Blackmailer

George Axelrod
Chapter One

The girl’s name was Jean Dahl. That was all the information Miss Dennison had been able to pry out of her. Miss Dennison had finally come back to my office and advised me to talk to her. “She’s very determined,” my secretary said. “I just can’t seem to get rid of her.”

Then Miss Dennison winked. It was a dry, spinsterish, somewhat evil wink.

“Anyway, Mr. Sherman, she’s your type.”

By that time I had decided Jean Dahl was most probably an author’s wife and, as such, fell under my jurisdiction. At Conrad, Sherman, Inc., Publishers, Pat Conrad deals with the authors and I deal with the authors’ wives.

I have far and away the tougher job.

Part of my job is to come up with spontaneous, unrehearsed answers to such irate questions as: Will you please explain to me why, when my Aunt Sarah tried to buy a copy of my husband’s book at Macy’s, they told her it was out of stock? Or: Are you deliberately trying to sabotage my husband’s book, or do you actually think you can sell it by running those measly little ads?

“O.K., O.K.,” I said to Miss Dennison. “Send her in. I’ll talk to her.”

When the door opened, I stood up, smiled broadly, extended my hand, and said, “How do you do. I’m Dick Sherman. I’m always delighted to meet the wife of one of our authors. Now don’t tell me what the trouble is. Let me guess. Your husband’s book is out of stock at Macy’s?”

Patter like this has made me the life of so many Book and Author luncheons.

Miss Dahl ignored me and my outstretched hand.

She walked past me, directly to the window, and stood staring down at the traffic on Madison Avenue.

“Or,” I continued, “perhaps our advertising campaign has fallen short of…”

Miss Dennison had been right about one thing. Miss Dahl was very definitely my type. She had thick, honey-colored blonde hair that she wore a little longer than this winter’s style dictated. She was wearing a beaver coat and what the fashion ads call a “basic black dress”-a little number costing about one hundred and fifty dollars. Several gold bracelets dangled from her wrist.

Miss Dahl took a cigarette out of her purse, lighted it, and, half sitting on the windowsill, turned to face me holding the cigarette between her lips. She looked at me carefully and said, “Are you the one I want to see?”

At this point it began to dawn on me that perhaps Miss Dahl was not an author’s wife.

“I want to talk to someone about a book,” she said.

I nodded, smiled, and explained patiently that since this was a publishing house most of the people who came to see us wanted to talk about books.

“You’ve written a book?” I asked. I was not surprised. The damnedest people write books.

“I’ve got a book, baby,” she said. “It’s for sale. You can have it for fifty thousand dollars.”

I laughed a polite, nervous laugh. “That seems a bit high,” I said. “Why don’t you do this, Miss Dahl? Why don’t you submit the book to us in the usual way, and if it turns out to be something we’re interested in, why, I’m sure…”

Then I noticed that Miss Dahl was not listening to me. She was staring dreamily out the window. “I’ll show you a page of the book,” she said conversationally. “So you’ll understand what I’m talking about when I say I have a book.”

She opened her purse, took out a folded sheet of yellow paper and handed it to me. I unfolded it and examined it curiously. It was page one, chapter one of a novel. There was no title and no author’s name. The page was roughly typed. There were many cross-outs, corrections, and penciled scrawls in the margin.

I glanced inquiringly at Miss Dahl. Her face was a complete blank. I began to read the page of manuscript.

I read the page very slowly. I examined the penciled writing between the lines and in the margins. By the time I had finished the page there was no question in my mind as to what I was reading.

“Where did you get this?” I asked, trying to be calm.

“I’ve got the three hundred and forty-six pages that come after it, too,” she said. “The price is still fifty thousand dollars.”

She reached over and gently plucked the yellow paper out of my hand. She folded it again and put it back in her purse. “I’ve got a book,” she said, “and I want to sell it. What I want to know is, do you want to buy it?”

“This book you say you have,” I was choosing my words carefully, “is it yours to sell?”

She ground out her cigarette in the ashtray on my desk. “Let’s put it this way, baby,” she said. “I’ve got it. If you want it, I’ll sell it to you and then you’ll have it.”

