Stop Press by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page B

innocent round eyes. ‘But it was just so! The manuscripts had been rewriting themselves in the dark. When the Spider was being taken in a direction he didn’t want to go he simply cancelled a sentence or a paragraph or a page and inserted one according to his own ideas.’
    For a moment Winter looked blankly incredulous. Then he shook his head. ‘I repeat, you have the family talent for a yarn. And it makes you a thoroughly annoying witness. What form were these manuscripts in? Where were they kept? How often were they tampered with? And, above all, how could your father not see at once what was happening?’
    ‘One question at a time, please. And I’m trying to give you the thing somewhat as it affected daddy. I think that’s important; don’t you?’
    ‘No doubt. What form were these manuscripts in?’
    Disconcertingly and for a split second the smooth projectile in which they were travelling moved in two directions at once; steadying itself, it rattled comfortably over a maze of points. ‘Paddington’, said Timmy. ‘All change.’
     
    The people whom one has successfully dodged getting in one often bumps into getting out. On the platform, and while Timmy was looking for a porter to carry his unnecessarily bulky suitcase, Winter bumped into Bussenschutt.
    ‘Ah, my dear fellow: off again?’ Bussenschutt’s eye, beaming its horrid geniality, turned towards Timmy. ‘Is not that the young Eliot of whom we were speaking?’
    ‘Yes; I am spending the weekend at his home.’
    ‘And catching the Spider?’ Bussenschutt deftly gestured amused tolerance. ‘ Soyez heureux, mes enfants; vous êtes encore jeunes .’
    Winter, whose doubts about his expedition were not decreasing, smiled without friendliness. ‘You are up for a night in town, Master?’ He sunk his voice in outrageous simulation of confidence. ‘My great-uncle Edward tells me that at the Vanity what he calls the beauty-chorus is better than ever.’
    Bussenschutt smiled in turn – with the indulgence of one who will acknowledge even a feeble thrust. ‘I am going down’, he said, ‘to see Shoon. This interesting matter of his papyrus. I hope he may favour me with a photostat. My generation, my dear Winter, is not sufficiently talented to square scholarship with the forty hour week. Have a care in walking into that Parlour. And now I must pick up a taxi. Au revoir .’
    Winter took off his hat. ‘ Au revoir , Master,’ he said cheerfully. ‘See that it’s a taxi.’ He retreated feeling that in this deplorable encounter the last round was his.
    Timmy, now farther down the platform, was revolving about a tall young man in the most inflexible uniform of travel: bowler, umbrella, and the yellowest of gloves. Timmy was evidently in a quiet ecstasy. ‘I say, Winter – do you know Hugo Toplady? Hugo, this is Gerald Winter.’
    Toplady, with the air of one who makes an important decision with practised rapidity, said, ‘How do you do.’ Amid vague remarks all three bundled into a cab. They jerked out of the station into the recurrently astounding uproar of London.
    ‘I’ve been telling Winter’, said Timmy, ‘about the Spider affair. He is confident he can solve it.’
    Winter opened his mouth and was forestalled by Toplady. ‘A horrid foolery,’ he said. ‘One sees that it is a joke, but decidedly not the sort of joke one sees.’ He tapped the floor of the taxi with the attenuated ferrule of his umbrella.
    ‘Not the sort of joke one sees.’ Timmy, repeating the words as he might repeat a particularly precious line of Dante, contrived to tread deftly and cruelly on Winter’s toes. Timmy’s loves were always fortified by irony. One day, Winter reflected, he might be a great lover; he had the not common ability of adoring what was actually there.
    ‘I think’, pursued Toplady, evidently encouraged by his admirer’s approbation, ‘that what your father might usefully think of is making a call. That would be the best course to my mind: