. Will Mr
Quillian kindly give us his views on this claim.’

‘I don’t usually give opinions in this off-hand way,’ said Mr
Quillian, ‘but on this occasion I have really no doubt. The Deed, sir,
was duly executed, so we are informed. The goods in question were
bona-fide intended to become your property, and have in fact become
so. They were delivered at your residence. In the absence of felonious
intent I should say that they had not been stolen, but the terms of
the problem state that felonious intent is to be presumed. Your
ignorance of the whole transaction does not seem to me to affect it.
In your place, sir, I should have no hesitation in finding the claim
good—and I only wish I had thought of the idea myself—I ought to have
done.’

‘Thank you, Mr Quillian. Then I decide that Wildersley is the winner.
Mr Matthews, will you please draw the usual cheque to Mr Wildersley’s
order?’

This having been done, and the chairman for the next meeting
appointed, Jimmy opened the sealed envelope containing the problem
that Leonard, the astute head-waiter, had set for the ensuing month.

Jimmy read it to himself first. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is a new line
of country. This is somewhat of a sensation. It’s called the Identity
Problem, and runs as follows: “It is required to discover the identity
of Leonard. The use of professional detectives, and any communication
with Leonard himself on the subject of this problem, are forbidden.”’

‘I always knew,’ said Hesseltine, with conviction, ‘that chap was no
ordinary head-waiter.’

And it appeared that several other members, who also had forgotten to
mention it before, had always been of the same opinion.



No. VI.

The Identity Problem

The Rev. Septimus Cunliffe took the chair at the forty-eighth meeting
of the Problem Club. The problem which Leonard, the astute
head-waiter, had set the members to solve during the preceding month
was simply the discovery of his own identity; and competitors were
debarred from communicating with Leonard himself or from employing
detectives in its solution.

Mr Cunliffe, with a pardonable enjoyment of his own excellent
elocution, read out the terms of the problem in tones that almost made
it a drama. And the few introductory remarks that usually fell from
the chairman became in his case almost an address. True, the occasion
furnished him with some excuse.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘with this meeting the Problem Club brings to a
close the fourth year of its existence. The idea of the club, as I
dare say most of you are aware, originated in the imaginative brain of
Lord Herngill, and of the original members there are still three left
us—Sir Charles Bunford, Major Byles, and Mr Matthews. The eccentric
nobleman who was our founder did not himself long remain a member.
Broken in health and, as I understand, suffering from private
disappointments, he relinquished his clubs and retired altogether from
society. He spent the remainder of his days on his Yorkshire estate,
shut out from the world and even denying himself the companionship of
old friends. It was only a few months ago that his death was announced
in the newspapers. A somewhat gloomy subject, gentlemen, but it seemed
to me fitting that on this occasion we should recall with gratitude
the name of our founder.

‘Now for the first two years of the club’s existence the monthly
problem was always provided by the member whose duty it would be to
adjudicate on it. But during the second year it was found that this
did not work well. Some of the members had not sufficient readiness of
invention. Others did not show sufficient discretion. Our minutes of
that period show some problems, I grieve to say, that can only be
described as scandalous. Under these circumstances a member, Mr
Barstairs, since dead, was deputed to find for us some able and
trustworthy person who, for a small honorarium, would act as our
setter of problems. At the next meeting he announced that he had
selected Leonard, who had then just become head-waiter here.

‘The selection of a head-waiter for the purpose seemed to some of
us—certainly to myself—fantastic, more especially as Barstairs offered
no explanation at all. But, we must admit, fantasy plays some part in
the spirit of the club, and no formal objection was raised. Time has
shown that Barstairs had reason in his fantasy. Leonard has given us
every satisfaction. Whoever he may be, I think that we are agreed on
one point—that he possesses qualities unusual in a head-waiter.

‘In fact, gentlemen, the news that I am about to give you will, I am
sure, be received with regret. I have a letter from Leonard in which
he tells me that after eleven to-night he will cease to be in the
service of the hotel, and will no longer be available as our
problem-setter. He offers, if it would be any convenience to us, to
name a successor whose ability and discretion he can guarantee
absolutely. I may add that it is a very properly-expressed and
respectful letter.

‘The appointment of a successor may, I think, be considered later. Let
us now proceed to the adjudication of the current competition. I
confess that if I personally had to find out who Leonard is, I should
not, under the conditions imposed, know how to begin. However, I have
great confidence in the ingenuity of the ten members before me—there
would have been eleven but for Harding Pope’s resignation.’

The chairman’s confidence was misplaced. Every member had made an
attempt to solve the problem, but every one had failed. Several of
them had hit on the expedient of following Leonard when he left the
hotel. The Hon. James Feldane, for example, had hit on it, and
recounted his failure.

‘I lay up in a taxi a few yards from the door of this place, where I
could get a good view. Presently out came Leonard, and I might very
easily have missed him, for I was expecting him to bob up from the
basement, and he came out of the main entrance. He was well turned
out, and looked rather less like a head-waiter than I do myself. He
called up a taxi and got in. Off he went, and off I went after him, my
driver having been instructed. We drove, as near as I can guess, for
about umpty-ump hours. I know I began to wonder if my cigarettes would
last out the trip. Then my cab slowed down to a crawl, and I looked
cautiously from the window. Leonard’s cab had stopped in front of a
mouldy-looking place with big gilt letters on it. He overpaid his
cabman—I heard the words, “Thank you,” distinctly—ran up the steps,
rang a bell, and entered. I got out.

‘“Cabby,” I said, “where are we? Is this the hereafter?”

‘“No, sir,” he said. “Looks like it, but it’s really Brixton.”

‘The big gilt letters informed me that Leonard had entered the
Beaulieu Temperance Hotel. I pushed the push, and the door was half
opened to me by an Italian waiter with the darkest eyes and hands I
ever saw. I could catch a glimpse of a small hall furnished with a
good deal of dust and a stand for hats and coats. I spotted Leonard’s
excellent hat and overcoat thereon. The waiter looked at me
suspiciously. I got right on to the point at once.

‘“I want,” I said, “the name and address of the gentleman who came in
here just now, and I’ll pay a sovereign for it.”

‘He seemed to understand the argument. In a minute he was back with
the name and address and the information that the gentleman was
stopping there for only one night. He got his sovereign. The name he
gave was Leonard, and the address was the address of this hotel. I may
have been more annoyed in the course of my life, but I doubt it. So I
made the weary journey back again, had a light supper of one whisky
and soda, and went to bed.’

Mr Matthews had followed Leonard on foot to the Ritz. Mr Quillian had
tracked him to a desperate hostelry in the far north of London. Major
Byles had pursued him to an hotel in Wimbledon. They ascertained that
he spent a night at each one of these three places, but they added
nothing else to their knowledge of him.

Sir Charles Bunford had been no more successful, but he had a curious
story to tell. He had met Leonard by chance in St James’s Street one
night at half-past eleven. There was nothing in Leonard’s dress or
bearing that suggested anything less than complete independence. Sir
Charles felt certain that he himself had not been recognised, turned,
and followed him.

‘He led me,’ Sir Charles recounted, ‘up through the squares to Oxford
Street, where he turned west. Just then there came shuffling along in
the gutter towards us a street-vendor with a tray of little toys slung
from his shoulders. He gave me the impression of an old man. Leonard
and he both stopped. I also stopped, making a pretence of lighting a
cigarette. They were both in the full light of a street lamp, and I
had a close view of them. Leonard picked up from the tray a little
monkey of blue plush mounted on a pin. Deliberately and without a
smile he stuck the monkey in the gutter-merchant’s battered bowler.
Then he took out his notecase, produced a fiver, and spread it on the
tray, and walked on. During this curious incident neither of the men
spoke. As you may imagine, I tackled the street-vendor at once.

‘“You’re in luck,” I said. “Did you know that customer?”

‘He folded his fiver and slipped it into an inner pocket. He looked at
me shrewdly, and I noticed that his eyes were young. His voice when he
spoke was quite young. And it was the voice of an educated man too.

‘“Which of us,” he said, “can say that he knows the other—or even that
he knows himself?”

‘“Come,” I said. “I think you can tell me what I want to know. And two
fivers are better than one.”

‘“That is so—to some people at some times—but not to Mr William
Bunting, the editor of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_, at this time. I will
wish you good-night, Sir Charles.”

‘And he walked off briskly without a trace of the old slouch. How he
knew my name I can’t tell you, for certainly Leonard, even if he knew
I was following, never said a word to him. The man left me staggered.
I rushed off again after Leonard, but I had lost him. That is all I
have to tell, and I have given you the facts accurately as they
happened. I was both sane and sober at the time—but if you doubt that,
upon my word I can’t be surprised.’

The failure was general. Dr Alden had interviewed the proprietor of
the hotel, who was most courteous, but, in the doctor’s opinion, lied
in his profession of ignorance. Mr Pusely-Smythe got hold of one of
the other waiters who appeared perfectly willing to betray anybody on
the most moderate terms, but, unfortunately, had no information to
impart.

‘Well,’ said the chairman, ‘I must decide that the problem has not
been solved. The prize for it not being awarded, the prize for the
next competition is doubled. We have now to obtain the solution of the
problem from the wily Leonard himself, and at the same time he is
required to show us that the problem was possible of solution by us.
It is now twenty to eleven and presumably Leonard leaves this hotel at
eleven; so we have not much time to spare. If you, Mr Quillian, will
unlock the doors and ring the bell, I will tell the waiter that we
should be glad to see Leonard for a few minutes.’

But it was Leonard himself who answered the bell. He was a tall young
man of good figure. He had not the stereotyped version of good looks,
but his face was pleasing and full of humour and intelligence. He
carried himself well. His dress was unsuited to the occasion, for he
wore a well-cut lounge-suit of dark-blue cloth, and his brown, laced
boots suggested a product of Bond Street intended for use in the
country. There was no trace of a waiter about him. His manner was
easy, confident without being assuming, and marked just by that touch
of restraint that a man might show on first introduction to a number
of his equals.

‘Well, Leonard,’ said the chairman, ‘we were on the point of sending
for you. Your problem has beaten us. Can you show us how we might have
solved it, and provide us with the solution?’

‘Certainly,’ said Leonard. ‘I’d rather expected that I should be
wanted.’

‘Good. Now sit down, won’t you? We’re all quite informal here.’

‘Thanks,’ said Leonard. It seemed to be tacitly and generally accepted
that he had become a guest of the club. Dr Alden proffered his
cigar-case; Jimmy brought him a whisky-and-soda.

‘I think I ought to begin,’ said Leonard, ‘by apologising to you for
having given you all such a lot of trouble—more especially as it was
quite intentional on my part.’

‘Part of the game,’ said Major Byles. ‘That’s all right. No apologies
needed.’

‘Thanks very much. At any rate I can apologise for these clothes. The
fact is that I’m going North by the midnight train from Euston, and so
I changed. And now let me show one or two ways in which the problem
could have been solved. Some of you followed me when I took a taxi to
an outlying hotel, and subsequently made applications at the hotel.
If, instead of doing this, you had hailed the taxi that I had just
left, you would in each case have found inside it an addressed
envelope giving you the information you required. When Mr Feldane went
for that very long drive to Brixton, I intentionally left my hat and
coat in the hall of the alleged hotel for a few minutes. He examined
the waiter; if he had examined the inside of my hat he would have
found a certain clue. Sir Charles very nearly caught me. That night I
left the hotel much earlier than usual, and had satisfied myself that
nobody was waiting for me outside. I was on my way to a house in
Audley Street where I was not known as the head-waiter at this hotel,
and my identity would probably have been discovered; and it was
necessary I should go to that house. At the top of St James’s Street I
found that Sir Charles was after me. But I had taken a precaution. A
friend of mine was stationed in Oxford Street, masquerading as a
vender of penny plush monkeys; I found him and we went through a
little eccentric pantomime together that had been prearranged. As had
been expected, Sir Charles stopped to make inquiries from him. And
while that was happening I made my escape.’

