by Frances
“Fine,” Jerry said, and said thank you, and to ask Mr. Kingsley to come in and, to his secretary, “Better get the latest sales reports out, hadn’t we, Jane?” Jane Whitsett thought they had indeed, and went for them.
They would, Jerry supposed, be what Byron Kingsley had come to see—to look at with that odd combination of pride and modesty and wonder which was so much part of him; to say, with that diffidence which, in spite of everything, was still so charming, that the figures were pretty good, weren’t they, Mr. North? (Not quite saying, “Mr. North, sir,” but somehow implying it.) He might also, of course, wonder whether it would be quite convenient to have a little further advance against royalties. Which would be all right. For the moment there was almost nothing Byron Kingsley could ask of North Books, Inc., which would not be all right. Mr. Kingsley was, to put it shortly, a publisher’s dream. There had been no brighter dream since the man from Macmillan’s took the manuscript of Gone With the Wind home in a trunk.
Byron Kingsley was, to put it even more shortly, the author of Look Away, Stranger. Gerald North (president, editor-in-chief, of North Books, Inc.) still pinched himself awake when he looked at the sales figures of Look Away, Stranger. (Two other editors, who had turned it down, took Miltown tablets when they remembered.) It was that sort of thing, that sort of novel, and the whole business was still, Jerry admitted to himself at intervals, and to Pam now and then, entirely unaccountable. Lightning had struck. That was what it came to.
The manuscript of Look Away, Stranger had come, looking rather like a bale of cotton, out of Arkansas. It showed signs, already, of other journeys. Somebody had laid a cigarette, briefly, on page 6. Pages from 105 on were suspiciously fresh. No agent had intervened—there was the murky aura of amateurism plain around Look Away, Stranger, which was also something over six hundred pages in length.
Jerry had passed it down almost two years ago—passed it down as far as it would go, which was no great distance, since North Books, Inc., is not a Macmillan for size. “Have a look at this,” Jerry had said, and the reader had sighed and said, absently, that he hoped it was typed on one side of the paper only.
“Deepest South I’ve ever dropped into,” the reader had reported, orally. “Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, touch of Williams. Old mansions falling into weed patches. And scions. Lots of scions.”
“O.K.,” Jerry had said, “put it over there somewhere,” and it had been put over there somewhere, and stayed over there for a matter of weeks, looming large. Jerry forgot it; grew accustomed to its balelike bulk; saw it one day, for no reason in particular, and said, “Jane, have them bundle that up and—” He paused, for no reason in particular, and said, “No. Bring it—” and had looked at Jane Whitsett, a small, neat girl, and realized she would be no match for Look Away, Stranger, and got the manuscript himself. Got it and, to keep the franchise, to clear his conscience, read the first page. It was, at any rate, neatly typed. He read the second page, since conscience still pointed an accusing finger. And then he read the third.
It was all that the reader had said. It was Deep South. Moreover, it was a family chronicle, stretching from there to, it appeared at first glance, eternity. And yet—
Jerry took the first hundred pages home with him that evening, read late (having got around to it late) and was still on the far side of the Civil War. There had been a rape, of course—what Jerry presumed would be merely a preliminary rape. And a baby had fallen in a hogpen and, as was to be expected, been eaten. All of this was much as Jerry had foreseen, warned as he had been. And yet—
And yet, the next day, he found that, for reasons entirely obscure, he wanted to get on with it. He got on with it, as other things allowed. There were passages—There were scenes that—By page 300, Jerry found that, mentally, he was cutting; almost preparing for the printer. Although, of course, it would never come to that. It would—
“Read this damn thing,” Jerry said, a week later, to Frank Barry, who was too good to stay much longer with North Books, Inc., unless it became Barry Books, Inc., or at the least North and Barry, Inc. Barry weighed it in his hands. He said it would have to be a five ninety-five book, at least. “Probably it won’t come to that,” Jerry told him. “But—”
There had been much editing, much cutting. This had been carried on by mail—carried on in long letters from Frank Barry, from Jerry himself, since they worked on it together; in short letters from Byron Kingsley, who was as brief in correspondence as he had been lengthy in art. Kingsley, from Arkansas—from, it appeared—a small town somewhere near Little Rock, had agreed at once that the book was too long; said he’d always known it was too long. He had been appreciative of acceptance, had signed a contract without demur, although Jerry (with conscience still pointing a finger) had suggested he might like to engage an agent; had said, to almost all suggestions, that they knew more about it than he did, and that he certainly was grateful for the help he was getting. He had behaved, indeed, gratifyingly unlike an author.
