At “Storecraft” they told him the manager was in his office, and Vance flew up in the mirror-lined lift. He had not been in the place since he had taken Laura Lou there to see his bust at the “Tomorrowists’ ” exhibition. In the distorted vista of his life all that seemed to be years away from him. The lift shot him out on the manager’s floor and he was shown into an office where Bunty Hayes throned before a vast desk of some rare highly polished wood. Vance was half aware of the ultramodern fittings, the sharp high lights and metallic glitter of the place; then he saw only Bunty Hayes, stout and dominant behind a shining telephone receiver and a row of electric bells.
“I want to know if you’ve got a job for me,” Vance said.
Bunty Hayes rested both his short arms on the desk.
With a stout hairy hand he turned over a paperweight two or three times, and his round mouth framed the opening bar of an inaudible whistle.
“See here—take a seat.” He leaned forward, fixing his attentive eyes on his visitor. “Fact is, I’ve been thinking we ought to start a publishing department of our own before long—if it was only to show the old fossils how literature ought to be handled. But I haven’t had time to get round to it yet. Seems as if Providence had sent you round to help me get a move on. My idea is that we might begin with a series of translations of the snappiest foreign fiction, in connection with our Foreign Fashions’ Department. …” He leaned forward eagerly, no longer aware of Vance except as a recipient intelligence. “Get my idea, do you? We say to the women: ‘Read that last Geed or Morant novel in our “Storecraft” Series? Well, if you want to know the way the women those fellows write about are dressed, and the scents they use, and the facial treatment they take, all you got to do is to step round to our Paris Department’—you see my idea? Of course translations would be just a beginning; after we got on our legs we’d give ’em all the best in our own original fiction, and then I’d be glad to call on you for anything you wanted to dispose of. Fact is, I’ve got an idea already for a first ‘Storecraft’ novel—”
He stopped, and Vance once more became an individual for him. “Maybe you don’t get my idea?” he said with a sudden shyness.
Vance felt the nausea in his throat. He began: “Oh, I don’t believe it’s any good—”
“What isn’t?” Hayes interrupted.
“I mean, my coming here.” His only thought now was how to get away; he could find no further words of explanation. But Hayes, still leaning across the desk, said mildly: “You haven’t told me yet what you came for. But I guess there’s hardly any case ‘Storecraft’ isn’t ready to deal with.”
Vance was silent. In a flash he pictured his plight if he let his disgust get the better of him and turned away from this man’s coarse friendliness. After all, it was not Hayes the man who disgusted him any longer, but the point of view he represented; and what business had a fellow who didn’t know where to turn for his next day’s dinner to be squeamish about aesthetic differences? He swallowed quickly, and said: “Fact is, I thought perhaps you might be willing to take me on in your advertising department.”
The whistle which had been lurking behind Hayes’s lips broke forth in an astonished trill. “See here—” he exclaimed, and sat inarticulately contemplating his visitor.
His gaze was friendly and even reverential; Vance guessed that he was not beyond being impressed by the idea of a successful novelist offering his services to “Storecraft.” “I suppose you’ve had some practice with book blurbs?” he began at last, hopefully.
Vance shook his head. “Not even.”
“Oh, well—”
Vance had recovered his self-possession. He set forth, in as few words as possible, his business relations with the New Hour and Dreck and Saltzer, and his urgent need of raising money. He explained that he was debarred from selling his literary work to other bidders, and that he wanted to try his hand at publicity. It hardly seemed to be his own voice speaking—he felt more as if he were making a character talk in one of his books. When Hayes opened a parenthesis to ease his mind on the subject of Tarrant and the New Hour, Vance recalled the drunken row in the office—but that too had become far-off and inoffensive. The only thing that was actual and urgent was what this man on the other side of the desk was going to say in reply to his appeal