‘One moment,’ said Sir Charles. ‘How on earth did he know who I was?
You never spoke to him?’

‘No, I never spoke. And he did not know who you were. He did not know
that you were Sir Charles Bunford, and does not know it now. He knew
that he could address you as Sir Charles, and he knew that from the
fact that I stuck the monkey in his hat. It was a prearranged code. If
Major Byles had been following me, I should have stuck the monkey in
my friend’s right sleeve. He would then have addressed him as Major,
though he would not have known his name. If Mr Wildersley had been
after me, the monkey would have gone into the left sleeve; my friend
would have known by that sign that he was an artist, but would have
known no more than that. Similarly, in other cases, he would always
have appeared to have known, but would not have known really.’

‘Leonard,’ said the chairman, ‘in my opinion you have shown both skill
and discretion, and a good sporting spirit besides. I decide that your
problem was fair. And now will you solve it for us?’

‘Very good. I must give you some abbreviated family history. My
grandfather had two sons, both of whom disappointed him, though in
different ways. My uncle was a man of extreme avarice; my father, the
younger of the two, was a gambler. Both my parents died before I was
five years old, and I—the only child—passed into the charge of my
grandfather.

‘My grandfather placed me with the family of an intimate friend of
his, who was also the senior partner in the firm of solicitors who
acted for him, a Mr Barstairs. Barstairs had married a Frenchwoman.
French was the language generally spoken in their house, and most of
my early years were spent abroad. I went through a public-school and
Cambridge without any particular disgrace or distinction. So far, my
grandfather had kept me well supplied with money; in fact, at
Cambridge I had not spent my allowance. But I had never seen my
grandfather. I wrote to him four times a year, and his replies were
always witty and entertaining. I took everything for granted in the
way that boys do.

‘On my twenty-first birthday I had a letter from my grandfather to the
effect that as an experiment he wished me to make my own living in any
way I liked for a period of some years. When that period was over, or
sooner if he died before then, I was to be no longer under that
necessity. Mr Barstairs, who had not been consulted, was indignant
about that letter, but I did not resent it myself.

‘What assets had I to offer an employer? My classical degree would
have entitled me to teach in a school—a truly awful profession to my
mind. I spoke two Continental languages well and a third passably. I
had an unusual knowledge of wines and cuisine for a man of my age. (Mr
Matthews will remember that Barstairs was an epicure.) I had seen a
good deal of hotel life at home and abroad. I took counsel with Mr
Hance, the proprietor of this hotel, who was known to me. After some
training at an hotel in Paris I became the night head-waiter here,
using my first name, Leonard, as my surname. My grandfather and Mr
Barstairs alone were taken into my secret. It is to the latter that I
owe the pleasure of having served a club of which I should be proud
one day to become a member, if that were possible. I saw life from a
novel and interesting angle. I had my mornings free for poetry, to
which I am devoted. I was quite satisfied.

‘There is little more to add. In the year that I came here my uncle
died unmarried. Three months ago my grandfather also died, and I——’

‘Pardon me,’ said Sir Charles, ‘but I have been watching your face
carefully, and I think I see a family likeness or the trace of one.
All that you have said would confirm it. I think you are the grandson
of the founder of this club, and in that case you are the sixth Baron
Herngill.’

‘That is correct. I remained here for these months while some legal
matters were completed, and to oblige Hance, for I consider that he
did me a good turn. I leave for Enthwaite to-night. And now,
gentlemen, since time presses, may I mention that I have a successor
to myself to propose to you, if you have made no other arrangements?
He would act on the same terms as I have done. I will answer for his
ability and discretion. He is, like myself, a poet. He is also the
editor of an obscure weekly publication called _The Pig-Keepers’
Friend_. If you choose him I have here his first problem to deliver to
the chairman. His name is William Bunting. With your permission I will
retire for a few minutes while you consider this.’

When he had gone out it was found that every member of the Problem
Club had formed the same idea. On his return to the room Lord Herngill
was informed that Mr Bunting had been appointed, and also that Lord
Herngill had been proposed by the chairman, seconded by Sir Charles
Bunford, and unanimously elected a member of the Problem Club.



No. VII.

The Shakespearean Problem

The failure of the members to discover the identity of Leonard—the
last problem that he had set them—meant that at the forty-ninth
meeting the prize was doubled, and a cheque for two hundred and twenty
pounds awaited the lucky winner. Leonard, formerly known as a capable
head-waiter and an astute setter of problems, had revealed himself as
the grandson and heir of the Lord Herngill who had founded the club,
and had been elected to membership. He had described himself further
as a poet. He had now travelled up from Yorkshire for the express
purpose of attending the first meeting after his election, and the
dinner with which the proceedings opened showed him, as had been
expected, a charming, accomplished, and quite amusing companion.

Young Hesseltine and the Rev. Septimus Cunliffe were, respectively,
chairman and secretary for the evening. The chairman, equipped with a
bound copy of Shakespeare, and certain other forms of refreshment,
read out the terms of the competition. They were longer than usual,
and ran as follows:—

‘Members are required, in the course of conversation, to make
undetected quotations from Shakespeare, and to detect and challenge
the quotations which are made by other members.

‘The score is two for making an undetected quotation, and one for
detecting and challenging a quotation made by another. The highest
score wins. If any member challenges as a quotation from Shakespeare
words which are not a quotation from that author, he will have one
deducted from his score. Any member with a score of minus three is out
of the game.

‘The method of challenging will be by raising one hand, when the
chairman will temporarily arrest proceedings and investigate. Where
several members raise their hands simultaneously, all will score the
detection, or be penalised for the failure, as the case may be.
Otherwise, only the first hand up can score or be penalised.

‘A quotation must consist of more than four words, or it will not rank
as a quotation. The words must be given in their correct order, but
otherwise any attempt may be made to disguise the quotation. Any
member who has made an undetected quotation should notify it to the
chairman at the earliest opportunity, while it is still fresh in the
memory.

‘Detection, to be valid, should be made immediately—say, within twenty
seconds of the utterance of the quotation.

‘The chairman will stop the competition when in his opinion all
members have had a fair and full chance of speaking, and on all
disputed points his ruling is absolute.’

‘Yes,’ said the chairman, when he had read out the above, ‘our new
problem-setter, the mysterious editor of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_,
seems to be rather a lengthy beggar. More like a round game than a
problem, to my mind. I can imagine literary circles playing it on
winter evenings. However, I think we’ve most of us got the hang of it.
There’s double the usual amount of boodle in the jack-pot, but all the
same I’m not sorry to be debarred from competing. I had a good deal of
Shakespeare boosted into me by schoolmasters when I was a boy, but I
fear that it ain’t stuck to me. Well, it’s all up to the high-brows
to-night. And I’ll call on our old friend Leonard, who’s our new
member, Lord Herngill, to start the ball rolling, and our padre to
keep the score as directed.’

‘Well,’ said Leonard, ‘I can’t say that I am a stranger here, but I am
certainly a new member, and very glad to be. Now, I told you that I
was a poet, but a writer of poetry is not necessarily a reader of
poetry. I can’t say whether he ought to be or not.’ He paused to
relight a cigarette. ‘To be candid——’

‘I challenge,’ said Mr Cunliffe, with uplifted hand. ‘The quotation
is, “To be or not to be,” rather cunningly broken up.’

‘Admitted,’ said Leonard.

‘Then,’ said the chairman, ‘the secretary will score one to himself.’

‘At the same time,’ said Leonard, ‘I should like him to score two to
me. The words, “I am a stranger here,” are a quotation from _King
Richard II._, Act 2, Scene iii. Northumberland speaks them. And the
quotation was not recognised.’

This was verified and found correct and the score allowed. The
chairman turned to the Hon. James Feldane, who was sitting—or, to be
accurate, reclining—in the chair next to Leonard. ‘Go ahead, Jimmy,’
he said.

‘Very well,’ said Jimmy wearily. ‘The—er—the quality of mercy——’

Five hands went into the air together.

‘Jimmy,’ said the chairman, ‘it looks as if you were pretty
considerably challenged—by five simultaneously. You, Major Byles,
being one of them, will tell us why.’

‘Why?’ exclaimed the Major. ‘Because it’s one of the best-known
quotations in Shakespeare. I won’t swear which play it comes from,
but everybody knows it. Let’s see, how does it go? “The quality
of mercy is not strained, but droppeth like the thingamy of the
something-or-other.”’

‘Any defence, Jimmy?’ asked the chairman.

‘Somewhat,’ said Jimmy. ‘I said, “The quality of mercy.” I admit it. I
glory in it. But that’s only four words, and it’s laid down that four
words do not make a quotation.’

‘That is so. I fear that the Major, Dr Alden, our only K.C., and our
two artist-members must all have a minus one recorded against them.’

‘What I was going to have said when they interrupted me was that the
quality of mercy differed in some material respects from coffee that
has been made with a percolator. Same thought as Shakey’s, but a
different mode of expression. Five of you have now lost a life through
being premature. You need to be careful. A score of minus three puts
you outside of any chance of two hundred and twenty of the very best.
And I’m dangerous to-night—I’m out for blood. The brindled cat winds
slowly o’er the lea—anybody like to challenge that?’

Wildersley said it would make a good title for an Academy picture, but
nobody asserted that it was Shakespeare—not even Jimmy.

‘You’re an unenterprising lot,’ said Jimmy disdainfully. ‘But I’ll
give you one more chance. “Satiate at length, and heightened as with
wine.” That’s more than four words. Any challengers?’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Charles, holding up his hand. ‘I don’t know for
certain, but it’s got the flavour of the period in it. Anyway, I’d
sooner lose one life than let you score a triumphant two for it.’

‘Then you’ll lose the life. It’s a quotation all right, but it happens
to be a little bit that I cut out of the best end of _Paradise Lost_,
by J. Milton, Esquire.’ And Jimmy leant back in his chair satisfied.
He had scored nothing for himself, but he had done something to spoil
the chances of six other men.

The chairman turned to Sir Charles. ‘Don’t you think that Jimmy’s an
irreverent young blackguard?’ he asked.

‘Well,’ said Sir Charles, with an air of quiet dignity. ‘Jimmy is
young and I am old. As we progress on life’s journey, we old men cease
to expect to find universal agreement with our views. We know that our
opinions are our own, but cannot be all the world’s.’ He paused and
sighed. ‘A stage or two farther on, and Jimmy may come to think, as I
do now, that——’ And here suddenly Sir Charles broke off and chuckled.
‘Well, I’m blest!’ he said. ‘I never expected to do it. I knew this
wasn’t a little nest of Shakespeareans, but I did think that you’d
spot the best-known line in Shakespeare.’

