Abeson's stiff corpse lying on the carpet). It gradually transpires that all the lodgers are in various ways connected with one another. The old lady in No.3 turns out to be the mother of the violinist in No.11. The novelist occupying the front bedroom is really the husband of the young lady in the third floor back. The fishy art-student is no less than this lady's brother. The solemn moonfaced person who is so very polite to everyone, happens to be butler to the crusty old colonel who, it appears, is the violinist's father. The gradual melting process continues through the art-student's being engaged to the fat little woman in No.5, and she is the old lady's daughter by a previous marriage. And when the amateur lawn-tennis champion in No.6 turns out to be the violinist's brother and the novelist their uncle and the old lady in No.3 the crusty old colonel's wife, then the numbers on the doors are quietly wiped out and the boarding-house motif is painlessly and smoothly replaced by that of a country-house, with all its natural implications. And here the tale takes on a strange beauty. The idea of time, which was made to look comic (detective losing his way... stranded somewhere in the night), now seems to curl up and fall asleep. Now the lives of the characters shine forth with a real and human significance and G. Abeson's sealed door is but that of a forgotten lumber room. A new plot, a new drama utterly unconnected with the opening of the story, which is thus thrust back into the region of dreams, seems to struggle for existence and break into light. But at the very moment when the reader feels quite safe in an atmosphere of pleasurable reality and the grace and glory of the author's prose seems to indicate some lofty and rich intention, there is a grotesque knocking at the door and the detective enters. We are again wallowing in a morass of parody. The detective, a shifty fellow, drops his h's, and this is meant to look as if it were meant to look quaint; for it is not a parody of the Sherlock Holmes vogue but a parody of the modern reaction from it. The lodgers are examined afresh. New clues are guessed at. Mild old Nosebag potters about, very absent-minded and harmless.
He had just dropped in to see if they had a spare room, he explains. The old gag of making the most innocent-looking person turn out to be the master-villain seems to be on the point of being exploited. The sleuth suddenly gets interested in snuffboxes. ''Ullo,' he says, ''ow about Hart?' Suddenly a policeman lumbers in, very red in the face and reports that the corpse has gone. The detective: 'What dy'a mean by gorn?' The policeman: 'Gone, Sir, the room is empty.' There was a moment of ridiculous suspense. 'I think,' said old Nosebag quietly, 'that I can explain.' Slowly and very carefully he removes his beard, his grey wig, his dark spectacles, and the face of G. Abeson is disclosed. 'You see,' says Mr Abeson with a self-deprecating smile, 'one dislikes being murdered.'
I have tried my best to show the workings of the book, at least some of its workings. Its charm, humour, and pathos can only be appreciated by direct reading. But for enlightenment of those who felt baffled by its habit of metamorphosis, or merely disgusted at finding something incompatible with the idea of a 'nice book' in the discovery of a book's being an utterly new one, I should like to point out that The Prismatic Bezel can be thoroughly enjoyed once it is understood that the heroes of the book are what can be loosely called 'methods. of composition'. It is as if a painter said: look, here I'm going to show you not the painting of a landscape, but the painting of different ways of painting a certain landscape, and I trust their harmonious fusion will disclose the landscape as I intend you to see it. In the first book Sebastian brought this experiment to a logical and satisfactory conclusion. By putting to the ad absurdum test this or that literary manner and then dismissing them
He had just dropped in to see if they had a spare room, he explains. The old gag of making the most innocent-looking person turn out to be the master-villain seems to be on the point of being exploited. The sleuth suddenly gets interested in snuffboxes. ''Ullo,' he says, ''ow about Hart?' Suddenly a policeman lumbers in, very red in the face and reports that the corpse has gone. The detective: 'What dy'a mean by gorn?' The policeman: 'Gone, Sir, the room is empty.' There was a moment of ridiculous suspense. 'I think,' said old Nosebag quietly, 'that I can explain.' Slowly and very carefully he removes his beard, his grey wig, his dark spectacles, and the face of G. Abeson is disclosed. 'You see,' says Mr Abeson with a self-deprecating smile, 'one dislikes being murdered.'
I have tried my best to show the workings of the book, at least some of its workings. Its charm, humour, and pathos can only be appreciated by direct reading. But for enlightenment of those who felt baffled by its habit of metamorphosis, or merely disgusted at finding something incompatible with the idea of a 'nice book' in the discovery of a book's being an utterly new one, I should like to point out that The Prismatic Bezel can be thoroughly enjoyed once it is understood that the heroes of the book are what can be loosely called 'methods. of composition'. It is as if a painter said: look, here I'm going to show you not the painting of a landscape, but the painting of different ways of painting a certain landscape, and I trust their harmonious fusion will disclose the landscape as I intend you to see it. In the first book Sebastian brought this experiment to a logical and satisfactory conclusion. By putting to the ad absurdum test this or that literary manner and then dismissing them
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