But it was the telephone that made consecutive thought or consecutive work impossible. What would happen next week when the new phone book came out with his number listed? Up to now only those people who by-passed Thorn, Digby and Brown, and the U. S. Post Office, and who had the idea of calling Information could get his number. Only those strangers, he amended. The family and a hundred other people had it anyway.
The phone was still ringing. Gregory gave in and answered; it was Thorn.
“French publication too!” Thorn called so often now he never wasted time on greetings. “Jim’s sending out the preliminary agreement.”
“That’s wonderful! What publisher?”
“Librairie Hachette. Jim says it’s one of the best houses in France. A hundred and twenty thousand francs’ advance; that’s around three hundred and fifty dollars. I think they’ve got a nerve, but Jim says that’s tops.”
“Thorn, it’s terrific.” Thorn must know by now what news like this meant to him. Back in April, Thorn had asked Hathaway and Ed Barnard for a list of the leading publishers and agents in Europe, and had air-mailed each of them a copy of The Good World, together with best-seller lists, sales figures, and major reviews (Bill MacNiccol’s excepted). Publication had already been arranged in England, Italy, Sweden, and Norway. Each time Gregory joyfully reported a new country to his editor, Ed Barnard called it “just a start.” In the calmest of tones, Ed would say, “Give it time. It will come out in Turkey and India and Occupied Japan and South America—everywhere except Russia and the satellites.” Long ago Partial Eclipse and Horn of Plenty had been published abroad, but only in England; the idea of seeing The Good World translated into foreign languages had moved Gregory unaccountably. Thorn was always kicking because so little money would result—”A few thousand all together, and with ten per cent for the foreign agent and then nine per cent for me, it’s just peanuts left over for you.” But even Thorn admitted there was something besides money involved. Thorn called it “world-wide publicity, including the Scandinavian.”
“One more thing,” Thorn said now. “Could Jim and I drop in on you tonight?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Jim put an idea to me a couple of weeks ago; I’ve been thinking about it and talking it out with Cindy and the kids, but now I’d like to hash it out with you. And so would Jim.”
They made the date, and Gregory reread the beginning of his sentence. “Of course Communists hate—” He picked up his pen and wrote, “—any concept of a world government, but in five years, or ten or twenty, maybe after one more full or partial war, if the fifty non-Communist nations were actually beginning mankind’s first experiment—”
The telephone rang once more and a feminine voice said mellowly, “Good morning, Mr. Johns, this is ‘Meet the Author.’”
Gregory stiffened. This was the newest radio and television entry into the Let’s-Kill-the-Author Sweepstakes; the course was rougher, the fences higher, the water-jumps wider. “Good morning,” Gregory said. “My brother Thornton—”
“Yes, we know. We’ve written him three separate times and called him as well, so Mr. Boland decided it would be all right to telephone you direct.”
“Mr. Boland decided that, did he?”
“You see, Mr. Johns, we do understand how you feel about public appearances, but it is such a big subject, and so many people join us in thinking it deserves a huge audience. Our current rating—”
“I know your program has a huge audience.”
“And I’m sure you yourself would want the largest possible discussion of world government. We have a wonderful program lined up. Norman Cousins will take the affirmative—”
“I admire Mr. Cousins very much, and his editorials on world government always move me.”
Victory blew its heady scent into his caller’s nostrils. “Mr. Boland says we could keep the entire program on a nonpersonal plane. Just the ideas, just the book itself. Wouldn’t you agree that a lively debate, a public forum on world government, might help convince a great many people?”
“Indeed I would.” He fell silent, and this time she held her peace. It was a disturbing moment; they had put it to him on a new level; it threw him. Perhaps some part of that huge audience would be stimulated enough to think and talk and ask about world government.
An idea flashed through his mind. “In that case,” he said, “since we all seem to want the large public forum, I have a suggestion to make.”
“Oh, we really do. Mr. Boland and all of us here.”