That air of pathetic dignity had merely been a bit of acting, but the
acting had been so good that it had distracted the attention from the
words. Otherwise members must have found in Sir Charles’s remarks the
well-worn tag that ‘All the world’s a stage.’ It scored two for Sir
Charles, thus putting him on the way to a win, at any rate.

A few minutes later another well-known quotation very nearly came
through unscathed. Somebody, speaking of Leonard, had said, ‘Leonard,
or Lord Herngill, whichever he prefers to be called.’

Leonard smilingly said that a rose by any other name would smell as
sweet. He admitted afterwards that he had not had the slightest
intention of quoting Shakespeare. He had merely uttered a platitude
because it happened to be apt, though as soon as he said it he
recognised his own quotation. Unfortunately for him, the Rev. Septimus
Cunliffe had also recognised it, and by challenging it added one to a
score that was growing slowly but surely. He attempted no quotation
himself, and never challenged unless he was sure. To put it plainly,
he played for safety.

‘Yes,’ said Jimmy Feldane plaintively, commenting on this incident,
‘one of the worst points about Mr W. Shakespeare is that he made such
a lot of proverbs. I don’t want to brag, but I suppose I’ve read as
little as most people, and I expect that even I don’t keep clear of
Shakespearean quotations altogether. I’m not aiming at him, but every
now and then he flies into it, so to speak.’

The supercilious Mr Quillian had provided himself with a stock of
quotations from Elizabethan dramatists other than Shakespeare, and did
deadly work with them. They were challenged, and brought the penalty
on the challengers. And having thus inspired a dread of traps, he
introduced three quotations which really were from Shakespeare, and
two of them got through undetected. Pusely-Smythe, who generally
welcomed a chance of a friendly duel with Quillian remained silent,
watching him with sardonic amusement.

The game became very strenuous. There was the closest attention in
order to spot any veritable quotation. Every strategic dodge that had
been thought of during the previous month was brought into action, to
induce a challenge that would be penalised, or to get a quotation
through undetected. Several members reached minus three, and were
ruled out.

‘This game is too much for me,’ said Mr Matthews, on losing his third
life. ‘It’s too subtle. The American game of draw-poker, with three
jokers in the pack and one of the players a crook, is simple,
transparent, and childlike compared to it. However, one of the joys of
being out of it is that I can get myself that little drink that I have
long needed.’ And he made his way to the side-table.

‘Mr Chairman,’ said Sir Charles, ‘I think a ten-minutes’ interval
would be welcome. It’s wearing work to keep on thinking what one is
saying.’

His suggestion was warmly supported and accepted by the chairman. Some
members followed the comfortable example of Mr Matthews. Some chuckled
over the clever caricatures, drawn on the back of bridge-markers, with
which Wildersley had been occupying his enforced leisure; an excess of
zeal over discretion had put him out of the game at an early stage.
All consulted the secretary’s score-sheet. Quillian was leading with a
score of nine. The secretary and Sir Charles were each at eight. Major
Byles was three, and Pusely-Smythe one. Jimmy Feldane was minus one,
and Lord Herngill—who had at one time reached the noble score of
four—had by reckless challenging brought himself to the perilous
position of minus two.

‘Can’t make it out,’ said Mr Matthews to him. ‘You used to set all our
problems. You ought to be a flyer at this kind of a game.’

‘It’s an easy job to set problems,’ said Leonard, ‘and to set them so
that you can solve them, but it’s a different thing altogether to
solve the problems that somebody else has set.’

‘Oh, well, it’s an open thing still. Quillian’s just leading, but I
don’t believe he’ll pull it off. Shan’t be surprised if old Bunford is
two hundred and twenty the richer before the evening’s out.’

Proceedings were now resumed. ‘Come, now, Pusely-Smythe,’ said the
chairman, ‘we’ve not heard much from you to-night.’

‘Afraid of being challenged?’ suggested Quillian.

‘As a rule,’ said Pusely-Smythe angrily, ‘I’m told that I am much too
venturous. However, my learned friend, if you want to talk, go on and
I will wait for you. The chairman called on me to speak, not you, and
as a matter of fact, I had a thing to say. But let it go—it may make
trouble later, and then you’ll remember I told you what would come of
this. Your blessed challenges, indeed! You may think you can do
everything, but I know you can do very little.’

Quillian stared at him aghast and perplexed.

‘Really,’ he said, ‘I don’t understand this outburst. I had not the
slightest intention——’

But here he was interrupted by Pusely-Smythe’s laughter. ‘All right,
old man,’ said Pusely-Smythe cheerily. ‘Don’t worry. It was all spoof
and part of the game. Thanks to you, I’ve just made five undetected
quotations from the work of the bard. You’re my benefactor. In fact,
as the Orientals say, you are my father and my mother, and I am the
son of a dog.’

‘Five?’ said the chairman. ‘It hardly seems possible.’

But Pusely-Smythe made out his list and it was found to be quite
correct. The five quotations were as follows:—

‘I am much too venturous,’ _King Henry VIII._, Act 1, Scene ii.

‘And I will wait for you,’ _Julius Cæsar_, Act 1, Scene ii.

‘I had a thing to say—but let it go,’ _King John_, Act 3, Scene iii.

‘I told you what would come of this,’ _The Winter’s Tale_, Act 4,
Scene iii.

‘I know you can do very little,’ _Coriolanus_, Act 2, Scene i.

‘It’s a great _coup_,’ said the chairman. ‘It puts you right at the
head of the list. Closing time is imminent, gentlemen. So if you have
anything else to say, get on with it.’

‘Well,’ said Quillian, ‘somebody ought to have spotted him. It’s
really more our carelessness than his cleverness. But I should imagine
that’s the last undetected quotation he will be able to get through
to-night. You’re a watched man now.’

‘By Jove, yes,’ said the Major.

‘Since you talk like that,’ said Pusely-Smythe, smiling. ‘I will make
another quotation. By the way, how long will you give me? I should
have asked you that before, of course.’

‘Five minutes,’ said the Major. ‘And then perhaps we might close the
competition, if the chairman sees fit.’

A general agreement was reached on this point, and Pusely-Smythe was
enjoined by the chairman to get on with it.

‘I’ve finished, thanks,’ said Pusely-Smythe. ‘The words, “I should
have asked you that before,” are a quotation from a play called _Romeo
and Juliet_. It’s the second scene of the first act—Romeo speaking.’

The quotation was verified, and advanced Pusely-Smythe’s score to
thirteen—a lucky number for once—thus leaving him an easy winner.

‘And,’ said young Hesseltine, the chairman, as he handed him the
cheque, ‘considering the way you must have sweated through tons and
tons of absolute Shakespeare during the month, in order to pick out
the little bits that didn’t look like quotations, I’m not sure that
you haven’t earned about five per cent. of it.’

The chairman now opened the sealed envelope containing the problem for
the next month. In this the talented editor of _The Pig-Keepers’
Friend_ had been quite brief. It was entitled ‘The Impersonation
Problem,’ and the terms of it were as follows:—

‘It is required to be mistaken for six different people in the course
of one hour.’

‘He don’t use any unnecessary words about it,’ said Mr Matthews.

But it may be remembered that the editor of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_
was also a poet—and real poets never use unnecessary words.



No. VIII.

The Impersonation Problem

The terms of the Impersonation Problem, which came up for adjudication
at the fiftieth meeting of the club, were as follows:—

‘It is required to be mistaken for six different people in the course
of one hour.’

Mr Wildersley, A.R.A.—large, cheerful, and childlike—took the chair,
and observed that it was just as well for other members that the
dignified position of adjudicator prevented him from competing, as
otherwise he would have been a certain winner. It was a claim that the
chairman for the evening very frequently made, but Wildersley was not
very serious about it.

‘My profession,’ he said, ‘would have given me a start of about eighty
yards in the hundred. I’m skilled in the rapid use of oil-paints.
Within the prescribed limit of one hour I could have painted myself to
look like a rabbit, or a tomato, or a man, or a hole in the ground, or
any other object of the seashore, so as absolutely to defy detection.
Not one of you duffers would have had a chance.’

‘Pardon the interruption,’ said Mr Quillian, K.C., ‘but the terms of
the problem require us to be mistaken for six different people. May I
ask the chairman if he would consider a rabbit and a tomato as being
people for the purposes of this problem?’

‘The time of the chairman,’ said Wildersley, severely, ‘is not to be
wasted on purely hypothetical cases. If, when his turn comes, Mr
Quillian claims to have been mistaken for a rabbit, I shall be ready
both to believe it and to adjudicate upon it. And now, gentlemen, we
will have the story of your dismal failures. Hesseltine here is acting
as secretary to-night, and he may as well get his talking done first,
so that he can give his undivided attention to his duties.’

‘Well,’ said Hesseltine, ‘Feldane and I went into partnership this
time, as the rules permit. We don’t claim to have scored the full six,
but we had a lovely time while it lasted. Jimmy had better tell you
about it, as he played the lead.’

‘Yes,’ said Jimmy, with a weary smile, ‘it was quite on the amusing
side. Involved a lot of work though—thinking it all out and getting
together the properties for the drama. If we scooped fifty-five pounds
each over it we shouldn’t be overpaid, but just as we were doing
nicely the bottom fell out of it. However, I’ll tell you.’

The incidents which Jimmy related were as follows: Early on a fine
morning he and Hesseltine were conveyed by a taxi-cab to a point,
previously selected, on a road on the outskirts of a south-western
suburb. Here they unloaded their miscellaneous collection of
properties and got to work. The driver took the cab off to a
public-house in the vicinity, and there awaited further orders.

Hesseltine was disguised as a labourer. Jimmy, who was to act as his
boss, was got up as, to use his own description, ‘a sort of
semi-scientific clerky person, clad in a seedy suit, a pince-nez, and
an air of educated wisdom.’ They began by enclosing a portion of the
roadway with stakes and ropes, fixing red flags at the corners of the
square. Then Hesseltine entered the enclosure and began vigorously to
dig a hole in the road with pick and spade. It was still early, and
there were few people about. So Hesseltine’s boss condescended to lend
a hand with the digging. Afterwards Feldane contented himself with
strolling round the hole with a voltmeter, borrowed from the taxi-cab,
in one hand, a two-foot rule sticking out of his breast-pocket, and a
general air of importance.

When the hole was about three feet deep a sleepy policeman paused on
his way past.

‘Something wrong with the drains?’ he asked.

‘Hope not,’ said Feldane cheerfully. ‘But that’s what we’re going to
find out. We’re just putting in the smoke-test on this section.’

‘I see,’ said the policeman. ‘You ain’t from Mackworth’s, are you?’

‘Mackworth’s? Oh, no. We’re from Matthews and Byles, the sanitary
engineers at Vauxhall. Dare say you know the name.’

The policeman said he believed he’d heard it, and passed on. The game
had now definitely begun, and there was only one hour to play it in
and no time to be lost. A small car was approaching with a lady
driving. Feldane ran into the road, held up his hand, and stopped it.

‘Sorry, madam,’ he said to the lady, ‘but would you mind waiting just
for a few seconds? I’m sure you’ll understand. We’ve got an Erichsen’s
galvanometrical balance working in that hole, and the least vibration
would spoil the reading. We shan’t be a minute.’

‘Certainly,’ said the lady. ‘I know something of these delicate
instruments. What are you using it for?’

‘We’re from the Post Office Electrical Survey. There’s trouble with
the telegraph wires here that they can’t locate. Of course if iron
pyrites has been used in the construction of the road, that would
account for it. We’re looking into it. Bill,’ he called to Hesseltine,
‘what do you make it?’

