OUT IN CHICAGO, MR. Digby was very drunk. Five hours had elapsed since he had dictated the telegram and Gregory Johns had not yet telephoned. That defection, however, was only a secondary cause for his condition.
The primary cause was that nobody else had telephoned either and that he had had to do something to keep from going crazy. To be sole repository, hour after hour, of good news which one generously longed to share, and to be unable to do so, was bad enough. But on top of that to be tormented by a question, a vital question, and find it impossible to reach anybody who could supply the answer—
Luther Digby hastily took another drink.
Hours ago urgent messages to call back Chicago Operator Number 25 had been left at a flat in Greenwich Village, an apartment on Morningside Heights, a cottage in East Orange, New Jersey, and a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. But so far his telephone had remained silent except for his own voice begging the operator to try once more and her responding voice announcing that each of the four people he wanted was still not at home. By New York time it was well past eleven; they couldn’t all be disreputable enough to stay out all night!
Luther Digby looked wanly at the telephone. It was a great invention, a noble instrument. Through it one could speak to London, Paris, Buenos Aires, New Delhi, and never move from one’s chair. But if everybody at the other end were unavailable, then Marconi and Bell and the rest of them might as well never have been born.
Visions of Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square rose before him, of the Place Vendôme, of Sugar Loaf Mountain and the mosques of India. These, however, soon receded and his mind once more, reached out: imploringly to Greenwich. Village, Morningside Heights, East Orange, and Greenwich. In one of them a door must soon be opening, a message be given. Hungrily his hand moved to the noble instrument, but in mid-air it halted. Chicago Operator Number 25 must hate him, he thought unhappily, and a terrible, loneliness welled up in him.
He raised the tall glass beside him, and morosely took another swallow. If not hate, then at least despise. At first she had been friendly and eager, but about an hour ago, a frostiness had entered her manner and now he was afraid to call her. He could, only sit in this awful silence in a hotel room a thousand miles from people who still liked, even admired, him. Despair seized him and he spoke aloud. “My God,” he confided to the ceiling, “I’m plastered.”
Somewhere a voice seemed to answer firmly, “Luther Digby doesn’t get plastered,” and he choked up in gratitude. He doesn’t, he thought, he really doesn’t, but this time he does. Did.
It had all begun innocently enough. After thanking Janet for her loyal performance at the switchboard, he had promptly put in a call for Alan Brown. The crucial question had not yet occurred to him; he had been motivated, only by the purest altruism. While he had waited in this lofty mood, savoring the delight his partner was soon to experience, he had bethought himself of a drink, to celebrate. He had ordered up a gin and tonic, which he had always associated with the British and therefore with everything admirable, despite such passing misfortunes as Labor Governments, free dentures, an universal eyeglasses.
Normally he was a light drinker; an abstemious man if ever there was one; had things only proceeded normally, that single drink would have served. But things hadn’t proceeded normally, though more than an hour had passed before he had begun to realize it. During that hour, he had relaxed comfortably on his bed in a congratulatory glow about what had so unexpectedly befallen the firm of Digby and Brown.
Already he could hear the quiet modest way in which he would soon say, “Well, The Good World is one of our books,” when some ill-informed lout asked, “And what sort of thing do you publish, Mr. Digby?” To have that inanity thrust upon him, as it always was, by nonpublishing people he met on trains and in hotels, had grown increasingly awkward, for it was not very impressive to reach back to 1940 for the name of a best seller everybody would recognize, and even less so to admit that since then he had devoted himself largely to the school and college textbook division of his own firm. Now, in a few months, he would have a magic reply, the simple utterance of which would increase his stature in the eye of the beholder. No longer would there be the vague “Oh, yes?” but instead, the admiring “Oh, yes!” and that quick respect always displayed to a representative of big business.
He could hardly wait. But since he had to, he ordered up a second gin and tonic.
Big Business—what a comfortable phrase it was. Luther Digby took a deep breath and began to pace the room, his chest expanded, his head high. Success was a tonic, a rejuvenator; better than vitamin pills and morning calisthenics and even proper evacuation, it made a man feel fit to face the world. People reacted instantaneously to the aura of Success—bellhops, headwaiters, room clerks, even one’s own wife and children treated one with new deference when one had pulled off a successful coup.
