I turned to Mortimer.
"Much laager," I said, "has made him mad."
Tommy chuckled.
"I'm not joking. I've got two miles of the finest private fishing on the Wye from Saturday to Monday, and a bungalow chucked in."
Mortimer nodded his head.
"That's right," he added.
I gazed at Tommy in mingled amazement and admiration.
"My dear Tommy," I said, "no one appreciates your powers of acquisition more than I do, but how the devil did you manage it?"
Tommy lit a cigar with some contentment.
"It was a reward for a kind action," he explained. "The place belongs to an old boy called Quinn—Sir Cuthbert Quinn. I ran across him last week in a country lane near Bedford, trying to find out what was the matter with his car. He'd been trying for some time. Well, I hopped out and put things straight—it was only a choked jet, but he was so grateful that he insisted on my coming back to lunch with him. While we were lunching, we got on the subject of salmon fishing. I happened to say how keen I was, and then he trotted out the fact that he owned an island with a bungalow on it and two miles of the best fishing above Symonds Yat. 'Would you like a week-end there?' he said. 'I should,' said I, 'very much.' Well, to cut a long yarn short, he handed me over the key, and told me I could come up for a couple of days and bring another rod with me. I couldn't think of any one else at the time, so I wired for Mortimer."