Hesseltine examined the bottom of the hole. ‘Steady at two point
five,’ he called back.

‘Good. Let this car past, and then set a foot further in. Thank you
very much, madam.’

The unsuspecting lady drove on. Hesseltine sat down in the hole and
laughed. Jimmy glanced at his watch. ‘That’s two in under ten
minutes,’ he said. ‘If we can keep it up at anything like this rate,
we ought to do.’

But for some time after this passers-by proved curious but
unenterprising. They stared with the keenest interest at the
proceedings, but did not put in any inquiry. Then an elderly tramp
paused on his way into the town.

‘Water-main?’ he suggested.

‘Ay,’ said Jimmy.

‘All that work for a little water! Sooner you than me.’

Almost immediately afterwards a rather fussy and important little man
demanded to know what it was all about.

‘Gas,’ said Jimmy laconically.

‘There’s no gas-main in this road,’ snapped the little man.

‘No,’ said Jimmy. ‘Nor likely to be until we’ve took the level for the
pipes. Pass along, please.’

The little man said that it seemed hopeless to expect a civil answer
to a civil question nowadays, but he passed along. Jimmy again
consulted his watch.

‘Four in half an hour,’ he observed. ‘We can hardly miss it now.’

But fate was already on its way in the shape of a young,
newly-appointed, eager and suspicious policeman. He watched Jimmy and
Hesseltine for a minute or so in silence. Jimmy made an entry in a
pocket-book.

‘All right, Bill,’ said Jimmy to Hesseltine. ‘You can fill in again
now.’

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ asked the policeman.

‘Rubberite Road Construction,’ said Jimmy. ‘They’re putting down an
experimental section here, and this is just the preliminary testing.’

‘Don’t they put no notice-board up with the name of the firm on?’

‘They will, of course, as soon as the actual work begins. I have their
card.’ This printed card had been one of Jimmy’s properties. The
policeman slipped it into his pocket.

‘I’ve no doubt it’s all right,’ said the policeman, ‘but I’ll just
show this card to make sure.’

‘Certainly,’ said Jimmy; ‘that’s the thing to do. You’ll find they
know all about it up at the station.’

The game was up. As soon as the policeman was round the corner Jimmy
dashed off to fetch the taxi while Hesseltine completed the work of
filling in the hole and getting their various properties together.
They had at least the satisfaction of getting clear away before the
policeman returned.

The chairman, when he had heard the story, said that if everybody had
their rights it was probable that two of the younger members of the
Problem Club would now be in prison, but he would allow them a score
of five all the same. The fifth score might seem a little doubtful,
but the young policeman has said that he believed it was all right,
and if he had not would probably have taken stronger measures. The
chairman also refused to admit Quillian’s objection that the
conspirators had been mistaken for imaginary people. People might be
real or imaginary, and the subtle editor of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_
had not indicated that either meaning was excluded. A further protest
by Major Byles and Mr Matthews against the scandalous use that had
been made of their names for the firm of sanitary engineers was not
taken seriously.

But the Major may have been embittered by the completeness of his own
failure. With the help of a gray wig and beard and some shabby
clothes, he had intended to call at six different back-doors and to
represent in succession six different people—a beggar, a
fortune-teller, a vendor of cheap jewellery, and so forth. But the
first back-door at which he called was his own, and there he was
immediately recognised by a house-dog and by his own kitchen-maid. His
subsequent explanation that he had merely been doing it for a bet had
not been well received. He did not give details, but it was gathered
that Mrs Byles had had a good deal to say on the subject.

Lord Herngill had done very little better. He had attempted no
disguise at all. His idea had been, in the course of travel on the
Bakerloo Tube railway, to get into conversation with six different
people and to tell six plausible but erroneous stories about himself.
His statement that he personally had driven the first train that had
passed under the Thames in that tube, being in fact the consulting
engineer of the company, was received by an old lady with great
interest and not the slightest suspicion. He then changed into another
carriage and found an opportunity to tell a young curate that though
he lived within ten miles of London he had never been there in his
life before. He was only there then because he had to see property
that he had inherited at Swiss Cottage. And could the curate tell him
at all where Swiss Cottage was?

That question was his undoing. ‘I can not only tell you,’ said the
smiling curate, ‘but, as it happens, I am going there myself, and it
will give me much pleasure to have your company.’

And by the time that he had got rid of that curate it was hopeless to
attempt his remaining impersonations within the prescribed time. It
was generally felt that in a matter of impersonation Lord Herngill, on
his previous character, should have done better.

Mr Quillian had bestowed six shillings on six different
crossing-sweepers. Five of them had said, ‘Thank you, m’lord,’ and the
other had said, ‘Thank you, Captain.’ On this he claimed to have won,
as it was obvious that all five crossing-sweepers could not have
mistaken him for the same peer. It was pointed out to him by the
chairman that there was not the slightest evidence that any one of
those crossing-sweepers had made any mistake at all.

For once Pusely-Smythe had failed to compete, and said that he had
been too busy. It was suggested that his time had been taken up with
spending his winnings from the previous month. Mr Matthews also had
taken no part in the competition. The reason he gave was simple
cowardice; the ghastly breakdown of his attempt to impersonate an old
lady for the purposes of the Kiss Problem had spoiled his nerve for
anything of the kind in the future.

The disgraceful adventure of Feldane and Hesseltine seemed likely to
be the nearest approach to the problem-setter’s requirements, until
Sir Charles Bunford was called on for his experiences. Sir Charles
claimed to have won.

‘I came to the conclusion,’ said Sir Charles, ‘that the man who asks
for something or tries to sell something is likely to create an
atmosphere of suspicion. On the other hand the man who gives
something, even to a complete stranger, will have his explanatory
story accepted without question. The fact that he stands to lose by
the transaction is accepted as evidence of his genuineness.

‘With this conviction, and with such disguise as I thought advisable,
I called at various houses all in one row in the Willesden
neighbourhood. I was accompanied by a covered handcart, propelled by a
boy hired for the purpose. Inside the handcart were the gifts that I
had prepared for the occupants of the houses. Taking from the handcart
a fruit-cake in a paper bag, I rang at the first house and requested
the dirty little girl who opened it to fetch her dear mamma. Mamma
appeared, wiping her hands on her apron, and looking displeased with
life in general and me in particular.

‘“Good-morning, lady,” I said. “I am instructed by my employers to ask
you if you will do them the favour of accepting as a present this
fruit-cake of their manufacture. They are shortly opening a branch in
this neighbourhood and are taking this method of making ladies
acquainted with the quality of their goods. It is, in fact, an
advertisement.” After assuring herself again that there was nothing to
pay, and that the consumption of the cake would not bind her to deal
with my firm—Messrs Butterstone and Co.—in future, she consented to
accept the cake, and even to say that it seemed a straight way of
doing business. She inquired where the new shop would be, which I told
her, and what the price of a similar cake would be if she ever wanted
to buy one. I put it at half what I had paid for it, and she said it
was a pleasant morning. Never for one moment did she doubt that I was
what I had represented myself to be.

[Illustration: A smiling gentleman, smartly dressed in a white summer
suit with a hat and holding a loaf-sized package wrapped in paper,
talks to a taciturn housewife as she wipes her hands on her apron. A
young girl stands nearby and watches them both. Caption:
‘“Good-morning, lady,” I said. “I am instructed by my employers.”’]

‘At the next house with equal success I presented half a pound of
butter as a sample of the products of the Farm Creameries Company, and
a similar story. The third house got a tablet of scented soap from an
enterprising chemist who was just starting in business in the
neighbourhood. At the next three houses I distributed as free
advertising samples a pound of sausages, a box of cigarettes, and a
small bottle of whisky. It took longer than I had expected, because
the ladies had such a lot of questions to ask about the new shops that
were to be opened, but I finished six minutes under the hour. Of
course, I could have carried all the goods round in a basket, but the
handcart looked more like a house-to-house distribution on a large
scale.’

The decision was not given in his favour until after Quillian had
raised an objection. He maintained that in each case Sir Charles had
been mistaken for the same thing—to wit, the representative or agent
in advance of a business firm. But the chairman’s decision that Sir
Charles had been mistaken for six different representatives of six
different firms was generally approved. And as no other member had a
claim to make the cheque was handed to him.

The chairman then opened the sealed envelope containing the problem on
which their ingenuity was next to be expended. It was entitled ‘The
Alibi Problem,’ and the terms of it were as follows:—

‘It is impossible for a man to be in two places at once. But it is
required so to arrange matters that bona-fide evidence would be
procurable that at a certain hour of a certain day or night you were
in two places at once, the two places to be not less than one hundred
miles from each other.’

‘Not uninteresting,’ said the Rev. Septimus Cunliffe, ‘but it leaves a
good deal to the discretion of the chairman. He will have to decide
which of us could produce the best evidence that the impossible had
been accomplished. By the way, who is the next chairman?’

‘Should have been Harding Pope,’ said Wildersley. ‘But as he’s gone,
it will be the member elected in his place—our old friend Leonard,
Lord Herngill.’

‘My poor abilities are at your service,’ said Lord Herngill, laughing,
‘at London’s lowest prices always.’



No. IX.

The Alibi Problem

Lord Herngill read out the demand made by the editor of _The
Pig-Keepers’ Friend_ on the ingenuity of the members of the Problem
Club. Members were required to produce evidence, that could be given
in good faith, that at a certain hour, day or night, they had been in
two places at once, the two places not being less than one hundred
miles apart.

Lord Herngill said that he felt anxious and depressed. His manner and
appearance, it may be added, hardly bore out the statement. He
assigned his depression to two reasons. Firstly, other chairmen had
had the simple task of adjudicating on a point of fact. He—a new
member, a novice, a mere babe, as you might say—was required to
undertake far more delicate and difficult work, and to base his
decision on an estimate of evidence. Secondly, the secretary for the
evening was Mr Wildersley. On the last occasion that Wildersley had
acted as secretary he had adorned the minute-book with drawings of the
chairman which were undoubtedly amusing and possessed of artistic
merit, but at the same time were calculated to bring that chairman
into ridicule and contempt.

‘So you see, gentlemen,’ Lord Herngill continued, ‘that this is
nervous work for me. However, I will make the plunge. Towards the end
of dinner a telegram was handed to Mr Feldane over which I noticed him
to be chuckling. May I inquire if it had any bearing on the problem
before us?’

‘Well, it had,’ Jimmy admitted. ‘Brainy work to have guessed it. But
I’m not on in this act—I’m resting. The wire really concerns
Hesseltine’s claim.’

‘You two generally hunt in couples. Perhaps Mr Hesseltine will let you
put his case for him.’

‘Anything that pleases you and saves me trouble,’ said Hesseltine
generously. ‘I can always correct Jimmy if he makes an ass of
himself.’

‘Well,’ said Jimmy, ‘we can see for ourselves that Hesseltine is here
to-night. I don’t want to dwell on his misfortunes, but he looks much
as usual. Talks in the same silly way too. But that telegram is his
evidence that he is really in Liverpool. It is signed with his name
and was handed in at a Liverpool office. I’ll read it. “So sorry to be
unable to be with you to-night, but have promised to remain here to
act as judge at local baby-show.” Well, it isn’t for me to say
anything, though I could.’