In a way, it was his own coup! Had it not been he who had had the vision to sign up a first novel by an unheard-of young college student named Gregory Johns? It had indeed. He himself had sown the seeds of today’s triumph and seen to it that it was not Random House or Scribner or Doubleday, but Digby and Brown, who were the publishers of The Good World. There would be those, even in his own firm, who would try to take the credit away, those niggardly enough to ask if he had read The Good World. They would conveniently forget that the head of a publishing house could not always find time to read every manuscript that bore its imprint, but he would remind them that in faraway 1930 he had not only read every solitary word of Partial—whatever-it-was, but had, in the face of some opposition, authorized a contract and an advance of one hundred dollars. Eclipse, that was it, Partial Eclipse, some sort of novel about a man who was imprisoned for something or other, just what he couldn’t recall.
And now had come proof, though rather long-deferred, of his editorial judgment and foresight in signing on Gregory Johns. Fifty-two thousand dollars was proof indeed, and if The Good World should develop a runaway sale in bookstores, this windfall might reach a hundred and fifty-two thousand.
Nor, it suddenly dawned on him, did the possibilities end even there. With that kind of book, anything might happen. It was then that The Question had popped into his mind.
Did the firm have a cut in possible movie rights? Or did it not?
Unhesitatingly he called Long Distance. “Try that Greenwich number again, please. It’s important.”
“I just checked it, sir. Mr. Brown is not in. I’ll try again in twenty minutes.”
“Do that.” He was still affable. Even on a local of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, a man could not remain en route forever. But he would cancel his own dinner appointment and stay put; it would he unkind to let Alan find him unavailable. Better to see Chicago’s second-largest book jobber tomorrow and dine right by the telephone.
It was a cozy idea. He would range the menu and treat himself to the things he liked best—this was no occasion for holding oneself down to any medico’s orders about diet and blood pressure. As if any man of fifty-five didn’t run to a bit of a paunch and a touch of blood pressure! He glanced at the mirror opposite and nodded judiciously at what he saw. Compact, that’s what he was; not fat, just compact. And balding, as Time put it, not bald. His features were good American features and his mustache, if he said so himself, was distinguished. The distinguished publisher, Luther Digby, among whose personal discoveries is the famous Gregory Johns, author of the Number One Best Seller—
Did the firm have a share in any of the subsidiary rights beyond the standard fifty-fifty deal on book club and reprints? Or was Gregory Johns’ present contract one of those barbarisms which made publishing a suicidal proposition in these days of murderous costs?
Suddenly he itched to know and to know at once. At Digby and Brown only two kinds of authors got such contracts. One was the author with such sales that he could command anything. The other was the proved failure. Failures could not always be kicked off the list but if there was no reasonable chance that a dime could ever be realized from their magazine rights or dramatic rights or movie rights, why, then, it was only good sense to release any share in those rights. There was no better way to refute meddlers and needlers like the Authors Guild than to have a handful of contracts around which generously let the author keep a full hundred per cent of everything.
Was Gregory Johns enough of a failure?
For the first time in a decade Luther Digby reversed his position on this point. He turned once more to the telephone but the first premonition of continuing disaster, chilled him. The Browns were party-goers; sometimes they stayed-over at a hotel in town rather than return to Greenwich.
Luther Digby shuddered and faced reality. A pulse began to beat on his right temple but he ignored it. Who; else might know about the Johns contract? Know now, away from the office, away from the files? Jack McIntyre was the firm’s treasurer; he sent out royalty checks; he might know. Ed Barnard was Johns’ editor, he ought to know. And if Jack and Ed both let him down, as Alan was doing, he might even call his secretary, late though it was, and be saved from going mad. Joyce would offer to go up to the office at once and get the answer. Did they or did they not have that movie cut?
“Operator,” Luther Digby shouted, “I have three emergency calls to place.”
An hour crawled by before he thought again of dinner but by then he was too enraged to be hungry. He ordered one more gin and tonic instead. There, he thought now, there, in that third drink was where he had made his mistake. The first two were reasonable, but that next one was not. And whatever others had followed that unreasonable one, they were: not either. There had been others. How many others, he did not know.
All he knew was that nobody, not one of them, not Alan, not Jack, not Ed, not Joyce, not one single soul had called back to find out how they—how he or she—could be of service to the President of the firm which gave them—which gave him or her—a livelihood and their place—his or her place—in society.
