‘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.