Stranger Than Truth Page 11

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”

  “I love it, but the door’s open.”

  “You weren’t so cautious yesterday.”

  “It’s your reputation I’m thinking of, Johnnie.”

  Lola Manfred had not come in. Eleanor was worried. “I’ve called three times but no one answers the phone. I can’t imagine what’s wrong. Lola always lets us know if she’s going to be away from the office. Do you think anything could have happened?”

  “She’s probably sleeping off a hangover. How about dinner, Eleanor? We ought to celebrate. Think of some place expensive you’d like to go. Still love me? Then give me a kiss for luck and wish me well, I’m on my way to my first Truth Digest conference.”

  No one broke a bottle of champagne over the masthead of the new magazine. The boss was a teetotaler. We launched our ship on a dollar-fifty blue-plate sent upstairs by the Barclay Building Grille. The lunch conference was said to promote friendship and good feeling, which enabled Barclay to enter the expense as legitimate on his income-tax returns.

  The conference table was covered with a damask cloth. Dishes and glassware were decorated with Barclay’s monogram, surrounded by laurel wreaths. The forks were so heavy that the lightness of the food was barely noticeable.

  Barclay sat at the head of the table. Opposite him was Gloria, his wife. He had found her in Beverly Hills, California, where her type is said to be indigenous. She was a long-legged, high-shouldered, full-breasted beauty. Every third month Truth and Beauty printed Gloria’s picture to prove that healthy motherhood does not destroy the form divine. She had given Barclay twin sons.

  At conferences Gloria represented the Woman’s Angle. This custom had been instituted long ago when Barclay was married to his second wife, a Vassar graduate, said by office veterans to have been a highbrow. No one could accuse Gloria of anything like that.

  I was the honored guest at the luncheon and sat at Barclay’s right. At his left was Old Faithful, E. E. Munn. Next to Munn sat Loring Wince of the Advertising Department, then J. J. Javes of Legal, Burton English of Circulation, Henry Roe, Editor of Truth Magazine, and completing the group. Dr. Mason of the Board of Religious Co-ordination.

  When we were all seated, a silence fell. It was like the moment before Opening Prayer. From the street rose the traffic noises, blurred and indistinct. Dr. Mason breathed through his mouth.

  “Gentlemen,” Barclay began, “and Mrs. Barclay. Our meeting today is a happy one. First of all we greet the new editor of a new magazine. From the day he entered our organization I recognized this young man’s potentialities. Gentlemen and Mrs. Barclay, John Ansell.”

  It was like being singled out in the school assembly. Except for Gloria and Javes of the Legal Department, I had met them all before. I noticed Munn nodding as if he, as well as Barclay, had recognized my potentialities from the start.

  Mrs. Barclay smiled graciously. “Why aren’t you eating your cocktail, Mr. Ansell?”

  “I don’t eat shellfish. I have an allergy,” I said.

  “We don’t believe in allergies.” Gloria’s smile condoned my ignorance. “We’ve proven they’re part of the medical racket, another way of putting money in the doctors’ pockets. Don’t you just adore Truth and Health?”

  “But shellfish doesn’t agree with me,” I argued. “I haven’t touched it since my freshman year at college, when I’d eaten some…”

  Barclay cleared his throat.

  I remembered why I was the new editor, guest of honor at this luncheon. “Oh!” I said as if I’d been hit on the head with a steam roller. “I did eat shrimp last week and the next thing I knew I was in the hospital.”

  Barclay grinned.

  Gloria’s lovely brow puckered. “You must have had some humiliating or terrifying experience in early youth. In your unconscious mind it’s probably associated with shrimps. Do you remember ever having been hurt or punished at the same time as…”

  “My dear,” Barclay interrupted, “your intentions are admirable, but we haven’t time now. These are busy men.”

  She accepted the rebuke with a modest smile.

  “The purpose of this meeting is to discuss our new magazine,” Barclay said.

  They all stopped chewing and nodded.

  “This new magazine is going to be terrific. Brief, punchy, succinct, timely and,” Barclay paused for emphasis, “courageous!”

  They all nodded again and Munn repeated, reverently, “Courageous.”