Luther Digby consulted his watch once more, but for the first time found it difficult to translate what he saw there to Eastern Standard Time, the only real time, God’s time. Something eluded him and he could not be positive whether the hand which was pointing to eleven in Chicago would be pointing in New York to twelve or to ten. He gave up New York and thought of the Rockies; when he traveled through Montana and Wyoming, surely he was two hours behind New York? Then if it were only nine in the Rockies by Mountain Time—but something had gone wrong again. He went farther west, to Pacific Time, but at once nothing but Hollywood occurred to him. That brought him back to The Question.
He moaned piteously and fell into a torpid slumber. The telephone rang.
“On your call to—”
“Yes, Operator, yes.”
“One moment, please.” In the mingling of nasal sounds in the receiver, he caught what sounded like “D.A.” This exasperated him unaccountably.
“D.A.? What D.A.? I don’t want any—”
“It’s our code for ‘Doesn’t Answer,’ sir. That Greenwich number doesn’t answer at all now. Whoever took the message before must have left. I’ll try again in twenty minutes, if you like.”
He slammed up the receiver without replying and fell back against his pillows. A thump-thump beat against his eardrums; his blood pressure must be ten thousand over nine thousand. He thought of coronary thrombosis, but without emotion.
The telephone shrilled again.
“Will you accept a collect call from New York? Mr. Gregory—”
“Put him on,” he begged.
“Hello, Mr. Digby,” a voice said patiently. “Your phone’s been busy—I’ve tried it every twenty minutes for more than an hour.”
“Oh, God.” Mr. Digby’s mind suddenly turned to hot pulp and inside that pulp frantic fingers scrabbled around to find the things he’d been prepared, so many hours ago, to say in congratulation and praise. Gregory Johns began to talk quietly of surprise and pleasure. Then at last Mr. Digby spoke.
“Rights,” he said clearly.
“What?”
“Rights.” Silence fell between them. Luther Digby clutched violently at Sobriety and by the grace of necessity got a momentary hold. “That is, other rights,” he said, enunciating perfectly. “Dramatic rights or foreign rights or movie rights. What’s our deal with you on all of those?”
There was a pause. “Let me think a minute.” There was a longer pause. “I don’t know. I haven’t any idea.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Digby forlornly.
“But my brother’s right here. He handles things like that for me. Just a minute.” The small clatter of a phone being laid down on a table came to Mr. Digby. Faintly the sounds of many voices came with it, laughter, high spirits, even a snatch of song. People could be carefree, he thought, relaxed, joyous. His throat began to ache. He had a passing conviction that Janet, at the switchboard years ago, had started to say something about a brother of Gregory Johns and that he had interrupted, but this he brushed aside as a fragment of nightmare. If Janet had mentioned any brother, he would have asked for his phone number, and perhaps have reached him before this torment had started. By God, if he ever discovered that Janet had willfully withheld—
Gregory Johns said hello again. “I’m sorry, my brother says he’d have to look up my contract before saying anything and it’s in his office downtown.”
To Luther Digby the conversation had become insupportable. Dimly he heard an offer to have the brother call him in the morning but he let it pass. With dignity he said, “Assure you, it’s not of great moment,” and offered something by way of good-bye. He had to close his eyes or he would die; he had to abandon everything and rest; a man could stand only so much torture before blacking out.
He blacked out.
At twenty-minute intervals for the next two hours Chicago Operator Number 25 clanged him back to consciousness with relentless reports of continuing failure on each of his four calls. At last, Luther Digby, in words he was mercifully never to recall, told her what she could do with Greenwich Village, Morningside Heights, East Orange, and the entire sovereign State of Connecticut.
For Thornton Johns, the high moment of the evening, second in importance and pleasure only to that earlier one when Abby had read the telegram aloud, came when Gregory laid down the phone and asked about the terms of his contract.
It was a reminder that he too would play a part in the big doings ahead, an essential part, an exciting part. Later on, Gregory would need a professional literary agent once more, like all authors with large-scale incomes, but tomorrow morning, questions about terms and payments would be handled in his office and nobody else’s. Hadn’t Gregory told Digby that he, Thorn would phone Chicago in the morning?
Change, a break in the routine, a sense of being somebody—he had longed for them and now, for a while at least, he was to have them all. It would be as stimulating as a vacation; there was nothing humdrum in talk about fifty-two thousand dollars. He looked at his brother with gratitude.
