‘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.