Gregory Johns spoke very slowly. “It’s rather an odd suggestion. Why not go ahead without me there, just the book?”
“Just the what?”
“For this once, you might call it, ‘Don’t Meet the Author,’ and really discuss only the book, and its ideas.”
“You’re joking, Mr. Johns.”
“About the title, sure. But you said it wouldn’t be on a personal plane, that all of you wanted a lively debate on world government. You certainly could have a lively one. There are several critics who’d love smashing at the book again.”
For a moment there was no answer at all. Gregory thought of the letter he had just had from Hy Bernstein: the screenplay was almost finished, and Von Brann was sure they’d have a box-office smash as well as everything else they wanted. Fifty million people might see The Good World, Hy had said. Perhaps this refusal to Mr. Boland wasn’t robbing world government of too much.
“Why, Mr. Johns, I’ll ask, but I think I can say now—”
“I think so too, and I’m sorry to be so unsatisfactory.”
“Well,” she said stiffly, “it’s just that most authors are perfectly delighted to appear with us.”
“I really am sorry, and thank you for inviting me.”
Once again he turned back to the same sentence in his letter, but he had lost the desire to go on. His refusal troubled him, unimpeachable in logic though it might have been.
Suddenly he remembered Marvin Kitterly and the dentist’s office. That was ten years ago, before television, but after writing a novel that had set the country talking, Kitterly had begun to guest-star on just about every radio program on the air. “If you tuned in on ‘Information Please,’” Ed had said recently, “there was Kitterly every other week; on ‘Town Forum,’ on quiz shows, word-defining shows, current-events shows, child-psychology shows, prison-reform shows—unless it was a full symphony orchestra or a heavyweight fight at the Garden, there was Marvin Kitterly.”
“Even I heard him often.”
“So one day at his dentist’s, Kitterly was chatting with the nurse, and another patient kept stealing surreptitious glances at him. Kitterly saw it and preened a bit—of course he’d had interviews and pictures all over the place too. At last the stranger couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Excuse me, aren’t you Marvin Kitterly, the author?’”
“‘Why, yes,’ Kitterly beamed at him. ‘Yes, I am.’”
“‘I thought so, Mr. Kitterly. I recognized your voice.’”
At his desk, Gregory Johns picked up his pen. As for me, he thought, I’d rather have somebody recognize a paragraph.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BY THE BEGINNING OF JULY, Thornton Johns forgave South Pacific.
This act took place late one afternoon as he approached the Park Avenue offices of the Zoring Smith Lecture Bureau, and was signalized by his spirited whistling of “I’m In Love With a Wonderful Guy.”
Though it was the off season, he had lectured three times to unheard-of little groups, and though there had not been even a mention of him in any but pipsqueak local papers, he had proved the two things he had wanted to prove. Ladies’ literary clubs were the same in the East as in the West, and he hadn’t lost his touch.
What was more, he had new material. He could take the ladies with him into a publishing office when a runaway came in; he could talk learnedly about the time-lag on national bestseller lists; he could get a gasp by saying, “And next Sunday it’s still Nu
mber One.” He could talk about foreign publishing and about Imperial Century’s shooting schedule and quote his favorite Hollywood phrase, “If it pends, it peters,” enjoying their bewilderment until he said Horn of Plenty might never have been sold at all had he not remembered just in time that Jill Goodwyn had one commitment a year with Paramount also, and then refused to let Metro keep the matter pending until it petered out for good.
Why, if he left out all the old anecdotes about Gregory, he still could keep going for three hours. If the breathless ladies assumed that the “we” who went to the plastic ice party included Gregory, that was no lie on his conscience. Or to the Daphne Herrick party, or the Danny Kaye party, or the Bogart party.
He had taken a taxi uptown to see Smith; the subway was faster, but he was in no mood for subways. A few days ago he had sold the digest rights of The Good World for ten thousand dollars, netting himself an unexpected thousand, and in a week more the book would cross the unbelievable mark of a hundred thousand copies. Who was he to ride in subways?
