The general public knows little about the Problem Club. Many are not
even aware that it has now been in existence for several years. Nor
can it be said that the references to it which have appeared from time
to time in the Press have been very enlightening, or even reasonably
accurate.
For instance, a paragraph in a recent issue of a society paper (which,
it may be admitted, is generally well informed) makes various
statements as to the Problem Club. It says that the club has its
premises underground in Piccadilly, that a former Premier is a member
of it, that all the members are required to swear a most solemn oath
to act with scrupulous honour in the monthly competitions, and that
high play frequently goes on. The actual truth is that there are no
club premises. The famous but old-fashioned restaurant that reserves
two rooms on the first floor for the club’s monthly meetings is not
situated in Piccadilly. No Premier has ever been a member. The story
of the solemn oath is even more absurd. After all, the members are
gentlemen. They would as soon think of taking a solemn oath not to
cheat at cards or at golf. The ‘scrupulous honour’ is taken for
granted. Lastly, there is no high play in the accepted sense of the
term. The amount that a member can win or lose in the monthly
competitions will be stated presently, and any betting on the results
is prohibited.
Silly misrepresentations of this kind have caused some annoyance, and
it is now thought that a discreet but authorised account of some part
of the proceedings of the club would be preferable.
The club consists of twelve members, and the annual subscription is
one hundred and thirty-four pounds. Of this sum twenty-four pounds is
allotted to the club expenses, including the club dinners which are
held on the first Saturday in every month. Each member in turn acts as
chairman at one dinner in the year, afterwards adjudicating upon the
problem competition for that month; while at the other eleven meetings
he is himself a competitor, the remaining one hundred and ten pounds
of his subscription being treated as eleven entrance fees of ten
pounds each. The problems are not of a mathematical nature, and were
for some time invented and propounded by Leonard, the ingenious
head-waiter of the restaurant. The winner receives the whole of the
entrance fees, amounting to one hundred and ten pounds; if there is
more than one winner this amount is divided equally between them. Thus
for his investment of one hundred and ten pounds it is possible that a
member may in one year obtain a return of one thousand two hundred and
ten pounds, if he is the sole winner of the eleven competitions for
which he is eligible. But the minute-books of the club show that in
actual practice this has never happened; indeed, the record, made by
Mr Pusely-Smythe in 1911, is seven wins, and on two occasions out of
the seven he had to share the prize with another successful
competitor.
It may be admitted that the club has necessarily been of the nature of
a secret society. Some of the problems set have been rather curious,
and it has occasionally happened that in the course of their practical
solution members have been led to do things which might prejudice them
in their domestic or social relations, or even subject them to the
penalties of the law.
It is permitted to add an account of some of the pre-war meetings of
the club, various natural precautions being taken to prevent the
discovery of the identity of members.
It was the forty-third meeting of the Problem Club. Dinner was over,
and the members had adjourned to the lofty and comfortable room where
the business of the evening was transacted. A side-table was suitably
equipped with provision for smokers—all the members were smokers—and
for such other refreshments as might be required in the course of the
evening. One or two waiters still lingered—removing a coffee-cup,
handing a liqueur, or placing an ash-tray and matches conveniently on
one of the small tables. A hum of conversation went on through the
blue haze of the cigar-smoke. Mr Pusely-Smythe, with his usual
lugubrious manner, was just coming to the end of a screamingly funny
story. Any reference to the competition to be settled is by an
unwritten law forbidden until the chairman has opened the proceedings,
but it was noticeable that Major Byles was once more talking of
resigning his membership. He was not taken very seriously. He was an
original member, and, though he lived in the country for the greater
part of the year, had never been known to miss a single meeting of the
club. His continuous bad luck in the competitions had irritated him,
but nobody believed in his threat of resignation, and it may be
doubted if he quite believed in it himself.
The waiters left the room, and Sir Charles Bunford, an elderly
gentleman of distinguished appearance, who was chairman for the
evening, took his place at his table and arranged his papers. Among
them the club cheque-book showed temptingly. In accordance with the
club custom by which the chairman at one meeting acted as secretary at
the next, Dr Alden took his seat beside Sir Charles and prepared to
make a note of the proceedings for the club minute-book. Conversation
ceased. The other members seated themselves informally in a semicircle
of easy-chairs. There was, indeed, a marked absence of formality at
the Problem Club. There was no order of precedence. The chairman did
not rise when he spoke, nor did members rise when they answered him.
‘Now, gentlemen,’ Sir Charles began, ‘we have before us to-night the
Giraffe Problem. I will read it out to you as worded by our esteemed
friend Leonard: “It is required to induce a woman who is unaware of
your intention to say to you, ‘You ought to have been a giraffe.’”
