'We wouldn't be in the ghastly position we are now, that I do know.'
'You'd have gone out of business,' said Frensic. 'Pause saved you. You've done very nicely out of the book and I've sent you others. Corkadales is a name to be reckoned with now.'
'Well, I suppose that's true,' said Geoffrey, slightly mollified, 'but it's going to be a name that will stink if it gets out that Piper is still alive and didn't write...'
'It isn't going to get out,' said Frensic, 'I promise you that.'
Geoffrey looked at him doubtfully. 'Your promises...' he began.
'You'll just have to trust me,' said Frensic.
'Trust you? After this? You can rest assured that if there's one thing I'm not going to do...'
'You'll have to. Remember that contract you signed? The one saying you had paid fifty thousand pounds advance for Pause?'
'You tore that up,' said Geoffrey, 'I saw you do it.'
Frensic nodded. 'But Hutchmeyer didn't,' he said. 'He had photocopies made and if this thing comes to court you're going to have a hard time explaining why you signed two contracts with the same author for the same book. It isn't going to look good, Geoffrey, not good at all.'
Geoffrey could see that. He sat down.
'What do you want?' he asked.
'A bed for the night,' said Frensic, 'and tomorrow morning I shall go to the American Embassy for a visa.'
'I can't see why you've got to spend the night here,' said Geoffrey.
'You would if you saw her,' said Frensic man-to-man. Geoffrey poured him another brandy.
'I'll have to explain to Sven,' he said, 'he's obsessively jealous. By the way, who did write Pause?' But Frensic shook his head. 'I can't tell you. There are some things it's best for you not to know. Just let's say the late Peter Piper.'
'The late?' said Geoffrey with a shudder. 'It's a curious expression to apply to the living.'
'It's a curious expression to apply to the dead,' said Frensic, 'It seems to suggest that they may yet turn up. Better late than never.'
'I wish I could share your optimism,' said Geoffrey.
Next morning, after a restless night in a strange bed, Frensic went to the American Embassy and got his visa. He visited his bank and he bought a return ticket to Florida. That night he left Heathrow. He spent the crossing in a drunken stupor and boarded the flight from Miami to Atlanta next day feeling hot, ill and filled with foreboding. To delay matters he spent the next night in a hotel and studied a map of Alabama. It was a detailed map but he couldn't find Bibliopolis. He tried the desk clerk but the man had never heard of it.
'You'd best go to Selma and ask there,' he told Frensic. Frensic caught the Greyhound to Selma and enquired at the Post Office.
The sticks. A wide place in the road over Mississippi way,' he was told. 'Swamp country on the Ptomaine River. Take Route 80 about a hundred miles and go north. Are you from New England?'
'Old England,' said Frensic, 'why do you ask?'
'Just that they don't take too kindly to Northern strangers in those parts. Damn Yankees they call them. They're still living in the past.'
'So is the man I want to see,' said Frensic and went out to rent a car. The man at the office increased his apprehension.
'You're going out along Blood Alley you want to take care,' he said.
'Blood Alley?' said Frensic anxiously.
That's what they call Route 80 through to Meridian. That road's seen a whole heap of deaths.'
'Isn't there a more direct route to Bibliopolis?'
