‘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.’