Jerry himself had worked on the book, with Barry, in a mood recurrently one of misgiving. A good deal of the time, he was convinced that he was engaged in furthering the most colossal mistake of his life. Other and bigger firms (gossip gets around in the trade) had seen Look Away, Stranger, and shuddered, and looked away precipitately. “Warmed-over Faulkner” was the most common description gossiped; “Warmed-over Wolfe” was a close second. Probably older heads—and bigger pockets—had been right. And yet—
Look Away, Stranger was published in the early fall. It blew the top off. “I’m still damned if I know why,” Jerry said, to Barry, and to Pamela North. “What’s the thing got—?” He always ended that with a shrug. But it was nothing to be shrugged off.
Book-of-the-Month was part of it. A movie sale which, although his cut was small—conscience had shaken a finger angrily and been heeded—was something for Jerry to blink about, was a good deal of it. In addition to which, the trade sale (at $5.95) was a thing you had to look at to believe.
And there, finally—lured at last out of Arkansas—was Byron Kingsley himself and Kingsley was, in a fashion, as remarkable as the book.
Looking at him now, standing to greet him, Jerry North was once more startled by the magnitude of the phenomenon which was Byron Kingsley. There was, for one thing, the sheer size of the man. He was six feet four, a stature seldom attained by those who write for a living; he was solid from feet (in cordovan shoes, now) to thick and tawny hair. He had mild blue eyes in a wide and evenly tanned face; he was in all respects a singularly handsome man. But there was more to it than that—as there had been more to Look Away, Stranger than could be precisely evaluated. Like the novel, Byron Kingsley was, somehow, of more than life-size; handsomer than a man has any business being, yet inoffensively handsome. Perhaps because he gave no indication that he was in the least conscious of being handsome. Possibly that was the best thing about Byron Kingsley, at any rate from the view of people who wanted to make the best of him, and the best for him.
Now he stood, with just the faintest suggestion of a stoop (as a man who did not want the accidental advantage of greater height, and was embarrassed by it), and smiled (with just a touch of diffidence) and did not sit until Jerry had sat first. And then he said he hoped he wasn’t butting in on anything, and that it was mighty good of Mr. North to let him barge in this way. He had a low, musical voice, and used it with charming diffidence.
Jerry, assuring him that he had butted in on nothing, could barge at will, remembered how, when Kingsley first came to the office—which was after Book-of-the-Month acceptance, when it became evident which way the wind blew—he had sat for almost half an hour in the reception room, in a corner out of Miss Prentice’s view, and had merely waited patiently to be noticed. He might, Jerry thought, have sat there all afternoon, never thinking to rap on Miss Prentice’s little window, call attention to himself, had not a stenographer, coming in from lunch, gone to Hilda Prentice with her eyes wide and her lips parted and enquired, “Wha
t is that wonderful thing out there?” Miss Prentice had looked, and taken steps to find out.
He sat now much as he had sat then, not putting himself forward. Two months of it had not changed him. His hair was better cut now; his clothes as urban as anyone’s. But he was still as modest as he had been; as unhardened. For six weeks he had been interviewed, had been asked to speak—which he did diffidently, but surprisingly well—had been photographed. This had not changed him. He had had little (and somewhat obscure) anecdotes told of him in Leonard Lyon’s column; had had parties given for him; had been able to read that no new writer of equal talent had appeared within memory. He still called all women “ma’am” and all men “sir.” (It was not quite “suh.”) Praised to his face, he tended to look uncomfortable and to say, “That’s mighty nice of you, ma’am.” (Or “suh.”)
“Still snowballing,” Jerry told him now. “See the ad in the Times this morning?”
Three columns, page depth, the advertisement had been. And the book out almost two months. Jerry knew authors who would have embraced him.
“Mighty fine advertisement,” Byron Kingsley said. “You’re being pretty swell about the whole thing, sir. I hope it didn’t cost too much, Mr. North.”
Jerry North, who had thought Kingsley could no longer surprise him, steadied himself. He told Byron Kingsley not to worry about that. He said, “Look,” and showed him the most recent figures. Byron Kingsley looked at them, and said he certainly owed Mr. North a lot. Mr. North, mentally, pinched himself. He was awake, all right, although it hardly seemed possible. Byron Kingsley leaned forward and carefully put the sales sheets back in front of Mr. North. He said he hated to take up so much time but—
“I’d sort of like to ask your advice, sir,” Kingsley said. “Know I’ve been a lot of bother already to you and Mr. Barry. But—it’s about this Miss Towne. The one who got—”
“Miss Towne?” Jerry said.
“I read about it in the papers,” Kingsley said. “It’s a pretty terrible thing.”
“Yes,” Jerry said. “I don’t get—”
“They’d arranged I was going to be on her program,” Kingsley said. “Miss Feldman made the arrangements.”
