“So what do you think?” asked Dee again.

“I think from the style of this report that they were probably wise at the Gazette to ask us to judge the literary merit of these stories,” said Rye.

“No. I mean this Dialogue thing. Bit of an odd coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Not really. I mean, it’s probably not a coincidence at all. Writers must often pick up ideas from what they read in the papers.”

“But this wasn’t in the Gazette till this morning. And this came out of the bag of entries they sent round last night. So presumably they got it some time yesterday, the same day this poor chap died, and before the writer could have read about it.”

“OK, so it’s a coincidence after all,” said Rye irritably. “I’ve just read a story about a man who wins the lottery and has a heart attack. I dare say that this week somewhere there’s been a man who won something in the lottery and had a heart attack. It didn’t catch the attention of the Pulitzer prize mob at the Gazette, but it’s still a coincidence.”

“All the same,” said Dee, clearly reluctant to abandon his sense of oddness. “Another thing, there’s no pseudonym.”

The rules of entry required that, in the interests of impartial judging, entrants used a pseudonym under their story title. They also wrote these on a sealed envelope containing their real name and address. The envelopes were kept at the Gazette office.

“So he forgot,” said Rye. “Not that it matters, anyway. It’s not going to win, is it? So who cares who wrote it? Now, can I get on?”

Dick Dee had no argument against this. But Rye noticed he didn’t put the typescript either into the dump bin or on to his possibles pile, but set it aside.