Now, of course, I’m not a competitor, but I must say that I’m sorry
I’m not. Upon my word, I don’t think Leonard has ever given us
anything quite so easy.’
There were several dissentient voices: ‘Not a bit of it.’ ‘Can’t agree
with you there, Bunford.’ ‘Wish I’d found it so.’ ‘Leonard knew what
he was doing this time.’
‘Oh, very well,’ said Sir Charles smiling. ‘I should have thought
there were a score of conversational openings to which the inevitable
reply would be, “You ought to have been a giraffe.” I may be wrong,
but I still expect that the prize to-night will have to be divided
between four or five of you. However, we’ll see what luck you’ve had.
I’ll begin with you, doctor, and then go on in the direction of the
sun and the wine.’
Dr Alden shook his head. He had a strong head, an alert expression,
and a bright eye. ‘No good,’ he said. ‘There was too much to do in
Harley Street this month for me to be able to give the proper time to
it. I made an attempt. It has probably cost me the esteem of an
excellent woman; these excellent women never think you’re serious
except when you’re joking. I gave her the chance to tell me I ought to
have been a giraffe, but she never took it. Enough said. Try the next
man.’
‘The next is our only member of Parliament, Mr Harding Pope.’
‘Not competing this month,’ said Mr Pope rather pompously. ‘My
constituency has made great demands upon me, and I’m unable to defend
my entrance fee. Fortunately, the pleasure of the company in which I
find myself is worth far more.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Sir Charles warningly, ‘but don’t get too
slack. We’ve got a long waiting list. What about you, Major Byles?’
‘My usual luck,’ said the Major. ‘I worked the whole thing out
completely and made all the necessary preparations. I was down at my
cottage at the time. I assure you that during the whole of breakfast
one morning I talked about practically nothing except giraffes and the
way that they can pull down fruit from a tree, thanks to their
thundering long necks. My wife, the children’s governess, and Mrs
Hebor, who was stopping with us, all heard me, though I can’t say that
they seemed particularly interested. Afterwards my wife and I were in
the garden, and I pointed to a tree full of ripe cherries.
‘“I like fruit,” I said, “but I hate climbing trees.”
‘Now, considering the ground-bait that I had been putting down at
breakfast, I consider the betting was ten to one that she would reply
that I ought to have been a giraffe. Instead of that, she said that
Wilkins would get them for me, and then seemed surprised that I was
annoyed. A few minutes later I tried the governess with precisely the
same remark, and she asked me if I would like to have a ladder
fetched. (I often wonder what I pay that woman her salary for.) Then
Mrs Hebor came out—as dependable a woman as I know in a general way;
you nearly always know what she is going to say before she says it—and
I told her that I liked cherries, but hated climbing to get them.
‘“You ought,” she began—and this time I thought I really had got
it—“to be able to reach some of those without climbing.”
‘After that I gave up. No amount of intelligence can contend against
luck like that. Matter of fact, I’m tempted to give up this problem
business altogether.’
‘Oh, don’t do that,’ said Sir Charles soothingly. ‘It was hard lines,
but we shall see you a prize-winner one of these days. Now, Mr
Cunliffe, what have you to tell us?’
‘I failed,’ said the Rev. Septimus Cunliffe, an elderly cleric who
specialised in broad-mindedness. ‘Plausible strategy, but
disappointing results. Nothing of interest to report.’
‘Did you do any better, Mr Matthews?’
Mr Matthews was a man of forty, bald, round-faced, rubicund, and
slightly obese. The task of ordering the club dinners and the wines to
be drunk therewith was always left in his hands with a confidence
which was invariably justified. His knowledge as an epicure was
considerable, and it is possible that his intelligence was less
considerable, but more than once he had been lucky in a competition.
He was the richest man in a club where nobody was very poor, and was
good-tempered and popular.
‘Well, you know,’ said Matthews, ‘I feel as if I ought to have won
this. At one time it looked as if I simply had it chucked at me. I was
talking to Lady Amelia, who does a lot in the East End and is always
nosing round for subscriptions.
‘“Why do you men drink?” she asked in her blunt way.
‘The question of this competition occurred to me, and it looked like a
good chance.
‘“Well,” I said, “the pleasure begins in the palate, but I fancy that
it continues in the throat. I often wish I had a longer throat.”
‘You would have hardly thought she could have missed it, but she did.
Said that she was sure I was not so bad as I made myself out to be,
and milked me of a fiver for some rotten “good cause.”’
‘Look here,’ said Major Byles, returning from a fruitless visit to the
side-table, ‘I’ll ask the chairman for a minute’s interval. They’ve
not put out any seltzer, though they must know that I always take
seltzer with mine.’
‘Certainly, Major; certainly. Would somebody kindly touch the bell?’
The seltzer-water was brought and business was resumed.
‘Your turn next, Jimmy,’ said Sir Charles.
