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paying you any more? You’d never write the kind of review I want.”
    â€œIf you mean, write a column of unctuous praise every week on behalf of your biggest advertisers, all full of nice, fat quotable sentences, no, I wouldn’t,” said the other nastily. “I’ve told you before, I’m not that kind of reviewer.”
    â€œAnd I’ve told you before, young fellow, that you’ll come to a bad end. You have to take things as you find them in this world.”
    The reviewer made a rude noise and turned back to his novels.
    Mr Todhunter opened the doors of the big bookcase in which the nonfiction books were kept, but for once his eye did not light up. He was one of those unfortunate people who, against all reason, feel a kind of responsibility for those in distress or trouble; and the present plight and future predicament of Ogilvie were worrying him already. Mr Todhunter felt that he ought to do something about it.
    â€œIt was Armstrong who dismissed Ogilvie?” he asked, turning back to Ferrers. Armstrong was the new managing editor of Consolidated Periodicals Ltd.
    Ferrers, who had got busy with his blue pencil again, looked up patiently. “Armstrong? Oh no. He’s got no say in that kind of thing at present.”
    â€œLord Felixbourne, then?” Lord Felixbourne was the owner.
    â€œNo. It was . . . Oh well, I suppose I ought not to talk about it. But it’s a dirty business.”
    â€œAny chance of you being next, Ferrers?” asked the fiction reviewer. “I mean, it would be rather jolly if we could have a literary editor who’d let me say, just once a month or so, that a novel is bad when it is.”
    â€œYou say what you like, don’t you? I don’t interfere with you.”
    â€œNo, you merely cut out all my best bits.” The fiction reviewer strolled across the room and stood behind his editor’s shoulder. He uttered a wail of despair and stabbed at the copy on the desk. “Oh, my lord, you haven’t cut that paragraph, have you? But, good heavens, man, why? It isn’t even rude. It only amounts to saying that——”
    â€œListen, Todhunter. This is what Byle’s written: ‘If this were Mr Firkin’s first novel there might be some excuse for this turgid spate of words, curdled with cliches like cream with clots, for it might only mean that he had not thought it necessary to find out how to handle his tools before using them; but by his sixth attempt Mr Firkin should at least have learned his English grammar. For the rest, if there is any meaning hidden away under the deluge of his verbosity, I could not find it. Perhaps those of my colleagues who, impressed no doubt by Mr Firkin’s powers of drooling on to any given length without saying anything at all, have bestowed such generous praise on his earlier books will oblige with an explanation of why this one should ever have been written. Or is that a secret known only to Mr Firkin’s publishers?’ And he says it isn’t even rude. What would you do in my place?”
    Mr Todhunter gave his deprecating, almost guilty little smile. “Perhaps it is a little outspoken.”
    â€œI’ll say it is,” agreed Ferrers and drew two more large blue crosses over the offending paragraph.
    The reviewer, a man of violent passion, stamped with rage. “I can’t understand you. Damn it, Todhunter, you ought to back me up. Of course it’s outspoken. And why the hell shouldn’t it be? It’s time something like that was said about Firkin. The man’s reputation is absurdly inflated. He’s not good at all; damn it, he’s bad! And he gets all this sickening praise because half the reviewers can’t be bothered to plough through his stuff at all and so find it easier to praise than criticise, and the other half really do think that inordinate length is a sign of genius, instead of being impressed as they should be