“Did she like it?” I asked.
Mr. Gilkowsky looked at me closely.
“She did,” he said, but not so enthusiastically as I had expected. “It's
her favorite book. Now I don't know what your scheme is, and I suppose
you know what you are doing better than I do; but I thought perhaps I
had better come around before I got to work on the illustrations and see
if, perhaps, you hadn't given me the wrong manuscript.”
“No, that was the right manuscript,” I said. “Was there anything wrong
about it?”
Mr. Gilkowsky laughed nervously.
“Oh, no!” he said. “But did you read it?”
I told him I had not, because I had been so rushed with details
connected with advertising the book.
“Well,” he said, “I'll tell you. This girl of mine reads pretty trashy
stuff, and she knows about all the cheap novels there are. She dotes on
'The Duchess,' and puts her last dime into Braddon. She knows them all
by heart. Have you ever read 'Lady Audley's Secret'?”
“I see,” I said. “One is a sequel to the other.”
“No,” said Mr. Gilkowsky, “one is the other. Some one has flimflammed
you and sold you a typewritten copy of 'Lady Audley's Secret' as a new
novel.”
V
When I told Perkins, he merely remarked that he thought every publishing
house ought to have some one in it who knew something about books,
apart from the advertising end, although that was, of course, the most
important. He said we might go ahead and publish “Lady Audley's Secret”
under the title of “The Crimson Cord,” as such things had been done
before; but the best thing to do would be to charge Rosa Belle
Vincent's thousand dollars to profit and loss, and hustle for another
novel--something reliable, and not shop-worn.
Perkins had been studying the literature market a little, and he
advised me to get something from Indiana this time; so I telegraphed
an advertisement to the Indianapolis papers, and two days later we had
ninety-eight historical novels by Indiana authors from which to choose.
Several were of the right length; and we chose one, and sent it to Mr.
Gilkowsky, with a request that he read it to his sweetheart. She had
never read it before.
We sent a detective to Dillville, Ind., where the author lived; and the
report we received was most satisfactory.
The author was a sober, industrious young man, just out of the high
school, and bore a first-class reputation for honesty. He had never
been in Virginia, where the scene of his story was laid, and they had
no library in Dillville; and our detective assured us that the young man
was in every way fitted to write a historical novel.
“The Crimson Cord” made an immense success. You can guess how it boomed
when I say that, although it was published at a dollar and a half, it
was sold by every department store for fifty-four cents, away below
cost, just like sugar, or Vandeventer's Baby Food, or Q & Z Corsets,
or any other staple. We sold our first edition of five million copies
inside of three months, and got out another edition of two million, and
a specially illustrated holiday edition, and an “edition de luxe;” and
“The Crimson Cord” is still selling in paper-covered cheap edition.
With the royalties received from the after-math and the profit on the
book itself, we made--well, Perkins has a country place at Lakewood, and
I have my cottage at Newport.