‘The evidence that Mr Hesseltine is here,’ said the chairman, ‘is
good. The evidence that he is in Liverpool is less good. A telegram is
not necessarily despatched by the man whose name is signed to it.
Further, it seems to me improbable that a young bachelor would have
been selected for the high office which Mr Hesseltine claims to have
fulfilled. I think we shall do better than that. I will ask Mr
Pusely-Smythe how far he has succeeded in being in two places at
once.’

‘It is easier to be in one place at twice,’ said Pusely-Smythe. ‘But I
have done what I could, considering how unversed I am in the arts of
deception.’ The applause which greeted this statement was possibly of
an ironical character. ‘On the morning of Tuesday last,’ Pusely-Smythe
continued, ‘I was at the Rectory, Meldon Bois, where I had been
spending the week-end. The village of Meldon Bois is one hundred and
eight miles from London. It had been my intention to leave Meldon Bois
by the 10.5 a.m. for London. I had been pressed to remain for one more
night, as there was to be a performance of a pastoral play by
distinguished amateurs in the grounds of the Rectory on Tuesday
afternoon, and it would be a pity for me to miss it. I will not
conceal it from you, sir, that the said pastoral play constituted the
principal reason for my departure.

‘You have grasped these facts? Very good. Now, on the morning of
Tuesday, by the first post, I received a letter from my one and only
aunt, who resides in London, to say that as I was coming up to town
that morning she hoped I would lunch with her in Grosvenor Street and
accompany her afterwards to hear a lecture to be given by some eminent
idiot on “The Future of Eugenics.” My aunt is one of the most
strong-minded and wearisome women in existence. I had been reluctant
to witness the amateur performance in the Rectory grounds, and I
contemplated the idea of listening to a lecture on “The Future of
Eugenics” with horror and loathing. That was the situation. I had to
miss two birds with one stone.

‘My first step was to telegraph to my one and only aunt as follows:
“Regret detained here. Am writing.” On the following morning she
received a letter from me which I am able to produce in its envelope.
The letter is in my own handwriting on paper stamped with the Rectory
address. The letter is dated Tuesday evening, and the post-mark on the
envelope shows that it was posted at Meldon Bois on that day. Now that
letter not only states that I had remained so as not to miss the
pastoral amateurs, but also makes several statements as to their
performance, every one of which can be proved to be absolutely
accurate. These statements are that Miss Sykes looked charming in some
pale lilac-coloured contraption, that the comedian over-acted, that
the weather was not entirely favourable, that some of the players
seemed to find a difficulty in making themselves audible, that quite a
nice sum was realised for the Cottage Hospital, and that the Rector in
proposing a vote of thanks to the players said that where all were so
good it would be invidious to differentiate. I have no doubt that on
the strength of that letter and the details it contains, my aunt would
give evidence in good faith that to her knowledge I must have been at
Meldon Bois on Tuesday afternoon. Notwithstanding this, I left Meldon
Bois on Tuesday morning by the train originally contemplated, and on
Tuesday afternoon I was playing bridge at my club in London, as
various members of the club who met me there would attest.’

‘On the face of it,’ said the chairman, ‘it looks like rather a good
case. I presume that you wrote the letter to your aunt before leaving
by train in the morning, and gave it to a servant with instructions to
post it after the performance.’

‘Precisely so.’

‘But how did you manage to give an accurate account of the performance
at which you were really not present?’

‘Well, Miss Sykes was staying at the Rectory and had told me what
dress she would wear. The rest was intelligent anticipation. The glass
was low, and, besides, the weather is always unfavourable for pastoral
plays, and some of the players always fail to make their voices carry
in the open. Given village amateurs, over-acting by the comedian is as
certain as death. To put the receipts as a nice sum was quite safe. It
was riskier to quote the Rector’s actual words, but he’s a kindly and
tactful man with a circumscribed mind, so I thought I might chance it,
and it came off.’

The next few members on whom the chairman called produced nothing of
interest. Some, like Hesseltine, had thought of the bogus telegram.
Some, like Feldane, were resting. Dr Alden had tried an idea of his
own, and expressed the hope that the chairman would think better of it
than he did himself.

Early one morning he had entered a tobacconist’s shop where he was not
known and investigated the man’s stock of cigars. He found it
difficult to make up his mind as to which of three different brands
would suit him best. He took away with him a specimen of each, and
said that he would try them after luncheon and let the tobacconist
know. At three that afternoon Dr Alden’s man called at the
tobacconist’s with a note from the doctor saying that the trial had
been made and naming the brand selected. Five hundred of this brand
were ordered, and a cheque for the exact sum was enclosed in payment.
The tobacconist was to deliver the goods to the bearer of the note, as
the doctor was leaving for the country at four and wished to take some
of the cigars with him. This was done, and probably the tobacconist
would have been willing to swear in consequence that Dr Alden was in
London until four that day. As a matter of fact, the doctor had left
for the North by express shortly after ten that morning.

‘Yes,’ said the chairman, ‘you convinced that tobacconist that you
were in London when you were not, just as Pusely-Smythe convinced his
aunt that he was not in London when he was. In each case it is the
evidence of one person only. Have you done any better, Mr Wildersley?’

‘Better?’ said Wildersley cheerfully. ‘I should rather think I have. I
should have made out the club cheque for the prize to my own order
already but for the fact that I prefer the formal routine. Cast your
chairmaniacal eye over this sketch-book. It is filled with pencil
drawings made from time to time, if not oftener, by the eminent
Wildersley. The last few pages were made at the political meeting at
Glasgow last week. They are dated in my own hand. There are notes as
to the colour also in my hand. They are in my sketch-book. If they are
not proof positive that I was at that meeting, then what are they? All
the same I was in London while that meeting was being held, and can
produce countless witnesses who saw me and spoke to me.’

The chairman looked carefully at the drawings. ‘Not done from
photographs, I suppose?’

‘No, m’lord,’ said Wildersley. ‘All genuine hand-work and done on the
spot.’

Lord Herngill compared them with previous drawings in the book. ‘These
look to me,’ he said, ‘as if they were done by somebody who was trying
to imitate your technique but had not quite got it.’

‘Yes,’ said Wildersley, ‘that finishes us. You have it. The other
artist member and I went into collaboration in this enterprise. Austin
went to Glasgow, and made the sketches in the book with what he was
pleased to call an imitation of the worst of the Wildersleian
mannerisms. I remained in London giving my famous impersonation of
myself. I added the date and manuscript notes afterwards. Still, if
this book fell into the hands of somebody who had not the full use of
his eyes—and very few people have—he might use it as evidence in good
faith that I was at Glasgow at that date.’

‘Undoubtedly. I shall not forget your claim. Meanwhile, is there any
other?’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Charles Bunford placidly, ‘I think my claim to have
established an alibi is stronger than any you have heard yet.
Birmingham is more than a hundred miles from London. A certain butler
in Birmingham would swear that he saw me and spoke to me on a certain
afternoon. A photographer in Birmingham would swear that he
photographed me on that same afternoon, and would be able to produce
the negative. Yet during the whole of that afternoon I was in London,
as the evidence of many of my friends would show. And all the evidence
would be given in good faith.’

‘And how was this miracle accomplished?’ the chairman asked.

‘I’ll tell you the story as briefly as I can. I went to stay for a
fortnight with an old friend of mine, a bachelor named Fraser, who has
a house outside Birmingham. He is a keen ornithologist. He employs in
the preparation of specimens and so on a curious character called
Mitten, who is just as keen on birds as Fraser himself. Fraser only
has Mitten’s spare time. Mitten’s regular work is with a Birmingham
photographer, for whom he does developing and also has charge of the
stock of negatives. Fraser is quite unlike me in the face, except that
we both have the same deficiency of colour in the hair, but we are of
about the same height and build. There is also a slight similarity in
our voices. That was the rough material that I had at my disposal, and
no doubt you can guess how I got my results from it.’

‘You’d better continue,’ said the chairman, smiling.

‘On the day before I left I pointed out to Fraser that a similarity in
mass often prevented a dissimilarity in detail from being noticed, and
that the attitude of expectant attention is a frequent source of
error. Fraser asked me, as I had thought he would, what I meant and
what I was getting at. I replied that by taking advantage of two facts
I had mentioned he could probably get himself mistaken for me. He said
that nobody would make the mistake. I said that Hammond’s butler would
make it on the following afternoon, if he cared to try the experiment.

‘“I’d like to try it, but it’s impossible. That butler has known me
for the last two years, and he has only seen you four or five times in
the afternoon. How could he be taken in?”

‘“He has always seen you in dark and chastened clothing, such as it is
your custom to wear. He has always seen me with a gray bowler, a light
suit, white spats, and a distinctive necktie. He expects to see me
to-morrow afternoon, because I borrowed an umbrella there to-day, and
said I would bring it back then. All you have to do is to wear my
clothes, and hand in that umbrella. He will expect to see me. He will
actually see my clothes on a man of about my figure. The hall at the
Hammonds’ house is rather dark, and you will have the sun behind you.
It’s quite certain the man will be mistaken.”

‘It was tried and happened as I had foretold. The butler addressed
Fraser as Sir Charles.’

‘But how did you manage about the photograph?’

‘That was done by means of a bet. Old Mitten is a great believer in
system, and has his own infallible method for cataloguing photographic
negatives so that a mistake is impossible. I chaffed him about it and
told him that I would cause him to enter two lots of negatives
wrongly. I offered to bet a sovereign on it and he accepted with
avidity. I then settled with Fraser what we would do. Fraser booked an
appointment with the photographer for the morning that I left for
London, and I booked another for myself in the afternoon, the
appointments being made by post. I kept Fraser’s appointment just
before I left for the station, and Fraser kept mine in the afternoon
after he had finished with Hammond’s butler. Mitten found out what had
been done, of course, catalogued the negatives correctly, and has
collected his sovereign. But I understand that he has not informed his
employer, on the ground that the employer dislikes larks. The entries
in the appointment book remain as they were. So that it is on record
that I was photographed in the afternoon, though the photographic
negatives entered under my name are really those taken from me in the
morning.’

‘This,’ said the chairman, ‘is the most elaborate attempt we have had.
Nobody else claims to have been seen in two places at the same time. I
do not say that the evidence is perfect, but then the evidence of an
alibi must always have a hole in it somewhere. Does anybody claim to
have beaten it? Nobody? Then I have no hesitation in deciding in Sir
Charles’s favour, and I congratulate him on the distinction—which, so
far, has been held by Mr Pusely-Smythe alone—of winning the prize on
two successive occasions.’

The next problem was now read out. It was entitled ‘The Threepenny
Problem,’ and ran as follows: ‘It is required to offer a half-crown
for a threepenny bus-fare, and to receive the change wholly in
threepenny bits. No gift or promise of a gift may be made to the
conductor to induce him to give the change in this form.’

‘That’s the easiest we’ve ever had,’ grumbled Major Byles. ‘So, of
course, it’s my turn to be in the chair, and I can’t compete.’



No. X.

