Trebizondo Culpeper snorted. His was a mighty snort, caused on this occasion by his reading, in the Standard, of the well-known science lecturer Dr. J. Q. Rumball’s theory that the origin of the potato disorder was of an electrical nature.

Trebizondo Culpeper gathered about him a buzz of acolytes, keen young Trebizondo Culpeperists with bright eyes and intriguingly windswept hairstyles.

“Hark!” boomed Trebizondo Culpeper, waving the newspaper aloft, “Rumball is spouting forth his electrical theory of the origin of the potato disorder. Never has it been clearer to me that it is wholly and utterly a matter of gas! Fan out, now, youngsters, fan out and spread the word!”

And so the Trebizondo Culpeperists went each to his own cubicle, and took up his stylus, and scraped on flat sheets of gleaming Trebizondoculpeperiteâ„¢ screeds to the Standard, and to other newspapers, and to magazines and journals and important institutions, discrediting Rumball and his theory and making the case for a gas origin of the potato disorder.

In his eyrie, Trebizondo Culpeper beamed with glee. He ground the Standard under his boot, and he poked pins into a waxen doll of Dr. J. Q. Rumball, and he unscrewed the nozzle on his canister, and put the siphon to his plumpish bulbous lips, and he took a deep, deep draught of the gas.

And when he exhaled, all about him shrivelled and withered and died. He clapped his hands, and called to an acolyte to bring him a platter of newly disordered potatoes.