Lancelot skipped the blurb come preamble which he had read for what seemed like the hundredth time and sampled the synopsis proper There was scarcely a phrase that he did not recognise at a glance He closed the folder and shifted it to one side Plainly at this rate Ians manuscript would never be forthcoming As well as almost wholly lacking the brilliance for which its author was supposed to be famous the synopsis under its doggedly frolicsome tone had the unmistakable dead ring of a lost conviction Lancelot remembered tales of a famous authorabouttown whose last book published incomplete after his death had been coaxed from him chapter by chapter one payment at a time But in that case the payments were fractions of a hypothetical advance which had never been given in the first place Ians advance had been enormous a blatant reversal of the sound business principle by which authors must deliver a manuscript now in order to be paid with inflated currency later