He closed the suitcase, and stood waiting. Strange thrills were shooting through his streamlined body, and his heart, which had been comparatively inactive recently, was again jumping and bumping. That consciousness of not having pushed a good thing along was now very pronounced.
‘Well, good night, Sally,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘Good night, Uncle Fred. Good night, Pongo. ‘‘Eh? Oh, good night.’
‘And thanks for the sanctuary.’
‘Eh? Oh, not at all.’
‘Good night, Miss Bean.’
‘Good night, sir.’
‘You will be turning in yourself shortly, no doubt? A thousand thanks once more for all your sympathy and kindness. The duck pond, eh?’ said Lord Ickenham thoughtfully. ‘Yes, admirable, admirable. Come along, Pongo.’
Half-way along the corridor Pongo paused. Lord Ickenham eyed him enquiringly.
‘Forgotten something?’
‘Eh? Oh, no. I was only thinking about Sally.’
‘What about her?’
‘She looked dashed pretty in that dressing—gown.’
‘Charming. By the way, she tells me she wants a lipstick. See to that tomorrow, will you.’
‘Right ho,’ said Pongo. ‘Lipstick, one. Right.’
He resumed his progress musingly.
10
If you motor to Wockley Junction in the morning, starting from Ashenden Manor reasonably soon after an early-ish breakfast, you can get an express train which deposits you on the arrival platform at Waterloo at twelve-forty-three. The passage of the hours in no way having weakened her determination to visit her child and make plain to her the bleakness of the future awaiting any girl rash enough to put on a white veil and walk down the aisle with her arm linked in that of Reginald Twistleton, Lady Bostock had done this. Bill Oakshott drove her to the junction, and she reached the block of flats where Hermione had her London residence shortly after one, just as Hermione, outside its front door, was about to step into her two-seater.
Privileged to direct a square look at this girl as she stood there in the almost unbelievable splendour of her new hat, her best frock and her carefully selected shoes, gloves and stockings, the dullest eye would have been able to see that she had what it takes. Her father might look like a walrus and her mother like something starting at a hundred to eight in the two-thirty race at Catterick Bridge, but Hermione herself, tall and dark, with large eyes, a perfect profile and an equally perfect figure, was an Oriental potentate’s dream of what the harem needed.
Hearing Lady Bostock’s bleating cry, she turned and stared, incredulity blended in her gaze with the natural dismay of a daughter who, having said goodbye to her mother on a Monday afternoon after entertaining her for a week at her flat, sees her come bobbing up again on Wednesday morning.
‘Mother!’ she exclaimed in the rich contralto which for years had been stirring up Bill Oakshott’s soul like an egg whisk. ‘Whatever …?‘
‘Oh, dear,’ said Lady Bostock. ‘Have you got to go? I came up specially to see you.’
‘I must. I’m lunching at Barribault’s and I’m late already. What did you want to see me about?’
‘Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. Reginald.’ ‘Reginald?’
‘Yes, dear. Your father —A smouldering gleam came into Hermione’s fine eyes. Those words ‘Your father’, taken in conjunction with the name of the man to whom she had plighted her troth, had aroused her suspicions. They could only mean, it seemed to her, that in defiance of her explicit instructions Sir Aylmer had not been treating her nominee like an ewe lamb. And she was a girl who when she said ewe lamb meant ewe lamb.
‘What has Father been doing to Reginald?’ she demanded sternly. ‘Has he been barking at him?’
‘No, no. Your father never barks. He sometimes raises his voice.’
‘Has he been raising his voice, then?’
‘Scarcely so that you could notice it. No, what has happened…. Oh dear, it’s such a long story.’
‘Then I really can’t wait to hear it now. I’m terribly late. And I’m lunching with a publisher.’
‘Mr Popgood?’
Hermione laughed a short, dry laugh. In an association which had lasted three years Augustus Popgood, the sponsor of her books, had never offered her so much as a cheese straw. Nor had his partner, Cyril Grooly.
