Chapter 2
'Fifteen thousand pounds plus costs,' said Sonia Futtle next morning, 'for inadvertent libel? I don't believe it.'
'It's in the paper,' said Frensic handing her The Times. 'Next to the bit about the drunken lorry driver who killed two children and got fined a hundred and fifty pounds. Mind you he did lose his licence for three months too.'
'But that's insane. A hundred and fifty pounds for killing two children and fifteen thousand for libelling a woman James didn't even know existed.'
'On a zebra crossing,' said Frensic bitterly. 'Don't forget the zebra crossing.'
'Mad. Stark staring raving mad,' said Sonia. 'You English are out of your minds legally.'
'So's Jamesforth,' said Frensic, 'and you can forget him as one of our authors. He doesn't want to know us.'
'But we didn't do anything. We aren't supposed to check his proofs out. Pulteney's should have done that. They'd have spotted the libel.'
'Like hell they would. How does anyone spot a woman called Desdemona Humberson living in the wilds of Somerset who grows lupins and belongs to the Women's Institute? She's too improbable for words.'
'She's also done very nicely for herself. Fifteen grand for being called a nymphomaniac. It's worth it. I mean if someone called me a raving nymphomaniac I'd be only too glad to accept fifteen '
'Doubtless,' said Frensic, forestalling a discussion of this highly unlikely eventuality. 'And for fifteen thousand I'd have hired a drunken lorry driver and had her erased on a zebra crossing. Split the difference with the driver and we would have still been to the good. And while I was about it I would have had Mr Galbanum slaughtered too. He should have had more sense than to advise Pulteneys and Jamesforth to fight the case.'
'Well it was innocent libel,' said Sonia. 'James didn't mean to malign the woman.'
'Oh quite. The fact remains that he did and under the Defamation Act of 1952 designed to protect authors and publishers from actions of this sort, innocent libel demands that they show they took reasonable care '
'Reasonable care? What does that mean?'
'According to that senile old judge it means going to Somerset House and checking to see if anyone called Desdemona was born in 1928 and married a man called Humberson in 1951. Then you go through the Lupin Growers Association Handbook looking for Humbersons and if they're not there you have a whack at the Women's Institute and finally the telephone directory for Somerset. Well, they didn't do all that so they got lumbered for fifteen thousand and we've got the reputation of handling authors who libel innocent women. Send your novels to Frensic & Futtle and get sued. We are the pariahs of the publishing world.'
'It can't be as bad as all that. After all, it's the first time it's happened and everyone knows that James is a souse who can't remember where he's been or who he's done.'
'Can't they just. Pulteneys can. Hubert rang up last night to say that we needn't send them any more novels. Once that word gets round we are going to have what is euphemistically called a cash flow problem.'
'We're certainly going to have to find someone to replace James,' said Sonia. 'Bestsellers like that don't grow on trees.'
'Nor lupins,' said Frensic and retired to his office.
All in all it was a bad day. The phone rang almost incessantly. Authors demanded to know if they were likely to end up in the High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, because they had used the names of people they were at school with, and publishers turned down novels they would previously have accepted. Frensic sat and took snuff and tried to remain civil. By five o'clock he was finding it increasingly difficult and when the Literary Editor of the Sunday Graphic phoned to ask if Frensic would contribute an article on the iniquities of the British libel laws he was downright rude.
'What do you want me to do?' he shouted. 'Stick my head in a bloody noose and get hauled up for contempt of court? For all I know that blithering idiot Jamesforth is going to appeal against the verdict.'
'On the grounds that you inserted the passage which libelled Mrs Humberson?' the editor asked. 'After all it was suggested by the defence counsel '
'By God, I'll have you for slander,' shouted Frensic. 'Galbanum had the gall to say that in court where he's protected but if you repeat that in public I'll institute proceedings myself.'
'You'd have a hard time,' said the editor. 'Jamesforth wouldn't make a good witness. He swears you advised him to jack Mrs Humberson up sexwise and when he wouldn't you altered the proofs.'
'That's a downright lie,' yelled Frensic. 'Anyone would think I wrote my authors' novels for them!'
'As a matter of fact a great many people do believe just that,' said the editor. Frensic hurled imprecations and went home with a headache.
