dently at work, for a few weeks later Mr. Grant Richards found it necessary (in the Times Literary Supplement) to declare: "Meanwhile I am asked all sorts of questions about the book and its author. Is there really such a person as Ernest Bramah? and so on."
The "so on" has a pleasantly speculative ring—to me, that is to say. At all events, whatever Mr. Richards had been asked, his diplomatic reference answered nothing, so that, later, he is induced to state without reserve: “Finally, I do assure his readers that such a person as Ernest Bramah does really and truly exist. I have seen and touched him.” This should settle the matter, you would say? Not a bit of it. Turn to "N. G. R.-S." in the Westminster Gazette: "He assures us that there is such a person as Ernest Bramah. Well, there may be! I myself still believe . . ." (This break does not represent omitted matter, but "N. G. R.-S.'s" too-sinister-for-words private belief.) "Anyway, you can now buy The Wallet for seven-and-sixpence and form your own opinion of the reasons which keep the author of such a book so closely mysterious behind his unusual name."
And then, surely the most astonishing of all, there is Miss Rose Macaulay: Miss Macaulay the relentless precisian, so flawlessly exact that she must by now hate the phrase "hard brilliance," author of Potterism (in whose dedication I have never ceased to cherish an infinitesimal claim), retailing "They say" with the cheerful irresponsibility of a village gossip. "N. G. R.-S.", it will be seen, gilds the pill of innuendo with a compliment; Miss Macaulay administers a more salutary dose: "The crude, stilted, Conan Doyleish English of his detective stories certainly goes far to bear out the common theory that Mr. Bramah has a literary dual personality" (Nation and Athenaeum).
Finally (perhaps), to my hand as I write this Preface
