der at the end. Thus, if a friend were to ask
me to guess who dined with him yesterday, it would be fatuous if he had
in mind somebody of whom he knew I had never heard. The only person who
has ever solved "The Big Bow Mystery" is myself. This is not paradox but
plain fact. For long before the book was written, I said to myself one
night that no mystery-monger had ever murdered a man in a room to which
there was no possible access. The puzzle was scarcely propounded ere the
solution flew up and the idea lay stored in my mind till, years later,
during the silly season, the editor of a popular London evening paper,
anxious to let the sea-serpent have a year off, asked me to provide him
with a more original piece of fiction. I might have refused, but there
was murder in my soul, and here was the opportunity. I went to work
seriously, though the _Morning Post_ subsequently said the skit was too
labored, and I succeeded at least in exciting my readers, so many of
whom sent in unsolicited testimonials in the shape of solutions during
the run of the story that, when it ended, the editor asked me to say
something by way of acknowledgement. Thereupon I wrote a letter to the
paper, thanking the would-be solvers for their kindly attempts to help
me out of the mess into which I had got the plot. I did not like to
wound their feelings by saying straight out that they had failed, one
and all, to hit on the real murderer, just like real police, so I tried
to break the truth to them in a roundabout, mendacious fashion, as thus:

_To the Editor of "The Star."_

SIR: Now that "The Big Bow Mystery" is solved to the satisfaction
of at least one person, will you allow that person the use of your
invaluable columns to enable him to thank the hundreds of your
readers who have favored him with their kind suggestions and
solutions while his tale was running and they were reading? I ask
this more especially because great credit is due to them for
enabling me to end the story in a manner so satisfactory to myself.
When I started it, I had, of course, no idea who had done the
murder, but I was determined no one should guess it. Accordingly,
as each correspondent sent in the name of a suspect, I determined
he or she should not be the guilty party. By degrees every one of
the characters got ticked off as innocent--all except one, and I
had no option but to make that character the