If Wednesday was bad, Thursday was no better. Collins rejected William Lonroy's fifth novel Seventh Heaven as being too explicit sexually. Triad Press turned down Mary Gold's Final Fling for the opposite reason and Cassells even refused Sammy The Squirrel on the grounds that it was preoccupied with individual acquisition and lacked community concern. Cape rejected this, Seeker rejected that. There were no acceptances. Finally there was a moment of high drama when an elderly clergyman whose autobiography Frensic had repeatedly refused to handle, explaining each time that there wasn't a large reading public for a book that dealt exclusively with parish life in South Croydon, smashed a vase with his umbrella and only consented to leave with his manuscript when Sonia threatened to call the police. By lunchtime Frensic was bordering on hysteria.
'I can't stand it,' he whimpered. The phone rang and Frensic shied. 'If it's for me, tell them I'm not in. I'm having a breakdown. Tell them '
It was for him. Sonia put her hand over the mouthpiece. 'It's Margot Joseph. She says she's dried up and doesn't think she can finish '
Frensic fled to the safety of his own office and took his phone off the hook.
'For the rest of the day I'm not in,' he told Sonia when she came through a few minutes later. 'I shall sit here and think.'
'In that case you can read this,' said Sonia and put a parcel on his desk. 'It came this morning. I haven't had time to open it.'
'It's probably a bomb,' said Frensic gloomily and undid the string. But the package contained nothing more threatening than a neatly typed manuscript and an envelope addressed to Mr F. A. Frensic. Frensic glanced at the manuscript and noted with satisfaction that its pages were pristine and its corners unthumbed, a healthy sign which indicated that he was the first recipient and that it hadn't gone the rounds of other agents. Then he looked at the title page. It said simply PAUSE O MEN FOR THE VIRGIN, A Novel. There was no author's name and no return address. Odd. Frensic opened the envelope and read the letter inside. It was brief and impersonal and mystifying.
Cadwalladine & Dimkins Solicitors
596 St Andrew's Street Oxford
Dear Sir,
All communications concerning the possible sale, publication and copyright of the enclosed manuscript should be addressed to this office marked for the Personal Attention of P. Cadwalladine.
The author, who wishes to remain strictly anonymous, leaves the matter of terms of sale and choice of a suitable nom de plume and related matters entirely in your hands.
Yours faithfully,
Percy Cadwalladine.
Frensic read the letter through several times before turning his attention to the manuscript. It was a very odd letter. An author who wished to remain strictly anonymous? Left everything concerning sale and choice of nom de plume and related matters entirely in his hands? Considering that all the authors he had ever dealt with were notoriously egotistical and interfering there was a lot to be said for one who was so self-effacing. Positively endearing, in fact. With the silent wish that Mr Jamesforth had left everything in his hands Frensic turned the title page of Pause O Men for the Virgin and began to read.
He was still reading an hour later, his snuff box open on the desk and his waistcoat and the creases of his trousers powdered with snuff. Frensic reached unthinkingly for the box and took another large pinch and wiped his nose with his third handkerchief. In the next office the phone rang. People climbed the stairs and knocked on Sonia's door. Traffic rumbled outside in the street. Frensic was oblivious to these extraneous sounds. He turned another page and read on.
It was half past six when Sonia Futtle finished for the day and prepared to leave. The door of Frensic's office was shut and she hadn't heard him go. She opened it and peered inside. Frensic was sitting at his desk staring fixedly through the window over the dark roofs of Covent Garden with a slight smile on his face. It was an attitude she recognized, the posture of triumphant discovery.
'I don't believe it,' she said standing in the doorway.
'Read it,' said Frensic. 'Don't believe me. Read it for yourself.' His hand flicked dismissively towards the manuscript.
'A good one?'
'A bestseller.'
'Are you sure?'
'Positive.'
'And of course it's a novel?'
'One hopes so,' said Frensic, 'fervently.'
'A dirty book,' said Sonia, who recognized the symptoms.
'Dirty,' said Frensic, 'is hardly adequate. The mind that penned if minds can pen this odyssey of lust is of a prurience indescribable.' He got up and handed her the manuscript.
'I will value your opinion,' he said with the air of a man who had regained his authority.
But if it was a jaunty Frensic who went home to his flat in Hampstead that night, it was a wary one who came back next morning and wrote a note on Sonia's scratch pad. 'Will discuss the novel with you over lunch. Not to be disturbed.' He went into his office and shut the door.