  “Not that we’ve lacked courage in the past,” Barclay continued. “In all modesty I say that no braver trumpet has heralded the truth to the reading public than the Truth group. We’ve bared the truth about subjects which no other publication would have looked at through a microscope or touched with antiseptic gloves.”

  “How true!” muttered Dr. Mason, scraping up cocktail sauce with a soda cracker.

  “When I first told Ansell my idea for the new magazine, do you know what he said? He said I’d have to face stiff competition in the digest field. As if I didn’t know! As if this were the first time the Barclay-Truth Publications have had to face competition.”

  An office boy came in, dropped mail into Barclay’s In-Basket, looked over his shoulder at the lunch table and went out contemptuously. Among the mail in Barclay’s basket I saw a manila office envelope decorated with a red Rush sticker.

  “…and we’re going to fight competition just the way we fought it in our other publications. How? By cutting the price. Just as we’ve done before. Remember, Wince, when we started Truth and Love? True Story and True Confessions were on top of the market at twenty-five cents a copy. We beat them by a dime. Was MacFadden furious? And when I brought out Truth and Health to compete with his beloved Physical Culture, and undersold him by a dime, he was ready to have me drawn and quartered.” Barclay enjoyed the recollection. We were his guests and his employees and could not interrupt as he launched into a lengthy account of his prowess as a magazine publisher.

  He did not, I noticed, bother to mention those magazines which had failed. Truth in Pictures could not compete with Life, nor even with its imitators. The younger generation had spurned his Truth and Youth, and while Truth and Beauty managed to stay alive, she limped far behind her competitors in what is known as “the woman’s field.” His motion-picture magazine had died ingloriously. Although Barclay had poured a mint of money into the project, Truth in Hollywood could not endure.

  While Barclay entertained us with a detailed history of his triumphs, two waitresses entered, took away our empty cocktail cups and placed before each of us a plate containing creamed chicken, mashed potatoes, string beans and a few limp beets.

  “In our new publication,” Barclay thundered, “we shall be courageous as no other digest is courageous. As of this day, boys, the brakes are off. Truth Digest is going to make magazine history. And more than that, it’s going to leave an indelible mark on modern civilization.”

  “What about advertising?” asked Loring Wince.

  Barclay shook his head. “We’re going to make more money without it. What do you think of that, boys, a magazine without advertising?”

  “What’s so new about that?” asked Burton English. “None of the digests carry advertising.”

  Munn looked hurt. He had no power over the insolent fellows in the Advertising and Circulation Departments. They brought in the money and could be as impudent as they liked.

  “In considering the contents of our first issue,” Barclay said, “I’ve made a survey of our magazines for the past ten years and found some great stuff. Dr. Mason…”

  The Head of the Board of Religious Co-ordination looked up guiltily, as if it were a sin to enjoy creamed chicken.

  “That campaign you and your associates prepared, Doctor, to run spiritualist fakes and other faith-parasites out of the country, that’s as fresh as the day it was written. We might have to bring it up to date by including a few timely items, but very little work is required. And Henry,”
Barclay aimed his charm at Roe, “I want to reprint that remarkable series you did for us in ’38…”

  “Not that stuff on unmasking dictators of the WPA?” Burton English cut in.

  “Why not?” demanded Barclay.

  “It’s dated, and besides, many of our readers don’t like it. Plenty of them have been on the projects.”

  Barclay shook his fork at the dissenter. “Truth Publications will never quit fighting until we’re rid of dictatorship in our country, whether the dictatorship of a Stalin, a Roosevelt, or a Philip Murray. We may endanger ourselves in the battle, we may lose our worldly goods, our lives, even our liberty, but let us not falter in our duty.”

  “Hear! Hear!” That, of course, was E. E. Munn.

  Burton English winked. Loring Wince smiled to himself. These cynics were less concerned with principles than with profits.

  “What about the woman’s angle?” asked Gloria brightly.

  Barclay thanked her with a gracious smile.

  It was the chance Munn had been waiting for. “I suggest illegitimacy.”

  “Good old illegitimacy, it never fails,” said Wince of Circulation.

