Mr. Blatchley was delighted. His firm was not among the old-established, and this could rank as his first great success; but it was very great. The book was only three-and-six; people actually bought it; the libraries roared out for more.
Journalists, hot upon dinner-table topics as vultures after flesh, interviewed him, each hoping to be in the office at that crucial moment when he decided the book's sale would gain by an announcement of the much-debated name.
But even when the interest began to wane—for nothing lasts Londoners more than a fortnight—Mr. Blatchley to every one's surprise was adamant. He still persisted in the stupid lie that he had not found out, himself....
"Look here, Alison," he said one day, when Geoffrey Alison had called in at his little office off the Strand, "you're not playing cricket, quite." He was a podgy little alien man, fattened beyond his years, and he said this with all a British sportsman's sternness.
"Oh come, you know; don't say that," exclaimed the other, naturally shocked. (His life average in the game itself would be a decimal.)
"I do, though," said the publisher and offered him a cigar. The artist did not care for that especial form of smoke, but felt that this was not the moment to be firm. He must not lose further prestige. He would leave soon and throw it away.
There was a pause of some seconds, broken only by a crossing of "Thanks" as they got things in order; then Blatchley lay back in his office chair and blew out the first whiff of smoke.
"I certainly do," he said more definitely. "Look at it this way. The Confessions has been out eight weeks and we have sold just over thirty thousand copies. That is pretty good, I know, and I'm extremely grateful to you. But that is the past. Now look at the present. By careful advertising I've induced the public to be really interested in the question as to Zoë's real identity. That's not going to last, my son. Somebody will do a murder or find out a home cure for corpulence. In half a week the chatty columns of the Daily will be full of something else. Every one who wants to has read Zoë and decided who she is. Very well, then. Now," and here he raised a podgy but dramatic finger, "this is the moment when we must say officially, 'The Author-Husband is Dash Blank.' In a moment the whole thing revives; every one is saying, 'I say, it was Dash Blank. I knew you were wrong. But what a show-up! What, not read it? Well, then, do.' The sales will leap up to the fifty thousand and nobody can say where they will stop. Without it, the book's dead." He stopped, dramatically sudden.
These were the only times when Geoffrey Alison shared Helena's ideas about the volume. "I'm very sorry if so," he said wearily, "but it's sold like anything and I expect it will. I still don't see why it's not cricket?" (He spoke more warmly now.) "I always warned you that I couldn't tell you who had written it."
"Bah!" The publisher waved that aside with a smooth fat hand which left a trail of smoke. "That's always so in the beginning, it's part of the game, but now it's in my interest, the book's, your friend's, your own as her adviser—I shall see you're mentioned as discoverer of the diary's great merits—in everybody's interest...."