For the rest of the morning there was little to indicate that Frensic had anything more important on his mind than a vague interest in the antics of the pigeons on the roof opposite. He sat at his desk staring out of the window, occasionally reaching for the phone or jotting something on a piece of paper. For the most part he just sat. But external appearances were misleading. Frensic's mind was on the move, journeying across the internal landscape which he knew so well and in which each publishing house in London was a halt for bargaining, a crossroads where commercial advantages were exchanged, favours given and little debts repaid. And Frensic's route was a devious one. It was not enough to sell a book. Any fool could do that, given the right book. The important thing was to place it in precisely the right spot so that the consequences of its sale would have maximum effect and ramify out to advance his reputation and promote some future advantage. And not his alone but that of his authors. Time entered into these calculations, time and his intuitive assessment of books that had yet to be written, books by established authors which he knew would be unsuccessful and books by new writers whose success would be jeopardized by their lack of reputation. Frensic juggled with intangibles. It was his profession and he was good at it.
Sometimes he sold books for small advances to small firms when the very same book offered to one of the big publishing houses would have earned its author a large advance. On these occasions the present was sacrificed to the future in the knowledge that help given now would be repaid later by the publication of some novel that would never sell more than five hundred copies but which Frensic, for reasons of his own, wished to see in print. Only Frensic knew his own intentions, just as only Frensic knew the identities of those well-reputed novelists who actually earned their living by writing detective stories or soft porn under pseudonyms. It was all a mystery and even Frensic, whose head was filled with abstruse equations involving personalities and tastes, who bought what and why, and all the details of the debts he owed or was owed, knew that he was not privy to every corner of the mystery. There was always luck and of late Frensic's luck had changed. When that happened it paid to walk warily. This morning Frensic walked very warily indeed.
He phoned several friends in the legal profession and assured himself that Cadwalladine & Dimkins, Solicitors, were an old, well-established and highly reputable firm who handled work of the most respectable kind. Only then did he phone Oxford and ask to speak to Mr Cadwalladine about the novel he had sent him. Mr Cadwalladine sounded old-fashioned. No, he was sorry to say, Mr Frensic could not meet the author. His instructions were that absolute anonymity was essential and all matters would have to be referred to Mr Cadwalladine personally. Of course the book was pure fiction. Yes, Mr Frensic could include an extra clause in any contract exonerating the publishers from the financial consequences of a libel action. In any case he had always assumed such a clause to be part of contracts between publishers and authors. Frensic said they were but that he had to be absolutely certain when dealing with an anonymous author. Mr Cadwalladine said he quite understood.
Frensic put the phone down with a new feeling of confidence, and returned less warily to his interior landscape where imaginary negotiations took place. There he retraced his route, stopped at several eminent publishing houses for consideration, and travelled on. What Pause O Men for the Virgin needed was a publisher with an excellent reputation to give it the imprimatur of respectability. Frensic narrowed them down and finally made up his mind. It would be a gamble but it would be a gamble that was worth taking. He would have to have Sonia Futtle's opinion first.
She gave it to him over lunch in a little Italian restaurant where Frensic entertained his less important authors.
'A weird book,' she said.
'Quite,' said Frensic.
'But it's got something. Compassionate,' said Sonia, wanning to her task.
'I agree.'
'Deeply insightful.'
'Definitely.'
'Good story line.'
'Excellent.'
'Significant,' said Sonia.
Frensic sighed. It was the word he had been waiting for. 'You really think that?'
'I do. I mean it. I think it's really got something. It's good. I really do.'
'Well,' said Frensic doubtfully, 'I may be an anachronism but...'
'You're role-playing again. Be serious.'
'My dear,' said Frensic, 'I am being serious. If you say that stuff is significant I am delighted. It's what I thought you'd say. It means it will appeal to those intellectual flagellants who can't enjoy a book unless it hurts. That I happen to know that, from a genuinely literary standpoint, it is an abomination is perhaps beside the point but I am entitled to protect my instincts.'
'Instincts? No man had fewer.'
'Literary instincts,' said Frensic. 'And they tell me that this is a bad, pretentious book and that it will sell. It combines a filthy story with an even filthier style.'
'I didn't see anything wrong with the style,' said Sonia.
