Sensing that the moment was right to thwart Muffin Mind's evil scheme (as we're less than a handful of pages away from the end of this farcical adventure, now seemed as good a time as any...) our hero set down his tea, wiped his mouth on a mop, tinkled, *coughed*, retched, Blasted!, panged a few times for luck and did some other random things before, about a month later, rising from his chair.

  “Since you are such a fan of puzzles and the like, Muffin Mind,” he proposed, remembering at least one point from the villain's long-winded napkin-based biography, “perhaps you'd like to hear a riddle or my own?”

  “I would welcome it,” Muffin Mind replied from his knees (for the moment at least he was no longer screaming) somewhat intrigued by our hero's cerebral provocation – at long last! “I will readily accept any mental challenge you wish to engage me in, for I will doubtlessly prosper.”

  Crumpet-Hands Man grinned, placed his hands on the elegant little tea table before him. Primed and ready to take the decisive advantage in this intellectual bout of the most heavyweight, he said, “Very well. Since you've tried to turn the tables on me, Muffin Mind...

  “Allow me to turn the tables on you!” he declared, flipping the table end over end with a mighty thrust. Much a smashing of much expensive china, doily, cake stand and half-eaten chair resulted – and not much else.

  “What did you do that for?” Muffin Mind demanded after a long period of silence, put out by such a senseless, pointless destruction of his beautifully assembled tea. “Was that the epitome of your plan?” “Erm,” was the epitome of our hero's reasoning. “Yes!” wheezed the fallen table. “Sorry,” Crumpet-Hands Man mourned, pulled a tablecloth over its dying face. “Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow. Have mercy on–”

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  Swinging from the end of his metaphorical tether, shards of china and biscuit and molten raspberry crunching under his feet, Muffin Mind came to loom over our hero. “Well, your impertinence matters little now,” he sneered. “You will join my legion of villains in the end, Crumpet-Hands Man – whether you agree to or not.”

  “And if I don't agree to agreeing with your agreement to agree?”

  “If you disagree,” the villain steamed, going in for a strangle, “then you leave me with no choice but to– ”

  Curtailing the villain mid-threat, the tablecloth which lay across the deaded table inexplicably erected into the air as though an awoken ghost and proceeded to wrap itself around the startled head-muffin of Muffin Mind. Equally as startled by such a bizarre turn of events, Crumpet-Hands Man watched on as the villain and the tablecloth wrestled around the floor; knocking him back, he experienced that sting which only arrives with a slap across the face.

  “Wake up, Crumpet-Hands Man!” he heard from some dreamlike faraway place.“Wake up!”

  Both rocked and bewildered from a second unexplained and unseen slap, our hero rubbed his reddened cheeks. He looked down at his crumpet-hands. Funny? They were wet with rain.

  “Please, Crumpet-Hands Man! You must wake up! Wake up–

  “–Wake up!” Detective Pilchard implored from the corner of the rooftop, doing his best to tug a nightie around the flailing Muffin Mind as though endeavouring to dress a bull. “Quickly, Crumpet-Hands Man! Wake up and help me! I can't hold him down much longer!”

  “Of course, my dear detective! I shall be right with you!” promised our now fully awakened hero. “But first,” he hopped behind a billboard, already unzipping his onesie...