“Oh,” Jerry said. “Well, it’s unfortunate. But they’ll fix something else up. I’ll ask Miss Feldman to come in and—”
“No,” Kingsley said. “I mean, whatever you say, sir. But it wasn’t so much about being on the program. You see, sir, I was there last night. Just before she got killed.”
“You were—” Jerry said, and paused. “You mean, at the hotel?”
“In her room,” Kingsley said. He looked at Jerry North, his expression compounded of anxiety and trust. “In her apartment, that is. She had what you call a suite. She—”
“You were there,” Jerry said, accepting it. “Why?”
It was, explained, simple enough. Earlier in the week, after the date for Byron Kingsley’s appearance on “People Next Door” had been set for Friday, Kingsley had been interviewed by a man from Miss Towne’s staff—a man named Gray. Tony Gray, that was it. Gray had asked a lot of stuff—about his early life, and where he went to school and how he happened to write Look Away, Stranger, and what the title meant. “All that sort of stuff,” Kingsley said. “Think he was going to write a book himself.”
Kingsley had assumed that that finished it—that, with what Tony Gray had got, they would have more than enough background to provide questions, and answers, on the ten or fifteen minutes of conversation he would have with Amanda Towne. But Gray, leaving, had said that Miss Towne might think of some more things she’d want to know about. He had said that Miss Towne was thorough about things like that.
“They called me up yesterday morning,” Kingsley told Jerry. “That is, Mr. Gray called me up and said, could I come around to Miss Towne’s apartment that evening, about six-thirty, he said, because there were one or two things Miss Towne wanted to know more about. I said I would, of course. Though I sure thought by that time they knew about all there was to know. About me, anyway.”
He had gone to Miss Towne’s suite, getting there at six-thirty, punctually, and ringing the doorbell, and being let in by Miss Towne herself. “Thought there’d be somebody else there, it being her hotel room and all,” Kingsley said. “But it was just Miss Towne. Mighty fine woman. Came from back home.” He looked at Jerry North for response.
“Did she?” Jerry said.
“Talked like people back home,” Byron Kingsley said. “Like I do, sir. Not so much, maybe, because she went away quite a bit ago. She was an older lady, of course. A little older. Mighty young looking, though.”
They had talked, Kingsley said, for perhaps forty-five minutes. It had seemed to him that they went over the same things he had gone over with Gray, but if that was what she wanted he sure wanted to help out. Because he appreciated what Miss Towne, along with everybody else, was doing for him.
At about a quarter after seven, Kingsley said, the telephone had rung and she had talked to somebody, and had looked at her watch and said, “All right, if you like. In about ten minutes?”
He had said he’d taken a lot of her time, and maybe he’d better be going, if she had an engagement—and told her, again, that he sure appreciated the time she was taking.
“She said I was going to be fine,” Kingsley said, “and to be at the studio early—one-thirty or about that, so they could see if I needed anything done to me. Makeup, I guess?”
“Probably,” Jerry said. “Told you to wear a blue shirt, probably.”
Kingsley looked at Jerry North with admiration, as one looks at the possessor of abstruse knowledge. That was just what Miss Towne had told him. And with that, he had left. At, he supposed, twenty minutes after seven, or thereabouts.
“And,” Jerry said, “she was expecting somebody in five or ten minutes. There? Or was she going out to meet someone?”
“I don’t know, Mr. North,” Kingsley said. “Could have been either way, I guess. What I wanted to ask you—you think I ought to tell somebody about being there? If she was killed—” (It sounded a little, but only a little, like “kilt.”) “I thought maybe I ought to, but then I thought, maybe it would be what they call bad publicity, and after all you and Mr. Barry have done … Anyway, I thought I better talk to you first.”
He looked at Jerry, again with anxiety.
“She was all right when I left,” he said. “You think they’d get the idea—?”
“No,” Jerry said, and hoped they wouldn’t, and wished, wholeheartedly, that “they” were anyone but Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley. “That’s absurd,” Jerry said, firmly.
“You know who I ought to go to, sir?” Kingsley said. “In the papers it sounded as if you and Mrs. North had been—that is, as if you knew about things like this.” He was circumspect.
Jerry looked at his big, gentle author, wondered momentarily where in him dwelt the knowledge, the sombre awareness of mankind’s troubled life, which were reflected in Look Away, Stranger. But he had wondered much the same about many authors, and found the speculation idle. They hid themselves, by intent or accident, behind many façades; they seldom looked, and often did not talk, like authors.
“Come on,” Jerry said. “I’d better go along.”
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Copyright © 1961 Frances and Richard Lockridge
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ISBN: 978-1-5040-3141-7
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