He began:

'Dear Sir -' and added slowly and viciously, 'or Madam, as the case may be.'

He typed furiously as the inspiration caught him, disregarding the faint wisp of smoke curling upward from the overheated keys:

'You say you don't think much of de Meister in this story. Well, I don't think much of de Meister, period. You can handcuff your slimy carcass to his and jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. And I hope they drain the East River just before you jump.

'From now on, my works will be aimed higher than your scurvy press. And the day will come when I can look back on this period of my career with the loathing that is its just -'

Someone had been tapping Graham on the shoulder during the last paragraph. Graham twitched it angrily and ineffectively at intervals.

Now he stopped, turned around, and addressed the stranger in his room courteously: 'Who the devilish damnation are you? And you can leave without bothering to answer. I won't think you rude.'

The newcomer smiled graciously. His nod wafted the delicate aroma of some unobtrusive hair-oil toward Graham. His lean, hard-bitten jaw stood out keenly, and he said in a well-modulated voice:

'De Meister is the name. Reginald de Meister.'

Graham rocked to his mental foundations and heard them creak.

'Glub,' he said.

'Pardon?'

Graham recovered. 'I said, "glub," a little code word meaning which de Meister.'

'The de Meister,' explained de Meister, kindly.

'My character?- My detective?'

De Meister helped himself to a seat, and his finely-chiseled features assumed that air of well-bred boredom so admired in the best circles. He lit a Turkish cigarette, which Graham at once recognized as his detective's favorite brand, tapping it slowly and carefully against the back of his hand first, a mannerism equally characteristic.

'Really, old man,' said de Meister. 'This is really excruciat-inly funny. I suppose I am your character, y'know, but let's not work on that basis. It would be so devastatin'ly awkward.'

'Glub,' said Graham again, by way of a rejoinder.

His mind was feverishly setting up alternatives. He didn't drink, more, at the moment, was the pity, so he wasn't drunk. He had a chrome-steel digestion and he wasn't overheated, so it wasn't a hallucination. He never dreamed, and his imagination - as befitted a paying commodity - was under strict control. And since, like all authors, he was widely considered more than half a screwball, insanity was out of the question.

Which left de Meister simply an impossibility, and Graham felt relieved. It's a very poor author indeed who hasn't learned the fine art of ignoring impossibilities in writing a book.

He said smoothly, 'I have here a volume of my latest work. Do you mind naming your page and crawling back into it. I'm a busy man and God knows I have enough of you in the tripe I write.'

'But I'm here on business, old chap. I've got to come to a friendly arrangement with you first. Things are deucedly uncomfortable as they are.'

'Look, do you know you're bothering me? I'm not in the habit of talking to mythical characters. As a general thing, I don't pal around with them. Beside which, it's time your mother told you that you really don't exist.'

'My dear fellow, I always existed. Existence is such a subjective thing. What a mind thinks exists, does exist. I existed in your mind, for instance, ever since you first thought of me.'

Graham shuddered. 'But the question is, what are you doing out of my mind? Getting a little narrow for you? Want elbow room?'

'Not at all. Rather satisfact'ry mind in its way, but I achieved a more concrete existence only this afternoon, and so I seize the opportunity to engage you face to face in the aforementioned business conversation. You see, that thin, sentimental lady of your society -'

'What society?' questioned Graham hollowly. It was all awfully clear to him now.

'The one at which you made a speech' - de Meister shuddered in his turn - 'on the detective novel. She believed in my existence, so naturally, I exist.'

He finished his cigarette and flicked it out with a negligent twist of the wrist.

'The logic,' declared Graham, 'is inescapable. Now, what do you want and the answer is no.'

'Do you realize, old man, that if you stop writing de Meister stories, my existence will become that dull, wraithlike one of all superannuated fictional detectives. I'd have to gibber through the gray mists of Limbo with Holmes, Lecocoq and Dupin.'

'A very fascinating thought, I think. A very fitting fate.' Reginald de Meister's eyes turned icy, and Graham suddenly remembered the passage on page 123 of The Case of the Broken Ashtray:

His eyes, hitherto lazy and unattentive, hardened into twin pools of blue ice and transfixed the butler, who staggered back, a stifled cry on his lips,

Evidently, de Meister lost none of his characteristics out of the novels he adorned.

Graham staggered back, a stifled cry on his lips.

De Meister said menacingly, 'It would be better for you if the de Meister mysteries continue. Do you understand?'

Graham recovered and summoned a feeble indignation. 'Now, wait a while. You're getting out of hand. Remember: in a way, I'm your father. That's right. Your mental father. You can't hand me ultimatums or make threats. It isn't filial. It's lacking in the proper respect and love.'