'Of course you didn't. You're an American and Americans aren't burdened by our classical inheritance. You can't see that there is a world of difference between Dreiser and Mencken or Tom Wolfe and Bellow. That's your prerogative. I find such lack of discrimination invaluable and most reassuring. If you accept sentences endlessly convoluted, spattered with commas and tied into knots with parentheses, unrelated verbs and qualifications of qualifications, and which, to parody, have, if they are to be at all comprehended, to be read at least four times with the aid of a dictionary, who am I to quarrel with you? Your fellow-countrymen, whose rage for self-improvement I have never appreciated, are going to love this book.'
'They may not go such a ball on the story line. I mean it's been done before you know. Harold and Maude?
'But never in such exquisitely nauseating detail,' said Frensic and sipped his wine. 'And not with Lawrentian overtones. Besides that's our trump. Seventeen loves eighty. The liberation of the senile. What could be more significant than that? By the way when is Hutchmeyer due in London?'
'Hutchmeyer? You've got to be kidding,' said Sonia. Frensic held up a piece of ravioli in protest.
'Don't use that expression. I am not a goat.'
'And Hutchmeyer's not the Olympia Press. He's strictly middlebrow. He wouldn't touch this book.'
'He would if we baited the trap right,' said Frensic.
'Trap?' said Sonia suspiciously. 'What trap?'
'I was thinking of a very distinguished London publisher to take the book first,' said Frensic, 'and then you sell the American rights to Hutchmeyer.'
'Who?'
'Corkadales,' said Frensic.
Sonia shook her head. 'Corkadales are far too old and stodgy.'
'Precisely,' said Frensic. 'They are prestigious. They are also broke.'
'They should have dropped half their list years ago,' said Sonia.
They should have dropped Sir Clarence years ago. You read his obituary?' But Sonia hadn't.
'Most entertaining. And instructive. Tributes galore to his service to Literature, by which they meant he had subsidized more unread poets and novelists than any other publisher in London. The result: they are now broke.'
'In which case they can hardly afford to buy Pause O Men for the Virgin.'
'They can hardly afford not to,' said Frensic. 'I had a word with Geoffrey Corkadale at the funeral. He is not following in his father's footsteps. Corkadales are about to emerge from the eighteenth century. Geoffrey is looking for a bestseller. Corkadales will take Pause and we will take Hutchmeyer.'
'You think Hutchmeyer is going to be impressed?' said Sonia. 'What the hell have Corkadales got to offer?'
'Distinction,' said Frensic, 'a most distinguished past. The mantel-piece against which Shelley leant, the chair Mrs Gaskell was pregnant in, the carpet Tennyson was sick on. The incunabula of, if not The Great Tradition, at least a very important strand of literary history. By accepting this novel for free Corkadales will confer cultural sanctity on it.'
'And you think the author will be satisfied with that? You don't think he'll want money too?'
'He'll get the money from Hutchmeyer. We're going to sting Mr Hutchmeyer for a fortune. Anyhow, this author is unique.'
'I got that from the book,' said Sonia. 'How else is he unique?'
'He doesn't have a name, for one thing,' said Frensic and explained his instructions from Mr Cadwalladine. 'Which leaves us with an entirely free hand,' he said when he finished.
'And the little matter of a pseudonym,' said Sonia. 'I suppose we could kill two birds with one stone and say it was by Peter Piper. That way he'd see his name on the cover of a novel.'
'True,' said Frensic sadly, 'I'm afraid poor Piper is never going to make it any other way.'
'Besides, it would save the expense of his annual lunch and you wouldn't have to go through yet another version of his Search for a Lost Childhood. By the way, who is the model this year?'
'Thomas Mann,' said Frensic. 'One dreads the thought of sentences two pages long. You really think it would put an end to his illusions of literary grandeur?'
'Who knows?' said Sonia. 'The very fact of seeing his name on the cover of a novel and being taken for the author...'
'It's the only way he's ever going to get into print, I'll stake my reputation on that,' said Frensic.
'So we'll be doing him a favour.'
That afternoon Frensic took the manuscript to Corkadales. On the front under the title Sonia had added 'by Peter Piper'. Frensic spoke long and persuasively to Geoffrey Corkadale and left the office that night well pleased with himself.
A week later the editorial board of Corkadales considered Pause O Men for the Virgin in the presence of that past upon which the vestige of their reputation depended. Portraits of dead authors lined the panelled walls of the editorial room. Shelley was not there, nor Mrs Gaskell, but there were lesser notables to take their place. Ranged in glass-covered bookshelves there were first editions, and in some exhibition cases relics of the trade. Quills, Waverley pens, pocket-knives, an ink-bottle Trollope was said to have left in a train, a sandbox used by Southey, and even a scrap of blotting paper which, held up to a mirror, revealed that Henry James had once inexplicably written 'darling'.
