His tastes were bookish; Nature had intended him for the librarian of a circulating library: the safe pilot of middle class ladies through the ocean of new fiction which overwhelms the British Isles twice a year.

His particular hobby was paleontology.
He was the author of _The Jurassic Deposits of Norfolk, with Some Remarks on the Kimeridge Clay_--an exhaustive study of the geological formation of the county and the remains of prehistoric reptiles, fishes, mollusca and crustacea which had been discovered therein.

This work, which had taken six years to prepare, had almost been lost to the world through the carelessness of the Postal Department, which had allowed the manuscript to go astray while in transit from Norfolk to the London publishers.
The distracted author had stirred up the postal authorities at London and Norwich, and had ultimately received a courteous communication from the Postmaster General to the effect that all efforts to trace the missing packet had failed.

A friend of Mr.Cromering's suggested that he should invoke the aid of the famous detective Colwyn, who had a name for solving mysteries which baffled the police.

Mr.Cromering took the advice and wrote to Colwyn, offering to mention his name in a preface to _The Jurassic Deposits_ if he succeeded in recovering the missing manuscript.