Herbert Jenkins - The Night Club

"And what happened?" queried Dick Little, who had heard the story a score of times.

"I was summonsed for assault. The magistrate was a creature entirely devoid of literary perception. He fined me five guineas, plus five guineas damages, and two guineas costs. But wait! Now here comes the shameful part of the story. Later I discovered that I had been wrong about the advertising. I wrote to that worm, that foul weed who is poisoning the slopes of Parnassus, apologising for whipping him, and will you believe it, he absolutely refused to return the five guineas damages?"

Dick Little laughed. He always laughed to see Dare upon his hobby-horse.

"The result of that case was an addition to the rules of the Barabbas Club, by which it was provided that, whenever an author horsewhipped a publisher, with or without justification, the president of the club should resign, and his place be automatically filled by the horsewhipper."

Dick Little rose from his chair, stretched himself lazily, lighted another cigarette and prepared to take his departure.

"One moment, my dear fellow," remarked Dare, "I must tell you something about this, The Damning of a Soul ." He tapped the manuscript upon the table. "It gives a picture of a publisher, so vivid, so horrible, so convincing, that I shudder when I think that anything so vile can be permitted to exist by our most gracious sovereign lady, Nature. It tells of the gradual intellectual murder of a great genius through lack of proper advertising by his publisher. 'It is a masterly picture of the effect of advertising matter upon imaginative mind.' I quote the words of our President. It will create a sensation."

"But what about libel?" enquired Dick Little, whose more cautious nature saw in this same masterpiece a considerable danger to its author.

"There is my master-stroke. My Beast, which transcends that of the Apocalypse in horror-compelling reality, is, as was that, a composite creature. I have drawn upon the whole of the seventeen publishers with whom I have had differences. One supplies 'a nervous, deceitful cough,' another 'an overbearing manner,' a third 'a peculiar habit of crossing and recrossing his legs,' a fourth 'a swindling propensity when the day of reckoning arrives,' a fifth 'a thoroughly unclean and lascivious life,' a sixth 'a filthy habit of spitting into the fireplace from every conceivable angle of his room,' a seventh – "

"Enough! I must be off," laughed Dick Little. "I suppose it's all right; but one of these days you'll get yourself into a bit of a mess. There may be the devil to pay over this even."

Dare smiled indulgently as he shook hands.

"Good-bye, my Æsculapius," he said. "If there's trouble, I have behind me the whole of the members of the Barabbas Club, representing eight hundred and thirteen volumes, and the brains of the country. Good-bye." There was a note of weariness about Dare's voice. Materialism was exceedingly tedious.

"Well, it's his affair, not mine," muttered Dick Little to himself as he descended the stairs of Dare's flat; "but they don't fight with books in the King's Bench Division."

Three weeks later, on returning from a fortnight's holiday in Scotland, Dick Little found awaiting him at his chambers the following note from Dare: —

"Come round at once. There is not the Devil, but the publishers to pay. Bring a hypodermic syringe and a pint of morphia. – "J.D."

Dick Little had been out of the world, and he had forgotten all about The Damning of a Soul and his own misgivings. Having seen a few of his more important patients, he walked round to his friend's flat and found Dare in a pathetic state of gloom.

"Have you brought the hypodermic syringe and the morphia?" he asked without troubling to greet his visitor.

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To those who are not authors it should be explained that Dare refers to publishers as a whole.