Part 8

The next two days were less productive, but he borrowed a specimen of quartz from one man, and a dog, which was unquestionably a quadruped, from another. A lady who was interested in archery lent him a quiver. Loans of a quoit, a quart of milk, and a quarter of coal were also negotiated.

But all the same, his smile of self-congratulation was premature. He was not destined to score eighteen, for the simple reason that he had not borrowed a single thing which was not on the list of either Lord Herngill, or Mr Quillian, or Mr Pusely-Smythe. And they in their turn could not score because everything on their lists was also on the parson’s. Industry had cancelled industry; ingenuity had destroyed ingenuity.

The only other member who could produce a score at all was Mr Matthews. He registered a modest score of one for having borrowed a quarrel. It was in vain that Hesseltine maintained that you could pick a quarrel but could not borrow one. The chairman referred to his standard dictionary and learned that a quarrel was not necessarily a dispute; it might be a diamond-shaped pane of glass, which was, in fact, what Mr Matthews had borrowed.

‘Well,’ said the chairman, ‘Major Byles is the winner, and I think he deserves to be. The rest of you were a tame set of sheep, laborious and ingenious, but without any proper spirit of enterprise. But nobody could walk out calmly one morning and borrow a quarry and a quicksand unless he were really adventurous. To do that was magnificent and Elizabethan. I confess that I should like to know what the neighbour said when the Major borrowed the quitch-grass.’

‘Oh, the old chap didn’t say much,’ said Major Byles. ‘That was the last thing I borrowed, and by that time he seemed rather worried and nervous. I told him quite a good story, too, about a nephew in London who wanted a specimen for botanical purposes. The real trouble was that, as it had to be a loan, I sent the beastly weed back to him three days later. That was when he decided I really must have had a touch of the sun, or had given way to the habit, or something of that kind. But I shall live it down. Anyway, I’ve won, and I don’t care if it snows.’

‘Quite so. In the problems of this club, as in the problems of life, it sometimes happens that courage and character will do more than low cunning to effect a solution. And I hope that this will be a lesson to certain members who, by a series of vexatious and needless questions, have deprived me of my proper rest this evening. However, I shall shortly be taking it out of them at bridge, and they have my forgiveness.’

‘If,’ said Pusely-Smythe, ‘the chairman has finished infringing the prerogative of our padre by delivering a sermon, he will perhaps inform us what the next problem is.’

‘Certainly,’ said the chairman cheerfully. ‘I was forgetting. It is Dr Alden’s turn to take the chair next time, but complications have arisen. I’ve had a letter from the talented editor of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_, who sets our problems, and, as you will remember, was introduced to us by Lord Herngill. It appears that, in consequence of his personal knowledge of the esteemed editor, Lord Herngill would have an unfair advantage in this next competition, and is therefore with his own consent disqualified for it. But for the same reason he is specially qualified to adjudicate on the problem. I have mentioned the matter to Herngill and the Doctor, and they are both willing to exchange their turns as chairman. So that, subject to your approval, Herngill will be the chairman at our next meeting. I will put it to you, gentlemen.’

The proposal met with general approval.

‘That’s all right,’ said the chairman. ‘Then we can have the card-tables brought in. And if I can only manage to cut with the Major, I fancy that our opponents will have a pretty thin time. This is his evening.’

‘I do not wish,’ said Mr Quillian solemnly, ‘to dispute the statement, but even now we do not know what the problem for next month is to be.’

‘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.’

‘It certainly looked to me,’ said Sir Charles, ‘as if I had got hold of the right end of the stick. I found the office, which appeared to occupy the whole of the top floor of the building. The name of the society was painted on the outer door, and underneath was the legend, “Hours, Ten to Four.” It was then eleven in the morning. I knocked and rang, and could get no answer at all, and I could hear no sound of any activity within. I came back at three in the afternoon with the same result. I then sent a letter, saying that I required a copy of the current number of the paper, and wished to know what amount I should forward for the purpose; and to make it quite certain I enclosed a stamped and addressed envelope. Well, I got a reply, with an illegible signature. It said that no retail business was done at the office, but that I could apply for the copy through the usual channels. I still thought that I was on the right line, and gave the address to my newsagent and set him to work. The answer he got was that the current issue was out of print, all copies having been allocated. So there I stuck.’

‘You came rather near to it, though,’ said the chairman. ‘Suppose we shorten matters. Does any member claim to have won this competition? Our friend Jimmy has been looking rather pleased with himself all the evening.’