  “Got to be careful,” warned Javes of Legal.

  Dr. Mason agreed.

  “Do you gentlemen, and Mrs. Barclay, remember that confession in last April’s Truth and Love?” asked Munn, “about the woman who refused marriage?”

  “I do,” cried Gloria. “‘I Spurned a Wedding Ring.’ She had six daughters.”

  “Perhaps she should have settled for the ring,” I said.

  Wince and English laughed. Munn looked pained.

  The waitresses were in again. One was removing our plates while the other served ice cream and a square inch of pound cake.

  “Syphilis is better,” Dr. Mason said.

  “I agree.” Burton English was now quite serious. “We always go to town with syphilis.”

  The waitress dropped a plate of ice cream.

  Barclay frowned slightly at the interruption of the conference. “I vote no on syphilis,” he said, “particularly for the first issue. Syphilis has been overdone lately. The most conservative magazines are taking it up. I’ve got a better medical piece. ‘Consider Your Glands, Medicine’s Biggest Racket.’”

  We considered our glands. In the corner the waitresses conferred in whispers. A critical situation had been caused by the ice-cream accident. One order was missing. All but Dr. Mason had been served. He looked anxious.

  “Just a couple of minutes, dearie,” the waitress said to him soothingly, and skipped off.

  Javes of Legal asked, “When was it printed? I don’t remember any gland pieces recently.”

  “I’m having it written now,” Barclay said.

  “Don’t digest magazines use reprints?” asked the literal-minded legal member.

  “This will be a reprint. Truth and Health will be on the stands a few days ahead of the Digest. That will give it timely quality. Shaw’s doing the piece. I told him to give it the same guts and punch as ‘Perversion in Our Colleges.’”

  The waitress came back with a double order of ice cream for Dr. Mason. He took it like a Sunday-school treat.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Munn said eagerly. “If we want lively material, what about a condensation of the Podolsky articles?”

  Henry Roe put down his spoon. “Are you crazy?”

  “I believe they increased Truth circulation,” Munn said coldly. “Isn’t that true, Mr. English?”

  “Increased cancellations.”

  Munn started to protest, but Barclay silenced him with a wave of his ice-cream spoon. He addressed himself to the Circulation and Advertising Departments. “Was it our fault that Russia didn’t seize Manchuria as soon as the Jap war ended? Podolsky thought she would. So did I. So did a great many people who are wiser than we are, politically speaking. Let’s say that Podolsky made an error.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” I said.

  “Are you questioning the integrity of one of our contributors?” Munn asked. “A rather important contributor, by the way. After all, he’s a well-known authority on world affairs.”

  “A well-known fake,” I added.

  The silence was uneasy.

  Gloria smiled brightly. “But General Podolsky’s so charming. He has such old-world manners.”

  “He isn’t a general,” I told her. “He was never an officer in the Czar’s Army. He’s not even a Russian. His adventures never happened and most of his facts have been proved false.”

  Munn let out a hollow laugh. “Ansell must have been reading those Red newspapers.”

  “Like the New York Times and the Herald Tribune, Mr. Munn?”

  “Ansell’s right. You’re right, lad,” Barclay assured me. “Like everyone else in the world, Podolsky’s made mistakes. But he’s always been ready to acknowledge them. As a matter of fact, my faith in Podolsky is so great that I’ve asked him to join our staff.”

  Gloria beamed.

  “In what capacity, may I ask?” queried Munn.

  “As sort of roving reporter,” Barclay said. “Later I may give him an editorial title. Right now I want him to travel around the country, take the national pulse, so to speak. I expect a sensational series for the new digest.”

  “Couldn’t we use his articles in Truth first? Save a little money,” suggested Munn as solemnly as if he were proposing a world-shaking idea.

  “That’s what I’d planned,” Barclay said.

  Munn wilted. Henry Roe winked at Gloria. She suppressed a giggle. The waitresses brought coffee for Javes, Wince, English, Henry Roe and me. Munn and Dr. Mason had tea, and Barclay and Gloria drank milk.

  The contemptuous office boy brought in the afternoon papers. The conference table was in use, so he put the papers on the metal cover of the radiator just behind my chair.