In the centre of this museum the Literary Director, Mr Wilberforce, and the Senior Editor, Mr Tate, sat at an oval walnut table observing the weekly rite. They sipped Madeira and nibbled seedcake and looked disapprovingly at the manuscript before them and then at Geoffrey Corkadale. It was difficult to tell which they disliked most. Certainly Geoffrey's suede suit and floral shirt did not fit the atmosphere. Sir Clarence would not have approved. Mr Wilberforce helped himself to some more Madeira and shook his head.
'I cannot agree,' he said. 'I find it wholly incomprehensible that we should even consider lending our name, our great name, to the publication of this...thing.'
'You didn't like the book?' said Geoffrey.
'Like it? I could hardly bring myself to finish it.'
'Well, we can't hope to please everyone.'
'But we've never touched a book like this before. We have our reputation to consider.'
'Not to mention our overdraft,' said Geoffrey. 'And to be brutally frank, we have to choose between our reputation and bankruptcy.'
'But does it have to be this awful book?' said Mr Tate. 'I mean have you read it?'
Geoffrey nodded. 'As a matter of fact I have. I know that my father didn't make a habit of reading anything later than Meredith but...'
'Your poor father,' said Mr Wilberforce with feeling, 'must be turning in his grave at the very thought '
'Where, with any luck, he will shortly be joined by the so-called heroine of this disgusting novel,' said Mr Tate.
Geoffrey rearranged a stray lock of hair. 'Considering that papa was cremated I shouldn't have thought that his turning or her joining him would be very easy,' he murmured. Mr Wilberborce and Mr Tate looked grim. Geoffrey adjusted his smile. 'Your objection then I take it is based on the fact that the romance in this novel is between a seventeen-year-old boy and an eighty-year-old woman?' he said.
'Yes,' said Mr Wilberforce more loudly than was his wont, 'it is. Though how you can bring yourself to use the word "romance"...'
'The relationship then. The term doesn't matter.'
'It's not the term I'm worried about,' said Mr Tate. 'It's not even the relationship. If it simply stuck to that it wouldn't be so bad. It's the bits in between that get me. I had no idea...oh well never mind. The whole thing is so awful.'
'It's the bits in between,' said Geoffrey, 'that will sell the book.'
Mr Wilberforce shook his head. 'Personally I'm inclined to think we would run the risk, the gravest risk of being prosecuted for obscenity,' he said, 'and in my view quite rightly.'
'I agree,' said Mr Tate. 'I mean, take the episode where they use the rocking horse and the douche '
'For God's sake,' squawked Mr Wilberforce. 'It was bad enough having to read it. Do we have to hold a post-mortem?'
'The term is applicable,' said Mr Tate. 'Even the title...'
'All right,' said Geoffrey, 'I grant you that it's a bit tasteless but '
'Tasteless? What about the part where he '
'Don't, Tate, don't, there's a good fellow,' said Mr Wilberforce feebly.
'As I was saying,' continued Geoffrey, 'I'm prepared to admit that that sort of thing isn't everyone's cup of tea...oh for goodness sake, Wilberforce...well anyway I can think of half a dozen books like it...'
'I can't, thank God,' said Mr Tate.
'...which in their time were considered objectionable but '
'Name me one,' shouted Mr Wilberforce. 'Just name me one to equal this!' His hand shook at the manuscript.
'Lady Chatterley,' said Geoffrey.
'Pah,' said Mr Tate. 'By comparison Chatterley was pure as the driven snow.'
'Anyway Chatterley's banned,' said Mr Wilberforce.
Geoffrey Corkadale heaved a sigh. 'Oh God,' he muttered, 'someone tell him that the Georgians aren't around any longer.'
'More's the pity,' said Mr Tate. 'We did rather well with some of them. The rot set in with The Well of Loneliness.
'And there's another filthy book,' said Mr Wilberforce, 'but we didn't publish it.'
'The rot set in,' Geoffrey interrupted, 'when Uncle Cuthbert took it into his woolly head to pulp Wilkie's Ballroom Dancing Made Perfect and published Fashoda's Guide to the Edible Fungi in its place.'
