"No, it's all true, I assure you," said the wizard.
"No, I mean Hokum was that loathsome creature Bingo met? How dreadful!"
"I think it is a very sad tale," said Randolf, "and it might have happened to any Robbit whose literary ambitions exceeded their talent."
"I can't believe that Hokum was remotely connected with Robbits. What a horrible idea!"
"Nonetheless it is true. There was a great deal in their backgrounds that was similar. They both desired literary fame and both had a fondness for Mushrooms. Think of the cheap novels they both enjoyed, for instance."
"I suppose so," admitted Fido reluctantly. "Though other folk apart from Robbits read soft porn. And Robbits don't cheat. Hokum meant to cheat Bingo from the moment he came into the shop and asked him if he had any first editions of 'Spanking for Pleasure'. And I daresay it tickled his wicked mind to start haggling with Bingo. He knew he couldn't lose because the only two copies in stock were both fakes."

"All too true," agreed Randolf. "But there was another reason too, which you haven't considered. Hokum was not completely ruined. He had put by a few shekels for a rainy day - as even a Robbit might. There was a tiny corner of his addled brain that still hoped his misfortunes might be overcome, and his literary fame regained. It was actually pleasant to hear a cultured voice again, re-kindling memories of sumptuous literary lunches, glittering prizes, orgiastic picnics with the cream of Rondorian maidenhood, and such half-remembered delights. But, alas, that would only make the wicked part of him more evil and worsen his facial eczema - unless it could be cured. Sadly, there was now little hope of that. Yet, not no hope."
"What do you mean?" asked Fido.

"Although he possessed the scroll for ages, further back than even he could now remember, it was long since he had used it. In the shop it was not needed, for there were stacks of porn to keep him amused; and when that bored him, he would nibble on the few remaining scraps of Numenorian rugs he still hoarded, and be transported to another, pleasantly hallucinogenic world, where he was still THE HOKUM, the envy of the publishing world. Certainly he never entirely faded. Even in that forsaken spot he would occasionally come upon one of his remaindered novels, and that kept him going. But the scroll was eating up his mind, and the torment of obscurity became almost unbearable. All his dreams of fame and fortune had turned to dust and ashes.
There were no new sexual positions to try out, nothing worth doing that he hadn't done a thousand times before, only nasty, furtive practices that sapped his strength and exacerbated his appalling skin condition. He was completely wretched. He hated obscurity and he hated fame more; he hated everything including himself, and the scroll most of all."

"Why?" asked Fido. "Surely the scroll was his most treasured possession; his precious, his magic talisman and the only thing he truly cared for? If he really did hate it, why didn't he just throw it away?"
"You still do not understand the power of this thing, Fido," said the wizard, sending a stream of smoke-rings up the chimney.. "He hated it and loved it, just as he hated and loved himself. He could not bare to part with it. A scroll of power looks after itself, my lad. It may desert its keeper as it did Issy Dors, but its keeper never deserts it. It maintains an iron grip upon the mind of its slaves. It was not Hokum who who let the scroll go to Bingo, but the scroll itself which choose Bingo as its new keeper."

"Wouldn't a literary agent have suited it better?" asked Fido.

"No. The scroll was trying to get back to its master. It left Issy the moment she dropped her drawers - for a bunch of Rondorian ne'er do wells, and so brought about her own death. When by chance it came to Hokum it devoured his mind and then deserted him when it had no further use for him. He had become small and petty-minded; overly obsessed with satisfying his personal literary ambitions, and indulging his strange sexual appetites. It had finished with him. He would never leave his dingy shop again. So when it's master re-awakened, and once again sent forth his evil thoughts from Kiwidor, it abandoned Hokum for Bingo. Yet, beyond that, there was another mind at work, beyond any desire of the Scroll-maker. I can say no more than this: Bingo was meant to find the scroll, but not by its maker. As you were meant to receive it from Bingo. And in that lies our geatest hope, and the enemy's weakness."

"So this really is the One Scroll? You are not just putting two and two together and coming up with five?" said Fido hesitantly.
"No. The history of Professor Ronald, Ellen Dillo and Issy Dors, and the One Scroll of the Dark Director, is only too well known in academic circles. Your scroll is proved to be that very scroll by the literary masterpieces it has engendered from the pens of half witted, talentless scribblers like Hokum, not to mention the sacred rhyme that was revealed when the scroll was immersed in water."
"And when did you find that out?" asked Fido
"Just now, you half-witted Robbit!" replied the wizard sharply. "In your washing-up bowl. But I fully expected to find it. It is the last proof of its authenticity. Making out Hokum's role and fitting it into the whole required considerable research and out-of-pocket expenses, but I fully expect to be reimbursed in the fullness of time. I no longer need to guess - I know! In any event I have also seen Hokum and that beats the backside off thinking, as we wizards are wont to say."
"Seen Hokum!" exclaimed Fido in astonishment.

"Yes. It seemed the logical thing to do. I tried many times but the tricksy little blighter always managed to change jobs and shops. So I had to resort to subterfuge. I paid some Oiks to deliver free samples of rather harder porn that Hokum is accustomed to, to every shop in the land, and waited until someone placed an order for more. Then I pounced, and found him gloating over his new purchases in a dingy basement off the King's road."

"So how did Bingo make off with the scroll?"
"As I told you last night, the scroll has many powers. It simply disguised itself as a bookmark, and Bingo went away with it tucked into his copy of 'Spanking for Pleasure."
"So what happened to Hokum after Bingo tricked the Scroll out of him. Do you know that?"

