Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer

by George Axelrod

  I walked over to the liquor cabinet and poured myself another drink.

  “Go on,” I said. “Let’s hear the rest of it.”

  “He agreed, and I set about trying to find a purchaser. Anstruther wanted one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This was just a bit more money than I could comfortably raise at the moment, so I investigated, made some discreet inquiries among my connections and found several people who might be interested in investing in so valuable a property as the new Charles Anstruther book. In short, Richard, a corporation was set up, capitalized at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the purchase was made. You still look doubtful, Richard. I can show you the canceled check made out to Charles Anstruther. I can show you the contracts drawn up between Anstruther and me. I, as president of the corporation, signed all the documents. I assure you, Richard, that I have too much sense to become involved in any sort of nefarious dealings. I have too much to lose.”

  I thought this over. In spite of everything, it sounded possible. Maybe it really was all right.

  “O.K.,” I said. “But why do you want us to publish the book? Why not one of the big houses? You know as well as I do we’ve never tackled anything more complicated than a volume of Triple-Cross-O-Grams. We don’t have the distribution setup for a thing like this.”

  “Now, Richard,” Walter said, “to get to the heart of the matter. The proposition that I would like to make with you is a very simple and very fair one. But it is a slightly unorthodox one. I don’t want you to get excited. Or begin screaming and throwing things about. I just want you to listen. And listen carefully.

  “First, you must admit that under ordinary circumstances Conrad, Sherman could never hope to publish such an important and valuable book as this, for the good reason that you have neither the prestige to attract such a work nor the cash to pay for it.

  “Second, if this book comes out under your imprint, it will bring tremendous prestige to your company. It undoubtedly will lure many other authors into the fold. It might well be the beginning of a new era for your firm. Textbooks and volumes of puzzles are all very well. But to be Charles Anstruther’s publisher, even posthumously, is quite a different matter.”

  “You make it sound great, Walter,” I said. “Now where’s the catch? How much of an advance do you want? A piece of the company? What?”

  “Richard, why are you so continually antagonistic? I don’t want an advance. I just want the use of your name. The use of your offices. The use of the normal facilities you have. Very simply I propose to give you the book to publish. I propose to pay all the advertising and exploitation costs. I propose to retain complete authority on such subsidiary rights as reprints, magazine serialization, foreign publication, television and motion picture rights. For your trouble, which, I may say, will be a good deal less than if you were publishing a new book of puzzles, I propose to offer you ten percent of all profits realized from printed matter. That is to say, reprints, twenty-five cent editions, translations, regular sales, book clubs, whatever. And five percent of any subsequent motion picture sales.”

  It was coming at me so fast that I couldn’t function.

  “In other words, Richard, I am asking you to front for my corporation.”

  I tried to think clearly.

  “None of the big publishers would give you a deal like that,” I said.

  “Of course not,” Walter said. “That’s why I asked you. At no expense to yourself you are being cut in for ten percent of what may well amount to a million dollars in profits. Plus the tremendous prestige of publishing what will unquestionably be the most talked-of book of the year. Naturally, the terms of our agreement will be confidential. For all anyone on the outside can know, you are publishing the book in the normal way.

  “As for me, I am eliminating a middleman, as it were. I, as president of my corporation, have a responsibility to my stockholders. I could, of course, eliminate you too. I could publish the book myself—form a subsidiary company, The Heinemann Press, perhaps. But that would only attract attention to myself. I would just as soon have the book published in as normal a fashion as possible. There is certainly nothing dishonest about this deal. As a matter of fact, it is done all the time. In reality, I am publishing the book and paying you a commission for certain services rendered. The use of your name, and so forth. The only thing is, Richard, I want the book for the late spring. So you must decide quickly.”

  I was somewhat overwhelmed.

  There was something wrong with the whole thing, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. The only thing I could think of to ask was, “Where does Max Shriber figure in this?”

  “Max,” Walter said, “Max is one of my stockholders. Or partners, if you prefer.”

  “Who else has a piece of this book?”

  “That, Richard, I am afraid I am not at liberty to divulge. Not until you have agreed to take the book. Once the papers are signed and you too are a partner, then everything will be open and aboveboard.”

  I was trying to think. I walked into the bathroom and washed my face with cold water.

  I came back in again.

  “All right,” I said. “You want fast action. When can you give me a copy of the manuscript?”

  “Oh, dear, no,” Walter said. “I haven’t made myself clear. No one, Richard, but no one can see the book until all papers are signed.”

  “If everything is so on the up and up,” I said, “if this whole thing is so honest, how come you’re getting fancy now? If I’m going to publish the book I’ve certainly got a right to see it.”

  “I agree,” Walter said. “But as yet, you haven’t agreed to publish the book.”

  “How can I agree till I read it?”

  “My dear boy, you are talking about the novel that Charles Anstruther spent the last six years of his life writing. If you read it and didn’t like it, you would still be compelled to publish it. Anyone would. After all, the man won a Nobel Prize.”

  “If you can give me a good reason why I can’t see it now, all right,” I said. “But it has to be good.”