The Hon. James Feldane, a rather weary young man, said, ‘Well, I claim
to be a winner, but there’s a shade of doubt about it, and I’ll ask
for your ruling. All I can say is that if I don’t touch the money my
luck’s even worse than the Major’s. Like him, I was systematic about
it. My first step was to buy some of the highest collars that could be
got for money—two inches or so too high for me and beastly
uncomfortable. I put one of them on, and looked like a bad
freak—something out of a back number of _Punch_. My next step was to
call on my married sister. She told me to go home and dress myself
properly, as I knew she would. So I asked in my innocent way what was
wrong, and she said I seemed to have mistaken my neck for the Nelson
Column.
‘“Alluding to my collar?” I said. “Well, I like plenty. I’d wear a
collar three feet high if I could.”’
‘And then my fool of a brother-in-law stuck his oar in, and said, “You
ought to have been a giraffe”; and I’m absolutely certain Dora would
have said it if he hadn’t got in first.
‘So there it is—the words were all right, but they were used by a man.
Still, for some purposes—bankruptcy and things of that kind—a man and
his wife count as one, don’t they? What’s the ruling?’
‘My ruling,’ said Sir Charles, ‘is that your claim fails. It is
required that the words should be used by a woman, and your
brother-in-law is not a woman.’
‘Yes, I was afraid you’d think so,’ said Jimmy, ‘but it was worth
trying. Anybody want any rotten high collars?’
‘Now, Mr Pusely-Smythe,’ said the chairman.
Mr Pusely-Smythe was a man of middle age, with dark, cavernous eyes
and an intellectual forehead. He was pale and thin, and was less
solemn than he seemed.
‘I claim to have won,’ he said in a melancholy voice. ‘My method was
not the most obvious or direct, and might easily have failed, but the
luck was with me. I must tell you that I happen to know a Mrs
Magsworth, who of late years has given way a good deal to Nature
Study. She haunts the Zoo and the Botanical Gardens. She understands
about the habitat of the hyena, and if cockroaches devour their young,
and which end of the tree the onion grows—all that kind of thing. She
is rather severe with people who, as she phrases it, “show an abysmal
ignorance of the simplest facts.” She has got a face like a horse,
though that is not germane to the question. I arranged with a kindly
hostess to let me take in Mrs Magsworth to dinner one evening—I gather
that there was no particular rush for the job.
‘I said: “I’m so glad to meet you again, Mrs Magsworth. With your
knowledge you will be able to settle a point that has been worrying me
for days. My little nephew asked me which was the tallest animal. And,
do you know, I couldn’t be quite sure.”
‘“Then, Mr Smythe,” she said, “you ought to have been. A giraffe is
much the tallest of the mammals.”
‘So I claim to have won. She, being a woman ignorant of my intention,
was induced to say to me the words required in the order required and
without the interpolation of any other word.’
‘But there’s the interpolation of a full stop,’ said Mr Harding Pope,
and was at once called to order—only the chairman has the right to
comment and to adjudicate.
Sir Charles took a few moments to consider his decision, and then gave
his ruling as follows:—
‘My ruling is that Mr Pusely-Smythe’s claim is conditionally allowed.
It is true that Mrs Magsworth used other words both before and after
the words required, but that is not precluded by the terms of the
problem. The only other possible objection is that there was the
interpolation of a full stop. Now, there is no full stop in spoken
speech: it is represented by a pause. In this case the pause indicated
the end of a sentence. In another case the pause might have indicated
that the woman could not for a moment think of the word giraffe. In
that case I am sure that no objection would have been raised. Yet
there, too, a sign could be used to represent it in print or writing.
Leonard requires certain words in a certain order, but he does not
forbid a pause to be made between them. Unless some member has induced
a woman to use the same words with no pause whatever—which I should
rule to be a still better solution—Mr Pusely-Smythe’s claim is
allowed.’
As no other member had met with any success at all, a cheque for one
hundred and ten pounds was drawn to the order of Mr Pusely-Smythe and
handed to him with the congratulations of the chairman.
The chairman’s next duty was to open the sealed envelope containing
the problem set by the ingenious Leonard for the ensuing month. This
was entitled ‘The Kiss Problem,’ and when its conditions were read out
both Major Byles and the Rev. Septimus Cunliffe objected to it, though
on totally different grounds, and urged that Leonard should be asked
to substitute something else. However, on a vote being taken, it was
agreed by a considerable majority that ‘The Kiss Problem’ should be
retained, although, as the chairman pointed out, it looked excessively
dangerous.
Mr Pusely-Smythe was reminded that it was his turn to be chairman at
the next meeting. And then, the business of the evening being at an
end, the card-tables were brought in, and members addressed themselves
to bridge at moderate points.
No. II.