hael. "Famous cricketers, of course, that is?
For instance, I cannot think what this one can be."

He produced after much uncertainty a torn and dirty sheet of some penny
weekly.

"I've got all the others," he said to Michael. "But one picture will
often stump you like this. No joke intended." He smiled feebly and
pointed to a woman holding in one hand the letter S, in the other the
letter T.

"What about Hirst?" Michael asked.

"Hirst," repeated the Solutionist. "Her S T. That's it. That's it." In
his excitement he began to dribble. "I'm very much obliged to you, sir.
Her S. T. Yes, that's it."

He began to shuffle toward the door.

"Anything you want solved at any time," he said to Michael. "I'm only
just upstairs, you know, in the room next to Mr. Barnes. I shall be most
delighted to solve anything--anything!"

He vanished, and Michael smiled to think how completely some of his
problems would puzzle the Solutionist.

"What's his name?" he inquired of Barnes.

"Who? Barmy Sid? Sydney Carvel, as he calls himself. Yet he makes a
living at it."

"At what?" Michael asked.

"Solving those puzzles and sending solutions at so much a time. He took
fifteen-and-six last week, or so he told me. You can see his
advertisement in Reynolds. Barmy Sid I call him. He says he used to be a
conjurer and take his ten pounds a week easily. But he looks to me more
like one of these here soft fellows who ought to be shut up. You should
see his room. All stuck over with bits of paper. Regular dust-hole,
that's what it is. Did you hear what he said? Solve anything--anything!
He hasn't solved how to earn more than ten bob a week, year in year out.
Silly----! That's what he is, barmy."

Michael's hope of entering into a close relation with all the lodgers of
1 Leppard Street was falsified. None of them except Barmy Sid once
visited his rooms; nor did he find it at all easy to strike up even a
staircase acquaintance. Vaguely he became aware of the various
personalities that lurked behind the four stories of long narrow
windows. Yet so fleeting was the population that the almost weekly
arrivals and departures perpetually disorganized his attempts to observe
them as individuals or to theorize upon them in the mass. No doubt
Barnes himself would have left by now, had he not been sustained by
Michael's subsidy; and it was always a great perplexity to Michael how
Mrs. Cleghorne managed to pay the rent, since apparently half the
inquil