'Fashoda was a bad choice,' Mr Tate agreed. 'I remember the coroner was most uncomplimentary.'
'Let's get back to our present position,' said Geoffrey, 'which from a financial point of view is just as deadly. Now Frensic has offered us this novel and in my view we ought to accept it.'
'We've never had dealings with Frensic before,' said Mr Tate. 'They tell me he drives a hard bargain. How much is he demanding this time?'
'A purely nominal sum.'
'A nominal sum? Frensic? That doesn't sound like him. He usually asks the earth. There must be a snag.'
'The damned book's the snag. Any fool can see that,' said Mr Wilberforce.
'Frensic has wider views,' said Geoffrey. 'He foresees a Transatlantic purchase.'
There was an audible sigh from the two old men.
'Ah,' said Mr Tate, 'an American sale. That could make a considerable difference.'
'Exactly,' said Geoffrey, 'and Frensic is convinced that the book has merits the Americans might well appreciate. After all it's not all sex and there are passages with Lawrentian overtones, not to mention references to many important literary figures. The Bloomsbury group for instance, Virginia Woolf and Middleton Murry. And then there's the philosophy.'
Mr Tate nodded. 'True. True,' he said. 'It's the sort of pot of message Americans might fall for but I don't see what good that is going to do us.'
'Ten per cent of the American royalties,' said Geoffrey. 'That's what good it's going to do us.'
'The author agrees to this?'
'Mr Frensic seems to think so and if the book makes the bestseller lists in the States it will consequently sell wildly over here.'
'If,' said Mr Tate. 'A very big if. Who has he in mind as the American publisher?'
'Hutchmeyer.'
'Ah,' said Mr Tate, 'one begins to see his drift.'
'Hutchmeyer,' said Mr Wilberforce, 'is a rogue and a thief.'
'He is also one of the most successful promoters in American publishing,' said Geoffrey. 'If he decides to buy a book it will sell. And he pays enormous advances.'
Mr Tate nodded. 'I must say I have never understood the workings of the American market but it's true they often pay enormous advances and Hutchmeyer is flamboyant. Frensic could well be right. It's a chance I suppose.'
'Our only chance,' said Geoffrey. 'The alternative is to put the firm up for auction.'
Mr Wilberforce poured some more Madeira. 'It seems a terrible comedown,' he said. 'To think that we should have sunk to this...this pseudo-intellectual pornography.'
'If it keeps us financially solvent...' said Mr Tate. 'Who is this man Piper anyway?'
'A pervert,' said Mr Wilberforce firmly.
'Frensic tells me he's a young man who has been writing for some time,' said Geoffrey. 'This is his first novel.'
'And hopefully his last,' said Mr Wilberforce. 'Still I suppose it could have been worse. Who was that dreadful creature who had herself castrated and then wrote a book advertising the fact?'
'I should have thought that was an impossibility,' said Geoffrey. 'Castrated herself. Now himself I '
'You're probably thinking of In Cold Blood by someone called McCullers,' said Mr Tate. 'Never did read the book myself but people tell me it was foul.'
'Then we are all agreed,' said Geoffrey to change the subject from one so close to the bone. Mr Tate and Mr Wilberforce nodded sadly.
Frensic greeted their decision without overt enthusiasm.
'We can't be sure of Hutchmeyer yet,' he told Geoffrey over lunch at Wheelers. 'There must be no leaks to the press. If this gets out Hutchmeyer won't bite. I suggest we simply refer to it as Pause.'
'It's appropriate,' said Geoffrey. 'It will take at least three months to get the proofs done.'
'That will give us time to work on Hutchmeyer.'
'And you really think there's a chance he will buy?'
'Every chance,' said Frensic. 'Miss Futtle exercises enormous charms for him.'
'Extraordinary,' said Geoffrey with a shudder. 'Still, having read Pause there's obviously no accounting for tastes.'
'Sonia is also an excellent saleswoman,' said Frensic. 'She makes a point of asking for very large advances and that always impresses Americans. It shows we have faith in the book.'
'And this fellow Piper agrees to our ten per cent cut?'
Frensic nodded. He had spoken to Mr Cadwalladine. 'The author has left all the terms of the negotiations and sale entirely in my hands,' he said truthfully. And there the matter rested until Hutchmeyer flew into London with his entourage in the first week of February.