The Behavior of Mr. Frumkin

by HONOR TRACY

WE lishers. ARE an There old-fashioned is nothing firm flashy of London in our publist of books. We have always preferred the enduring, no matter how solid, to the ephemeral, brilliant as this may be. Certain concessions to the age in which we live have naturally had to be made: our policy here has been to publish our books in yellow jackets and, by labeling “ Thorold s twentieth Century Library,”to make our personal feelings clear.

The premises we occupy are dignified and spacious. From our upper windows we get a splendid view of St. Paul’s Cathedral as well as a glimpse of the river. There is a spreading elm in our courtyard, under whose boughs in the summer our secretaries take their luncheon. It may be said that all these secretaries are ladies — one of them, indeed, a lady of title. Mr. Augustus Thorold, the chairman, of whose distinguished appearance the firm is proud, still wears a lop hat when so inclined.

Such at least is the picture we offer to the outside world. Behind the scenes our life, like that most publishers, moves in cycles of emergency. These emergencies are both great and small, constant and recurring, peculiar to our work and accidental on present conditions. On the one hand, that is, we have the lost manuscripts, missing blocks, aggrieved authors, and the threats of legal action by notorious rogues on flimsy pretexts: on the other, rising costs, dwindling supplies of paper, and the impertinences trade unions.

Thus we had no place in our scheme, nor indeed any precedent in our experience, for Mr. Frumkin.

The first time he made an appearance we thought little of it. Publishers, like newspaper editors and clergymen, are visited by a strange assortment of human beings. There was nothing about the man to mark him out from the hundred other lunatics that drifted harmlessly into our office and out again, he was short, very short, dressed in a seedy black overcoat with an astrakhan collar, and he had a pale moon face out of which two great black eyes looked mildly and sleepily. With him he had brought a bulky manuscript, written on thin paper in a flowing Continental hand and in purple ink. Towards the end of it he had evidently determined to economize with the paper, for on completing page 400 he had turned the manuscript sideways and worked back: thus page 400 right way up was also page 401 in the new position, page 399 was also page 402, and so on for seventy pages odd.

This feature of the work it was that suggested to the alert sense of Lady Violet that the whole affair might prove to be unsuitable. Lady Violet has been the personal secretary of Mr. MacGregor, our editorial manager, for a number of years and she is seldom mistaken. She told Mr. Frumkin at once how unlikely it was that any proposal would be made. Mr. Frumkin gently replied that the book was a masterpiece and would make all our fortunes. Lady Violet pointed out that political arrangements in England were such that the making of fortunes — or for that matter an honest living - was well-nigh impossible. She is a very outspoken lady. Mr. Frumkin countered this by saying that the publication of an outstanding title would greatly enhance our reputation. Lady Violet told him that it stood in no need of enhancing.

“And that is why I have come to you,”Mr. Frumkin swiftly replied.

It was his sudden, deft changing of ground that turned, as it were, Lady Violet’s flank. Among her many qualities a suppleness of mind was never remarkable. Later on she confessed to us all that she did not know what came over her. In the ordinary way she would have made short work of this man. Now for some reason she took the manuscript from him and promised it would be read. Mr. Frumkin declined the offer of a receipt.

“Because I know you are to be trusted,” he said.

2

FROM the very beginning the book was a hideous nuisance. We have had so much trouble with unsolicited manuscripts that we are quite fanatical in respect of their care. As they come in, the details are entered on special cards: the author’s name and address, date received, and whether by hand or by post. The obviously dreadful ones are then locked in an iron safe for an appropriate interval, after which they are taken out and returned with thanks to the owner. We do not have them read: it is a waste of money. Many authors appear to suspect this and lay liltle traps for us, such as gumming pages together and so on; and when the manuscript returns with these pages still stuck together they write triumphantly in to say their book has not been examined — a fact of which, of course, we are already cognizant.

We could not follow our usual procedure in the case of Mr. Frumkin because the title of the manuscript was unreadable. All we had to go on was his name, Samuel Frumkin, on a cheap visiting card clipped to page one. There was no address. We referred the matter to one of our apprentices, who has taken a degree in paleography, and also to Miss Barnicot, who specializes in author’s handwriting. Neither was able to help us. This difficulty in reading the title prompted us to look more closely at the body of the manuscript. It was impossible to make out. more than a word here and there.

Morton the office boy, a bright, mischievous lad of whom we are all very fond, puzzled over the thing for a while and said at last he believed it was a description of life in a Russian prison camp. Accordingly we gave it the title of “Life in Russia Today” and filled out a card. Morton then revealed ho had made the conjecture only because most manuscripts nowadays seemed to be about Russian prison camps. This was so true that we couldn’t help smiling, but we were no further forward.

