I nodded.
"Your work is good," he said seriously. "Too good. Not up to par on some points, but in a few years you'll be going places. That's why I sneaked away from them and came here—to beg you to reconsider, to stop this writing now, before it's too late."
"You mean—you can't mean—you're not—afraid of competition?"
He waved an annoyed hand. "Competition, hell! There's always room for more. You don't understand," he went on, screwing his face into a look of determination. "I'm trying to save your peace of mind, your sanity perhaps. The mind is a great and powerful thing, sometimes dangerous. All these things—these alien creatures that a science-fiction author creates—"
"Yes?"
But he had straightened suddenly, a look of terror on a face gone ashen. He went to the door like a man being pushed, fumbled for the knob. "I beg of you, for your sake, forget it," he called back. Then he was gone.
I went out on the porch but MacDonald was not in sight. I heard a strange noise as of the flapping of great leathery wings. A shadow passed across the lawn. I looked up.
Nothing.
The next morning I got a small envelope in the mail. The letter inside read, "Enclosed is a check for your story THE MONBEAST...." I sank into the softest chair in the world and read those wonderful, wonderful words, and held the check in my hand and read those wonderful, wonderful figures. I was so in a trance I hardly noticed the tiny decimal point that scampered on tiny legs across the check. I hardly felt the small, sharp bite—but....