‘No,’ she said. ‘This is a new one. He wrote to me a few days ago, saying that he would like to have me on his list and suggesting luncheon. He seems a most enterprising man, quite different from Popgood and Grooly. He is the head of a firm called Meriday House, a Mr Pointer or Punter or Painter. I couldn’t make out the signature on his letter. Goodbye, mother. I’ll try to get back about three.’
‘I’ll wait for you, dear.’
‘It’s something important, you say?’
‘Very, very important.’
‘About Reginald?’
‘Yes, dear. We find that he —‘
‘I’m sorry, mother,’ said Hermione. ‘I must rush.’
She was not without a normal girl’s curiosity, but she was also an ambitious young authoress who believed that there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, and there was awaiting her at Barribault’s Hotel a publisher who, judging from his letter, was evidently a live wire endowed with pep and ginger and all the other qualities which ambitious young authoresses like to see in those responsible for the marketing of their books.
The car moved off. Seated at the wheel, she gave herself up to agreeable thoughts about this pushful Mr Pointer.
Or Punter.
Or possibly Painter.
Painter was the name. Not Pointer. Not Punter. Painter. It was Sally’s brother Otis who was waiting for Hermione in the lobby of Barribault’s Hotel, and at the moment when her two-seater joined the stream of traffic he had sprung from his chair, too nervous to sit any longer, and begun to stride to and fro, his eyes from time to time straying to his wrist watch. The coming luncheon marked a crisis in his affairs.
It was no mere coincidence that Otis Painter, in his capacity of publisher of the book beautiful, should have written to Hermione suggesting a meeting with a view to an agreement. The invitation had been the outcome of some very rapid thinking on his part.
Right from the start it had been plain to Otis Painter that if anything like a happy ending was to be achieved in that matter of the lawsuit which was brooding over him like a thunder cloud, Sir Aylmer Bostock would have to be pleaded with, and he had told Sally to tell Pongo to perform the task. And it was while he was in the grip of that unpleasant sinking feeling which always came to those who placed their affairs in Pongo’s hands that he had happened upon the issue of the Tatler containing Hermione’s photograph.
‘Miss Hermione Bostock,’ he read, ‘daughter of Sir Aylmer and Lady Bostock of Ashenden Manor, Hants. In addition to being prominent in Society, Miss Bostock has written several novels under the pseudonym of Gwynneth Gould.’
The words had brought inspiration. His thoughts, as he gazed at the photograph and the caption beneath it, had run roughly as follows. And they seem to us to display an intelligence considerably above the average of what might have been expected in one who had been in his time both an interior decorator and a seller of antiques, besides running a marionette theatre in the Boulevard Raspail.
Q. Who is the best possible person to plead with an old crumb who is threatening to bring a ruinous suit for damages against a shaky young publishing firm?
A. Obviously the crumb’s daughter, the apple of his eye to whom he can refuse nothing.
Q. Get hold of the daughter, then, and enlist her in one’s cause?
A. Exactly.
Q. But how?
A. Easy. She’s an author. Offer her a contract. Her interests will then be identical with those of her publisher, and she will exert her tremendous influence to save him from ruin. Better ask her to lunch.
Q. Right.
A. At Barribault’s.
Q
. What? Have you ever been to Barribault’s and seen the prices on the right-hand side?.
A. No good spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar. You can’t swing a deal like this on bottled beer, a mutton chop and two veg.
So now Otis was pacing Barribault’s lobby, wondering why his guest did not arrive and what the lunch was going to set him back when she did. A few thoughtful words about acidity might steer her off champagne, but at a place like this even hock was likely to inflict a ghastly gash on the wallet.
