‘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.’