De Lusac has signed a contract with the Menorah Press!’
‘A contract! Are you sure?’
‘Apparently there is a written contract to publish his work.’
‘How do you know?’
‘That’s what Cedric Delauny told me.’
‘Has Mann confirmed it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then we’d better find out. If he has a serious editor they could put a spanner in the works.’
‘Can we meet?’
‘Of course, what else do you know?’
‘I can’t speak over the phone.’
‘Where?’
‘In the lobby bar in fifteen minutes.’
‘He saw Shlomo Klein, sitting at a table fumbling with a sheaf of papers looking his normal smiling agitated self.’
‘Hi Patrick!’
‘So Shlomo what’s new?’
He leaned forward and lowered his head: ‘I have a copy of the contract with the Menorah Press.’
He handed O’Connelly the papers, who flipped through them, it looked like a draft, not too well written and on plain paper.
‘There’s no signature, or name!’
Shlomo shrugged: ‘A draft.’
‘A draft is not a contract!’
‘That’s all there is.’
‘How did you get this?’
‘Delauny gave it to me.’
‘Does Mann know?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘What about the Menorah Press? Do you have any confirmation from them?’
‘Not for the moment.’
‘This mentions a payment of ten thousand Euro and royalties, is that the way they work?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Why was it at Mann’s?
‘Cedric told me he thinks de Lussac is trying to get the Trust to cough up an advance.’
‘The best thing you can do Shlomo is to discretely call the Menorah Press department and get some confirmation, then we can decide what to do next.’
‘What is the Menorah Press?’
‘It belongs to the Anglo-Israeli press magnate Ronny Gould.’
27
Seville
The Legacy of Solomon Page 27