And so once more the words formed indelibly black upon the page with all the old elegance of shape that had so satisfied him in the past. Below him the lake shone in the summer sunlight and a breeze ruffled the trees around the cabin, but Piper was oblivious to his surroundings. He had picked up the thread of his existence where it had broken in the Gleneagle Guest House in Exforth and was back into Search.
When Baby returned that evening from her flight to New York with the copy of his first manuscript now safely mailed to Frensic & Futtle, Lanyard Lane, London, she found Piper his old self. The trauma of the fire and their flight had been forgotten.
'You see, what I am doing is combining my own novel with Pause,' he explained as she poured herself a drink. 'Instead of Gwendolen being...'
'Tell me about it in the morning,' said Baby. 'Right now I've had a tiring day and tomorrow we've got to be on the road again.'
'I see you've bought another car,' said Piper looking out at a red Pontiac.
'Air-conditioned and with South Carolina plates. Anyone thinks they're going to come looking for us, they're going to have a hard time. I didn't even trade in this time. Sold the Ford in Beanville and took a Greyhound to Charlotte and bought this in Ashville on the way back. We'll change again farther south. We're covering our tracks.'
'Not by sending copies of Pause to Frensic, we aren't,' said Piper, 'I mean he's bound to know I haven't died.'
'That reminds me. I sent him a telegram in your name.'
'You did what?' squawked Piper.
'Sent him a telegram.'
'Saying what?'
'Just, quote Transfer advance royalties care of First National Bank of New York account number 478776 love Piper unquote.'
'But I haven't got an account...'
'You have now, honey. I opened one for you and made the first deposit. One thousand dollars. Now when Frensic gets that birthday greeting '
'Birthday greeting? You send a telegram demanding money and you call that a birthday greeting?'
'Had to delay it somehow till he'd had time to read the original of Pause,' said Baby, 'so I said he had a birthday on the 19th and they're holding it over.'
'Christ,' said Piper, 'some damned birthday greeting. I suppose you realize he's got a heart condition? I mean shocks like this could kill him.'
'Makes two of you,' said Baby. 'He's effectively killed you...'
'He did nothing of the sort. You were the one to sign my death certificate and end my career as a novelist.'
Baby finished her drink and sighed. 'There's gratitude for you. Your career as a novelist is just about to begin.'
'Posthumously,' said Piper bitterly.
'Well, better late than never,' said Baby, and took herself off to bed.
The next morning the red Pontiac left the cabin and wound up the curving mountain road in the direction of Tennessee.
'We'll go west as far as Memphis,' said Baby, 'and ditch the car there and double back by Greyhound to Chattanooga. I've always wanted to see the Choo Choo.'
Piper said nothing. He had just realized how he had met Miss Pears/Gwendolen. It had been one summer holiday when his parents had taken him down to Exforth and instead of sitting on the beach with them he had gone to the public library and there...The house no longer stood on a knoll. It was at the top of the hill by the cliffs and its windows stared out to sea. Perhaps that wasn't such a good idea. Not in the second version. No, he would leave it where it was and concentrate on the relationships. In that way there would be more consistency between Pause and Work In Regress, more authenticity. But in the third revision he would work on the setting and the house would stand on the cliffs above Exforth. And with each succeeding draft he would approximate a little more closely to that great novel on which he had been working for ten years. Piper smiled to himself at this realization. As the author of Pause O Men for the Virgin he had been given the fame he had always sought, had had fame forced upon him, and now by slow, persistent rewriting of that book he would reproduce the literary masterpiece that had been his life's work. And there was absolutely nothing Frensic could do about it.
That night they slept in separate motels in Memphis and next morning met at the bus depot and took the Greyhound to Nashville. The red Pontiac had gone. Piper didn't even bother to enquire how Baby had disposed of it. He had more important things on his mind. What, for instance, would happen if Frensic produced the real original manuscript of Pause and admitted that he had sent Piper to America as the substitute author?
'Two million dollars,' said Baby succinctly when he put this possibility to her.
'I don't see what they have to do with it,' said Piper.
'That's the price of the risk he took playing people poker with Hutch. You stake two million on a bluff you've got to have good reasons.'
'I can't imagine what they are.'
Baby smiled. 'Like who the real writer is. And don't give me that crap about a guy with six children and terminal arthritis. There's no such thing.'
'There isn't?' said Piper.
'No way. So we've got Frensic willing to risk his reputation as a literary agent for a percentage of two million and an author who goes along with him to preserve his precious anonymity from disclosure. That adds up to one hell of a weird set of circumstances. And Hutch hears what's going on he's going to murder them.'
'If Hutchmeyer hears what we've been doing he isn't going to be exactly pleased,' said Piper gloomily.
'Yes but we aren't there and Frensic is. In Lanyard Lane and by now he's got to be sweating.'
And Frensic was. The arrival of a large packet mailed in New York and addressed Personal, Frederick Frensic, had excited his curiosity only mildly. Arriving early at the office he had taken it upstairs with him and had opened several letters before turning his attention to the package. But from that moment onwards he had sat petrified staring at its contents. In front of him lay, neatly Xeroxed, sheet after sheet of Piper's unmistakable handwriting and just as equally unmistakably the original manuscript of Pause O Men for the Virgin. Which was impossible. Piper hadn't written the bloody book. He couldn't have. It was out of the question. And anyway why should anyone send him Xeroxed copies of a manuscript? The manuscript. Frensic rummaged through the pages and noted the corrections. The damned thing was the manuscript of Pause. And it was in Piper's handwriting. Frensic got up from his desk and went through to the filing cabinet and brought back the file now marked Mr Smith and compared the handwriting of Piper's letters with that of the manuscript. No doubt about it. He even reached for a magnifying glass and studied the letters through it. Identical. Christ. What the hell was going on? Frensic felt most peculiar. Some sort of waking nightmare had taken hold of him. Piper had written Pause? The obstacles in the way of such a supposition were insuperable. The little bugger couldn't have written anything and if he had...even if he quite miraculously had, what about Mr Cadwalladine and his anonymous client? Why should Piper have sent him the typed copy of the book through a solicitor in Oxford? And anyway the sod was dead. Or was he? No, he was definitely dead, drowned, murdered...Sonia's grief had been too real for disbelief. Piper was dead. Which brought him full circle to the question, who had sent this post-mortem manuscript? From New York? Frensic looked at the postmark. New York. And why Xeroxed? There had to be a reason. Frensic grabbed the package and rummaged inside it in the hope that it might contain some clue like a covering letter. But the package was empty. He turned to the outside. The address was typed. Frensic turned the packet over in search of a return address but there was nothing there. He turned back to the pages had read several more. There could be no doubting the authenticity of the writing. The corrections on every page were conclusive. They had been there in exactly the same form in every annual copy of Search for a Lost Childhood, a sentence scratched neatly out and a new one written in above. Worst of all, there were even the spelling mistakes. Piper had always spelt necessary with two cs and parallel with two rs, and here they were once again as final proof that the little maniac had actually penned the book which had gone to print with his name on the title page. But the decision to use his name hadn't been Piper's. He had only been consulted when the book had already been sold...