“It’s your blood, isn’t it?” the man said tersely.
He said nothing more while he arranged the customer inside the pentacle. At his side he set the container of thick black stuff and propped the customer’s wrist over it so that the blood dripped in as he made the incision. Then he tossed a handful of powder onto the flame and began to chant.
The book came into the office of the San Francisco Times in a normal and unobtrusive manner. It was in a cardboard box wrapped in brown paper and bore postage at the proper book-rate. The label was plain, bearing no information other than the typed address, which read:
Book department
San Francisco Times
San Francisco, California
Miss Wentz opened the package and discarded the wrappings. She glanced at the oddly figured jacket, opened the book, and read the printed slip.
We take pleasure in sending you this book for review and we shall appreciate two clippings of any notice you may give it.
She muttered her opinion of publishers who give neither price or publication date, and turned to the title page. Her eyes popped a little.
THE BLOOD IS THE DEATH
being a collection of arcane matters
Demonstrating
that in the violence of death
lies the future of life
assembled by
Hieronymus Melanchthon
New York
The Chorazin Press
1955
She had never heard of Hieronymus Melanchthon nor The Chorazin Press; but anything comes to a newspaper. In a book-review department, incredulity is a forgotten emotion. Miss Wentz shrugged and soberly set to making out a card for the files, just as though the thing were really a book.
She was interrupted by the arrival of The Great Man, as she (in private) termed The Most Influential Bookpage Editor West of the Mississippi. He breezed in, cast a rapid eye over the pile of new arrivals, and hesitated as he looked at The Blood Is the Death.
“What now?” he said. He picked it up, held it in one hand, and let the pages riffle past his thumb. Malicious people said he could turn out an impeccable 250-word review after such a gesture. “Crackpot,” he said tersely. “Over on the left.” He picked up his mail and headed for the inner office. But he stopped a minute and looked at his thumb, then took out his handkerchief and rubbed at an ink smudge. He looked hurt, as a biologist might if a laboratory guinea pig turned on him and scratched him.
Miss Wentz put The Blood on the left. One wall of the office was a tall double bookcase. On the right were current books to be reviewed, from which the staff reviewers made their selections. On the left was a hodge-podge of rental romances, volumes of poetry printed by the author, secrets of the Cosmos published in Los Angeles, and other opera considered unworthy even of a panning. The Blood went in among them, between Chips of Illusion and The Trismegist of the Count St. Germain.
Miss Wentz went back to her typewriter and to her task of explaining to the usual number of eager aspirants that The Great Man did not read unsolicited manuscripts. In a moment she looked up automatically and said “Hello,” but there was no one there. Reviewers were always in and out all day Monday; she was sure she had heard, seen, felt somebody . . .
She tried to type and wished the phone would ring or The Great Man would decide to dictate or even a screwball author would wander in. Anything rather than this room that was not quite empty . . .
She was very warm in her welcome of The Reverend, as she mentally labeled him—so warm as thoroughly to disconcert the Times’s, reviewer of religious books. He was a young man still in his diaconate—not a year out of the seminary yet, but already realizing the nets and springes that are set for an unmarried clergyman. He was slowly becoming not so much a misogynist as a gynophobe, and found himself reading Saint Paul more and more often. He had always thought of the Times office as a haven of safety, but if even here— He turned away his face, which was reddening embarrassingly, and devoted himself to serious study of the books on the right.
He took down the letters of a Navy chaplain, a learned thesis on contemplation, and a small book in large type with the peppy title Prayer Is the Payoff. He set them on the table with a sigh of resignation (at that, there might be a sermon idea in them somewhere) and looked idly at the shelves again. With half a smile he reached for The Blood Is the Death.
“Such a sacrilegious title!” he observed, paging through it. “I imagine this might fall into my province at that?”
“What? Oh.” Miss Wentz looked at The Blood. “That’s supposed to be over on the other side. He doesn’t want anything on that.”
“I found it here,” he protested mildly.
“I’d swear I put it over with the rejects.” She rose and thrust it in its proper place. “Well, it’s there now.”
The Reverend frowned at his finger. “What frightful ink in that odd book! Look how it comes off.”
Miss Wentz reached in the drawer. “Here’s a Kleenex.”
But rub though he would, the stain persisted. He was still at it, and rather wishing that he might revert to the vocabulary of his undergraduate days, when Mark Mallow came in.
The word usually used for Mark Mallow was clever, or sometimes even brilliant. People always said how much they admired his work, or how entertaining he was. They were never heard to say anything so simple as “Mallow? Yeah, a swell guy.” Mallow wore, among other necessary items, a trim Van Dyke and a jaunty hat and a bright bow tie. You