The Threepenny Problem

‘Childs-play,’ said Major Byles, ‘that’s what this problem is. It is
required to offer a half-crown for a threepenny bus-fare, and to
receive the change wholly in threepenny-bits. And you’re not allowed
to give the conductor anything or promise him anything as an
inducement to let you have the nine threepennies. It’s my belief that
you’d only have to ask in a civil way, and any conductor would do it
for you. A more obliging set of men than the London bus-conductors
couldn’t be found, except, perhaps, the London police. I don’t call it
a problem at all. You’ll all win, of course, and that will mean a
comfortable tenner for every member of the club except myself—just
because I’m stuck up here in the chair. It’s scandalous.’ He snipped
the end of a cigar ferociously, and lit it as if he took pleasure in
its destruction—which, indeed, may have been the case. ‘However, I
must do my duty, and I’ll call on my reverend friend, Mr Cunliffe, to
tell us what he has done about it.’

‘My story is a sad one,’ said the Rev. Septimus Cunliffe. ‘It leads me
to believe that our chairman has over-estimated the amiability of the
conductors and underestimated the difficulty of the problem. I gave a
half-crown for a threepenny fare, and told the man that it would be a
great kindness if he could let me have my change in threepenny pieces.
He never said a word, but handed me a florin and three coppers.

‘“Did you hear what I asked you?” I said to him.

‘“Oh, yes,” he said, “I heard. If you want all them threepennies,
you’d better get them out of the blanky offertory-bag next Sunday!”’

‘Extraordinary,’ said the chairman. ‘Something must have occurred to
ruffle the man’s temper. Did you find any difficulty, Bunford?’

‘I failed absolutely,’ said Sir Charles Bunford. ‘No doubt I made a
mistake in putting my request during the busy hour of the morning. The
conductor looked resigned but sardonic.

‘“Want it all in threepennies, do you?” he said. “Would you like them
of any particular year?”

‘I said that the date was immaterial. Any year would do.

‘“That’s all right,” he said. “Then you can wait for next year’s.” And
he gave me a shilling, a sixpence, and ninepence in what is generally
described at the inquest as bronze.’

‘Of course,’ said the chairman, ‘it was a mistake to bother the man
when he was busy. And a little tact is wanted. If I’d been in for this
competition myself I shouldn’t just have asked for my change in
threepennies, I should have given some plausible reason for wanting
it.’

‘With great respect, sir,’ said Mr Quillian, ‘I must differ from you.
I had the same idea and tried it. I told the conductor that I had a
bet that I would get my change entirely in threepennies. I thought it
would appeal to his sporting instinct. All he said was, “You’ve lost,
then,” and gave me the change without as much as one threepenny in it.
Seemed rather pleased about it, too.’

‘I’d much the same experience,’ said Dr Alden. ‘As I gave the man my
half-crown I mentioned that I was a collector of threepenny bits, and
asked him if he could help me. He gave me two shillings and three
pennies.

‘“Well,” he said, “if you like to step off at the Bank of England and
ask the Chief Cashier to give you threepennies for that little lot,
you can mention my name.”’

‘It’s quite possible,’ said the chairman, ‘that those conductors had
not got the threepennies to give you. I go for days sometimes without
as much as seeing a threepenny bit. It really looks as if the problem
presented more difficulties than I had at first supposed. Did you
manage to surmount them, Mr Matthews?’

‘Can’t say I did, though I took a lot of trouble about it. There’s no
two ways about it—if you put an unreasonable request to a complete
stranger, whether he’s a bus-conductor or anything else, you’re likely
to be sat on and not to get what you want either. I picked a bus in
the slack time, running nearly empty, with a good-natured-looking
conductor. I chatted with him for five minutes, and got him friendly
disposed towards me, before I even mentioned threepennies. Then I
asked him if he got many of them. He said he took enough of them to
fill a pint-pot some days and he wished he didn’t. They were finicky
things to handle and easy dropped. Well, that was a very good start. I
gave him a half-crown for my threepenny ticket and told him that I
would be glad to take as many threepenny bits off his hands as he
liked to give me. Said I wanted them for a young nephew of mine. The
man was quite willing, and if anybody had offered me twenty pounds
just then for my chance of winning the prize to-night I’d have refused
it. If anybody would give me twenty pence for the same chance at the
present moment I’d jump at it. The trouble came in just as the
chairman has indicated. The man looked through his silver and did his
best for me, but one solitary threepenny was all he could raise. I got
that one, of course, but one is not nine. It was just rotten bad luck.
He said that nineteen days in twenty he could have given me a dozen of
them, but he supposed it had to happen so.’

‘You call that bad luck?’ said the Hon. James Feldane gloomily. ‘Not
half as bitter as mine.’

‘We’ll have the story of your failure, Jimmy,’ said the chairman.

‘Failure’s nothing. I’ve failed before and shall do again. It’s what
happened afterwards that worries me. All the same, I don’t know that I
should have failed if I had simply trusted to my own judgment, but the
woman looked so smart and brainy that I let myself be influenced,
though she was really talking clotted nonsense.’

‘You’re getting on too quickly,’ said the chairman. ‘To what woman do
you refer?’

‘How should I know? I haven’t an idea what her name is. She was one of
a pack of hens that I found cackling in my sister’s drawing-room. They
were discussing their maids and how to manage them, same as women have
always done since the year one. The brainy-looking one said that when
she had a reasonable order to give a maid, she always put it in the
form of a request; but if she had an unreasonable request to make to a
maid, she always put it in the form of an order. She said that this
always bluffed the maid out. I thought there might be something in
that bit of wisdom. If you give an order in an ordinary way, as if it
were a matter of course, it may get taken in that spirit. Anyway, I
thought I’d try it with the bus-conductor. I gave him my half-crown,
and said in my light and casual way. “Threepenny ticket. And give me
my change in threepenny bits.”

‘He didn’t say anything. He just glared at me. If he had said anything
it would probably have scorched the top off the bus. He gave me my
change—with never a threepenny bit in it—and then glared some more.
He’d got rather a good glare. Broke up my nerves, anyhow. At the next
corner I hopped off.

‘Now mark the sequel. A little later I owed a taxi eightpence, gave
the man a half-crown and waited for my change. “Sorry, sir,” said the
man, “but I shall have to give you six threepenny bits. I’ve got no
other silver.”

‘And that’s the way things happen. When you want a thing you can’t get
it, and when you don’t want it it’s chucked at you.’

‘Well, really,’ said the chairman, without a blush, ‘as I foresaw,
this turns out to be a very difficult problem. No interruptions,
please. I know that I did not actually say that it was very difficult,
but it was in my mind. It looked easy, as I pointed out in my opening
remarks, but nobody knows better than I do that appearances are often
deceptive. I shall call upon our great expert and prize-winner, Mr
Pusely-Smythe. I am confident that he will have realised the
difficulties and taken his measures accordingly.’

Mr Pusely-Smythe smiled grimly and sardonically. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he
said, ‘for your kind words. I do not want to brag, but I gave this
problem my very earnest consideration, and I do think that I realised
some at least of the difficulties before me. I saw, firstly, that it
was possible and even probable that the conductor might not have nine
threepenny-bits to give me. Now some company-promoters have found out
that the best way to get gold out of a gold-mine is to start by
putting a little gold into it. I adopted that principle. I selected a
certain bus on a certain route. I arranged that on the journey just
before I made my appearance no fewer than twelve passengers would pay
their fares with threepenny-bits. It only required a little
organisation. If you tell a human boy or even a human girl to take
your threepenny bit, pay a penny bus fare with it, and keep the
change, you get willing service without any troublesome demand for
explanations. Secondly, I had to have a story to tell the conductor
that would induce him to oblige me. I was prepared to tell him that a
friend had promised me that if I could collect a thousand
threepenny-bits for the London Hospital, he would add double that
amount to it.

‘I notice, sir, an unworthy expression of suspicion on the face of my
learned friend Mr Quillian. My story for the conductor was not only
plausible—it was actually true. I was the man who had made that
promise to myself. (If I am not my own friend, who is?) Further, I was
so absolutely certain of success that I remitted the sum in question,
thirty-two pounds ten shillings, to the hospital and have a receipt
for it. When I deducted the thirty-two pounds ten shillings
expenditure from the hundred and ten pounds prize, I calculated that
it would still leave a living wage for myself. Well, that was the
position. I saw that there were two main difficulties in this problem,
and I had arranged to meet both of them.’

‘Quite so,’ said the chairman. ‘As I’ve always said, these things need
to be worked out in a clear-minded and systematic way. And the result
was all right?’

Pusely-Smythe’s smile was more sardonic than ever. ‘Much depends on
the point of view; it was all right from some points of view.
Punctually at the time I had fixed I took my seat on the top of the
bus I had selected. About a minute later the conductor came up to
collect the fares. I felt for my half-crown. I had not got any
half-crown. I had no money on me whatever. I had inadvertently left my
money at home. There was nobody on the bus to whom I could apply for
temporary assistance. Well, there was no help for it. The conductor
was weary, but firm. He told me to hop off the bus and not to try it
on again. I hopped. It may have been all right from the point of view
of the other competitors, but from my own point of view it was less
satisfactory. And it only shows, as we all know, that you may lose
your game by missing a perfectly easy shot.’

Mr Wildersley, A.R.A., had demanded threepennies from a conductor on
the ground that he was collecting them. The conductor had replied that
he was there to take the fares, not to supply private museums. Mr
Austin had met a most obliging conductor, who, however, had no
threepennies in his possession. Lord Herngill and Mr Hesseltine had
only contemptuous refusals to record.

This, of course, happened before the war. In times when the gentler,
kindlier, and more refined sex has charge of our public vehicles, the
problem might prove easy of solution.

‘Well,’ the chairman began, ‘it looks as if the whole lot of you
duffers had failed.’ Here the secretary, Lord Herngill, whispered a
few warning words in his ear, and the chairman nodded assent.

‘Yes,’ he resumed, ‘it may look to you duffers as if the whole lot of
you had failed, but of course that would be wrong. Nobody has
succeeded in getting nine threepennies in change. But in that case the
nearest approximation to that number wins. Mr Matthews got one
threepenny, and conformed to the conditions. Nobody else even got one.
Therefore I declare Mr Matthews to be the winner, and the club cheque
for one hundred and ten pounds will be drawn to his order.’

Jimmy Feldane confided his private sorrows to his friend Hesseltine.
‘I don’t mind old Matthews winning. He’s a genial old bird, and what
he don’t know about the noble art of dining ain’t worth worrying over.
But there is just one thing that makes me want to kick myself round
and round this room till I get giddy. When Matthews told us his yarn,
he said he’d take twenty pence for his chance of the prize. I ought to
have been on to it in a flash, if not sooner. One-and-eight for a
sporting chance of a hundred and ten pounds is good enough. The more I
think of it, the more I see that I ought not to be allowed out except
in charge of a nursemaid.’

‘Oh, we all missed that chance,’ said Hesseltine. ‘Maybe a little
drink might do us some good.’

While they were taking the medicine indicated, the chairman read out
the problem which was to employ them during the following month. The
fantastic editor of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_ had entitled it, ‘The
Q-Loan Problem,’ and its terms were as follows:—

‘It is required in three days to borrow as many things as possible,
the name of each thing to begin with the letter Q. Nothing counts for
the competition if its name is on the list of more than one member. No
money may be given or promised in respect of any loan.’

‘And to-morrow morning, bright and early,’ said Jimmy, ‘I’m off to the
Zoo in a taxi to see if I can’t borrow their quagga.’



No. XI.

The Q-Loan Problem

The problem which came up for adjudication on this occasion was as
follows:—

‘It is required in three days to borrow as many things as possible,
the name of each thing to begin with the letter Q. Nothing counts for
the competition if its name is on the list of more than one member. No
money may be given or promised in respect of any loan.’