  “I can give you two excellent reasons,” Walter said. “One, it is part of my overall promotion strategy that absolutely no one is to see the book. This will create interest in it. And it will prevent loss of impact. Many publishers make the great mistake of allowing hundreds of advance copies of a new book to drift around before publication. They dispel a great deal of excitement that way. To show you that this strategy is paying off, I have had two firm offers from movie companies, sight unseen.”

  “O.K.,” I said. “I can see why you don’t want a lot of people reading it. But I’m not a lot of people. I’m going to publish it.”

  “The second reason is even simpler,” Walter said. “The Winding Road to the Hills by Charles Anstruther is really a very bad book.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, yes. You understand that I am speaking to you with utter frankness and in complete confidence. It’s a dreadful book. I mean artistically. Anstruther needed money. He wrote it with an eye to a movie sale. And it will make an excellent picture. But as a serious work of literature, it is nonsense. If it is not sold to the movies and if all the subsidiary rights are not disposed of before publication, the critical reception will certainly damage the value of the property. It is unfair, in a way, too. The book is a fine adventure story. It is exciting. Really very like a top-notch movie scenario. If it were by someone else the critics would praise it for what it is—entertainment. But since it is by Charles Anstruther, whom they quite rightly regard as a pillar of American literature, they will be obliged to attack it. And yet, ironically, the fact that it is by Anstruther makes it valuable. A very complex situation, as you can see.”

  Walter reached over to his control board and pushed a button.

  On the far wall a picture slid to one side and revealed a small wall safe.

  “I have all three copies of the book in there. I also have your contracts, drawn up and waiting. I realize you will ha
ve to consult with your partner, Mr. Conrad, on this. Why don’t you phone him and ask him to come over here immediately? I should like to get this settled today.”

  Behind us, the door opened noiselessly.

  Jimmie said, “Miss Whitney asks if you will join her for breakfast.”

  I jumped. I had not heard him come in.

  “Thank you, Jimmie,” Walter said. “Tell Miss Whitney I’ll be with her in a moment.”

  Jimmie nodded and withdrew as quietly as he had come.

  “I didn’t know Janis was staying here,” I said. “She mentioned a hotel.”

  “And she was absolutely right,” Walter said. “This place is getting to be a hotel. Everyone but everyone stays here. No, Janis is an old friend of mine.”

  “Is she another one of your stockholders?” It was a shot in the dark, but I could tell by Walter’s face that it was an accurate one.

  “I will be frank with you. The book is owned by three equal partners, Janis, Max Shriber and myself. We each put up fifty thousand dollars.” He turned toward me and patted me on the arm. “Now, Richard, I don’t want you to be alarmed by my honesty. When I say that The Winding Road to the Hills is a bad book, I simply mean that it is a poor book. Anstruther, as you may or may not know, was well on the way toward becoming an alcoholic. His work, naturally, suffered. It is still as good a book, if not a better one, than most of the books that appear on the best-seller list.

  “Understand me, it is only a poor book by the standards that Anstruther himself set when he was writing at the top of his form. That is all the critics will say. But that will be enough to hurt the commercial value. What I am getting at is that you personally will only gain in stature from publishing it. It is far better to publish a poor work by a great writer than an excellent book of Triple-Cross-O-Grams. Richard, as a friend, I strongly urge you to accept my proposal.”

  I got up, walked to the bar, and poured myself another drink. “Look,” I said, “don’t strongly urge me. I understand the deal. I’ve published bad books that didn’t earn me a dime. Why shouldn’t I publish a bad book that’s going to make me a lot of dough? That part of it is all right. Just don’t high-pressure me. I want to think.”

  Walter watched me with a concerned expression on his face. “Richard—something is bothering you. What is it?”

  I wasn’t sure what was bothering me. My head was swimming too fast. I hadn’t had a chance to collect my thoughts in twenty-four hours. But he was right. Something was definitely bothering me. “Tell me one more thing, Walter,” I said.

  “If I can.”

  “What did Jean Dahl have to do with this?”

  Walter sighed. “Nothing,” he said. “So far as I know she had nothing whatsoever to do with this.”

  “She wasn’t one of your stockholders?”

  Walter laughed shortly. “Of course not!”

  “She had no interest in the book? No access to it?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You may be interested to know, Walter, that Jean Dahl came in to my office a week ago and offered to sell me the new Anstruther book for fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Incredible!” Walter said. “Utterly incredible. She was bluffing, of course. There are three typewritten copies of the manuscript in existence. And all three of them are there in my safe.”

  I walked over to the window and looked out at the park. “Walter,” I said, “what kind of paper are your three copies typed on?”

  Walter looked puzzled.

  “Ordinary typing paper,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean...”

  “Ordinary white paper?”

  “Naturally.”

  Naturally?

  There was nothing natural about it. Jean Dahl had showed me a sheet of yellow paper in the office. A sheet of yellow paper that I was sure was authentic. There was something just a little bit wrong. I didn’t know quite what it was. But something was wrong somewhere.