'And another thing.' said de Meister, unmoved. 'We've got to straighten out this business of Letitia Reynolds. It's gettin' deucedly borin', y'know.'

'Now you're getting silly. My love scenes have been widely heralded as miracles of tenderness and sentiment not found in one murder mystery out of a thousand. - Wait, I'll get you a few reviews. I don't mind your attempts to dictate my actions so much, but I'm damned if you'll criticize my writing.'

'Forget the reviews. Tenderness and all that rot is what I don't want. I've been driftin' after the fair lady for five volumes now, and behavin' the most insufferable ass. This has got to stop.'

'In what way?'

'I've got to marry her in your present story. Either that, or make her a good, respectable mistress. And you'll have to stop making me so damned Victorian and gentlemanly towards ladies. I'm only human, old man.'

'Impossible!' said Graham, 'and that includes your last remark.'

De Meister grew severe. 'Really, old chap, for an author, you display the most appallio' lack of concern for the well-bein' of a character who has supported you for a good many years.'

Graham choked eloquently. 'Supported me? In other words, you think I couldn't sell real novels, hey? Well, I'll show you. I wouldn't write another de Meister story for a million dollars. Not even for a fifty percent royalty and all television rights. How's that?'

De Meister frowned and uttered those words that had been the sound of doom to so many criminals: 'We shall see, but yon are not yet done with me.'

With firmly jutting jaw, he vanished.

Graham's twisted face straightened out, and slowly - very slowly - he brought his hands up to his cranium and felt carefully.

For the first time in a long and reasonably ribald mental life, he felt that his enemies were right and that a good dry cleaning would not hurt his mind at all.

The things that existed in it!

Graham Dorn shoved the doorbell with his elbow a second time. He distinctly remembered her saying she would be home at eight.

The peep-hole shoved open. 'Hello!'

'Hello!'

Silence!

Graham said plaintively, 'It's raining outside. Can't I come in to dry?'

'I don't know. Are we engaged, Mr. Dorn?'

'If I'm not,' was the stiff reply, 'then I've been turning down the frenzied advances of a hundred passion-stricken girls -beautiful ones, all of them - for no apparent reason.'

'Yesterday, you said -'

'Ah, but who listens to what I say? I'm just quaint that way. Look, I brought you posies.' He flourished roses before the peep-hole.

June opened the door. 'Roses! How plebeian. Come in, cookie, and sully the sofa. Whoa, whoa, before you move a step, what have you got under the other arm? Not the manuscript of Death on the Third Deck?'

'Correct. Not that excrescence of a manuscript. This is something different.'

June's tone chilled. 'That isn't your precious novel, is it?'

Graham flung his head up, 'How did you know about it?'

'You slobbered the plot all over me at MacDunlap's silver anniversary party.'

'I did not. I couldn't unless I were drunk.'

'Oh, but you were. Stinking is the term. And on two cocktails too.'

'Well, if I was drunk, I couldn't have told you the right plot.'

'Is the setting a coal-mine district?'

'-Uh-yes.'

'And are the people concerned real, earthy, unartificial, down-to-earth characters, speaking and thinking just like you and me? Is it a story of basic economic forces? Are the human characters lifted up and thrown down and whirled around, all at the mercy of the coal mine and mechanized industry of today?'

'-Uh-yes.'

She nodded her head retrospectively. 'I remember distinctly. First, you got drunk and were sick. Then you got better, and told me the first few chapters. Then I got sick.'

She approached the glowering author. 'Graham.' She leant her golden head upon his shoulder and cooed softly. 'Why don't you continue with the de Meister stories? You get such pretty checks out of them.'

Graham writhed out of her grasp. 'You are a mercenary wretch, incapable of understanding an author's soul. You may consider our engagement broken.'

He sat down hard on the sofa, and folded his arms. 'Unless you will consent to read the script of my novel and give me the usual story analysis.'

'May I give you my analysis of Death on the Third Deck first?'

'No.'

'Good! In the first place, your love interest is becoming sickening.'

'It is not.' Graham pointed his finger indignantly. 'It breathes a sweet and sentimental fragrance, as of an older day. I've got the review here that says it.' He fumbled in his wallet.

'Oh, bullfeathers. Are you going to start quoting that guy in the Pillsboro (Okla.) Clarion? He's probably your second cousin. You know that your last two novels were completely below par in royalties. And Third Deck isn't even being sold.'

'So much the better - Ow!' He rubbed his head violently. 'What did you do that for?'

'Because the only place I could hit as hard as I wanted to, without disabling you, was your head. Listen! The public is tired of your corny Letitia Reynolds. Why don't you let her soak her "gleaming golden crown of hair" in kerosene and get familiar with a match?'

'But June, that character is drawn from life. From you!'