‘I’ve arranged this,’ said Mr Austin, who was the chairman for the
evening, ‘so as to avoid any overstrain for myself. I shall call on
that notorious painter and decorator, Mr Wildersley, to begin with his
list. When he has finished he will call on somebody else. The second
man in his turn will name the third, and so on. If anything is read
out by another member which is also down on your own list, hold up
your hand. The secretary will keep the score. That leaves me
absolutely nothing to do until it is time to announce the winner, and
I shall probably go to sleep. So don’t make any disturbing noises,
please. You can begin now, Wildersley.’

‘My score is six,’ said Wildersley, ‘unless some of you selfish men
have had the same ideas as I have. On my first day I borrowed two
things—one of which people seem to show hesitation about lending,
while the other was a thing that very few people have got to lend
nowadays. In fact, I borrowed a quid and a quill-pen.’

Many hands went up.

‘This is painful and surprising,’ said Wildersley, ‘and reduces my
score to four. On the second day I visited a female relative, said
that I had a cold coming on, and had no difficulty in borrowing some
quinine and a quilt.’

But a show of hands indicated that others had found it equally easy.

‘That brings me down to two, but the last two are good. I doubt if any
other member could have thought of them, or could have borrowed them
in any case. But I happen to know a painter who has got whole
wardrobes full of costumes—uses them for his alleged pictures. From
him I borrowed, firstly, a queue.’

‘I appeal to the chairman,’ said Jimmy Feldane confidently. ‘That word
is spelled with a K.’

‘No,’ said the chairman. ‘You are probably thinking of the Gardens of
the same name.’

‘In any case it’s the thing they have outside the pit entrance, and
you can’t borrow it.’

‘That will be for Mr Wildersley to explain.’

‘I did not borrow a crowd outside a pit entrance,’ said Wildersley.
‘But I did borrow the tie of a wig, which is another meaning of the
word. That’s one to me, anyhow. And I also borrowed a quoif.’

‘Surely, sir,’ said Mr Quillian, ‘that word is spelled with a C?’

The chairman consulted a useful work of reference, and announced that
the word was spelled in both ways.

‘May we have your authority for that statement?’

‘Standard dictionary.’

‘And will you define a standard dictionary for the purposes of this
competition?’

‘For the purposes of this competition a standard dictionary is any
dictionary that was published subsequently to the eighteenth century
and cost more than fivepence-halfpenny originally.’

‘It doesn’t much matter really, for as the word is also on my own list
neither Wildersley nor I can score it.’

‘You might have said that before,’ said the chairman. ‘It looks as if
you were giving me trouble on purpose.’

And it is quite possible that his surmise was correct. The Problem
Club does not allow its chairman to sleep when on duty. Sir Charles
Bunford requested him to state what Mr Wildersley’s score was; and it
may not have been from inadvertence that Wildersley neglected to name
his successor and left it to the chairman to do so. He called upon Dr
Alden.

‘Well,’ said the Doctor, ‘I had borrowed quinine, of course, but that
has been ruled out. I also borrowed some quassia from the same man. No
hands up? I think I score one for quassia, if the chairman admits it.’

The chairman consulted his dictionary and said that quassia appeared
to be all right. He was immediately asked by Mr Pusely-Smythe if he
could inform the members whether quassia was a summer drink or an
intermittent fever.

‘At the present moment,’ said Mr Austin severely, ‘I am giving my most
eager and concentrated attention to the conscientious discharge of my
arduous duties. I cannot be interrupted by purely frivolous questions.
Dr Alden will proceed.’

‘I further borrowed a quadrant and a thermometer.’

‘I fear,’ said the chairman, ‘that I must rule that the word
thermometer does not begin with the letter Q.’

‘Your rapid grasp of these fine points, sir, impels my admiration. But
with great respect I would point out that this thermometer contained
mercury, and therefore in borrowing the thermometer I borrowed
quicksilver. My remaining loans consisted of a quarto and a
quotation.’

But other members had borrowed both a quarto and a quotation. Dr Alden
was accordingly left with a score of three.

Major Byles, who came next, had done better. In the course of a
morning stroll with a neighbouring landowner over his property, he had
borrowed some weird things. His list consisted of a quarry, a
quicksand, some quickset, quitch-grass, and quick-lime. And as none of
these things had been borrowed by any other member he scored five. But
he did not seem entirely happy about it.

‘The trouble with these problems,’ he said, ‘is that one has to do
absolutely idiotic things, and consequently one is likely to be
thought an absolute idiot. I did the best I could. I invented quite a
plausible story about a geological friend to account for the quarry
and the quicksand. But I believe that my neighbour goes about saying
that poor old Byles is far from well, and tapping his forehead to
indicate the nature of my complaint. It’s most unpleasant. Still, five
ain’t such a bad score. How did you get on with that quagga, Jimmy?’

‘Nothing doing,’ said Jimmy. ‘I went to the Zoo, just as I said I
would. But, if you ask me, the whole place is rotten with red tape and
officialism. They wouldn’t lend me the blessed quagga, though I
promised them I’d return it in five minutes. Said it was not customary
to lend out the animals, and a lot of silly talk like that. Quite
obstinate about it, too. I’d got Hesseltine there to take a snapshot
of me shepherding the quagga in the wilds of Regent’s Park, and it
simply meant our valuable time thrown away. Also, it appeared that
quaggas are out of print and they’d not got one.

‘But quite apart from that I’m not claiming to have won. I’ve only got
two things down on my list that have not been claimed so far. The
first was the queen of spades from a pack of cards, and the second is
the four kings from the same pack. I don’t spell the word king with a
Q, but the four of them are a quatorse, at piquet. But a score of
two’s no use, and I shall probably be described on my tombstone as
brainy but unfortunate. Meanwhile I notice a sunny smile on the face
of our padre, as if he were a prize-winner. He might tell us how he
did it.’

The Rev. Septimus Cunliffe had certainly been energetic and
industrious. To start with he had called upon an old friend of his, a
man of some learning, with an interest in music and a fair library.
Here he had no difficulty in borrowing Quixote, Quivedo, Quintillian,
Quain, and some quadrilles, quartets, and quintets. He engaged his
host in a discussion as to the precise meaning of a quip, a quirk, and
a quiddity, persuaded him to write down an instance of each, and
borrowed the instances. He borrowed a quatrain of his host’s
composition, and twenty-four sheets of notepaper, which make a quire.

The next two days were less productive, but he borrowed a specimen of
quartz from one man, and a dog, which was unquestionably a quadruped,
from another. A lady who was interested in archery lent him a quiver.
Loans of a quoit, a quart of milk, and a quarter of coal were also
negotiated.

But all the same, his smile of self-congratulation was premature. He
was not destined to score eighteen, for the simple reason that he had
not borrowed a single thing which was not on the list of either Lord
Herngill, or Mr Quillian, or Mr Pusely-Smythe. And they in their turn
could not score because everything on their lists was also on the
parson’s. Industry had cancelled industry; ingenuity had destroyed
ingenuity.

The only other member who could produce a score at all was Mr
Matthews. He registered a modest score of one for having borrowed a
quarrel. It was in vain that Hesseltine maintained that you could pick
a quarrel but could not borrow one. The chairman referred to his
standard dictionary and learned that a quarrel was not necessarily a
dispute; it might be a diamond-shaped pane of glass, which was, in
fact, what Mr Matthews had borrowed.

‘Well,’ said the chairman, ‘Major Byles is the winner, and I think he
deserves to be. The rest of you were a tame set of sheep, laborious
and ingenious, but without any proper spirit of enterprise. But nobody
could walk out calmly one morning and borrow a quarry and a quicksand
unless he were really adventurous. To do that was magnificent and
Elizabethan. I confess that I should like to know what the neighbour
said when the Major borrowed the quitch-grass.’

‘Oh, the old chap didn’t say much,’ said Major Byles. ‘That was the
last thing I borrowed, and by that time he seemed rather worried and
nervous. I told him quite a good story, too, about a nephew in London
who wanted a specimen for botanical purposes. The real trouble was
that, as it had to be a loan, I sent the beastly weed back to him
three days later. That was when he decided I really must have had a
touch of the sun, or had given way to the habit, or something of that
kind. But I shall live it down. Anyway, I’ve won, and I don’t care if
it snows.’

‘Quite so. In the problems of this club, as in the problems of life,
it sometimes happens that courage and character will do more than low
cunning to effect a solution. And I hope that this will be a lesson to
certain members who, by a series of vexatious and needless questions,
have deprived me of my proper rest this evening. However, I shall
shortly be taking it out of them at bridge, and they have my
forgiveness.’

‘If,’ said Pusely-Smythe, ‘the chairman has finished infringing the
prerogative of our padre by delivering a sermon, he will perhaps
inform us what the next problem is.’

‘Certainly,’ said the chairman cheerfully. ‘I was forgetting. It is Dr
Alden’s turn to take the chair next time, but complications have
arisen. I’ve had a letter from the talented editor of _The
Pig-Keepers’ Friend_, who sets our problems, and, as you will
remember, was introduced to us by Lord Herngill. It appears that, in
consequence of his personal knowledge of the esteemed editor, Lord
Herngill would have an unfair advantage in this next competition, and
is therefore with his own consent disqualified for it. But for the
same reason he is specially qualified to adjudicate on the problem. I
have mentioned the matter to Herngill and the Doctor, and they are
both willing to exchange their turns as chairman. So that, subject to
your approval, Herngill will be the chairman at our next meeting. I
will put it to you, gentlemen.’

The proposal met with general approval.

‘That’s all right,’ said the chairman. ‘Then we can have the
card-tables brought in. And if I can only manage to cut with the
Major, I fancy that our opponents will have a pretty thin time. This
is his evening.’

‘I do not wish,’ said Mr Quillian solemnly, ‘to dispute the statement,
but even now we do not know what the problem for next month is to be.’

‘You’re right,’ said the chairman; ‘you’re absolutely right. It’s
funny, but if I forget a thing once I nearly always forget it twice.
However, as a matter of fact, I don’t yet know it myself. Here it is
in its sealed envelope. We will investigate it.’

He tore open the envelope and glanced at the contents.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I really don’t know why he made so much fuss about
it. You couldn’t have anything simpler. He calls it “The Pig-Keeper’s
Problem.” This is all it is: “It is required to buy a copy of the
current issue of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_.” I don’t see any
difficulty about that, do you, Leonard?’

But Leonard declined to be drawn. ‘I should like to have notice of
that question,’ he said.



No. XII.

The Pig-Keeper’s Problem

‘Well, gentlemen,’ said the chairman, Lord Herngill, ‘you have been
required to purchase a copy of the current issue of _The Pig-Keepers’
Friend_. It is generally published on the seventh of every month, but
if the talented editor happens to be thinking about something else at
the time—as occasionally happens—it may come out a few days later. It
is published according to the law, but it cannot be said to court
circulation. It is exposed for sale in certain places, but I doubt if
any copy has been purchased by the general public for the last year—at
any rate, not until the members of this club went on the hunt for it.
How did you get on, Major Byles?’