"Yes and no. What I told you was what Hokum confessed after I promised to have a whip round amongst his friends to get up a literary subscription to put him back on his feet. What I actually did was to have him roundly whipped by his friends until he confessed. For starters, he called the Scroll his 'Birthday present' from Mother Miggins, and so told two falsehoods in one. A preposterous tale. I have no doubt that Mother Miggins was the worst scoundrel in Rondor with no more literary appreciation than a brood of dyslexic Oiks with really loud ties. The idea of her possessing such a literary treasure and giving it to an illiterate nonentity like Hokum is - well, complete hokum. But the lies contained a grain of truth. Hokum was haunted by the rape of his sister, indeed, I think he was literally haunted by her, since she had died in the most hideous conditions in a knocking shop, some years earlier, and the very mention of her name sent him into paroxysms of terror.

I suffered him longer than any man should stomach such a minor author, and in the end I had to be rather firm with him. I put the fear of writers block on him, and slowly but surely wrung the truth from him, amidst much whining about the dishonesty of literary agents, the liberties taken by pedantic sub-editors, and the snubs of arrogant publishers. He claimed he was misunderstood and abused, but would not tell me all the tale. Some terror greater than the fear of literary failure and the dread spectre of his dead sister, was upon him. He droned on about revenge and betrayal. Publishers would see if he would stand being rejected, driven onto the remaindered lists, and robbed of his rightful place in literature. Hokum had powerful friends now, good friends, who would help him. Faggins would pay dearly for his crime. That was his chief complaint. He hated Bingo with a passion and cursed his name at every opportunity. What is more, he knew where Bingo lived and was going to see to it that he was 'dead meat'—those were his exact words, before the year was out."

"But how did he find out Bingo's address?" asked Fido fearfully.
"Well, Bingo foolishly used his credit card to pay for his copy of 'Spanking for Pleasure'. After Hokum left the Second-hand book shop it did not take him long to discover Bingo's address. Oh yes, Hokum came out. The desire for the scroll proved stronger than his fear of the Oiks who hung around the entrance in dirty old raincoats, or even of The Enemy in Kiwidor. After a while he left the shop and began to revive a little. Although he was still enslaved to it, the scroll was no longer eating up his mind. Yet he felt old, his eczema was worse than ever, yet less timid, and he was desperately short of readies.
He still feared and hated Academics, and he always will, but he was nothing if not devious. He found he could hide from them and the major publishers and their literary agents by getting into vanity publishing in a small way. He caught stupid, young writers whose literary ambitions exceeded their meagre talents with small ads in the local papers, and quickly relieved them of their savings. He grew stronger and bolder with the cash he made. Eventually he found his way into the Holly Wood, as one would expect."

"Is that where you found him?" asked Fido.
"Yes. I met him briefly at a small luncheon given by a minor script-writer down on her luck. Before that, Hokum had wandered a great deal, always following Bingo's career as a historian with undiminished hatred. It was difficult to learn anything worthwhile from him on that occasion, for he was very drunk, and his talk consisted almost entirely of imprecations against Bingo and smutty innuendos about the guests. 'Faggins is dead meat. We will choke the little rotter with his own manuscriptsss. Look at the titsss on that... I wouldn't say no to a quickie, my sweet. Thieving Robbitsess! They cheated us, they did - hic- out of my inheritance. What we wouldn't give to shag the arse on that! We hates the filthy Faggins for ever! We should have knifed the dungball when we had the chanssshh, my preciousss,oh yes. Let us sit on your face, my pretty! Faggins is dead meat. We will squeeeze it, my preciuousss, squeeze it's filthy little neck. Oh yesshh we will.'

That is a sample of his conversation. If you want any more you will have to read my memoirs. But from the hints he dropped I found out that he had wormed his miserable way into the the confidences of one or two less scrupulous agents of the Holly Wood, and so discovered Bingo's new address."

"Then why didn't he find Bingo?"
"He tried to. He was not short of the fare, nor the desire. But something stronger turned him aside from his plans of vengeance. Well that was many years ago now. After Bingo moved for the fourth time I took up the trail again. But by then it was cold. The Academics had tracked him first, an easy task for them, since Hokum left a trail of third-rate novels behind him which even a second rate publishers's reader could have followed from a fourth rate critical review. The fringes of vanity publishing were full of rumours about him; shocking tales of spurious apostrophes, pedantic parentheses (and excessive hyphenation) abounded—not to mention copyright infringements and blatant plagiarism—which chilled the marrow of even the most broken-down old hacks inured to the worst excesses of literary mendacity. Lexicographers went in terror of their reputations. The critics said that some new scoundrel was at work; a writer that not only sucked the life-blood from any manuscript that fell into his evil clutches, but who crept into writers' garrets at the dead of night and stole their note books without so much as a marginal citation.

But at last, when I had given up all hope, Hokum was found by a young Academic and dragged, kicking and screaming to me. What he had been working on he would not say. He only called me cruel and vindictive, and the more I beat him, the more he whined and complained; as if recalling some ancient torture of which the light taste of my stick, was an unbearable reminder. But I fear there can be no doubt where he had been. He had made his slow, painful progress from the outer circle of vanity publishing through the rejected scripts of the Holly Wood, to the realm of the Dark Director himself. He had been to; KIWIDOR!"

A heavy silence fell on the room, it pressed on Fido's head and make his legs buckle. It pushed the wizard's hat down over his eyes and oppressed the mice in the wainscoting, who paused in their torture of the cat they had trussed up just behind Fido's elegant writing-desk, and held their breath. Even the sound of Jam Spongee's electric mower was heard no more. In a word, it was very, very quiet.

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