“Oh, I don’t know,” said Freddie. “It wasn’t bad fun getting a rest. And of course there was the fiver.”

“What fiver?”

“I got a fiver from the Weekly Cyclist for getting my ankle sprained.”

“You—what?” cried Ukridge, profoundly stirred—as ever—by a tale of easy money. “Do you mean to sit there and tell me that some dashed paper paid you five quid simply because you sprained your ankle? Pull yourself together, old horse. Things like that don’t happen.”

“It’s quite true.”

“Can you show me the fiver?”

“No; because if I did you would try to borrow it.”

Ukridge ignored this slur in dignified silence.

“Would they pay a fiver to anyone who sprained his ankle?” he asked, sticking to the main point.

“Yes. If he was a subscriber.”

“I knew there was a catch in it,” said Ukridge, moodily.

“Lots of weekly papers are starting this wheeze,” proceeded Freddie. “You pay a year’s subscription and that entitles you to accident insurance.”

We were interested. This was in the days before every daily paper in London was competing madly against its rivals in the matter of insurance and offering princely bribes to the citizens to make a fortune by breaking their necks. Nowadays papers are paying as high as two thousand pounds for a genuine corpse and five pounds a week for a mere dislocated spine; but at that time the idea was new and it had an attractive appeal.

“How many of these rags are doing this?” asked Ukridge. You could tell from the gleam in his eyes that that great brain was whirring like a dynamo. “As many as ten?”

“Yes, I should think so. Quite ten.”

“Then a fellow who subscribed to them all and then sprained his ankle would get fifty quid?” said Ukridge, reasoning acutely.

“More if the injury was more serious,” said Freddie, the expert. “They have a regular tariff. So much for a broken arm, so much for a broken leg, and so 

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