“I’d have to consult with my partner, Mr. Conrad, about this,” I told her.

Miss Dahl smiled. She had white, perfect teeth. “Consult with anybody you want to,” she said. “The price is fifty thousand dollars. In cash. Or a certified check will do. Only you’ll have to make up your mind quickly. As they say, this offer is good for a limited time only.”

I stood up, suddenly angry.

“It’s not as easy as that,” I said. “If this is genuine… if you have the rest of the pages… and if you can prove title to the book-that is, if you have a legal right to sell it so that after we’ve bought it we can prove ownership in court-if all those things, then we might be interested. Then maybe we could talk about the price.”

Miss Dahl was smiling.

She got up from the window and walked toward me. We were standing very close. It was so quiet that I could hear both of us breathing.

“Listen, baby,” she said. She was still smiling. She put her hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back into my chair.

“Listen, baby,” she said. “I have the only copy in the world of the book Charles Anstruther finished before he died. If you want to buy it, I’ll sell it to you. But the sale has to be fast. There’s another customer interested in it. I don’t care who buys it. I don’t care about that at all. What I care about is the money.”

I started to get up.

She pushed me down into the chair again.

“You can have till tonight to decide. I’ll get in touch with you and you can give me your answer then. If you decide you’re interested, I’ll show you the rest of the pages. Then tomorrow you give me the money, and I’ll give you the book. Think it over. You’ll hear from me.”

I started to get up.

“Don’t bother, baby. I can find my way out.”

Twice, after she had gone, I picked up the receiver to call Pat Conrad and twice I put it down again.

The phone on my desk buzzed.

I lifted the receiver very gently, trying not to break the spell. I didn’t want to wake up and spoil the beautiful daydream I was having.

I walked into Pat’s office (in the dream) and casually tossed the manuscript (347 yellow pages, typed, with pencil corrections) on his desk.

“What’s this?” Pat asked.

“Oh,” I said, “a book…”

“What book?”

“The new Anstruther,” I said casually. “If we rush it into galleys we can have it for spring publication.”

Pat was aghast.

Feverishly, with trembling fingers he seized the manuscript and began to pore over it, eagerly, hungrily scanning the pages. “Dick! Where-how-I don’t understand…” He was kissing me on both cheeks and blubbering when the buzz of the phone snapped me back to harsh reality.

“There’s a Red Arrow messenger here with a letter for you,” Miss Dennison said. “You’ll have to sign for it yourself.”

“It’s from some author’s wife,” I said. “She thinks she’s pretty smart. I’ll sign for it, but I won’t read it. I’ll just notice her name and I’ll deduct the quarter I have to give the boy from her husband’s royalties.”

I told Miss Dennison to send the boy in. I signed my name on the proper dotted line, and gave the boy a quarter. When Miss Dennison and the boy had gone, I looked at the letter. It was not from an author’s wife. I opened it and read:

MAX SHRIBER, LTD.

ARTIST’S REPRESENTATIVE

CARLYLE HOTEL, NEW YORK

Mr. Richard Sherman

Conrad, Sherman, Inc., Publishers

New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Sherman:

This is to inform you that I have been engaged by the literary executors of the late Charles Anstruther to represent and to negotiate the sale of The Winding Road to the Hills, a novel which was completed by Charles Anstruther shortly before his death.

I am hereby offering your firm the opportunity of publishing this book. However, because of the intense interest in this, the last work of America’s leading novelist and Nobel Prize winner, I can only extend to you a twenty-four-hour option. I must have a definite answer from you not later than noon tomorrow. I will be in my office from nine o’clock tomorrow morning. I will be expecting to hear from you.

Sincerely, MAX SHRIBER

I sat at the desk with the letter in front of me, trying to consider the matter calmly.

In the first place, I had never heard of a literary agent named Max Shriber.

In the second place, until less than an hour ago, I had not been aware of the existence of an unpublished novel by Charles Anstruther. Now, suddenly, it had been offered to me not once but twice.

