bait

Quite a number of years ago my elderly next-door neighbour asked me what I knew about a man named Hartley Spurr. I told him I had never heard the name, and he asked me to help him find out. All he knew, he told me, was that the name "Hartley Spurr" had made its way into a saying among some of his acquaintances. "If you wanted some obscure tool or object, somebody would pipe up and say: 'Hartley Spurr had one of those'," my neighbour said. I assured him I would try to find out, and…