with Letitia Reynolds?'
'That's right.'
June swallowed the aspirin.
'Well, I'll explain, June, the way he explained it to me. All characters really exist - at least, in the minds of the authors. But when people really begin to believe in them, they begin to exist in reality, because what people believe in, is, so far as they're concerned, and what is existence anyway?'
June's lips trembled. 'Oh, Gramie, please don't. Mother will never let me marry you if they put you in an asylum.'
'Don't call me Gramie, June, for God's sake. I tell you he was there, trying to tell me what to write and how to write it. He was almost as bad as you. Aw, come on, Baby, don't cry.'
'I can't help it. I always thought you were crazy, but I never thought you were crazy!'
'All right, what's the difference? Let's not talk about it any more. I'm never going to write another mystery novel. After all' - (he indulged in a bit of indignation) - 'when it gets so that my own character - my own character - tries to tell me what to do, it's going too far.'
June looked over her handkerchief. 'How do you know it was really de Meister?'
'Oh, golly. As soon as he tapped his Turkish cigarette on the back of his hand and started dropping g's like snowflakes in a blizzard, I knew the worst had come.'
The telephone rang. June leaped up. 'Don't answer, Graham. It's probably from the asylum. I'll tell them you're not here. Hello. Hello. Oh, Mr. MacDunlap.' She heaved a sigh of relief, then covered the mouthpiece and whispered hoarsely, 'It might be a trap.'
'Hello, Mr. MacDunlap!... No, he's not here...Yes, I
think I can get in touch with him...At Martin's tomorrow,
noon... I'll tell him... With who?... With who???' She hung up suddenly.
'Graham, you're to lunch with MacDunlap tomorrow,'
'At his expense! Only at his expense! '
Her great blue eyes got greater and bluer, 'And Reginald de Meister is to dine with you."
'What Reginald de Meister?'
'Your Reginald de Meister.'
'My Reg-'
'Oh, Gramie, don't.' Her eyes misted, 'Don't you see, Gramie, now they'll put us both in an insane asylum - and Mr. MacDunlap, too. And they'll probably put us all in the same padded cell. Oh, Gramie, three is such a dreadful crowd.'
And her face crumpled into tears.
Grew S. MacDunlap (that the S. stands for 'Some' is a vile untruth spread by his enemies) was alone at the table when Graham Dorn entered. Out of this fact, Graham extracted a few fleeting drops of pleasure.
It was not so much, you understand, the presence of MacDunlap that did it, as the absence of de Meister.
MacDunlap looked at him over his spectacles and swallowed a liver pill, his favorite sweetmeat.
'Aha. You're here. What is this corny joke you're putting over on me? You had no right to mix me up with a person like de Meister without warning me he was real. I might have taken precautions. I could have hired a bodyguard. I could have bought a revolver.'
'He's not real. God damn it! Half of him was your idea.'
That,' returned MacDunlap with heat, 'is libel. And what do you mean, he's not real? When he introduced himself, I took three liver pills at once and he didn't disappear. Do you know what three pills are? Three pills, the kind I've got (the doctor should only drop dead), could make an elephant disappear - if he weren't real. I know.'
Graham said wearily, 'Just the same, he exists only in my mind.'
'In your mind, I know he exists. Your mind should be investigated by the Pure Food and Drugs Act.'
The several polite rejoinders that occurred simultaneously to Graham were dismissed almost immediately as containing too great a proportion of pithy Anglo-Saxon expletives. After all -ha, ha - a publisher is a publisher however Anglo-Saxony he may be.
Graham said, 'The question arises, then, how we're to get rid of de Meister.'
'Get rid of de Meister?' MacDunlap jerked the glasses off his nose in his sudden start, and caught them in one hand. His voice thickened with emotion. 'Who wants to get rid of him?'
Chapter Three
'Do you want him around?'
'God forbid,' MacDunlap said between shudders. 'Next to him, my brother-in-law is an angel.'
'He has no business outside my books.'
'For my part, he has no business inside them. Since I started reading your manuscripts, my doctor added kidney pills and cough syrups to my medicines.' He looked at his watch, and took a kidney pill. 'My worst enemy should be