1.  Lt.  Ross possessed a bicycle, motor, one.  No. 54321 L/Cpl.  Burt possessed feet, two, only.  Ross had no occasion, ability or disposition to ride a motor bicycle.  No. 54321 could neither do his business nor enjoy life afoot.  Accordingly, No. 54321 rode the bicycle, while, for the purposes of what is known to better people than ourselves as Establishment, Ross owned it.  But that was in the good old days, before Traffic and Police and all the Others interested themselves.

2.  The first thing Traffic did was to say that all owners of motor bicycles must own cards, and produce them when demanded.  That was easy:  No. 54321 got the card.  Then Police issued some vague but menacing literature with regard to the fate of people who stole other people’s property or failed to stick to their own.  There was no difficulty about this; Ross publicly fathered the thing.

3.  Traffic, issuing new cards, said next that all owners of cards must also own bicycles.  Realising the quandary, Ross was for saying he wouldn’t play any more, but would declare a separate peace.  His Mr. Brown however got up a long and intricate correspondence, at the end of which Ross was still owner and No. 54321 was still rider; both had cards, and all the authorities had, unknowingly, made themselves parties to the fraud.

Suddenly the Major declared his intention of putting the whole of Ross’s establishment (including bicycle) on what he called a satisfactory basis by a series of orders which he proposed to draft himself.  Ross, always ready to be put on a satisfactory basis by anybody, took note of the draft, and laid it before his Mr. Brown.  The latter was aghast, and proved, by infallible reasons, the fatal results which would follow if the matter was stirred up.  Ross made a careful note of the reasons, and laid them before the Major.  The Major explained gently that discipline was discipline.  And so Ross went to and fro between the two, until the Major said, “Really, Ross!” and his Mr. Brown said, “I’m very sorry, Sir, but there it is;” and yet Ross couldn’t sack his Major, and he couldn’t break away from his Mr. Brown.

He was between the Devil and the Deep Sea.  What was he to do about it?  Well, he just told the Deep Sea to keep calm a little longer, and went and waited outside the Devil’s Mess.  He saluted and asked the Devil if he’d care to come for a walk, and, the latter consenting, he led him to the Deep Sea.  Then, when the Devil himself had been introduced to the Deep Sea itself, Ross slipped off and left them in his office to fix it up between themselves.

Ross dined with the Major that night, and the latter said he wasn’t feeling at all well.  The way Ross’s Mr. Brown had licked his thumb and the lightning speed with which he had turned up exactly the right correspondence, office minute or Routine Order, had nearly given the Major heart disease.  Besides, he’d lost the argument.  “I was too heavily handicapped from the start,” said he, “by not being in a position to lick my thumb or to stick my pencil behind my ear.”