Mysteriously the name of Frumkin by now had circulated throughout the building. Colleagues from Advertising, Production, and Sales came flocking to Editorial to have a look at the cryptic document. Bets were laid and work on our new Autumn last, already late, was entirely suspended. Even before we came to know him, Mr. Frumkin was a disruptive force in our lives.

He reappeared some ten days later, seedier than before and clutching an immensely old and shabby Gladstone hag. He sidled into the room in a manner shy and deprecatory and yet somehow confiding. It was this quality in him that defeated us all. He contrived in some remarkable way to make a claim, to lay a duty, upon us by virtue of the difference in his position and ours; that is the only way I can describe it. At the same time there was in him a humble mildness which seemed to promise that if we rejected this claim, refused this duty, if we chose instead to revile, injure, and insult him, he would perfectly understand. Lady Violet, who is bitterly ashamed of her heart of gold, believes to this day that he mesmerized her. Such things, she insists, have been heard of before.

A surprise awaited the poor lady now. She told him that we had not yet had an opportunity of considering his book and that if he would leave his address we would write to him. He waved this ancient gambit aside with a tiny gray paw.

“Of course you haven’t digested my book already,” he agreed. “It has taken me ten years to write it. Today I am showing you something nice.”

With that he whipped open the Gladstone bag and took out pair after pair of nylon stockings which he arranged with neat dispatch on the backs of chairs, across the table, and over his arm. In a twinkling the place had the air of a haberdashery. Such a thing never happened in Thorold’s before.

“Only nineteen and sixpence a pair,” he whispered, his head cocked on one side.

Observe how the episode, trivial in itself, flowered in bewildering consequence. Mr. Augustus Thorold chose this moment to make one of his rare visits to Lady Violet. Needless to say, he retired at once; he is too much of the old school not to feel that anything peculiar is better ignored. But later in the afternoon he came back, now to find Lady Violet thoughtfully considering the several pairs of nylon stockings that she had bought from Mr. Frumkin. A glance at Lady Violet’s serviceable stockings and shoes might have warned him that extraordinary things were afoot, but Mr. Thorold’s glance is never directed below a lady’s shoulder. He retired again, a suspicion of her utter frivolity sown in his mind.

The matter came up at a Board Meeting.

“How did that fellow get in? Hey?” Mr. Thorold inquired, out of the blue.

“Er . . . which fellow, sir?” was respectfully murmured.

“ That tout, spiv, barrow boy, or what have you — Lady Violet’s chum,” Mr. Thorold proceeded.

It was a measure of the spell that Mr. Frumkin had cast over us that even after the affair of the stockings we had not seen him at all in this light. He was still in our minds respectably classified as Lunatic Author. Nor had we given a thought to the question so pertinently raised. Apart from the Directors’ entrance and the fire escapes there is only one way of entering and leaving the building. It is by a long, low flagged corridor, dimly lit except at one point where, in an alcove behind a desk, sits the commissionaire. His duty is to mark the stall in and out and to allow no stranger to pass without first learning his business and apprising the department concerned by telephone. He is a peppery old man who has played a useful part in all the British wars to occur in his lifetime, and little or nothing eludes his eye. Yet on two occasions Mr. Frumkin had flitted past him unchallenged.

Mr. Thorold instructed us to hold an inquiry. The commissionaire could throw no light on the matter but offered at once to resign if he were not giving satisfaction; therefore it had to be dropped.

3

FROM that day forth Mr. Frumkin came and went as he chose. He never referred to his manuscript but simply dropped in for a chat or to offer miscellaneous objects for sale. With him he seemed to bring something of the grace, the leisure, of an Oriental bazaar: at the approach of that tiny squat figure our activity faltered and died. Once for an hour he sang favorite tunes from the Italian operas. Once he telephoned Liverpool at our expense. No one objected, whatever he did. It was a triumph of personality: the helpless, pleading manner he had, together with his enormous check, had somehow disarmed us all.

Not for a moment did he take this toleration as his due: he was intensely, embarrassingly grateful for it. Each time he came he thanked us warmly again. Something about him spoke of hitter faroff memories, deep wounds in the past, that in some inexplicable fashion we were helping to heal. And all who came in touch with him sensed it.

Then suddenly one morning came the amazing thing. Mr. Frumkin showed an entirely new facet of his complex nature and also achieved his most, brilliant success. He announced that, he must really try to repay the kindness he had been shown: he would take our Mr. MacGregor out to luncheon.

