'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!'