WORDS OF THE WEEK

John Updike's literary adventure into cyberspace is over. But how will the adventure of Miss Tasso Polk end?

It's been coming our way from outer space for 45 days ... THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD.

On 29 July, John Updike published a 300-word paragraph on the Internet bookstore Amazon.com - it was the beginning of a short story which was completed at 6am US Pacific Daylight Time on Thursday. Called `Murder Makes the Magazine', the magnet for website wordsmiths was a $100,000 prize which will be awarded in a random draw of all the contestants. It started like this...

Miss Tasso Polk at ten-ten alighted from the elevator on to the olive tiles of the 19th floor only lightly nagged by a sense of something wrong. The Magazine's crest, that great black M, the thing masculine that had most profoundly penetrated her life, echoed from its inlaid security the thoughtful humming in her mind: "m". There had been someone strange in the elevator. She had felt it all the way up. Strange, not merely unknown to her personally. Most of the world was unknown to her personally, but it was not strange. The men in little felt hats and oxblood shoes who performed services of salesmanship and accountancy and research and co- ordination for the firms (Simplex, Happitex, Technonitrex, Instant-Pix) that occupied the 17 floors beneath the sacred olive groves of The Magazine were anonymous and interchangeable to her but not strange. She could read right through the button-down collars of their unstarched shirts into the ugly neck-stretching of their morning shaves, right through the pink and watery whites of their eyes into last night's cocktail party in Westchester, Tarrytown, Rye, or Orange, right through their freckled, soft, too-broad- and-brown hands into adulterous caresses that did not much disgust her, they were so distant and trivial and even, in their suburban distance from her, idyllic, like something satyrs do on vases. Miss Polk was 43, and had given herself to The Magazine in the flower of her beauty.

The contributors then take us on a convoluted saga of the suicide (or is it?) of the editor, Mr Merriweather; a video message from the grave (perhaps); business rivalries; an attempt at hypnotism and kidnapped cats. And here is Laura Kane's penultimate chapter, in which an increasingly bemused Tasso Polk is about to discover the truth about Mr Merriweather's death ...

Levelling her gaze at Uncle James, Tasso Polk decided it was high time for the cards to be placed on the table for all to see. Despite the crackle of danger she could sense in the air, she would be the first to lay a face card down.

"I heard much more than that," she said, "thanks to dear old Mauser, who seems to be the only creature worthy of my trust." Her eyes shifted to the faces of the other two men: the stranger, Franklin Boyce, and her former lover, William Evermore. "I'm supposed to have seen a ghost somewhere, I believe, the ghost of Mr Merriweather in the library of his house, hovering in front of the calfskin classics. Is that not so?"

The men exchanged furtive glances as she continued.

"Now, I have no intention of going to the police in hysterics come morning; sorry to foil your little plan. As for the blasted key that you are all so eager to retrieve, I'm not sure I recall where it is. Perhaps if I knew the truth behind this little drama of yours, I might remember."

Franklin Boyce was the first to break the silence. "My dear Miss Polk," he said in his accented tones, "it would be in your best interest to co- operate. Since it is now evident that you realise just how central a character you are in this `little drama', as you put it, you have just raised the stakes." He glanced pointedly at the body of Mr Merriweather. "One more dead body would hardly be a burden, especially one as slight as yours."

Anger, rather than fear, flashed in her eyes. "Are you threatening me?"

"Tasso, please say nothing else!" pleaded Uncle James. "You don't know who you're dealing with!"

She turned her furious glare back to her Uncle. "And you! What part do you have in this charade? I don't even know you any more!"

He was silent for a moment. Then he sighed deeply, torturously. "You're right, Teacup," he said. "It's time you knew." He looked at the other men. "We must tell her. It's the only way."

For John Updike's final chapter contact: www.amazon.com