‘Wish I’d never gone in for it,’ snapped the Major. ‘I told my regular
newsagent to get me a copy. He said he hadn’t heard of it, but would
make inquiries. At the end of a week he came to me with a story that,
as far as he had been able to learn, the paper had discontinued
publication a year before. I knew that was a lie, of course, and told
him so, and said I’d finished with him. There’s only one other
newsagent near me, and I had to go to him. His beastly boy leaves the
wrong papers at the house every morning, and seems to think I’m a
Socialist like himself. The end of it will be that I shall have to eat
my own words and go back to the other man. Destroys all discipline,
that kind of thing.’

Dr Alden, Pusely-Smythe, and several others had hunted trade lists and
directories in vain. Mr Matthews had lavished money on advertisements,
offering a sovereign for a copy of the current issue of _The
Pig-Keepers’ Friend_, and had received no reply.

Sir Charles Bunford had written to an old friend who held a high
position at the British Museum, asking him to get hold of some recent
number of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_, and let him have the address at
which it was published. After some delay the friend replied that he
had seen a copy of the periodical, and that it appeared to be the work
of a lunatic, and that the address given in it was ‘The Impersonation
Society, Boswell Court, Fleet Street.’

‘It certainly looked to me,’ said Sir Charles, ‘as if I had got hold
of the right end of the stick. I found the office, which appeared to
occupy the whole of the top floor of the building. The name of the
society was painted on the outer door, and underneath was the legend,
“Hours, Ten to Four.” It was then eleven in the morning. I knocked and
rang, and could get no answer at all, and I could hear no sound of any
activity within. I came back at three in the afternoon with the same
result. I then sent a letter, saying that I required a copy of the
current number of the paper, and wished to know what amount I should
forward for the purpose; and to make it quite certain I enclosed a
stamped and addressed envelope. Well, I got a reply, with an illegible
signature. It said that no retail business was done at the office, but
that I could apply for the copy through the usual channels. I still
thought that I was on the right line, and gave the address to my
newsagent and set him to work. The answer he got was that the current
issue was out of print, all copies having been allocated. So there I
stuck.’

‘You came rather near to it, though,’ said the chairman. ‘Suppose we
shorten matters. Does any member claim to have won this competition?
Our friend Jimmy has been looking rather pleased with himself all the
evening.’

‘Have I?’ said Jimmy. ‘Well, I don’t mind admitting that I’ve jolly
good reason to be pleased with myself just now, quite apart from the
competition. I’ve won that too, as it happens. But I don’t take much
credit for it. Of course, you could say that it was due to the
improved habits and all that, and I suppose that was so, more or less,
but the fact remains that I wasn’t even thinking about the thing at
the time, and if I hadn’t forgotten my cigarette-case it would never
have happened. So if you don’t call it luck, what are you to call it?’

‘Mr Feldane,’ said the chairman, with great gravity, ‘you are
beginning your story at the wrong end—that is, with the criticism of
it. I must ask you to tell us simply what happened from the very
commencement, and as coherently as possible.’

‘Certainly,’ said Jimmy indulgently, ‘any old way that you happen to
fancy. Well, to start with, though as a matter of fact it had been
going on for more than a week before, they asked me to dine with them
at the house on Wimbledon Common. So naturally I jumped at it. I won’t
say I had always been addicted to the scenery of Wimbledon, but there
were certain private reasons.’

‘Private reasons for dining at Wimbledon?’ said Hesseltine
reflectively. ‘I think I know her name, don’t I?’

‘Wish you wouldn’t interrupt just at the moment when I’m being
coherent. I was going to dine at Wimbledon, and it takes some doing to
get there. My own little car was in hospital, and the natural way
seemed to be to take a taxi, and let it tick up the twopences until I
wanted to go back. Then I reflected that I had decided to give up all
silly extravagance, and on inquiry I found that there was a place
called Waterloo Station from which I could book to Wimbledon. So I did
so. I didn’t smoke on my way out, which must have been a kind of
absent-mindedness. It was on my way back that I found that I had
forgotten my cigarette-case. Now nothing makes you feel you must smoke
so much as the knowledge that you can’t. I hopped out at Vauxhall and
found a taxi right away—I’d got all the luck in the world that night.
I told the driver where to go and to stop at a tobacconist’s, and do
it soon. The shop he stopped at, in a back street off a side street,
didn’t look up to much, but I was desperate and ready to smoke
anything that was called a Turkish cigarette. Behind the counter I
found a fat, middle-aged man reading a book. He gave me something that
would do, took my money, and called me sir. But he was no more a
tobacconist than I am.

‘Tobacconists may do a lot of funny things, but they don’t read the
_Agamemnon_ of Æschylus in the original Greek, which is what this
blighter was doing. Nor do they have manicured nails and an Oxford
intonation—his attempt at a Cockney accent was one of the most
pathetic failures I’ve ever met. However, that’s not the point. The
point is that on the counter was a small pile of copies of the current
number of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_. The number consisted of sixteen
pages, and they were very small pages, and the price was one pound,
but I did not hesitate. I bought my copy, and I have it in my pocket
now. I’ll hand it up to our chairman. I’ve had a glance at it myself,
and I’m inclined to agree with that Museum johnnie. It’s got nothing
to do with pigs. It’s mostly poetry and the rest is foolishness. It
beats me altogether.’

The chairman examined the copy of the paper which had been handed to
him. ‘There is no doubt about it,’ he said. ‘This is a copy of the
current issue, and Mr Feldane assures us that he bought it. No other
claim is put forward. The club’s cheque for one hundred and ten pounds
will therefore be drawn to the order of Mr Feldane. Has any member
anything to add?’

‘I have,’ said Mr Matthews. ‘The whole thing wants clearing up, and I
hope our chairman will clear it. Is our problem-setter really a
lunatic? What is he doing with this weird paper of his? What’s the
Impersonation Society? Who was the over-educated tobacconist? We’d
like the whole story.’

And to this there was general assent.

‘I’ve no objection,’ said Lord Herngill. ‘Willy Bunting has empowered
me to tell you anything I like about him, including the truth. The
fact is that in this problem the members of this club have come up
against another organisation, the Impersonation Society, which is one
of Bunting’s curious inventions.

‘I first knew him as an undergraduate. I thought a good deal of his
ability both as a poet and as an amateur actor. He was also no end of
a lark. He was not a lunatic, but he had endless eccentricities. He
had no ambitions, a contempt for public opinion, and a determination
to do just as he liked. He was sent down for impersonating one of the
proctors. He was beautifully made up, and looked exactly like that
proctor, but he had the misfortune to meet the original in Trumpington
Street.

‘This disaster did not greatly trouble him. He had more money than was
good for him and was not intending to take up any profession. He came
to London, and shortly afterwards he started the Impersonation
Society. His theory was that the ordinary holiday is a mistake, and
that what a tired man or woman wants is not only a change of place but
a change of personality. In order to get a complete rest you must, for
the time being, be somebody else. You must dress and live like the
character you have assumed and you must even try to think like him. I
am by no means sure that there is not something to be said for the
idea. There must be plenty of people who think so, for the membership
of the society has increased every year, and includes some of the very
last people that you would expect to find in such an organisation.

‘For instance, the man that Jimmy found in the tobacconist’s shop in
the Vauxhall neighbourhood, is in reality the head master and
proprietor of a large and successful private school. All through
term-time he is treated with intense respect. Little boys call him
sir, and tremble before him. His assistant masters treat him with a
deference which they are probably very far from feeling. He lives in
an atmosphere of sickening and insincere flattery, and smoking is
strictly prohibited. So in his holiday he becomes a tobacconist’s
assistant, smokes all day, goes about in his shirt-sleeves, treats
customers with respect, is respected by nobody himself, professes no
more virtues than he really has, and thoroughly enjoys it. He says
that it keeps him sane. The shop itself is, of course, the property of
the society, and a resident manager trains those members who wish to
take a holiday there.

‘I should perhaps explain why Sir Charles Bunford was unable to obtain
entrance to the rooms of the society. He misinterpreted the legend on
the door. The hours are ten to four, but they are from ten at night to
four in the morning. I may add that it was once raided by the police,
to the intense disappointment of the police and to the great joy of
the members, particularly Willy Bunting.

‘But I must tell you something of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_. Willy’s
nearest relative is an irascible uncle, who told him that he was
wasting his life. Willy said that, on the contrary, he was enjoying
it. The uncle maintained that Willy did nothing, and Willy replied
that he wrote poetry. Then the indignant uncle did a foolish thing. He
said that he was prepared to bet a hundred pounds that Willy never had
a poem accepted by the editor of any existing periodical published in
London. Willy jumped at that bet. That moribund monthly, _The
Pig-Keepers’ Friend_ was at that time in the market. It had lost its
circulation and had never had advertisements. The wretched enthusiast
who had brought it into being was heartily sick of it. Willy offered a
fiver for it, which was more than it was worth, and instantly became
the proprietor. He then appointed himself editor, and in his editorial
capacity accepted one of his own poems and printed it in the next
issue. A prefatory note said that the editor had no doubt that the
weary pig-keeper would be glad to beguile his hours of leisure with
the following poem by his esteemed contributor, William Bunting. Willy
sent a copy of it to his uncle, received his hundred, and was cut out
of the uncle’s last will and testament.

‘Having acquired the magazine, Willy proceeded to make it the organ of
the Impersonation Society. He still printed his own poems in it, and
occasionally mine, but it was principally devoted to the cryptic
record of the many strange activities of the Impersonation Society.
The original title was retained, and occasional references to pigs and
pig-keeping will be found in it. For instance, in the current number
there are a number of spoof inquiries from agonised pig-keepers
seeking the expert advice of the editor in their difficulties. One of
them asks how, in the event of his pigs swarming, he is to know which
of them is the queen. The editor’s replies are humorous and in some
cases, I regret to say, Rabelaisian.

‘The present issue of the paper was on sale at the tobacconist’s. It
has also been offered in the public streets by a supposed newsvender
every day for the last month. The only copy purchased was bought by
Jimmy, who found it by accident. As the paper is sold only by members,
Mr Matthews will understand why his advertisements failed to get any
result. And now that I’ve answered your questions, I’d like to put one
to our prize-winner.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Jimmy.

‘How many times have you dined at Wimbledon in the last week?’

‘Four times, as it happens. You see, the views there over the Common
are really——’

‘You needn’t continue. You’ve said enough. I am sure that I may offer
you the hearty congratulations of the club on your engagement.’

‘Well, I’m blest,’ said Jimmy. ‘I am engaged, I’m pleased and proud to
say, but how on earth did you know?’

‘In many ways, and I’ll tell you one. Only one thing on earth could
have made you forget your cigarette-case.’

And naturally the next thing to do was to drink to the health of Jimmy
and his future bride. And it was done with great enthusiasm.


And here the chronicles of the Problem Club must come to an end. The
story of how Willy Bunting became a member of the club and
subsequently retired from it, and how the solution of one problem
brought the Rev. Septimus Cunliffe into the police-court, and how the
solution of another made Mr Matthews miss his dinner, and how a negro
failed to get into the club, and how a girl of seventeen was actually
elected—these things with many others must remain hidden in the club
archives.



Transcriber’s Note

This transcription in based on the text of 1919 edition published by
W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. However, the following are believed to be
unambiguous errors in the text, and have been corrected:

 * “climbin” was changed to “climbing” (Chapter I).
 * “Pusely Smythe” was changed to “Pusely-Smythe” (Chapter VII).
 * Two misspellings of “_The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_” were corrected.
 * Seven occurrences of mismatched quotation marks have been repaired.





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