Mr. MacGregor had not even met Mr. Frumkin. The whole affair had been most carefully kept from him; it was outside his range altogether. He is a dour Scottish gentleman, of few words and extreme professional competence but little imaginative power. Every day he lunches at the same table in the same Fleet Street tavern with the same two cronies. The idea of his varying this habit to go off lunching with an unknown foreigner was fantastic.

Yet .. Mr. Frumkin skipped nimbly up the stairs and knocked boldly on Mr. MacGregor’s door. The pair of them remained closeted for something like half an hour and, holding our breath, we heard their voices rise and fall. At a quarter to one the door was opened and to our stupefaction they both came out and left the building together. Our first thought was that the end of the world was at hand. We touched ourselves to make sure that we were awake. Next we rushed to the safe and took out the manuscript. It was clear that by some occult means Mr. MacGregor had been favorably impressed, and we feared he would call for a report in the course of the afternoon. We pored over the flimsy pages with their purple hieroglyphs in something like despair.

Mr. MacGregor returned to the office an hour later than was his wont and in a taxi. His cheeks were flushed and his eves glittered: he was speechless with rage. He went at once to his room and shut himself in. Lady Violet reported that he was hunched in his chair, whistling through his teeth — always a dangerous signal.

Half an hour later Mr. Derek Mill bounded lightly into the office.

“My dears!” he cried — Mr. Mill is writing a book on Interior Decoration for our “Twentieth Century Library.” “My dears! What can it mean : Tell me all! “

But it was Mr. Mill who told us all, or as much as we were ever to know. It seems that he lunches almost daily at Claridge’s: he believes it helpful to his career. There today with astonishment he had seen our formidable Mr. MacGregor confidently led to a table by what he described as a cheerful little gnome. To his disappointment — “anguish” was the word he used — this table was out of earshot and all that followed took place, as far as he was concerned, in a kind of dumb show. What he saw was staggering, unheard of, preposterous; and somehow, none of us was even surprised.

The gnome had ordered the meal with a flourish. Smoked salmon, roast duck, crepes Suzette, all were eagerly noted by Mr. Mill. White wine appeared on the table, followed by red. The gnome did most of the talking. He was gay and completely at ease and his voice fluted over the tinkle of knives and forks like the voice of a dove. But when at last, the bill was laid before him, he had fallen abruptly silent. The look on his face, said Mr. Mill, was that of a man who receives a disquieting telegram. Suddenly he had clasped his little hands and leaning .across the table—Mr. Mill described his expression then as one of divine candor — had murmured something in Mr. MacGregor’s ear.

Mr. MacGregor was sitting so that Mr. Mill couldn’t see his face — “too heartbreaking!” — but he had started as if he had been shot. There was a very long pause. Then, with the slow, heavy movements of a sleepwalker or a man under water, he had produced his wallet and counted out a surprising number of pound notes. He had risen and left the room without looking back. Behind him hopped the little man, fluttering his hands and pouring out a confused stream of what Mr. Mill took to be entreaties and endearments.

Mr. Mill had finished his own meal at high speed and had leaped into a taxi, hoping to inform himself of the circumstances.

The house telephone rang at this point and the commissionaire spoke.

“There’s someone here by the name of Frumkin,”he said. “What shall I do."’

From his tone we judged that here too something was amiss.

“Please send him away,” we said; and we felt like the murderers of a baby.

Morton name upstairs chuckling. He had solved the mystery of Mr. Frumkin’s comings and goings. Returning from one of his protracted errands he had spotted the tiny figure immediately in front of him. It had turned up the corridor leading past the commissionaire, had stolen along with noiseless tread and, on nearing the desk, had suddenly crouched and bent its knees like a man playing at children. Thus the crown of its hat had traveled silently past the desk some three inches lower than the commissionaire’s line of vision. Morton’s hyenalike laugh had caused that excellent man to spring to his fed and all was discovered.

This simple and natural explanation had never entered our minds.

We have not seen our strange little friend again. His manuscript still reposes unread in our safe, for we have nowhere to send it. We have long since given up vain speculation as to what, in the first place, had led him to our door. And from the point of view of routine, his disappearance is welcome. Such colorful interventions have no place in business life. But the curious thing is that none of us except Mr. MacGregor— can think of the matter without a vague regret, an unease amounting almost to a sense of failure. Mr. Frumkin had show n in us all a confidence, a trusting reliance on our patience and love, that a saint might have shown: we saw that we had never really deserved it.