Even when the time did come for choosing a new agent, Gregory would discuss the matter with him, as he always discussed any business details, and in that direction, too, there were new horizons. Temporary but new. And it was possible that easygoing Gregory might put off so troublesome a decision for several weeks, maybe even months.
Exhilaration raced through. Thorn’s blood. Never had he thought to be so richly repaid for that off hand suggestion, made during one of Gregory’s brief furloughs from the Pentagon Building, the year before the war ended.
“I’ll give things a once-over for you,” he had said when Gregory had told him; about quarreling with Marilyn Laird. “Get all your stuff from her office and let me dig around for a while.”
“Would you, Thorn?”
“Sure. There’s no big rush about it, is there?”
“It might be a lot of trouble. That’s what you pay ten per cent to agents for.” He suddenly sounded dispirited. “But I suppose ten per cent of not much wasn’t enough of an inducement to make Miss Laird accurate.”
“If I could get the hang of it, couldn’t you keep your ten per cent? Do you have: to have an agent?”
“I suppose not. Plenty of writers never do.”
“Well, we’ll think about a new agent deal when the time comes.”
It had never come. There was very little mystery to an author’s contract when you got right down to it. Only once had he needed guidance from experts, and he had gone to the same firm that handled Roy Tribble’s: legal business. Jim Hathaway had looked astonished when he said he would pay the fee himself rather than deduct, it from his brother’s small royalties, but it was for himself, really, he had sought counsel, so that he might go on with, his new interest as long as possible, free from worry about possible errors. He hadn’t bothered to tell Gregory he had gone.
And now he was delighted that no serious move toward a new agent had ever been made. Now there would be real problems to cope with, and circumstance had found him ready for them. What would the most professional of professional agents have done just now but learnedly mention contracts and stall for time until morning?
Illogically, he thought of Diana. The change which would come over her face tomorrow when he told her! He wouldn’t boast about Gregory, of course, but he would have to sketch her in on what had happened and tell her he would go right on handling the business end, infinitely more complicated though it would be. He would wait until she came in with the letter to Roy Tribble; instead of reaching for his pen to sign it, he would look up from the spread of book contracts and tell her to file the Tribble letter until sometime next week.
“Next week, Mr. Johns?” she would ask, her voice concerned over anything so unusual.
“Yes, more important things are afoot,” he would answer, and then, very casually, he would tell her. And he would be watching her face as he did so; there’d be no cool remoteness in her eyes tomorrow. Five would get anybody fifty on that.
Anticipation bubbled up and once again he looked at Gregory. The kid brother! The unambitious one, the failure! Now he was a big-money author, somebody whose work all sorts of people, hundreds of thousands of people, not just a few high-brows but real people, would read and respect and argue about.
Even here in the bosom of the family Gregory was already “different” in everybody’s eyes. He was an important author; soon he would be A Name. Ever since the first hubbub had died away, they had all been pumping him about The Good World, asking its plot, begging to be allowed to read it at once, even in manuscript form, since Digby and Brown had sent him only one set of galleys, which he had had to correct and return. The whole family was still in the process of getting used to having such a novelist in their midst. Already Gregory had displaced him as the most successful member of the family, but he was only too happy to relinquish his title. This was a success story surpassing anybody’s rosiest and wildest dreams; it would be ignoble to begrudge him any part of it, and certainly nobody did.
Thorn looked around the room. It was true that a more sober mood could be detected, a kind of settling down. That was only natural. Gloria was beginning to talk of leaving before too long—“When you can’t afford a real nurse,” she said, with a toss of her head in her husband’s direction, “you’re the slave of a baby-sitter.” Her sisters nodded knowingly, and all three of their husbands, in a mass reaction of their collective muscles, moved off to the tray of decanters at the other end of the room.
Even Dad and Mother, Thorn noticed, were beginning to show signs of strain, but they made no move to end the party. Their glance had scarcely wavered from the face of their younger son and even now, as Gregory left the room to call Ed Barnard, their dazed eyes clung with inexpressible pride to the chair where he had been sitting. It was touching, Thorn thought, and started toward them, but at that moment Cindy turned away from Abby and drifted aimlessly over to the fireplace. He forgot about his parents and joined her.
She was looking into the mirror over the mantel and, as he approached her, he saw that she too had come down from the first pinnacle of happiness over Gregory. She said softly, “I suppose Gregory will take Abby to Florida or some place to celebrate,” and before he could reply, she pushed her face close to the glass and added, “I look half dead and awful.”
