Do you know anything about gas? I buy a lot every week for my geyser. You get about 1000 for half-a-crown. A thousand what? I don't know; but I like to take part in these great business transactions, and I am now writing to ask if they could make it 1200 seeing that I am a regular customer. No harm in asking. III DEAR CHARLES,--Do you truly want me to recommend you something to read? Well, why not try the serial story in some ha'penny paper? There you get a glimpse of the real thing. I turned idly to "Lepers in Israel" (or whatever it is called) last night, and found myself suddenly up to the neck in tragedy. Lord Billingham ... Charles, you're a married man, tell me if it really is so. The gentle Pamela is urged by a cruel mother to espouse Lord Billingham for his money's sake. Lord B. is a vulgar brute, I'm afraid; in any case Pamela is all for young Prendergast; but one must be sensible, you know, and money does make a difference, doesn't it? So she becomes Lady Billingham; and a year or two later Prendergast comes back from South Africa to find that it is he who is the real Lord Billingham after all. (I got most of this from the "synopsis," which enables you to start the story now, so I can't say how it was they overlooked him in the first place.) It would be extremely cruel (you see that, Charles?) to talk about it, because Pamela would then become plain Mrs Stubbs, and no money at all; so Prendergast decides to say nothing to anybody. But he was reckoning without Mrs Trevelyan, no less. Mrs Trevelyan finds out the secret, and threatens Prendergast that she will tell everybody that he is the real Lord Billingham unless he marries her. So of course he has to. It is at this moment that we meet Captain Pontifax. Captain Pontifax is in love with Mrs Trevelyan, at least he thinks he is, and he says that if she doesn't marry him he will let on about what happened to Mr Trevelyan, who was supposed to have died of old age. At the same time the news gets out that Prendergast is really Lord Billingham, and so Pamela does become Mrs Stubbs; and, as Prendergast cannot honourably withdraw from the alliance he is about to contract with Mrs Trevelyan, it looks as though she is going to be Lady Billingham. But on the eve of the wedding a body is found at the bottom of the old chalk quarry.... Whose? ... What I want to hear from you, Charles, is, Do people always get married for this sort of reason? Are you really the Duke of Norfolk, and did Kitty discover your secret and threaten to disclose it? Oh, you coward! I don't mind anybody knowing that I am the true Earl Billingham. About the body. We shall know to-morrow. I think it's Captain Pontifax myself, but I will send you a telegram.