Hayes leaned back and drummed on the desk. “Cigarette?” he queried, pushing a box across the table. Vance shook his head, and there was another silence. Then: “How’s your wife?” Hayes asked abruptly.
The blood rushed to Vance’s temples. “She’s fairly well,” he said coldly.
“I see. Living at the same old stand?”
“No. We’re out in the country now.”
“Say—are you?” Hayes lit his cigarette, took a puff or two, and then stood up. “See here, Mr. Weston, I guess we can fix you up some way or other. Come round with me now to our Publicity Department—” He opened the glass door and led the way down a corridor to another glazed enclosure. …
When Vance got into the elevated to return home he had five hundred dollars in his pocket. He had spent an hour with “Storecraft’s” publicity agent, and besides the money his pockets were bulging with models of advertisements—“blurbs” and puffs of every conceivable sort, from an advertisement of silk stockings or face cream, or “Storecraft’s” insurance policies, to circulars and prospectuses featuring the lecture tours managed by “Storecraft’s” Arts and Letters Department. In the bunch, as Vance glanced over them, he found his grandmother’s advance circular, and thrust it disgustedly under the others; but the disgust was easily dominated. He had the money in his pocket, a retaining fee, Hayes had explained to him. It was worth the money to “Storecraft” to have a well-known novelist on their publicity list; and he’d soon pick up the hang of the thing sufficiently to earn his advance, and more too. Fellows who knew how to sling words were what they were after, Hayes continued; many of the literary people didn’t seem to realize yet that writing a good advertisement was just as much of an art as turning out Paradise Lost or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Vance hardly noticed at the time that the pecuniary transaction did not take place in the Publicity Department, but in Hayes’s private office, to which the manager invited him back for a cocktail and a final talk. He had the money in his pocket, and he was going to turn to and try to earn it, and as much more as he could. Compared with these monumental facts everything else seemed remote and negligible; and when Hayes, at the close of their talk, said a little awkwardly: “Well, so long. … Glad to hear your wife’s all well again, anyhow,” Vance felt a sudden compunction, as if he had been deliberately deceiving the first person who had really befriended him. “Well, she hasn’t been very bright lately,” he confessed with an effort at frankness.
“That so? Sorry to hear it.” Hayes paused uncertainly, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I don’t believe I know just where your burg is. Maybe I could call round one day and see how she’s getting on—bring her a little grapefruit and so on, eh?”
Vance hesitated. Since they had left New York he had given his address to no one; even Eric Rauch had not been able to wheedle it out of him. In reply to Hayes he mumbled that he was hard at work on his novel, and had to keep away from people as much as he could—and he saw Hayes redden at the rebuff, and was sorry, yet could not bring himself to say more. “Well, you’ll be round again soon with something to show us, I suppose?”
Vance said yes, and after another awkward moment the hands of the two men met.
“You’ve done me a mighty good turn,” Vance stammered, and the other replied: “Oh, well—call on me if there’s any other way I can be of use.” Then the lift received Vance, and he dropped down the long flights, dizzy with what he had achieved, and a little ashamed at the poor return he had made for it. But Hayes with his damned grapefruit spying out the misery of the bungalow—no.
On the way home he felt a sudden buoyancy, combined with a new steadiness and composure of mind. He was even able to enjoy the humour of the situation as he ran over the list of subjects the publicity agent had given him to try his hand on. At a newstand he bought a handful of picture magazines, and plunged into the advertising pages, comparing, criticising, mentally touching them up. Evidently what “Storecraft” wanted was a combination of Sinclair Lewis, Kathleen Norris, and Mrs. Eddy. Well, he thought he could manage that, and even go them one better. … He longed for someone to share his laugh, and the thought of Halo Tarrant flashed out, as it always did when the human comedy or tragedy held up a new mask to him. Poor Laura Lou would not be able to see the joke. Her admiration for Bunty Hayes was based on his scholarship and eloquence—Vance remembered how much she had been impressed by the literary quality of Mrs. Scrimser’s advance circular. Her simplicity had irritated him at the moment; now he saw it through a rosy gleam of amusement. After all, he decided he would tell Laura Lou about his visit to Hayes and their arrangement. It would please her to know that the two men were friends; and somehow he felt he owed it to her not to conceal Hayes’s generosity. He had never forgotten the crumpled love letter he had picked up in her room, in the early days at Paul’s Landing. He reached his journey’s end, and swung down the lane whistling and singing through the night. …
He banged on the front door, but there was no answer. He tried the handle and it opened. How often he had told Laura Lou to lock up in his absence! Really, her carelessness … The room was pitch-dark and cold. He stumbled over something and fell to his knees. “Laura Lou—Laura Lou!” he cried out in deadly terror.
By the light of his electric torch he saw her lying almost