‘Have I?’ said Jimmy. ‘Well, I don’t mind admitting that I’ve jolly good reason to be pleased with myself just now, quite apart from the competition. I’ve won that too, as it happens. But I don’t take much credit for it. Of course, you could say that it was due to the improved habits and all that, and I suppose that was so, more or less, but the fact remains that I wasn’t even thinking about the thing at the time, and if I hadn’t forgotten my cigarette-case it would never have happened. So if you don’t call it luck, what are you to call it?’

‘Mr Feldane,’ said the chairman, with great gravity, ‘you are beginning your story at the wrong end—that is, with the criticism of it. I must ask you to tell us simply what happened from the very commencement, and as coherently as possible.’

‘Certainly,’ said Jimmy indulgently, ‘any old way that you happen to fancy. Well, to start with, though as a matter of fact it had been going on for more than a week before, they asked me to dine with them at the house on Wimbledon Common. So naturally I jumped at it. I won’t say I had always been addicted to the scenery of Wimbledon, but there were certain private reasons.’

‘Private reasons for dining at Wimbledon?’ said Hesseltine reflectively. ‘I think I know her name, don’t I?’

‘Wish you wouldn’t interrupt just at the moment when I’m being coherent. I was going to dine at Wimbledon, and it takes some doing to get there. My own little car was in hospital, and the natural way seemed to be to take a taxi, and let it tick up the twopences until I wanted to go back. Then I reflected that I had decided to give up all silly extravagance, and on inquiry I found that there was a place called Waterloo Station from which I could book to Wimbledon. So I did so. I didn’t smoke on my way out, which must have been a kind of absent-mindedness. It was on my way back that I found that I had forgotten my cigarette-case. Now nothing makes you feel you must smoke so much as the knowledge that you can’t. I hopped out at Vauxhall and found a taxi right away—I’d got all the luck in the world that night. I told the driver where to go and to stop at a tobacconist’s, and do it soon. The shop he stopped at, in a back street off a side street, didn’t look up to much, but I was desperate and ready to smoke anything that was called a Turkish cigarette. Behind the counter I found a fat, middle-aged man reading a book. He gave me something that would do, took my money, and called me sir. But he was no more a tobacconist than I am.

‘Tobacconists may do a lot of funny things, but they don’t read the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus in the original Greek, which is what this blighter was doing. Nor do they have manicured nails and an Oxford intonation—his attempt at a Cockney accent was one of the most pathetic failures I’ve ever met. However, that’s not the point. The point is that on the counter was a small pile of copies of the current number of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_. The number consisted of sixteen pages, and they were very small pages, and the price was one pound, but I did not hesitate. I bought my copy, and I have it in my pocket now. I’ll hand it up to our chairman. I’ve had a glance at it myself, and I’m inclined to agree with that Museum johnnie. It’s got nothing to do with pigs. It’s mostly poetry and the rest is foolishness. It beats me altogether.’

The chairman examined the copy of the paper which had been handed to him. ‘There is no doubt about it,’ he said. ‘This is a copy of the current issue, and Mr Feldane assures us that he bought it. No other claim is put forward. The club’s cheque for one hundred and ten pounds will therefore be drawn to the order of Mr Feldane. Has any member anything to add?’

‘I have,’ said Mr Matthews. ‘The whole thing wants clearing up, and I hope our chairman will clear it. Is our problem-setter really a lunatic? What is he doing with this weird paper of his? What’s the Impersonation Society? Who was the over-educated tobacconist? We’d like the whole story.’

And to this there was general assent.

‘I’ve no objection,’ said Lord Herngill. ‘Willy Bunting has empowered me to tell you anything I like about him, including the truth. The fact is that in this problem the members of this club have come up against another organisation, the Impersonation Society, which is one of Bunting’s curious inventions.

‘I first knew him as an undergraduate. I thought a good deal of his ability both as a poet and as an amateur actor. He was also no end of a lark. He was not a lunatic, but he had endless eccentricities. He had no ambitions, a contempt for public opinion, and a determination to do just as he liked. He was sent down for impersonating one of the proctors. He was beautifully made up, and looked exactly like that proctor, but he had the misfortune to meet the original in Trumpington Street.

‘This disaster did not greatly trouble him. He had more money than was good for him and was not intending to take up any profession. He came to London, and shortly afterwards he started the Impersonation Society. His theory was that the ordinary holiday is a mistake, and that what a tired man or woman wants is not only a change of place but a change of personality. In order to get a complete rest you must, for the time being, be somebody else. You must dress and live like the character you have assumed and you must even try to think like him. I am by no means sure that there is not something to be said for the idea. There must be plenty of people who think so, for the membership of the society has increased every year, and includes some of the very last people that you would expect to find in such an organisation.

