After dozing for a little while, Christopher woke up early.
A little past six, he packed the stack of manuscripts back into a kraft-paper envelope, put on his coat, tucked the envelope under his arm, and went straight out the door.
He lived in Chelsea, while Bloomsbury Publishing was near Russell Square.
It was about a forty-minute walk.
The morning air was cold and damp.
Mist curled around the streetlamps, and several red double-decker buses drove past, their headlights dragging blurry halos through the fog.
He didn’t walk quickly.
His leather shoes stepped across the wet pavement, occasionally splashing up a little water.
There were few people on the street.
Only an early-rising newsboy stood at a corner, arranging a stack of The Times.
As Christopher walked past him, his mind was still filled with those sentences—
Harry’s, Hagrid’s, the Dursleys’…
Those images seemed especially vivid in the London morning, as if they might leap out from around some corner and turn real at any moment.
When he pushed open the heavy oak door of Bloomsbury Publishing, the receptionist had only just arrived for work and was pouring hot water into a cup.
“I’m here to see Barry Cunningham.”
The young woman at the front desk looked up at him, confusion appearing on her face.
“…Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but he’ll want to see me.”
The girl hesitated for two seconds.
Perhaps because there were hardly any people in the building at this hour, she picked up the phone, pressed a few buttons, said a few words, and then put the receiver down.
“Mr.
Cunningham is on the third floor.
Turn left, second room.”
Barry Cunningham’s office was smaller than Christopher had imagined.
The shelves were crammed full of sample copies, some already yellowing with age.
Several stacks of manuscripts, almost half as tall as a person, were piled on the desk.
Beside them sat a pair of reading glasses and a precariously balanced mug.
Barry himself was a few years younger than Christopher.
His gray-brown hair stuck up in a messy tangle, and his shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows.
He seemed to be working through a proof.
When he saw Christopher come in, he took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
His tone carried the familiarity of someone he hadn’t seen in years, yet still kept a polite distance.
“Christopher?
Now this is rare.
The last time you came to see me on your own initiative, was it ’86 or ’87?”
“’88.”
Christopher placed the kraft-paper envelope on the desk.
“That was the year you signed that chef’s cookbook.
It sold four hundred thousand copies.”
Barry chuckled.
“You’ve got a good memory.
But I don’t take cookbooks anymore.
What have you brought?”
Christopher didn’t answer immediately.
He pulled out the chair opposite Barry and sat down.
Then he opened the envelope, took out the stack of pages, and gently pushed it in front of Barry.
“Take a look at this.
It’s the first eight chapters.”
Barry raised an eyebrow and lowered his gaze to the words on the cover—
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
The First Eight Chapters.
He picked up the manuscript and weighed it in his hands, then looked at Christopher.
“Fantasy?
I thought you didn’t really touch this genre.”
“That was before.”
Christopher leaned back in his chair, his hands folded over his knees.
“Read it first.
We’ll talk after you’re done.”
Barry gave him a suspicious glance, but still opened the manuscript and turned to the first page.
Christopher sat quietly across from him, waiting like a patient cat.
The second page, the third page, the fourth page…
Barry turned the pages more and more slowly.
Sometimes he would stop at a certain passage, go back, and read it again.
Christopher noticed that when Barry read the part where Harry finally saw his first letter from Hogwarts, the corners of his mouth lifted in an extremely faint curve.
It was as though he, too, were celebrating for the character in the story.
The office remained quiet for a long while.
Christopher took his pocket watch out and glanced at it.
More than two hours had already passed.
Only then did Barry finally lift his head from the manuscript.
He took off his reading glasses, rubbed the corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, and let out a deep breath.
Near the end, to avoid keeping Christopher waiting too long, he hadn’t read as carefully as he might have.
But even so, he had still been drawn into it without realizing.
“Where’s the rest?”
“That’s all of it.
For now.”
“For now?”
“The author only gave me the first eight chapters.
The rest should come later.”
Barry closed the manuscript.
His fingers still rested against the edge of the cover, tapping it lightly twice.
“What’s the author’s name?”
“Allen Wayne.”
“Do you know him?”
“Before dawn today, I’d never heard the name.”
Barry paused.
“Then how did you get the manuscript?”
“It appeared on my desk together with the others.”
Christopher shrugged.
“I’m telling the truth.
I found it while clearing through submissions last night.
I have no idea who put it there.”
“There was an address written on the back.
13 Baker Street.
But that address—”
“13 Baker Street?”
Barry frowned.
“I don’t remember there being a number 13 on Baker Street.”
“Holmes lived at 221B, but that’s fictional.
In reality, the odd numbers on that street end at 11.”
“Exactly.
So I can’t contact him.”
Barry fell silent for a moment.
He opened the manuscript again, flipped to the final page, looked at the ending about Hagrid and the little package, and unconsciously repeated the same question in a low voice:
“That’s it?”
His tone carried the exact same irritation Christopher had felt the night before.
The two men looked at each other and laughed.
“Christopher.”
Barry placed the manuscript on the desk and interlaced his fingers.
“You didn’t come here just to let me have a look, did you?
You want me to sign it.”
“I want you to start typesetting it now,” Christopher said.
“The sooner, the better.”
Barry looked troubled.
“You know what the publishing cycle is like.
From signing, editing, proofreading, cover design, printing, and distribution, even at the fastest, it’ll take three months.”
“This book can’t wait three months.”
“Why?”
Christopher leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice.
“What did you feel when you were reading just now?”
Barry opened his mouth, as if preparing to give a proper, review-style answer.
But in the end, he gave up on that and answered honestly.
“I forgot the time.
I even forgot there was someone sitting in front of me.”
“So did I,” Christopher said.
“I read almost the entire night.”
“I’ve been a literary agent for twenty years.
I’ve handled eight hundred books, if not a thousand.”
“The last book that made me stay up all night reading was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
But that book made me laugh.
This one makes me feel—”
He paused, as if searching for the right word.
“It makes me feel that if I don’t get it printed as soon as possible, I’ll be letting someone down.”
Barry stared at him for a few seconds, then tapped his fingers twice against the edge of the desk.
“Are you always this dramatic?”
“I’m always practical.”
Barry scoffed, but didn’t refute him.
He flipped through a few more pages of the manuscript, his eyes sweeping over the descriptions of Diagon Alley, Ollivanders, and the Sorting Hat.
“These details are incredibly solid,” he murmured.
“A wizarding bank, a magical currency system, Platform Nine and Three-Quarters…”
“If this is a debut author, then either he’s done an extraordinary amount of research, or he has an astonishingly complete world inside his head.”
“Have you considered a third possibility?” Christopher said.
“What?”
“That these things are real.”
~
Push the book forward by Adding to library and sending powerstones~!