It was a glorious hot day, one he would long remember. The heat wave everybody else moaned over made him feel as jaunty as if he had just had a workout at the Racquet and Tennis Club, where Jim was putting him up for membership. He always felt wonderful as a summer bachelor, and tonight he was taking Diana out to dinner again. They’d go to a quiet place on the Island and be leisurely; this time he meant to break down the reserve that cloaked her continuing sadness. It was too bad he had had to lie to Cindy about staying in town all weekend for business reasons, but instinct had told him to keep Saturday and Sunday available.
He wasn’t quite sure what he would do about Jill next week, but that was too far ahead to worry over now. Jill had called him from Hollywood an hour ago; she had adored his last two letters; they were the bright spots in the longest draggingest picture she had ever been stuck with. Retakes were nearly done at last and she was absolutely starting East on Monday. She would stay two whole months and wasn’t telling another soul in New York until she’d had some rest, so would he meet her at the airport? She was fed up, beat, worn out, and she wanted a new lease on life. “Got a new landlord all picked out?” he had asked.
After that, he’d picked up his pigskin portfolio and set forth as if the Smith contract were already in it. In the impressive reception room of the Zoring Smith office, a pretty redhead explained that Mr. Smith was talking to London and would be only a minute, and Thornton looked about him with satisfaction.
Around the dark green walls ran wide strips of tan cork, an endless belt of bulletin board, and he rose to read the handsome leaflets and folders about Zoring Smith clients. With a stable of winners like that, no wonder this was one of the largest bureaus in the country—authors, explorers, economists, industrialists, professors, publishers, radio quiz masters, astrologers, monologuists, scientists—apparently he, Thornton Johns, wasn’t the only one who enjoyed being on a stage and having people flock in to see and hear him.
The folders contained photographs, short biographies, and titles of speeches, as well as quotes about the charm and personality and audience appeal of the lecturers. Thornton Johns imagined one about himself, and was, for one second, abashed. Like selling prize livestock, he thought. No, that was the sort of thing Gregory would think; he must watch himself. Anyway it was natural for an out-of-town club to try to size up what its honorarium was buying. Why was it always an “honorarium” in letters, and a “fee” in conversation?
The door opened and the redhead looked out at him apologetically. “The overseas connection went bad,” she said; “it will only be another couple of minutes.”
Nobody knew about this visit except Diana. Not Jim, not Cindy, nobody. Least of all Gregory. Nobody except Diana knew about the three new lectures either. He had taken her along to the one in Morristown—how shining and proud her eyes had been as she sat there looking up at him, hearing the applause burst all around her. Once, long ago, he had seen that shining look when she discovered that a second-string radio star was a client of his and might come into the office where she could meet him. Diana would find Roy Tribble mighty small beer now!
If Jim and he went ahead next fall, their offices would be uptown, somewhere right near here, on Park or Madison; they would lunch clients at “21” or the Ritz; words like “liability” and “compensation” and “term” and “annuity” would never come to mind again, except when he collected his renewal commissions on his old accounts. All he’d have to do for that was keep his license alive.
The Hathaway-Johns Agency. The Johns-Hathaway Agency would sound just as well, of course, and it had been surprising to find Jim so intent on getting top billing. There always was a streak of self-promotion in Jim’s character and at times it emerged so vividly it was embarrassing. Nevertheless it was Jim who would be putting up the capital, and when Jim had finally pulled the alphabet on him, the discussion of tonal effects became pointless; h, i, j was irrefutable.