In this she was wrong. Lucinda Johns never looked half dead and rarely looked awful. She was a woman of energy, just as she had been a girl of energy, with the kind of energy which comes from health, vitality, and inner dissatisfaction. She had an energetic voice, free, it is true, of the two attributes which make an excellent thing in woman, but with other, and compensating, characteristics. These included a certain brash charm, a ring of humor, and an expensive Brearley-Vassar way of speaking which she had somehow picked up on her road through New York’s free public schools and colleges.
Cindy was tall and redheaded, with a complexion so good that its occasional periods of floridity could be forgiven. She was a trifle large, but she carried herself perfectly and never, even in the country, wore slacks. Recently she had taken to having “rinses” for her hair, but henna is, of course, a vegetable product and not a true metallic dye. She was Thornton’s age, looked it, never bewailed it publicly, and believed that a good wife was one who subtly pushed her husband to greater business effort than he would put out by himself. In this Thornton concurred, and in affectionate moments told her that half his. success was due to her, and that he was lucky she wasn’t devoid of normal ambition like some wives.
In this, she concurred. She had long held it a family misfortune that Gregory had not married a girl who could have made something, of him, who could have persuaded him to give, up writing esoteric stuff nobody wanted to read in favor of sensible writing like, romantic stories, radio serial, or popular novels. Appealing to a large public, was, a trick of the trade you could pull off, at will—how often had she read that in hook reviews! And how often spoken of it to Thorn!
Tonight’s, news about more “esoteric, stuff,” he suddenly realized as he met her glance in the mirror, must have thrown his wife a bit off keel. It was never pleasant to have one’s theories assassinated by facts, and for anybody like Cindy, it would be very nearly infuriating. A rush of sympathy warmed him and he said, “You’ve never looked awful in your whole life and right now you look wonderful.”
Cindy’s eyes cleared and he was reassured. How natural had been her comment about Florida, and how disloyal of him to find it troubling, even momentarily. Cindy had faults, many faults, but she was as incapable as he of being jealous of Gregory. Consolingly he said, “Gregory won’t be taking a vacation just yet—he’ll be too busy and so will I.”
“You?”
“Who’s going to be handling all his business detail?”
“Of course. I hadn’t thought of that at all.”
“For a while, anyway, and there’ll be plenty of it.”
“There will?”
“Sure. A stream of phone calls about splitting up the payments, people to meet and discuss things with—”
“What people?”
“Oh, I don’t know. From Digby and Brown, I guess, maybe from Best Selling Books, Incorporated. I’ll find out tomorrow how these things are done.” Cindy was watching him with a strange look, almost a look of, well, whatever it was a look of, it flattered him. His mind raced; he felt himself reaching confidently into new areas of living. “There might even be a movie sale in this,” he heard himself saying with calm authority, though this was a notion which had just been born. “And that would mean people from Hollywood too. Producers and people.”
Cindy’s head lifted and her shoulders straightened. She turned and looked about the room expectantly, as if guests were due. “It’ll be fun, won’t it?” she said, and smiled at him.
If Gregory Johns had been as close and constant an observer of human nature as authors are popularly held to be, he would have noticed long before this that the happiness of some of his nearest and dearest relatives was no longer unmixed.
But Gregory Johns was not such an author. He always needed time to develop the impressions left upon his mind during moments of high import, and only in retrospect did the subtleties of behavior take on their true values for him.
Thus it was that the small signs of distress here and there seemed to escape his notice. He had heard his sisters grousing about baby-sitters, had seen Cindy’s scrutiny of her own face in the mirror, and had a fleeting impression that though Thorn had been pensive, even sad, until after the call to Chicago, he had swung into violent, almost manic, good humor before it was over.
But none of these notes jotted down upon the surface of Gregory Johns’ mind were, as yet, easily legible even to him. For some time, his most active preoccupation had been with the idea that it would be nice to go home, and now that he had escaped from the noise and hilarity in the living room, he found himself longing for the moment when he and Abby could be alone.
He looked about him vaguely. He was in Cindy’s and Thorn’s bedroom; it was cool and blessedly silent. He sat down near the telephone table but made no move to lift the receiver. Ed Barnard had driven down to Philadelphia to work with an invalid author and would get home at two or three in the morning. He wondered if Ed knew, and what he would feel about it when he did know. Apart from Abby, Ed was the one person in the world with whom he might be able to discuss this, turn of fortune and the unprecedented emotions crowding his breast because of it.
