Stop Press by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page A

pestering sort that celebrities must endure and he therefore expressed no curiosity. This forbearance was rewarded. Later in the evening Mr Eliot explained. When he picked up the receiver a voice had immediately said: ‘I am the Spider. I know all.’ This was the point at which Mr Eliot had thought of cutting off the caller and refrained. The voice had then said: ‘I have a warning for your paramour Mrs Birdwire.’ And this was when Mr Eliot had angrily put the receiver down. Three nights later the burglary at Mrs Birdwire’s took place.
    And after this the Spider got into his stride. One afternoon the vicar called in barely concealed panic. The Spider, it seemed, had again intimated that he knew all. Mr Eliot had the delicate task of reassuring his visitor while steering clear of embarrassing confidence; he conjectured, he told Timmy, that the secret which lay heavy on the vicar’s conscience was Intellectual Doubt. Then there was the village schoolmistress. The Spider – presumably the Spider qua detective – let her know that Mr Eliot, and Mr Eliot alone, could reveal to her the mystery of her true paternity. The subject was one on which the schoolmistress had never before entertained doubt; nevertheless the Spider had chosen the recipient of his message with rudimentary psychological skill and Mr Eliot was put to a good deal of trouble before the matter was smoothed over. And hard upon this the Spider contrived several similar absurdities. This represented the first phase of his activities.
    The second phase was more subtle. And logically it should have come first. For whereas in the earlier phase the Spider was already an independent agent, devising actions according to his own fancy, in this later phase he contrived to give the impression of painfully breaking free from that ink and paper prison in which he had hitherto had his being. The effect, Timmy put it with a flight of fancy, was as if the inanimate-seeming husk of his father’s books had trembled and cracked – and from the chrysalis there had struggled a living thing. Or it was like an advertisement which he remembered as particularly impressing his youth: that pioneer piece of surrealism in which the ancestors are stepping down from the walls to enjoy a well-known brand of whisky.
    It was some time before Mr Eliot appeared to realize what was happening. His habits of composition were a little unusual; commonly he liked to work on two novels simultaneously and in addition to these there would be a number of short stories to which he gave sporadic attention. For years his work had been troublesome to him and when he spoke of it his tone was not infrequently one of irritation. This tendency, as might be imagined, was accentuated at the time of the incidents centring in the Birdwire burglary. And then came a change. Mr Eliot several times spoke with satisfaction of the current novels; he thought there was unusual life in them. The characters were coming alive and going their own way. This is always something grateful to the novelist, even if the result is sleepless nights trying to rebuild a shattered plot. And Mr Eliot, who had peopled thirty-seven volumes with automata, was apparently pleasantly excited at the new sense of his creations stirring beneath his hand. But this feeling lasted only a short time. Mr Eliot was observed to be in increasing perplexity; one morning he held a consultation with his secretary; and the true explanation of his sense of an independent life in his characters emerged. Mr Eliot’s manuscripts were mysteriously rewriting themselves in their files.
    Timmy had got so far when Winter raised a protesting hand. ‘Young man, it is you who talk far, far too well. You ought to go into the family business. Do you realize how much you are dramatizing these absurd occurrences? The manuscripts were mysteriously rewriting themselves, indeed!’
    Timmy, who had certainly been doing his best to present a dramatic narrative, opened