In any case, final escape from the insurance business was at last more than a hopeless daydream and nothing could chip away at his gratitude to Jim. An imaginative and bold new agency, Jim had said repeatedly in their talks the last few weeks, could make huge money almost from the start; there needn’t even be any questionable “raiding” of the established literary agencies. All Jim’s authors and playwrights and actors were forever yakking about how little their present agents ever did to earn their ten per cent—
The door opened once again and this time the secretary stood aside in signal for his entrance. As he shook hands with Zoring Smith, Thorn thought, He’s hard as nails, I’ll have to watch it. Zoring Smith was no taller and no heavier than Jim Hathaway, but he had a slow deliberate speech instead of Jim’s quick clean delivery. He spoke the way you would expect a plump, affable man to speak, and as he talked about tours he had arranged for other best-selling authors, Thorn wondered whether it had been too risky to leave the purpose of this visit so equivocal.
“That’s what’s eating me,” he said. “With The Good World riding the top of the list, all my brother wants to do is take his family on a vacation and get on with his next book.”
“He still won’t lecture? You said—”
“I said I wanted to talk about a sort of try-out tour.”
Zoring Smith looked at him without expression, and again Thorn thought, He’s hard as hell. Well, so am I. He opened his portfolio and slid the largest of the Hollywood newspaper stories across the desk. Then he sat back and watched. He saw the uninterested first glance; he saw the dawn of recognition; he saw Smith read the captions and then the whole piece.
“That was my first lecture,” Thorn said easily. “I’d like to tell you a bit of a story about how they persuaded me to try it.”
Ten minutes later, Thornton Johns was thinking, When old Zoring smells business cooking, he softens up like butter. “So now I’ve tested myself in the East, in absolute secrecy, of course. Even my brother doesn’t know about the last three dates. Or Lenny Lyons or Winchell or any of the columnists or anybody who could even tell a columnist.”
“Why not?”
“My brother Gregory might act up and stop me cold. He came close to that out West. But next week, they’re heading for Wyoming. They’ve got the touring craze, and a problem with their daughter, and they’ll be gone until Labor Day.”
For the first time Zoring Smith permitted himself a smile. “While requests for lectures by Gregory Johns still keep coming in?”
“Precisely.” Thornton Johns smiled also.
“You’ve thought out every aspect of it, haven’t you, Mr. Johns?”
“I know summer is dead for big lectures, but if you could fix up a few minor dates, we might get some pretty good quotes and blurbs for your folders. Then, whatever happened after Labor Day could go ahead and happen. I’m working out a new lecture that nobody could stop me from giving.”
Zoring Smith was looking hard once more. “There’s a big draw in a title like ‘My Brother, Gregory
Johns,’ you know.”
“‘Runaway Best Sellers’ is no slouch of a title, is it? There’s all kinds of stuff available—I’m collecting quips and anecdotes all the way back to David Harum.”
An unwillingness fell upon Mr. Smith. “Building up a new lecturer is a sizable investment,” he said. “Printing, mailing, sending wires, advertising in small towns all over the country. ‘Runaway Best Sellers’ might be a draw—”
“With my name played up so they’d get the hookup at once?” Thorn asked. The unwillingness visibly lessened. “I’m sure you’d find a way to link my billing up with my brother’s book. What other runaway best seller would I be talking about?”
“You have thought out every aspect of it.” Admiration touched Smith’s face with sudden brightness. From a black marble inkstand he plucked a ballpoint pen, wrote rapidly, and then read aloud. “‘Thornton Johns, Public Relations Counselor to Gregory Johns and Other Leading Authors.’”
Thorn nodded. “Mind you, I’m not looking for trouble—I usually can win Gregory over. He blazes up but then he’s apt to go philosophical and shrug things off.”
“I’m sure he does. I’ve often noticed that people who are high-hat about publicity are perfectly able to appreciate the vast benefits that accrue from it.”
Thornton laughed. “Anyway, I’d say we could plan on using the old title for quite some time. By the way, do you ever send out scouts? I have one more date of my own, a garden club, really, in Kingston on the tenth. My friend Miss Goodwyn is coming from the Coast for several weeks, and I thought she might drive up with me.”
Smith tipped back in his chair and looked appraisingly across the desk. For several moments he said nothing whatever. Then he reached for his phone and pressed a button on it. “Dot, bring in the list of opens, will you?”
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