Watching Otis Painter walk to and fro with his mouth ajar and his knees clashing like cymbals, for he had the misfortune to suffer from adenoids and to be knock-kneed, a spectator would have been surprised to learn that he was so closely related to Sally. But just as daughters have a way of being easier on the eye than their fathers and mothers, so are sisters frequently more attractive than their brothers. Otis was a stout young man with a pink nose, horn-rimmed spectacles and short side-whiskers, who looked like something from the Anglo-Saxon colony on the east bank of the Seine.
It was, indeed, to the east bank of the Seine that he had migrated immediately after graduating from the college where he had received his education, having sprouted a soul and the side-whiskers simultaneously towards the end of his sophomore year. From the rive gauche he had drifted to London, there to try various ventures with a uniform lack of success, and here he was, five years later, the directing executive of Meriday House, formerly Ye Panache Presse, waiting in Barribault’s lobby to give lunch to Hermione Bostock.
The hands of his watch were pointing to twenty-seven minutes past one when through the glass of the outer door he saw the gaily apparelled official who stood on the threshold to scoop clients out of their cars and cabs suddenly stiffen himself, touch his hat convulsively and give his moustache a spasmodic twirl, sufficient indication that something pretty sensational was on its way in. And a moment later the door revolved and through it came a figure that made him catch his breath and regret that the pimple on the tip of his nose had not yielded to treatment that morning. There is nothing actually low and degrading about a pimple on the tip of the nose, but there are times when a susceptible young man wishes he did not have one. He stepped forward devoutly.
‘Miss Gould?’
‘Oh, how do you do, Mr Pointer?’ ‘Painter.’
‘Punter?’
‘Painter.’
‘Oh, Painter. I hope I’m not late.’ ‘No, no. Cocktail?’
‘No, thank you. I never drink.’
Otis started. The wallet in his hip pocket seemed to give a joyful leap.
‘What, not even at lunch?’
‘Only lemonade.’
‘Come right in,’ said Otis with an enthusiasm which he made no attempt to conceal. ‘Come right along in.’
He led the way buoyantly towards the grill room. Lemonade, he happened to know, was half-a-crown.
It was probably this immediate striking of the right note that made the luncheon such a success. For that it was a success not even the most exacting critic could have disputed. From the first forkful of smoked salmon it went with all the swing of a Babylonian orgy or of one of those conferences between statesmen which are conducted throughout in a spirit of the utmost cordiality.
Too often when a publisher entertains an author at the midday meal a rather sombre note tinges the table talk. The host is apt to sigh a good deal and to choose as the theme of his remarks the hardness of the times, the stagnant condition of the book trade and the growing price of pulp paper. And when his guest tries to cheer him up by suggesting that these disadvantages may be offset by a spirited policy of publicity, he sighs again and says that eulogies of an author’s work displayed in the press at the publisher’s expense are of little or no value, the only advertising that counts being — how shall he put it — well, what he might perhaps describe as word-of-mouth advertising.
There was nothing of that sort here today. Otis scoffed at the idea that the times were hard. The times, in his opinion, were swell. So was the book trade. Not a trace of stagnation. And as for pulp paper, you might have supposed from the way he spoke that they gave him the stuff.
He then went on to sketch out his policy as regarded advertising.
Otis, said Otis, believed in advertising. When he found an author in whom he had confidence — like you, Miss Gould, if he might say so — the sky was the limit. A column here, a column there. That sort of thing. The cost? He didn’t give a darn about the cost. You got it all back on the sales. His motto, he said, coming through smoothly with the only bit of French — except Oo-la-la — which had managed to stick from the old left bank days, was L ‘audace, l’audace, et toujours l’audace.
It was a statement of faith well calculated to make any young authoress feel that she was floating on a pink cloud over an ocean of joy, and that was how Hermione felt as she listened. The sensation grew even more acute as her host spoke of commissioning her next three books, sight unseen, and paying royalty on them at the rate of twenty per cent, rising to twenty-five above three thousand. Even when uttered by a man with adenoids the words were like the strains of some grand anthem.