Never as long as he could remember anything would he forget that first moment when Jake Zatke’s slow-paced voice told him his book had been selected. There was one dazzling, blinding instant of joy, unequivocal and pure, at the vision of hundreds of thousands of people reading something he had written, something into which he had put his faith and his love. Never had he worn a face of scorn for the size of one’s audience; never had he pretended that it mattered not whether ten people or ten thousand saw one’s work. Now many times ten thousand people would see his—the knowledge was a huge burst within him, exalted and exulting.
Later, when Jake had reached the part about the money, there had been another kind of pleasure, of a different nature, less private, more gaudy. This second pleasure one could describe more easily; it dealt with bills and expenses and physical things for Hat and Abby—he thought fleetingly of a large and very white refrigerator. But that first, that inner delight—could he ever share that, even with Abby?
All evening, startling new emotions had been crowding his mind, jostling each other, trampling and shoving, fairly shouting for attention. Not all of them were wonderful.
Gregory Johns suddenly recalled snatches of anecdote he had heard from Ed Barnard about certain authors who had begun to regard themselves as virtually immortal the moment they had their first collision with a large success. The details had varied, but never the underlying pattern: a new air of importance, a shy inability to dissuade those who used the word “great” or even “genius,” a newly discovered passion for extra Lebensraum via duplex apartment or remodeled farmhouse in Bucks County or Westport, Connecticut. There was, too, a universal docility toward anyone who insisted on an interview, a photograph, a radio or television appearance, or a private talk at the Stork Club during the height of the rush.
“All he has to do,” Ed had once said about one such docile newcomer to the Halls of Fame, “is say, ‘No.’ Instead he swills it like a hog and then grieves constantly about how exhausted he is, how unable to work, how astonished at the penalties the world exacts from its authors. And on his desk, he has two framed pictures”—here Ed had begun to laugh—“one of Shakespeare and the other of Abraham Lincoln.”
Remembering, Gregory wished this unfortunate train of thought could be broken at once. Outside in the hall, Thornton called, “Hey, where are you?” and he answered eagerly, “Right in here.”
Thorn opened the door carefully as if fearing to disturb a conversation. “Did you get Barnard?”
“No.”
“What are you doing out here by yourself?”
“Just thinking.”
“I’ve been thinking, too. What do you suppose Digby wanted to know all about your other rights for, in the middle of the night?”
“Why, because—” It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why. “I don’t know.”
“I bet he thinks there’s a big chance for a movie sale.”
“He couldn’t. It’s not that sort of—”
“Is it the sort for a book club?”
“I’m positive there’s no movie in it.”
“Don’t be positive about anything, not now.” They stared at each other. “Listen, I’m going to send a messenger out for the manuscript first, thing tomorrow. Or maybe Digby and Brown would let go of another set of galleys now. I’ve got to read it right away. O.K.?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll call you the minute—no, you’ll have to call me.”
“All right. When?”
“Early. Right after I’ve talked to—hell, let me think.” He scratched his right nostril thoughtfully. “You’ll be going in to the office tomorrow, won’t you?”
“Your office?”
“Digby and Brown. You’ll have to go see them about all this, won’t you?”
“I—” An odd reluctance began to form in his heart, vague and directionless. “Yes, sure,” he said heartily. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but sure, I guess I’ll be seeing them pretty soon. I want to call Ed Barnard anyway.”
“You’ll have to go there, too. Look, I’ll find out everything by phone first, and you call me before you go over.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Good. And, Gregory—”
“Yes?”
“You’d better get your phone back in as fast as you can.”
“My phone?” Suddenly he was uneasy, even apprehensive; there was no sense to it, but there it was. His vague reluctance had become a nipping, tugging pull of unwillingness.
“This changes things,” Thorn said earnestly. “Not only will I need to call you about things, but Digby and Brown will, and maybe B.S.B. The news is going to break and then a lot of people will want to talk to you about this or that, and it would drive everybody nuts to wait on the mails.”
“I suppose it would.” He hesitated. Of course he would have the phone again. A telephone was essential to modern life necessity alone had made him do without one. “I’ll do it the minute I can,” he said, and for no reason at all found himself remembering the awful, the angry helplessness he had felt as a child whenever is parents made him leave an engrossing story and go do his homework.