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"Puzzlehead" they had called him at his preparatory school, Old Puzzlehead Sabre, the chap who always wrinkled up his nut over things and came out with the most extraordinary ideas. He had remained, and increasingly become, the puzzler.
Said Hapgood that garrulous Hapgood, solicitor, who first in this book spoke of Sabre to a mutual friend said Hapgood, seated in the comfortable study of his fiat, to that same friend, staying the night: "Well, now, old man, about Sabre. Well, I tell you it's a funny business a dashed funny business, the position old Puzzlehead Sabre has got himself into.
I said, 'Good lord, man, fancy sticking up for a chap like that! And old Sabre by Jove, I tell you there we all were in a flash back in the playground at old Wickamote's, down in that corner by the workshop, all kids again and old Puzzlehead flicking his hand out of his pocket remember how he used to? like that and saying, 'You sickening fool, I'm not sticking up for him, I'm only saying he's right from how he looks at it and it's no good saying he's wrong! Rum, eh, after all those years.... No, he didn't say, 'You sickening fool' this time.
I'm only saying he's right from how he looks at it and it's no good saying he's wrong.... Ha! Funny days.... Jolly nice chap, though, old Puzzlehead was.... Yes, I met him.... Fact, I run into him occasionally. We do a mild amount of business with his firm. I buzz down there about once a year. Tidborough. He's changed, of course. So have you, you know. That Vandyke beard, what? Ha!
When old Wickamote or some one had landed him, or all of us, with some dashed punishment, and we were gassing about it, used to screw up his nut in the same way and say, 'Yes, but I see what he means. And some one would say, 'Well, what does he mean, you ass? and he'd start gassing some rot till some one said, 'Good lord, fancy sticking up for a master! And old Puzzlehead would say, 'You sickening fool, I'm not sticking up for him.
Sabre displayed the "wrinkled-up nut" of his Puzzlehead boyhood. "I'm not sticking up for them. I detest their methods as much as you do. I think they're monstrous and indefensible. All I said was that, things being as they are, you can't help seeing that their horrible ways are bringing the vote a jolly sight nearer than it's ever been before.
Here, in the effect upon him of beauty and of ideas communicated to his mind by his reading first manifested to him by the Byron revelation was the mark and label of his individuality: here was the linking up of the boy who as Puzzlehead Sabre would wrinkle up his nut and say, "Well, I can't quite see that, sir," with the man in whom the same habit persisted; he saw much more clearly and infinitely more intensely with his mind than with his eye.
Thought better of it, thanks be; patched him up; discharged him from the Army; and sent him home very groggy, only just able to put the bad leg to the ground, crutches, and going to be a stick and a bit of a limp all his life. Poor old Puzzlehead. Think yourself lucky you were a Conscientious Objector, old man.... Oh, damn you, that hurt. "Very well. That's as he was when I first saw him again.
But that was my impression though that she wasn't just the sort of woman for old Sabre. But after all, what the dickens sort of woman would be? Fiddling chap for a husband, old Puzzlehead. Can imagine him riling any wife with wrinkling up his nut over some plain as a pikestaff thing and saying, 'Well, I don't quite see that. Ha! Rum chap. Nice chap. Have a drink?"
But they're all characters down there from what I've seen of it.... "Yes, you go down there and have a look, with your sketch-book. Old Sabre'll love to see you.... His wife?... Oh, very nice, distinctly nice. Pretty woman, very. Somehow I didn't think quite the sort of woman for old Puzzlehead.
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