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worst thing and, second to that, the cloud or ball of visible darkness that arose in the lighted room when Charles Ambrose cast salt and asafetida into the pentagram. He reached down to find the lead on the bed lamp where the switch was and encountered something cold and leathery. It was only the tops of his slippers, which he always left just beside his bed, but he had once again screamed before he remembered. The lamp on, he lay still, breathing deeply. Only when the first light of morning, a gray trickle of dawn, came creeping under and between the curtains at about six, did he fall into a troubled doze.
    Morning makes an enormous difference to fear and to depression. It wasn’t long before Ribbon was castigating himself for a fool and blaming the whiskey and the scrambled eggs, rather than Kingston Marle, for his disturbed night. However, he would read no more of
Demogorgon.
No matter how much he might wish to know the fate of Charles and Kayra or the identity of the bandaged reeking thing, he preferred not to expose himself any longer to this distasteful rubbish or Marle’s grammatical lapses.
    A hot shower, followed by a cold one, did a lot to restore him. He breakfasted, but in the kitchen. When he had finished he went into the dining room and had a look at
Saul Encounters the Witch of Endor.
It was years since he had even glanced at it, which was no doubt why he had never noticed how much like Mummy the witch looked. Of course Mummy would never have worn diaphanous gray draperies and she’d had all her own teeth, but there was something about the nose and mouth, the burning eyes and the pointing finger, this last particularly characteristic of Mummy, that reminded him of her. He dismissed the disloyal thought but, on an impulse, took the picture down and put it on the floor, its back toward him, to lean against the wall. It left behind it a paler rectangle on the ocher-colored wallpaper, but the new bookshelves would cover that. Ribbon went upstairs to his study and his daily labors. First, the letter to Owlberg.
    21 Grove Green Avenue
London E11 4ZH
     
    Dear Sir,
    In spite of your solemn promise to me as to the correction of errors in your new paperback publication, I find you have fulfilled this undertaking only to the extent of making
one single amendment.
    This, of course, in anyone’s estimation, is a gross insult to your readers, displaying as it does your contempt for them and for the TRUTH. I am sending a copy of this letter to your publishers and await an explanation both from you and them.
    Yours faithfully,

Ambrose Ribbon
     
    Letting off steam always put him in a good mood. He felt a joyful adrenaline rush and was inspired to write a congratulatory letter for a change. This one was addressed to: The Manager, Dillon’s Bookshop, Piccadilly, London W1.
    21 Grove Green Avenue
London E11 4ZH
     
    Dear Sir or Madam,
    (There were a lot of women taking men’s jobs these days, poking their noses in where they weren’t needed.)
    I write to congratulate you on your excellent organization, management, and the, alas, now old-fashioned attitude you have to your book buyers. I refer, of course, to the respectful distance and detachment maintained between you and them. It makes a refreshing change from the overfamiliarity displayed by many of your competitors.
    Yours faithfully,

Ambrose Ribbon
     
    Before writing to the author of the novel that had been directly responsible for his loss of sleep, Ribbon needed to look something up: a king of Egypt of the seventh century B.C. called Psamtik I he had come across before in someone else’s book. Marle referred to him as Psammetichos I, and Ribbon was nearly sure this was wrong. He would have to look it up, and the obvious place to do this was the
Encyclopaedia
Britannica.
    Others might have recourse to the Internet. Because Mummy had despised such electronic devices, Ribbon did so too. He wasn’t even on the Net and never would be. The present difficulty was that