Dallas Hinton to Anton Shepelev:
The writer is writing about events which have happened (past). We
have no idea what (if anything) has transpired since. In any
case, to suddenly shift from past to present would be quite
jarring to the reader. And also, the ring is (or seems to be from
this fragment) a very minor part of the story so who really cares
about it's current location? :-)
I see. It reminds me of a dialog line from a British horror
story, where a woman excalims "I forgot he was vegeterinan!",
when she realies she has prepared no vegetaranian meal for her
new acquaintance, who, by all means, is vegetarian still. I think
it is from Ramsey Campbell's "The Doll Who Ate his Mother."
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* Origin: nntps://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)