“Beautifully—until four days ago.”
The Wrong Venus — 33
In July, Dudley had gone to New York and located
a couple of writers, and brought them back to Paris
as a security measure. Naturally, the whole thing
had to be kept secret. Miss Manning’s literary agent
and publisher didn’t know she had disappeared, and
would go up like Krakatoa if they found out what
was going on. Dudley forged her signature on
correspondence and contracts.
As a team, the two writers clicked from the first
minute. Neither could have written it alone—one
hadn’t written anything in fifteen years and the
other had never written fiction at all—but together
they rolled it out like toothpaste, and it was pure
Manning. In two months they had half of it done.
Dudley sent that much of it off to New York, and her
agent and publisher raved about it. They said it was
the best thing she’d ever done.
