“I think he’s pulling a sit-down strike, Mr. Hopedale. He’s way overdrawn now and I had to refuse him a thousand-dollar advance. He wanted to send his wife to the Virgin Islands for a divorce.”
“Give him the money,” Mr. Hopedale said impatiently. “How can you expect the man to write when he’s beset by personal difficulties?”
“Mr. Hopedale,” I said politely, “she could divorce him right here in New York State. He’s given her grounds in all five boroughs and the western townships of Long Island. But that’s not the point. He can’t write. And even if he could, the last thing American literature needs right now is another trilogy about a Scandinavian immigrant family.” “I know,” he said. “I know. He’s not very good yet.
But I think he’s going to be, and do you want him to starve while he’s getting the juvenilia out of his system?” His next remark had nothing to dcTwith EleMnen. He looked at the signed photo of T. R.—”To a bully publisher—” and said: “Morris we’re broke.”
I said: “Ah?”
“We owe everybody. Printer, papermill, warehouse. Everybody. It’s the end of Hopedale Press. Unless—I don’t want you to think people have been reporting on you, Norris, but I understand you came up with an interesting idea at lunch yesterday. Some Swiss professor.”
I had to think hard. “You must mean Leuten, Mr. Hopedale. No, there’s nothing in it for us, sir. I was joking. My brother—he teaches philosophy at Columbia —mentioned him to me. Leuten’s a crackpot. Every year or two Weintraub Verlag in Basle brings out another volume of his watchamacallit and they sell about a thousand. Functional Epistemology—my brother says it’s all nonsense, the kind of stuff vanity presses put out. It was just a gag about us turning him into a Schweitzer or a Toynbee and bringing out a one-volume condensation. People just buy his books—I suppose—because they gojt started and feel ashamed to stop.
Mr. Hopedale said: “Do it, Norris. Do it. We can scrape together enough cash for one big promotion and then— the end. I’m going to see Brewster of Commercial Factors in the morning. I believe he will advance us sixty-five per cent on our accounts receivable.” He tried on a cynical smile. It didn’t become him. “Norris, you are what is technically called a Publisher’s Bright Young Man. We can get seven-fifty for a scholarly book. With luck and promotion we can sell in the hundred-thousands. Get on it.” I nodded, feeling sick, and started out. Mr. Hopedale said in a tired voice: “And it might actually be work of some inspirational value.”
Professor Leuten sat and listened, red-faced, breathing hard. “You—betrayer,” he said at last. “You with the smiling face that came to Basle, that talked of lectures in
America, that told me to sign your damnable contract. My face on the cover of the Time magazine that looks like a monkey, the idiotic interviews, the press release-ments in my name that I never saw. America, I thought, and held my tongue. But—from the beginning—it was_ a lie!” He buried his face in his hands and muttered-“Ach! You stink!”
That reminded me. I took a small stench-bomb from my pocket and crushed it.
He leaped up, balanced on one leg and thumbed his nose. His tongue was out four inches and he was panting with the terror of asphyxiation.
“Very good,” I said.
“Thank you. I suchest we move to the other end of the car.”
We and our luggage were settled before he began to breathe normally. I judged that the panic and most of his anger had passed. “Professor,” I said cautiously, “I’ve been thinking of what we do when—>and if—we find Miss Phoebe.”
“We shall complete her re-education,” he said. “We shall point out that her unleashed powers have been dys-functionally applied.”
“I can think of something better to do than completing her re-education. It’s why I spoke a little harshly. Presumably Miss Phoebe considers you the greatest man in the world.”
He smiled reminiscently and I knew what he was thinking.
La Plume, Pa. Wednesday Four A.M. (!)
Professor Konrad Leuten
c/o The Hopedale Press
New York City, New York