‘For instance, the man that Jimmy found in the tobacconist’s shop in the Vauxhall neighbourhood, is in reality the head master and proprietor of a large and successful private school. All through term-time he is treated with intense respect. Little boys call him sir, and tremble before him. His assistant masters treat him with a deference which they are probably very far from feeling. He lives in an atmosphere of sickening and insincere flattery, and smoking is strictly prohibited. So in his holiday he becomes a tobacconist’s assistant, smokes all day, goes about in his shirt-sleeves, treats customers with respect, is respected by nobody himself, professes no more virtues than he really has, and thoroughly enjoys it. He says that it keeps him sane. The shop itself is, of course, the property of the society, and a resident manager trains those members who wish to take a holiday there.

‘I should perhaps explain why Sir Charles Bunford was unable to obtain entrance to the rooms of the society. He misinterpreted the legend on the door. The hours are ten to four, but they are from ten at night to four in the morning. I may add that it was once raided by the police, to the intense disappointment of the police and to the great joy of the members, particularly Willy Bunting.

‘But I must tell you something of _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_. Willy’s nearest relative is an irascible uncle, who told him that he was wasting his life. Willy said that, on the contrary, he was enjoying it. The uncle maintained that Willy did nothing, and Willy replied that he wrote poetry. Then the indignant uncle did a foolish thing. He said that he was prepared to bet a hundred pounds that Willy never had a poem accepted by the editor of any existing periodical published in London. Willy jumped at that bet. That moribund monthly, _The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_ was at that time in the market. It had lost its circulation and had never had advertisements. The wretched enthusiast who had brought it into being was heartily sick of it. Willy offered a fiver for it, which was more than it was worth, and instantly became the proprietor. He then appointed himself editor, and in his editorial capacity accepted one of his own poems and printed it in the next issue. A prefatory note said that the editor had no doubt that the weary pig-keeper would be glad to beguile his hours of leisure with the following poem by his esteemed contributor, William Bunting. Willy sent a copy of it to his uncle, received his hundred, and was cut out of the uncle’s last will and testament.

‘Having acquired the magazine, Willy proceeded to make it the organ of the Impersonation Society. He still printed his own poems in it, and occasionally mine, but it was principally devoted to the cryptic record of the many strange activities of the Impersonation Society. The original title was retained, and occasional references to pigs and pig-keeping will be found in it. For instance, in the current number there are a number of spoof inquiries from agonised pig-keepers seeking the expert advice of the editor in their difficulties. One of them asks how, in the event of his pigs swarming, he is to know which of them is the queen. The editor’s replies are humorous and in some cases, I regret to say, Rabelaisian.

‘The present issue of the paper was on sale at the tobacconist’s. It has also been offered in the public streets by a supposed newsvender every day for the last month. The only copy purchased was bought by Jimmy, who found it by accident. As the paper is sold only by members, Mr Matthews will understand why his advertisements failed to get any result. And now that I’ve answered your questions, I’d like to put one to our prize-winner.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Jimmy.

‘How many times have you dined at Wimbledon in the last week?’

‘Four times, as it happens. You see, the views there over the Common are really——’

‘You needn’t continue. You’ve said enough. I am sure that I may offer you the hearty congratulations of the club on your engagement.’

‘Well, I’m blest,’ said Jimmy. ‘I am engaged, I’m pleased and proud to say, but how on earth did you know?’

‘In many ways, and I’ll tell you one. Only one thing on earth could have made you forget your cigarette-case.’

And naturally the next thing to do was to drink to the health of Jimmy and his future bride. And it was done with great enthusiasm.

And here the chronicles of the Problem Club must come to an end. The story of how Willy Bunting became a member of the club and subsequently retired from it, and how the solution of one problem brought the Rev. Septimus Cunliffe into the police-court, and how the solution of another made Mr Matthews miss his dinner, and how a negro failed to get into the club, and how a girl of seventeen was actually elected—these things with many others must remain hidden in the club archives.

Transcriber’s Note

This transcription in based on the text of 1919 edition published by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. However, the following are believed to be unambiguous errors in the text, and have been corrected:

* “climbin” was changed to “climbing” (Chapter I). * “Pusely Smythe” was changed to “Pusely-Smythe” (Chapter VII). * Two misspellings of “_The Pig-Keepers’ Friend_” were corrected. * Seven occurrences of mismatched quotation marks have been repaired.