He came. I gave him all the information he wanted, and more. Whether he was a pleasant sort of person or not I hardly noticed; I was so very pleasant myself. He returned my enthusiasm. He asked me to dine with him the following week. A little party at the Savoy--his birthday, you know. I accepted gladly. I rolled up at the party with my little present...a massive silver cigar-case...suitably engraved. * * * * * So there you are. He clings to me. He seems to have formed the absurd idea that I am fond of him. A few months after that evening at the Savoy he was married. I was invited to the wedding--confound him. Of course I had to live up to my birthday present; the least I could do was an enormous silver cigar-box (not engraved), which bound me to him still more strongly. By that time I realized that I hated him. He was pushing, familiar, everything that I disliked. All my friends wondered how I had become so intimate with him.... Well, now they know. And the original E.M.W., if he has the sense to read this, also knows. If he cares to prosecute Ernest Merrowby Woolman for being in possession of stolen goods, I shall be glad to give him any information. Woolman is generally to be found leaving my rooms at about 6.30 in the evening, and a smart detective could easily nab him as he steps out. A MIDSUMMER MADNESS The girl who shared Herbert's meringue at dinner (a brittle one, which exploded just as he was getting into it) was kind and tactful. "It doesn't matter a bit," she said, removing fragments of shell from her lap; and, to put him at his ease again, went on "Are you interested in little problems at all?" Herbert, who would have been interested even in a photograph album just then, emerged from his apologies and swore that he was. "We're all worrying about one which Father saw in a paper. I do wish you could solve it for us. It goes like this." And she proceeded to explain it. Herbert decided that the small piece of meringue still in her hair was not worth mentioning, and he listened to her with interest. On the next morning I happened to drop in at Herbert's office.... And that, in short, is how I was entangled in the business. "Look here," said Herbert, "you used to be mathematical; here's something for you." "Let the dead past bury its dead," I implored. "I am now quite respectable." "It goes like this," he said, ignoring my appeal. He then gave me the problem, which I hand on to you. "A subaltern riding at the rear of a column of soldiers trotted up to the captain in front and challenged him to a game of billiards for half a crown a side, the loser to pay for the table. Having lost, he played another hundred, double or quits, and then rode back, the column by this time having travelled twice its own length, and a distance equal to the distance it would have travelled if it had been going in the other direction. What was the captain's name?"