and then the screen went blank and a sign appeared. It said OWING TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL TRANSMISSION HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED. Frensic regarded it balefully. It seemed gratuitous. That circumstances were now beyond anyone's control was perfectly obvious. Thanks to Piper's high-mindedness and Sonia Futtle's ghastly intervention his career as a literary agent was done for. The morning papers would be filled with the expose of The Author Who Wasn't. Hutchmeyer would cancel the contract and almost certainly sue for damages. The possibilities were endless and all of them awful. Frensic turned to find Geoffrey looking at him curiously.
'That was Miss Futtle, wasn't it?' he said.
Frensic nodded dumbly.
'What on earth was she doing hurling herself about like that for? I've never seen anything so extraordinary in my life. A bloody author starts lambasting his own novel. What did he say it was? A vile monstrous degenerate book debasing the very foundations of English literature. And the next thing you know is his own agent behaving like a gargantuan banshee, yelling 'Cut!' and hurling mikes about the place. Something out of a nightmare.'
Frensic sought frantically for an explanation. 'I suppose you could call it a happening,' he muttered.
'A happening?'
'You know, a sort of random, inconsequential occurrence,' said Frensic lamely.
'A random...inconsequential...?' said Geoffrey. 'If you think there aren't going to be any consequences...'
Frensic tried not to think of them. 'It certainly made it a very memorable interview,' he said.
Geoffrey goggled at him. 'Memorable? I should think it will go down in history.' He stopped and regarded Frensic open-mouthed. 'A happening? You said a happening. Good Lord, you mean to say you put them up to it?'
'I what?' said Frensic.
'Put them up to it. You deliberately stage-managed that shambles. You got Piper to say all those extraordinary things about his own novel and then Miss Futtle bursts in and goes berserk and you've pulled the biggest publicity stunt...'
Frensic considered this explanation and found it better than the truth. 'I suppose it was rather good publicity,' he said modestly. 'I mean most of those interviews are rather tame.'
Geoffrey helped himself to some more whisky. 'Well I must take my hat off to you,' he said. 'I wouldn't have had the nerve to dream up a thing like that. Mind you, that Eleanor Beazley has had it coming to her for years.'
Frensic began to relax. If only he could get hold of Sonia before she was arrested or whatever they did to people who burst into TV studios and disrupted programmes, and before Piper could do any more damage with his literary high-mindedness, he might be able to save something from the catastrophe.
In the event there was no need. Sonia and Piper had already left the studio in a hurry followed by Eleanor Beazley's shrill voice uttering threats and imprecations and the programme producer's still shriller promise to take legal action. They fled down the corridor and into an elevator and shut the door.
'What did you mean by ' Piper began as they descended.
'Drop dead,' said Sonia. 'If it hadn't been for me you'd have landed us all in it up to the eyeballs, shooting your mouth off like that.'
'Well, she said '
'The hell with what she said,' shouted Sonia, 'it was what you were saying that got to me. Looks great, an author telling half a million viewers that his own novel stinks.'
'But it isn't my own novel,' said Piper.
'Oh yes it is. It is now. Wait till you see tomorrow's papers. They're going to have headlines
