The loyal readers of the Globe need have no fear for the future of the best-loved paper in the kingdom. Both candidates have agreed that Sir Walter Sherwood shall remain as chairman of the board, guaranteeing the continuity that has been the hallmark of the paper’s success for the better part of a century. So register your vote, and the result will be announced next Saturday.
Townsend thanked Slater, and assured him that if he became proprietor he would not be forgotten. His first thought after he had put the phone down was to wonder where Armstrong was.
He didn’t return to the squash court, but immediately rang Ned Brewer, his bureau chief in London. He briefed him on exactly what he expected him to do during the night, and ended by telling him that he would be in touch again as soon as he landed at Heathrow. ‘In the meantime, Ned,’ he said, ‘make sure you have at least £20,000 in cash available by the time I reach the office.’
As soon as he had put the phone down, Townsend went to the front desk and picked up his wallet from security, walked out onto Fifth Avenue and hailed a taxi. ‘The airport,’ he said. ‘And you get $100 if we’re there in time for the next flight to London.’ He should have added ‘alive.’
As the cab weaved in and out of the traffic, Townsend suddenly remembered that Tom was still waiting for him on the court, and that he was meant to be taking Kate out to dinner that night so she could bring him up to date on her progress with The Senator’s Mistress. Every day that passed, Townsend thanked a God he didn’t believe in that Kate had flown back from Sydney. He felt he had been lucky enough to find the one person who could tolerate his intolerable lifestyle, partly because she had accepted the situation long before they were married. Kate had never once made him feel guilty about the hours he kept, the turning up late or not turning up at all. He only hoped Tom would phone to let her know he had disappeared. ‘No, I have no idea where,’ he could hear him saying.
When he landed at Heathrow the following morning, the cabbie didn’t feel it was his place to ask why his fare was dressed in a tracksuit and carrying a squash racket. Perhaps all the courts in New York were booked.
He arrived at his London office forty minutes later, and took over the operation from Ned Brewer. By ten o’clock every available employee had been sent to all corners of the capital. By lunchtime no one within a twenty-mile radius of Hyde Park Corner could find a copy of the Globe at any price. By nine that evening Townsend was in possession of 126,212 copies of the paper.
Armstrong arrived back at Heathrow on the Saturday afternoon, having spent most of the morning in Paris barking out orders to his staff all over Britain. By nine o’clock on Sunday morning, thanks to a remarkable trawl from the West Riding area, he was in possession of 79,107 copies of the Globe.
He spent the Sunday ringing the editors of all his regional papers and ordering them to write front-page stories for the following morning’s editions, urging their readers to dig out Saturday’s Globe and vote Armstrong. On Monday morning he talked himself on to the Today program and as many news slots as possible. But each of the producers decided it was only fair that Townsend should be allowed the right of reply the following day.
By Thursday, Townsend’s staff were exhausted from signing names; Armstrong’s sick from licking envelopes. By Friday afternoon both men were phoning the Globe every few minutes, trying to find out how the count was going. But as Sir Walter had called in the Electoral Reform Society to count the votes, and they were more interested in accuracy than speed, even the editor wasn’t told the result until just before midnight.
‘The Dodgy Dingo Beats the Bouncing Czech’ ran the banner headline in the first editions of Saturday’s paper. The article that followed informed the Globe’s readers that the voting had been 232,712 in favor of the Colonial, to 229,847 for the Immigrant.
Townsend’s lawyer arrived at the Globe’s offices at nine o’clock on Monday morning, bearing a draft for $20 million. However much Armstrong protested, and however many writs he threatened to issue, he could not stop Sir Walter from signing his shares over to Townsend that afternoon.
At the first meeting of the new board, Townsend proposed that Sir Walter should remain as chairman, on his present salary of £100,000 a year. The old man smiled and made a flattering speech about how the readers had unquestionably made the right choice.
Townsend didn’t speak again until they reached Any Other Business, when he suggested that all employees of the Globe should automatically retire at the age of sixty, in line with the rest of his group’s policy. Sir Walter seconded the motion, as he was keen to join his chums at the Turf Club for a celebratory lunch. The motion went through on the nod.
It wasn’t until Sir Walter climbed into bed that night that his wife explained to him the significance of that final resolution.
Fifth Edition
The Citizen v the Globe
28
The Citizen
15 April 1968
Minister Resigns
‘One hundred thousand copies of The Senator’s Mistress have been printed and are stacked in the warehouse in New Jersey, awaiting Mrs. Sherwood’s inspection,’ said Kate, looking up at the ceiling.
‘That’s a good start,’ said Townsend. ‘But they’re not going to return a penny of my money until they see them in the shops.’
‘Once her lawyer has verified the numbers and the invoiced orders, he’ll have no choice but to return the first million dollars. We will have fulfilled that part of the contract within the stipulated twelve-month period.’
‘And how much has this little exercise cost me so far?’
‘If you include printing and transport, around $30,000,’ replied Kate. ‘Everything else was done in-house, or can be set against tax.’
‘Clever girl. But what chance do I have of getting my second million back? For all the time you’ve spent rewriting the damn book, I still can’t see it making the bestseller lists.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Kate. ‘Everybody knows that only eleven hundred shops report their sales to the New York Times each week. If I could get a sight of that list of booksellers, I’d have a real chance of making sure you get your second million back.’
‘But knowing which shops report doesn’t make customers buy books.’
‘No, but I think we could nudge them in the right direction.’
‘And how do you propose doing that?’
‘First by launching the book in a slow month — say, January or February — and then by only selling in to those outlets that report to the New York Times.’
‘But that won’t make people buy them.’
‘It will if we only charge the bookshop fifty cents a copy, with a cover price of $3.50, so the bookseller shows a 700 percent mark-up on every copy sold, instead of the usual one hundred.’
‘But that still won’t help if the book is unreadable.’
‘It won’t matter in the first week,’ said Kate. ‘If the bookshops stand to make that sort of return, it will be in their interest to put the book in the window, on the counter, by the till, even on the best-seller shelves. My research shows that we’ll only have to sell ten thousand copies in the first week to hit the number fifteen slot on the best-seller list, which works out at less than ten copies per shop.’