"Elementary, My Dear

Watson!"

By “Amel”

THE money, two pound notes in a sealed envelope, had gone. Nobody knew where. With my usual forethought, I had placed the envelope on a shelf between two windows, while a brisk wind was blowing. Consequently, when I went to collect it a little later, it had vanished I turned the house inside out, peered down crab-holes and rooted around in the canna beds, but nothing could I find.

Then up spoke Sherlock Holmes.

“You put the envelope there?”

“Yes.”

“And the wind was blowing?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it would blow the envelope out of the window. And it should be lying there,” he indicated, “but it isn’t,”

Yes and no,” I said, feebly.

“Hmnn,” he muttered, “this needs some thinking out.” Brow wrinkled and chin in hand, Dad wandered around the yard.

The strain was too much for me. I went and had a bath. In the midst of my ablutions, I heard an ear-splitting yell, by which I judged that Dad had either stubbed his toe on a coconut, bumped his head on a shutter, or solved the problem.

The latter was the case. Waving the missing envelope in his hand, Dad had an interesting tale to relate. It was the sort of thing you read about and view with a slight tinge of scepticism. Yet everyone who knows the impudent little maina bird of the Islands will believe it.

Having noticed a maina carry a piece of paper up to its nest in a coconut tree, he had resolved to set a trap and test a theory. Placing a piece of paper on the ground near the window, he watched quietly. Presently, along came a maina, cocked its eye at the paper, seized it and made off. But a strong gust of wind wrenched the paper from the bird’s grasp, and it did not bother to retrieve it.

Another bait was tried —this time an open envelope with a thin piece of paper inside. Once more the maina appeared, and inspected the envelope. This, ap parently, was to its liking. The bird, as if a connoisseur on such matters, looked into the envelope, saw that it contained something good and . . . shook it out!

Then, spearing it daintily with its beak, it flew up into the hollow limb of a nearby tree.

Dad grabbed a ladder and swiftly mounted to investigate. The maina fled.

Putting his hand inside the hollow limb, he drew out rags, sticks, the paper and other rubbish . . . but no envelope.

Disappointed, he sat up there on his perch and gazed around the landscape.

Suddenly, under a kaumoce bush, on the ground, he spotted a corner of white.

Fixing it with his eye, lest it should be spirited away, he slowly dismounted.

It was the missing envelope, with the money intact. The maina, unable to ex tract the notes, had cast the whole thing from its nest . . . only to lead us to its discovery again!

Lieutenant Colin Hill, Royal Australian Naval Reserve, who was second officer on the trans-Pacific liner “Niagara” before the war, has been made a member of the Order of the British Empire (Military), He led a small party of volunteers from the Australian destroyer “Waterhen” (since sunk by Nazi dive bombers in the Mediterranean) and sal vaged a burning oil tanker near Suda Bay, Crete.

Three Salamaua (New Guinea) men, D. Williams, G. Clark, and H. Wyatt, are serving in the same AIF battalion in the Middle East.