  I looked over my shoulder and read the headlines. Then I turned my back to the table and read a front-page column:

  PLAID-COAT SUSPECT FOUND

  Mystery Woman Confesses Ride in

  Death Elevator

  “The woman in plaid, sought in connection with the death last May of Warren G. Wilson, bachelor recluse, confessed this morning to Captain A. C. Riordan of the Detective Bureau that she rode in the elevator to Wilson’s floor the night he was shot in the back. She is Arvah Lucille Kennedy, divorcee, of Bayside, L. I. Suffering pangs of…turn to Page 21.”

  I turned to Page 21. Barclay went on talking about policy, truth and the new digest. Arvah Lucille Kennedy had not killed Warren G. Wilson. She had never met the late tenant of Suite 3002-4. On the night of May eleventh, wearing a plaid coat, she rode to the thirtieth floor of the exclusive apartment hotel because her friend did not want her to be seen getting off at the twenty-eighth. She had walked down two flights for the sake of her friend’s reputation.

  Her friend was Frederick Semple, morning-coated manager of the hotel. He could not set a bad example to guests nor let employees discover that he had relations with the Bayside divorcee. It was for Mr. Semple’s sake that Arvah had kept silent for six months.

  “What are you reading, Ansell?”

  Everyone at the table stared. I could see that Dr. Mason and E. E. Munn were shocked by my bad manners. “You’ll be interested, Mr. Barclay,” I said, and handed him the paper.

  He was about to refuse it when I pointed to the plaid-coat headline.

  “Excuse me, boys,” muttered Barclay and began to read the Kennedy story.

  Loring Wince and Burton English lit cigarettes. J. J. Javes of Legal asked Gloria if she minded a pipe. Munn told her that he admired her chapeau. I watched Barclay.

  In the wire basket on his desk was the envelope with my memo. The basket was less than ten feet from where I sat, but I could not, in the sight of the boss, the boss’s wife and six other employees, snatch mail from the boss’s desk.

  “Very interesting,” Barclay said as he handed me back the paper.

  We went on with the meeting. I c
ontributed nothing. It was my first important conference and I was a two-hundred-dollar flop. English, Wince, Mason, Javes and Roe offered bright ideas or criticized unprofitable ones. All I thought about was the memo in Barclay’s basket.

  It was after three when the meeting broke up. English, Roe, Wince and Javes left. Dr. Mason stayed for a private word with Barclay. Gloria was talking to Munn. I had no excuse for hanging around. I walked to the door slowly.

  Barclay had gone to his desk. Dr. Mason leaned over it, whispering some confidential question or opinion. Barclay was not listening. He had taken the mail from his basket.

  As I left he was opening the envelope with the red sticker.

  The phone rang.

  I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes to four.

  “Yes, he is,” Miss Kaufman said. She put down the phone and turned to me, saying, “He wants you in his office. Right away.”

  I was glad. The agony was about to start, but the suspense was over. Barclay had promoted me, raised my salary, made me his new favorite in order to keep me quiet. I had accepted the bribe and he thought he had me where he wanted me. And how he had discovered that I was not content to stay quiet in my niche.

  Munn passed me in the hall. “Great meeting, wasn’t it?” Evidently he had not seen my memo.

  Miss Eccles smiled, too. “Go right in. He’s waiting for you, Mr. Ansell.”

  Gloria was still in Barclay’s office. She greeted me brightly. “I’m so glad to know you at last, Mr. Ansell. Daddy’s told me so much about you. You must dine with us some night. I’ll arrange it with Eleanor.”

  News traveled fast in the Barclay office. I did not mind their knowing about Eleanor. What puzzled me was the air of approval. Barclay nodded over Gloria’s invitation. On his desk, at the center of the blotter, my memo lay.

  “Lover,” Barclay said to his wife, “I’ve got to speak to this young man about business. I’m sure it wouldn’t interest you.”

  “Yes, dear.” She kissed her husband, wrapped herself in sables, waved a farewell, and was gone.

  Barclay picked up the memo. “What’s the meaning of this, lad? Trying to be funny, eh?” The approach was mild. He had probably planned his strategy.