Hardy gave the manuscript a perfunctory glance, and went on reading the morning paper. It occurred to him that the first page was a little out of the ordinary for a cranky correspondent. It seemed to consist of some theorems, very strange-looking theorems, without any argument. Hardy then decided that the man must be a fraud, and duly went about the day according to his habits, giving a lecture, playing a game of tennis. But there was something nagging at the back of his mind. Anyone who could fake such theorems, right or wrong must be a fraud of genius. Was it more or less likely that there should be a fraud of genius or an unknown Indian mathematician of genius? He went that evening after dinner to argue it out with his collaborator, J.E. Littlewood, whom Hardy always insisted was a better mathematician than himself. They soon had no doubt of the answer. Hardy was seeing the work of someone whom, for natural genius, he could not touch – who, in natural genius, though of course not in achievement, as Hardy said later, belonged to the class of Euler and Gauss.