It is possible that the reader of this chronicle, misled by Bill Oakshott’s enthusiasm, may have formed an erroneous idea of Hermione Bostock’s standing in the world of literature, for her career had been a good deal less triumphant than he had appeared to suggest. She had published three works of fiction through the house of Popgood and Grooly, of which the first two had sold eleven hundred and four and sixteen hundred and eight copies respectively. The last, just out, was reported by Popgood, a gloomy man, to be ‘moving slowly’. Grooly, the optimist of the firm, spoke in brighter vein of a possible sale of two thousand.
But even if you strung along with sunny young Grooly you could not say that figures like these were anything but a poor return for a great deal of hard toil, and Hermione attributed them not to any lack of merit in the books themselves, for she knew their merit to be considerable, but to the firm’s preference for keeping its money in the old oak chest instead of spending it on advertisements in the papers. She had once taken this matter up with the partners, and Popgood had said that it was no use advertising in the papers, because the only form of advertising that counted was … how should he put it?
‘Word of mouth?’ suggested Grooly.
‘Word of mouth!’ assented Popgood, looking gratefully at the ingenious phrasemaker.
Little wonder, then, that as Hermione drank in Otis’s intoxicating words, soft music seemed to fill the air and even the directing executive of Meriday House became almost beautiful. She listened as if in a dream, and the more he talked the more she liked it. It was only as she was sipping her coffee (two shillings, but unavoidable) that anything crept into his remarks that suggested that all was not for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Quite suddenly, after an eloquent passage surcharged with optimism, he struck a minor chord.
‘Yay,’ he said, ‘that’s how I feel. I admire your work and I would like to take hold of your books and push them as they ought to be pushed. But —‘
He paused, and Hermione, descending from her pink cloud, looked at him with concern. When a publisher has offered you twenty per cent rising to twenty-five above three thousand and has been talking spaciously of column spreads in all the literate Sunday papers, you do not like to hear him use that word ‘but’.
‘But —?‘ she echoed.
Otis removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, polished them and replaced them on a nose which an excellent luncheon had turned from pink to scarlet. He also touched his pimple and polished that, and with a pudgy hand stroked his starboard whisker. The interview had reached its crux, and he wished to reflect before proceeding.
‘But…. Well, the fact is,’ he said, ‘there’s a catch. I’m not so sure I’m going to have the money to do it with. I may go bankrupt before I can start.
‘What!’
‘You see, I’m faced with a darned nasty legal action, an
d my lawyer tells me the damages may be very heavy.’
‘But why do you speak as if you were certain to lose?’
‘I am, if it ever comes into court. And I don’t see how I’m going to stop it coming into court. This man Bostock —‘
‘Bostock?’
‘Sir Aylmer Bostock. He used to be Governor of one of those African colonies, and he wrote his Reminiscences and got me to publish them —‘
‘But that was Ye Panache Presse.’
‘I changed the name to Meriday House. Crisper. Why, say,’ said Otis with natural surprise, ‘you speak as if you know all about it. You do? Extraordinary how these things get around. Well, if you’ve heard what happened, I don’t have to explain. The point is that this Bostock is showing a very vindictive spirit. And, as I say, if the thing comes into court, I shall be ruined.’
‘Ah!’ said Hermione.
Lord Ickenham, looking at this girl’s photograph, had given it as his opinion that she was a potential eye-flasher. He had been correct. Her eyes were flashing now, and in that simple ‘Ah!’ there was all the sinister significance of Constable Potter’s ‘Ho!’
In earlier portions of this chronicle reference was made to the emotions of wolves which overtake sleighs and find no Russian peasant aboard and of tigers deprived of their Indian coolie just as they are sitting down to lunch. More poignant even than these are the feelings of a young authoress who, having just been offered twenty per cent rising to twenty-five above three thousand by a publisher who believes in column spreads in all the literate Sunday papers, learns that her father is planning to rob that publisher of the means to publish.