Mr. McKinnon alighted; and James, as he glanced at him, felt cheered and encouraged by the very sight of the man. The literary agent was a grim, hard-bitten person, to whom, when he called at their offices to arrange terms, editors kept their faces turned so that they might at least retain their back collar studs. There was no sentiment in Andrew McKinnon. Editresses of society papers practised their blandishments on him in vain, and many a publisher had waked screaming in the night, dreaming that he was signing a McKinnon contract.
“Well, Rodman,” he said, “Prodder & Wiggs have agreed to our terms. I was writing to tell you so when your wire arrived. I had a lot of trouble with them, but it’s fixed at twenty percent, rising to twenty-five, and two hundred pounds advance royalties on day of publication.”
“Good!” said James absently. “Good! McKinnon, do you remember my aunt, Leila J. Pinckney?”
“Remember her? Why, I was her agent all her life.”
“Of course. Then you know the sort of tripe she wrote.”
“No author,” said Mr. McKinnon reprovingly, “who pulls down a steady twenty thousand pounds a year writes tripe.”
“Well anyway, you know her stuff.”
“Who better?”
“When she died she left me five thousand pounds and her house, Honeysuckle Cottage. I’m living there now. McKinnon, do you believe in haunted houses?”
“No.”
“Yet I tell you solemnly that Honeysuckle Cottage is haunted!”
“By your aunt?” said Mr. McKinnon, surprised.
“By her influence. There’s a malignant spell over the place; a sort of miasma of sentimentalism. Everybody who enters it succumbs.”
“Tut-tut! You mustn’t have these fancies.”
“They aren’t fancies.”
“You aren’t seriously meaning to tell me—”
“Well, how do you account for this? That book you were speaking about, which Prodder & Wiggs are to publish—The Secret Nine. Every time I sit down to write it a girl keeps trying to sneak in.”
“Into the room?”
“Into the story.”
“You don’t want a love interest in your sort of book,” said Mr. McKinnon, shaking his head. “It delays the action.”
“I know it does. And every day I have to keep shooing this infernal female out. An awful girl, McKinnon. A soppy, soupy, treacly, drooping girl with a roguish smile. This morning she tried to butt in on the scene where Lester Gage is trapped in the den of the mysterious leper.”
“No!”
“She did, I assure you. I had to rewrite three pages before I could get her out of it. And that’s not the worst. Do you know, McKinnon, that at this moment I am actually living the plot of a typical Leila J. Pinckney novel in just the setting she always used! And I can see the happy ending coming nearer every day! A week ago a girl was knocked down by a car at my door and I’ve had to put her up, and every day I realize more clearly that sooner or later I shall ask her to marry me.”
“Don’t do it,” said Mr. McKinnon, a stout bachelor. “You’re too young to marry.”
“So was Methuselah,” said James, a stouter. “But all the same I know I’m going to do it. It’s the influence of this awful house weighing upon me. I feel like an eggshell in a maelstrom. I am being sucked on by a force too strong for me to resist. This morning I found myself kissing her dog!”
“No!”
“I did! And I loathe the little beast. Yesterday I got up at dawn and plucked a nosegay of flowers for her, wet with the dew.”
“Rodman!”
“It’s a fact. I laid them at her door and went downstairs kicking myself all the way. And there in the hall was the apple-cheeked housekeeper regarding me archly. If she didn’t murmur ‘Bless their sweet young hearts!’ my ears deceived me.”
“Why don’t you pack up and leave?”
“If I do I lose the five thousand pounds.”
“Ah!” said Mr. McKinnon.
“I can understand what has happened. It’s the same with all haunted houses. My aunt’s subliminal ether vibrations have woven themselves into the texture of the place, creating an atmosphere which forces the ego of all who come in contact with it to attune themselves to it. It’s either that or something to do with the fourth dimension.”
Mr. McKinnon laughed scornfully.
“Tut-tut!” he said again. “This is pure imagination. What has happened is that you’ve been working too hard. You’ll see this precious atmosphere of yours will have no effect on me.”
“That’s exactly why I asked you to come down. I hoped you might break the spell.”
“I will that,” said Mr. McKinnon jovially.
The fact that the literary agent spoke little at lunch caused James no apprehension. Mr. McKinnon was ever a silent trencherman. From time to time James caught him stealing a glance at the girl, who was well enough to come down to meals now, limping pathetically; but he could read nothing in his face. And yet the mere look of his face was a consolation. It was so solid, so matter of fact, so exactly like an unemotional coconut.
“You’ve done me good,” said James with a sigh of relief, as he escorted the agent down the garden to his car after lunch. “I felt all along that I could rely on your rugged common sense. The whole atmosphere of the place seems different now.”
Mr. McKinnon did not speak for a moment. He seemed to be plunged in thought.
“Rodman,” he said, as he got into his car, “I’ve been thinking over that suggestion of yours of putting a love interest into The Secret Nine. I think you’re wise. The story needs it. After all, what is there greater in the world than love? Love—love—aye, it’s the sweetest word in the language. Put in a heroine and let her marry Lester Gage.”
“If,” said James grimly, “she does succeed in worming her way in she’ll jolly well marry the mysterious leper. But look here, I don’t understand—”
“It was seeing that girl that changed