I don’t know how familiar you are with the book publishing business in New York, but believe me when I say that the odds against a firm like Conrad, Sherman, Inc., ever publishing a Charles Anstruther manuscript were probably better than a thousand to one.

Conrad, Sherman was basically a textbook house. We did a novel or two when we could lay our hands on one, but the closest thing we had developed to a bestseller was our “Triple-Cross-O-Grams,” books of puzzles for which there seemed to be an ever bottomless market.

I walked over to the bookshelf and took down a copy of Who’s Who in America and thumbed through the A’s until I came to: Anstruther, Charles, American novelist and short story writer. Born 1895 in St. Louis, Mo.

The entry covered a whole page. It listed his ten books, his five wives, and gave his permanent address as Key West. Under hobbies it said: Big game hunting, skiing, stunt flying, military strategy, deep-sea fishing, fencing, and judo.

I smiled, remembering the story that had been current a few years before. Anstruther, in filling out the form for Who’s Who, had included one other hobby, a short picturesque word in the participle form which he himself had been one of the first to use in print. The editors of Who’s Who had, naturally, deleted it.

Anstruther was probably not a better writer than Steinbeck, Hemingway, or half a dozen others. But he was more colorful. I had met him twice. He had been a large, violent-looking man with a red face and shaggy hair.

I had met him first at a formal dinner in his honor at which he had turned up, quite drunk, wearing boots and a flannel hunting shirt.

The second time had been in the office of the publishing house for which I was then working. We talked for a few minutes, or, rather, he had talked and I had listened in awed silence. He had come to the office to get a second advance on a novel that he had not yet begun. The subject of the conversation was limited to what he proposed to do if the advance were denied. He told me in great detail how he would punch the head of the firm in the belly, throw typewriters out windows and make merry with the young lady at the reception desk. He elaborated on this theme for perhaps fifteen minutes until the head of the firm appeared with a large check. The novel, incidentally, was ultimately completed and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for that year.

A number of questions had begun to form in my mind. I am a methodical, plodding soul, with a memory like a sieve. I took out a pencil and a scratch pad and began to write down the questions as they came into my mind.

1. Who is Jean Dahl? And if there is a new Anstruther novel, what is she doing with it? 2. Who is Max Shriber? And if there is a new Anstruther novel, what is he doing with it? 3. If either of these people do have the new Anstruther, why in God’s name would they both want to submit it to us?

I looked at the three questions and could not answer any one of them.

In fact, there was only one thing in the whole business that I was sure of.

Before joining Pat to form Conrad, Sherman, Inc., I had worked as an editor at the large, successful publishing house which had, in the past, published Anstruther’s books. I had had the privilege of working on two Anstruther manuscripts. I knew the way he typed, I knew his handwriting, I knew the quality and weight of the yellow paper he generally used. I knew (and this was something few people did know) exactly which words he invariably misspelled. You would have to have worked on his original manuscripts to believe that Charles Anstruther, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, had gone to his grave under the impression that immediately was spelled with one m.

What I was getting at is this: I was prepared to swear that the page Jean Dahl had showed me had actually been written by Charles Anstruther.

This did not prove that she had the other three hundred and forty-six pages that would go to make up the rest of a novel. But the possibility did exist.

It was certainly true that Anstruther had had time to write a new book. He had published nothing during the six years before his accident, and during that time he had periodically announced (from Cuba, from Paris, from Korea, from the dozens of places where he was always turning up) that he was at work on a new novel.

However, his drinking, which had always been a problem, was so far out of hand during the last years of his life that no one was greatly surprised when no new manuscript was found among his effects.

The end had been both tragic and a little foolish. Anstruther had accidentally shot himself while cleaning a hunting rifle. He had been, it was later revealed, in an advanced alcoholic stage at the time of the accident.

I picked up the phone and told Miss Dennison to get me Max Shriber’s office at the Carlyle Hotel.

The operator said that Mr. Shriber was out. She said she had no information as to when he would be back. I asked if there were any place where I could reach him. She said that he’d left no message.

“Fine,” I said. “That’s helpful. That’s real helpful.”

I hung up the phone. Then, for the third time, I started to call Pat. And for the third time I decided not to call.