  Walter rose abruptly and walked toward me.

  “Richard, I have been very patient with you. But I must have a definite answer. I am going in to have breakfast with Janis. Sit here and think. Try to make up your mind.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll make up my mind. But, listen, Walter, I want you to understand something. I know you’re lying to me about a lot of things. I just want you to know that I realize that. I don’t trust you, Walter. I don’t trust you at all. For all I know you killed Jean Dahl. And for all I know you were the man who called me on the phone last night with your trick imitation of Max Shriber’s voice. I just want you to know that I don’t trust you for a second. You’ve got this house all rigged with sliding pictures and God knows what. If I had any sense at all, I’d tell you where to stick your book and get the hell out of here right now.”

  Walter giggled happily.

  “You have a most suspicious nature,” he said. “It’s positively morbid. And, I must say that I admire you for it. I myself am a terribly suspicious person. And as far as this house is concerned...” He giggled again.

  Then he leaned over to his control board and pressed one of the several dozen buttons. He fiddled with the switches for a moment or two. Then I heard the hum of the loudspeaker on the phonograph. Then a whirring sound. Then voices.

  Walter’s voice said, “Richard, you are making yourself perfectly ridiculous. Now let go of me and hand me a towel. Please.”

  Then another voice said, “I’m sorry, Walter. But I’ve got to talk to you.”

  He reached over and pressed another button. The voices stopped.

  Walter was grinning like a little boy. “It’s done with wire recorders,” he said proudly. “I wired the whole thing myself. It’s vastly complicated. I knew absolutely nothing about electricity. But I bought every available book on the subject and taught myself. Look.”

  He fiddled with some more gadgets.

  “This one is really amusing. The pickup is built into the bedstead in my guest room. The way some of my guests do carry on!”

  Over the loudspeaker Janis Whitney’s voice said, “Where the hell is Walter? The coffee is getting cold.”

  Jimmie’s voice said, “He’s still in there with Dick Sherman.”

  “Oh, that one,” Janis said. “I think he’s real cute.”

  Walter switched off the microphone.

  I had to grin.

  “Walter,” I said, “I overestimated you. I thought you were a murderer and a crook and a big operator. Hell, you’re just a nasty, evil-minded old maid.”

  Walter did not seem to be upset. He smiled broadly and said, “Janis is absolutely right, Richard. I think you’re real cute too.”

  He said the words, “I think you’re real cute too,” and for an instant I thought the mike was back on. His voice took on the throaty quality with just a trace of left-over southern accent. If you closed your eyes you could swear you were talking to Janis Whitney.

  “My God, Walter,” I said, “that’s uncanny.”

  “Isn’t it?” Walter said. “I have an amazing gift for mimicry. And an almost perfect ear.”

  “You had her voice exactly,” I said. “Even to that trace of southern accent that she hasn’t quite lost yet.”

  “Speaking of uncanny,” Walter said, “it’s uncanny how Janis has got rid of her drawl. You just barely notice it now. And I regard it as particularly uncanny since she was born and raised in Utica, New York.”

  Then Walter sighed. All the amusement went out of his face. “Now then, Richard, I don’t like to hurry you but we must settle this one way or the other. I must have the contracts signed as soon as possible. Why don’t you call your partner and have him come up here now? We can get this settled this afternoon.”

  “Listen, Walter,” I said. “We’ll get this settled all right. I may do this and I may not. I’ll talk it over with Pat. But I’m not going to talk to him here. I don’t like to have my private conversations recorded. I don’t like to have people peering at me through mirrors. Pat and I wi
ll talk this over and if we’re interested we’ll let you know about it.”

  Walter sighed again. “You’re such a wild one,” he said. “I shall expect to hear from you by five this afternoon. I cannot possibly delay any longer than that.”

  “You’ll hear from me,” I said. “You’ll hear plenty.”

  I turned and left the room.

  Chapter Eight

  I had not been to the office in a week. But nothing had changed.

  “You look just ghastly, Mr. Sherman,” Miss Dennison said by way of greeting.

  “Thank you, Miss Dennison. Is Mr. Conrad in his office?”

  “No.” She smiled maliciously. “He’s at Twenty One with Miss Carstairs. She was very disappointed you weren’t here.”

  In spite of the fact that I was feeling even more ghastly than I looked, I could not help grinning. “Poor Pat,” I said. “Poor Pat.”

  I went into my office, sat down at the desk and stared out the window.

  After a while I picked up the telephone. I had decided that it was now time to find out a little about a man named Max Shriber.

  I made three casual telephone calls. To three people who, between them, know everything there is to know about everything. One was a book salesman, one was an associate editor at a large publishing house, and the third was a lady literary agent.

  The book salesman knew only that Max Shriber was a big agent. I was getting a little tired of that phrase. The associate editor had met him twice, knew very little about him, but was under the impression that he had once been a gangster. The lady literary agent told me that he handled some very big people, both writers and actors. That he was very attractive in a George Raft sort of way, and that there were rumors that he had spent time in jail for killing a man.