Читать книгу Jericho's Daughters - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 33
3
ОглавлениеIt was Mary Agnes who broke the unhappy silence. In spite of her detachment, irritation with him was not her sole preoccupation. She had other problems more pressing to her. Nevertheless, he was there, and he had managed to arouse in her a slight curiosity, although perhaps not a sympathetic curiosity. Her way of opening the discussion was characteristic.
“Well, Wistart, let’s have it,” she said suddenly.
He almost started. “Have—what?” he said somewhat stupidly, for now that the issue was to be brought in the open he felt a sudden intensification of his fears.
“You had some reason, I suppose, for calling me back in this atrocious weather—or didn’t you?” She spoke acidly, ignoring the fact that she had her own reasons for coming.
“Well—yes. Yes, I did, honey——”
“I’ve told you I hate being called ‘honey’!”
He drew a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’ll try not to do it any more. But about—wanting to see you—I did—I do have a reason.”
“No, really?” she drawled with sarcasm.
He seemed to gather himself. “I’ll give it to you straight. I’m going to have to sell the Clarion.”
She sat up at that. “Sell it? Why?”
“The Sentinel people have made me an offer——”
“The Ender brothers? Those horrible little vulgarians? Why, this is insolent!”
“Not as insolent as you think,” he said unhappily.
“Wistart, stop talking in riddles!”
“Well—to tell the truth—the sale is being forced on me.”
By now all her lassitude was gone. Her gaze on him was concentrated, a little frown line between her eyes. More by reputation than otherwise she knew Eddie and Tony Ender. She had met them a few times—at the sort of civic affairs, Chamber of Commerce dinners and the like, with which she was occasionally bored.
Round-bellied little men, she thought of them. Eddie, the elder, was dark, a few hairs plastered tight across his bald spot, continually smiling a detestable loose-lipped grin, and with a handshake limp as a dead fish. Tony was red, with fox-colored hair and foxlike cunning, which he masked, however, behind a bulbous nose and an expression of unspeakable stupidity. Horrible little vulgarians she had called them, and it seemed to fit them better than well.
She gave a shudder of distaste—the Enders were the essence of what her nature abhorred, bold in an oily smirking manner, badly gotten up in clothes too flashy, perspiring slightly and smelling too strongly of cologne, none too sure of their grammar or syntax even in the few brief words she exchanged with them out of politeness. The very idea of calling them newspapermen was funny in a disagreeable way—they were gangsters, perhaps, but certainly without any single quality of the intellect, the grasp of affairs, and the ability to present those affairs to the reading public. They represented the new trend in journalism gone to its farthest extreme, prostitution of everything that gives it dignity and respect, for grimy, greasy dollars.
Mary Agnes had snubbed the Ender brothers properly, and she did not think they had much love for her. The mere thought that they might presume to meddle in affairs connected however remotely with herself was an affront of a personal nature.
“How can they force a sale on you?” she demanded.
He undertook to explain. “The Clarion was only about breaking even three years ago when the Sentinel was established——”
“It was a gold mine when your mother had it.”
“I know it. But—well, I’m not my mother. Anyway, we’ve been losing ground ever since the other paper started. When a newspaper begins to lose money, it loses it faster than any other kind of business.”
His voice had taken on a pleading, self-defensive sound. She glanced at him with contempt. What a bungler!
“I don’t believe those Enders have the kind of money to buy the Clarion,” she said.
“Maybe not. But they can get it. And—well, the paper’s in a vulnerable position just now——”
“For what reason?” she pursued mercilessly.
His eyes fell. “We’ve had to borrow—to correct antiquated methods and equipment—and—well—just to keep going. I think we’ve done it—the corrections, I mean. New presses and linotype machines, and some better talent in both the editorial and business departments. But it’s cost money—a lot of money. And we aren’t making money. I’ve kept hoping we’d pull out of it, but the truth is we’ve only fallen behind. It’s hard—very hard—to get a newspaper started up the hill again once it sags. And—well, to cut it short, the Clarion as of today is practically in the hands of the bankers.”
Now it was her turn to draw a deep breath—a gasp, rather. She had not imagined such straits. Often in the past she had tossed off satirically the phrase “married to a newspaper” as a joke. And she had never taken Wistart seriously, always speaking of him and his paper in the half-humoring way that a busy elder uses in referring to a child and its footling little toy. But all the time she had taken for granted the Clarion’s permanence. It was, she suddenly realized, one of the solid bulwarks of her existence, of which, until now, she had hardly been conscious. With this thought, she was for the first time alarmed.
“The worst of it,” went on Wistart tonelessly, “is that we’re badly in arrears to the paper mills——”
“How much?”
“About a hundred thousand dollars.”
“And other debts?”
“To the banks and other creditors, about four hundred thousand.”
She was startled. “Half a million! But the Clarion is worth more than a million, isn’t it?”
“I—well—yes, I suppose you could say so—counting intangibles like good will and its subscription lists and the fact that it’s a going concern, and so on. But the actual physical assets are nowhere near that.”
“The paper mills are pressing you?”
He nodded ruefully. “The banks refuse any more credit. And now we’ve been notified that unless we do something about the paper debts the mills will cut off our newsprint. That means suspending publication.”
“The Sentinel knows about this?”
“Yes, that sort of thing gets around in the publishing world. And some smart people are working with the Enders. Tom Pollock, their attorney, for one, is no fool——”
“I should say not! And he’s got plenty of reason to hate you, hasn’t he? The kind of things the Clarion has said about him.”
“You can’t run a newspaper without making enemies,” Wistart said. “You simply can’t avoid stepping on somebody’s toes sooner or later. Pollock’s always been in the wrong political camp——”
“So you’ve cast your bread upon the waters—of the wrong kind. And now it comes back to you?” For a moment she mused. “Tom Pollock can get even for those years the Clarion has maligned him—he can stick in the knife and turn it in the wound——” She seemed to derive a gloating zest out of the contemplation of this fascinating cruelty behind the dull, routine façade of business.
He nodded. “I guess that about says it. If our newsprint is cut off, the Clarion must take bankruptcy or accept the offer——”
“What’s the offer?”
“Not very much. Not near what the Clarion’s worth. They’ve got us over the barrel, and they’re not interested in paying for good will or other intangibles. They’ll get us from the receiver in bankruptcy if they don’t get us outright. What they’re offering is to take over the debts, and pay us a little more—fifty or sixty thousand, maybe. I don’t know exactly how much until the audit is made.”
“And that’s all?”
“Either that, or lose everything.”
“The end of the Wedge dynasty. Rather sad, isn’t it?” Her voice was half dreamy, as if she were watching, without participating in it, the acting out of a stage tragedy.
He nodded with a gulp.
“And you’ll be—a nobody.”
“I suppose you could say that,” he agreed drearily.
“And rather indigent besides, won’t you, by the time you’ve settled your personal liabilities besides those of the paper?”
It did not occur to him to suggest that his wife was wealthy and that she might share her wealth with him.
“Broke,” was all he said.
“A nonentity where you’ve always been such a big shot. And the Clarion will be in the hands of those awful bastards, the Enders, and Tom Pollock.”
Whether or not Tom Pollock would twist the knife in the wound, given opportunity, Mary Agnes knew how to do it with exquisite torture, and her husband winced.
