Follows was congratulating himself on having come rather well out of this when Agnew added that of course the Hon. (whose reading range didn’t extend beyond the sporting magazines) couldn’t be expected to plough through all the entries, that her team of ace reporters were far too busy writing their own deathless prose to read anyone else’s, and that therefore she was looking to the library services with their acknowledged expertise in the field of prose fiction to sort out the entries and produce a short list.

Percy Follows knew when he’d been tagged and looked for someone on the library staff to tag in turn. All roads led to Dick Dee who, despite having an excellent degree in English, seemed never to have learned how to say no.

The best he could manage by way of demur was, “Well, we are rather busy… How many entries are you anticipating?”

“This sort of thing has a very limited appeal,” said Follows confidently. “I’d be surprised if we get into double figures. Couple of dozen at the very most. You can run through them in your tea break.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of tea,” grumbled Rye when the first sackful of scripts was delivered from the Gazette. But Dick Dee had just smiled as he looked at the mountain of paper and said, “It’s mute inglorious Milton time, Rye. Let’s start sorting them out.”

The initial sorting out had been fun.

The idea of refusing to read anything not typewritten had seemed very attractive, but rapidly they realized this was too Draconian. On the other hand as more sackloads arrived, they knew they had to have some rules of inadmissibility.

“Nothing in green ink,” said Dee.

“Nothing on less than A5,” said Rye.

“Nothing handwritten where the letters aren’t joined up.”

“Nothing without meaningful punctuation.”

“Nothing which requires use of a magnifying glass.”