He was still reading when Mildred O’Kelly came to the door of his office. “Look, Frankie,” she said amiably, “Ben wants to see you.”
Sargent closed the copy of Turkey Talk but took it with him as he adjourned to Chapman’s private office. He wondered if he was being fired.
Chapman waved the shears at him. “Close the door, I want to have a talk with you. Sligo’s been squawking. I want to tell you about him because I’ve got to run up to Madison, Wisconsin, for a few days on a little legal matter. I can’t trust anyone around here. They all hate my guts. If anything happens to me, Sligo’s the man the police want. He’s made threats against me and he’s quite capable of carrying them out. I’ve been having him shadowed by a detective agency and they’ve reported that he consorts with gangsters and such ilk. Remember that, Corporal.”
“Sargent!” Sargent said. “But look, Mr. Chapman, I’ve just started to work here. Wouldn’t it be better...?”
“No! You haven’t had time yet to take sides. I’m an excellent judge of character. Before I became a trade journal publisher I was a newspaperman. A damn’ good one if I do say so. This was down in Montgomery, Alabama, and I earned fifty dollars a week. People used to point me out on the street. Then I got the Sugar Beet Review and made it the classiest little trade journal in the industry. I was offered thirty thousand dollars for it and refused; then a year later I was glad to take five thousand. Biggest mistake I ever made in my life. Haven’t made any since. If a paper doesn’t pay, I get rid of it. I had Lock & Keys, covering the oldest craft known to man. I had to get rid of it. Just wouldn’t go. That reminds me, you ought to put out a special Colorado issue of Turkey Talk. They raise a lot of turkeys down there. Our White Holland issue was a good one.
“Steer clear of Lew Thayer. He’s a drunkard. I’m thinking of firing him. Here are a bunch of subscription letters that have come in since I fired Pelkey. I’ve taken the money that came with them. Better get the names entered. You go to press tomorrow with the June issue. Get your gallays from Mutter before you leave tonight. I’ve been thinking we ought to make a drive for commission house advertising. No reason why those fellows shouldn’t advertise in Turkey Talk. They’ve got the money and we’ve got the turkeys. Hanson Hill’s a dirty crook, but he stands in with that crowd. That Minnesota turkey pool of his is nothing but a fraud. I’ll send him to jail before I get through.”
“Hanson Hill owns Turkey Tracks, doesn’t he?” Sargent managed to get in edgewise. “I was just reading—”
“He used to work for me. Made him a mighty fine proposition and he double-crossed me. Started a competitive sheet. Haley did that on Soap Digest and I made him pretty sick before he quit. Did the same thing to Sligo. Why I ever took that man into this business I don’t know. I’m going to fire him one of these days.”
“Sligo?” Sargent asked.
“Haley. I fired him. Caught him dipping his fingers into the petty cash. Forget what I said about Sligo. Helped me out of a spot one time. Grand fellow, Sligo. Smartest business manager in the trade journal field. Published Candy Columns and made a good thing of it. Have you pasted up your dummy yet for the June issue? You go to press tomorrow. Gums up the whole shop if you throw them off schedule. Get busy. If there’s one thing I don’t like it’s an editor who sits around twiddling his thumbs. Here, enter these subscriptions.”
Sargent took a double handful of envelopes, all of which had been slit open, and fled to his cubicle.
“Godalmighty,” he said, under his breath, “what a man! What a business... Hello!”
During his absence someone had deposited a bundle of galley proofs on his desk. One set was on white paper and another on pink, duplicates of the whites. Sargent looked at them curiously.
“Pasting up a dummy” had a familiar ring. He’d heard the term before, or read about it somewhere and knew vaguely that it had to do with getting a magazine ready for the printer, but exactly what the work entailed was beyond him.
He took the proofs into Jim Robertson’s office. “Look,” he said, “I’m green as grass about this business. What do I do with these?”
“You read the whites and make your corrections on them. The pinks you use to make up your dummy.”
“Yeah, but just what is a dummy?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I was never inside an editorial office in my life before today,” Sargent confessed, grinning ruefully. “And I’m wondering if I’m going to last it out. My head’s been in a whirl ever since I came in here.”
“Ben,” said Robertson. “Look, it’s a quarter to five. Shove all that stuff in a drawer and we’ll call it a day. I’ll give you a few pointers about this racket over a bowl of soup if you’re not in a hurry.”
“Oh, I haven’t got a thing to do. And I’d certainly appreciate anything you can tell me. Frankly, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going and I can’t seem to understand much of what Mr. Chapman tells me... except that he once published a trade paper called Sugar Beet Review.”
Robertson chuckled. “You’ll get sick of that Sugar Beet Review. Come on, let’s go!”
As they walked down the center aisle toward the door, Sligo came out of his office and made a show of looking at his watch, to indicate that he knew they were beating the gun by a few minutes.
Outside the building Robertson said to Sargent, “I didn’t know Ben had an ad in the paper this week. When did he interview you?”
“Just a little while ago, when I came up to the office.”
“The first time? Funny no one else answered the ad.”
“I didn’t answer an ad.”
“Then how’d you happen to get the job?”
Sargent laughed. “I came up to interview Chapman. You see, I work for the Trotter Institute of Public Opinion. The Trotter Poll, you know. I didn’t know Chapman from Adam. I started to ask him the usual stuff and he went into a monologue and wound up by hiring me. It’s the craziest thing ever happened in all my life.”
Robertson nodded. “Stick around awhile.”
“You don’t seem surprised. Does Chapman always hire his help that way?”
“No, he usually runs ads in the Sunday Tribune. You’ll find out about that later. Where do you live?”
“In a hotel on North Avenue, near Halsted.”
“That’s not so far from where I hang out. I’ve got a hole on Dearborn, near Division. This joint look all right to eat?”
“Fine.”
They entered a cafe and seated themselves in a booth. “I don’t know about you,” Robertson said, “but I always have a drink the first thing after I leave the office.”
“That’s okay by me. I’ll have a Martini.”
When the waiter brought drinks Robertson downed his in two gulps and promptly ordered another. Sargent contented himself with taking a sip of his Martini.
“Are all publishing offices as, uh, hectic as Business Journals?”
Robertson lit a cigarette and studied Sargent cautiously for a moment. “I just remembered I’ve got a date later on. Now, just what can I tell you about the details of making up a magazine?”
“The dummy. I don’t know a thing about pasting it up.”
“Simple. Your copy’s already been set up in type. Pelkey took care of that before he was — before he left. So you just trim the margins from your pink galleys and past up the magazine the way you’d like to have it. First your ads, of course, although there aren’t many on Turkey Talk. Then your reading matter. Use an old copy as a model. First, though, you ought to read the white galleys so that the shop can make any corrections that are necessary.”