“Why, for the reasons I’ve told you. My articles haven’t been a success—I know that as well as you. But my book has, and under our agreement it’s brought me no more than if it had been a failure. I can’t live, and keep my wife alive, on the salary you give me, and if you’ll let me off I can earn three times the money tomorrow.”
Tarrant was silent. He began to drum again on the desk, and the dull red of anger still coloured his pale skin. “My dear fellow, you’ve had plenty of opportunities to complain to me of our contract, and it never seems to have occurred to you to do so till that pirate Lambart came along. Even then, if you’d come straight to me and stated your case frankly, I don’t say … But I’m not in the habit of letting my contributors be bribed away behind my back, and neither are Dreck and Saltzer. You signed a contract with us, and that contract holds.”
“Why do you want it to hold?”
Tarrant continued his nervous drumming. “That’s our own business.”
“Well, if you won’t answer, I’ll answer for you. It’s because I’ve given you one success at a bargain, and you feel you may miss another if you set me free. And it pays you to hang on to me on that chance.”
Tarrant’s lips moved slowly before his answer became audible. “Yes—I suppose that’s the view certain people might take. … It’s one that doesn’t enter into our way of doing business. Besides, before knowing whether the chance you speak of was worth gambling on, as you assert, I should have had to see the book you’re at work on now; it doesn’t always happen that beginners follow up a first success with a second. Rather the other way round.”
“Then why won’t you let me go?”
Tarrant, instead of replying, lit another cigarette, puffed at it for a moment, and then said: “By the way, is your manuscript here?”
“Yes.”
“I should like to have a look at it … only for an hour or two. So far I haven’t much idea of what it’s about.”
Vance pulled the manuscript out of his pocket. “If you don’t like it, will you let me off?” he repeated doggedly.
“No, certainly not. I shall ask you to make an effort to give us something more satisfactory, as I have every right to.”
There was another pause. The air between the two men seemed to Vance to become suddenly rarefied, as if nothing intervened to deflect the swift currents of their antagonism.
“You won’t like it,” Vance insisted with white lips.
“I daresay not. No doubt you’ve seen to that.”
The sneer struck Vance like a blow. He felt powerless with wrath and humiliation.
“It’s no use your reading it anyhow,” he exclaimed, no longer knowing what he was saying. He leaned across the desk, snatched up the pages, and tore them to bits before Tarrant’s astonished eyes. He could not stop tearing—it seemed as if the bits would never be small enough to ensure the complete annihilation of his work.
He was conscious that Tarrant, after the first shock of surprise, was watching him with a sort of cold disgust; and also that, when the work of destruction was over, their relative situations would be exactly what they had been before. But this cool appreciation of the case was far below the surface of his emotions. He could not resist the sombre physical satisfaction of destroying under that man’s eyes what he had made. …
The last scrap dropped to the floor, and Tarrant said quietly: “I’m afraid now you’ll have to send round and get the copy you have at home.”
“I’ve no other copy,” Vance retorted.
“That’s a pity. You’ve given yourself a lot of unnecessary work—and I’m damned if I see why. What’s the sense of having to begin the thing all over again?”
“I shall never begin it over again.”
“Well, if you weren’t satisfied with it, or thought it wouldn’t suit our purpose, I daresay you’re right. But in that case I’ll have to ask you to buckle down and turn out something else in the shortest possible time. We’ve been a good many months now without getting any return for our money. …”
“I shall never write anything for you again,” said Vance slowly.
Tarrant did not speak for a moment or two. His colour had faded to its usual ivory-like sallowness, and the furrow deepened between his ironically lifted eyebrows. He had the immense advantage over his antagonist that anger made him cold instead of hot.
“Never? You’d better think that over, hadn’t you? You understand, of course, that your not writing for us won’t set you free to write for anybody else till the four years are over.”
Vance looked at him with something of the other’s own chill contempt. His wrath had dropped; he felt only immeasurably repelled.
“You mean, then,” he said, “that even if I don’t write another line for you you’ll hold onto me?”
“I’m afraid you’ve left me no alternative,” Tarrant answered coldly. He rang the bell on his desk, and said to the office boy who appeared: “Clear up those papers, will you?”
In the street Vance drew a long breath. He did not know what would happen next—could not see a fraction of an inch into the future. But in destroying the first chapters of Loot he felt as if he had torn the claws of an incubus out of his flesh. He had no idea that he had hated the book so much—or was it only Tarrant he was hating when he thought of it? He flung on, flushed, defiant. He felt like a balloonist who has thrown out all his ballast: extraordinarily light and irresponsible, he bounded up toward the zenith. …
As he turned the corner of his street he came upon a pedlar beating his horse. Horses were rare nowadays in New York streets, pedlars almost obsolete; but in this forgotten district both were still occasionally to be seen. …
