"I've heard the name, is all."
Kintyre drew the long breath of an experienced lecturer.
"Owens was a best seller in the late 1930's," he said. "Since the last official war, though, his sales have slipped. A couple of years back, he recouped with a thing called Magnificent Monster: The Life and Times of Cesare Borgia. Its scholarship is superficial—to put it kindly—but he has a flamboyant style and he dished up the sex and sadism with a liberal hand. All the old libels on Lucrezia are there, and so on. But it was a sensational seller even in hardback; the presses had trouble meeting the demand for pocket editions; and now Hollywood wants to film it as one of their more expensive superepics."
"So?" Clayton looked bored. "Good for him, but what has all this to do with Bruce?"
"Give me time. Prior to writing the book, Owens spent some months in Italy, allegedly doing research. He came back with certain letters he claims to have tracked down in the archives of a noble family—letters to and from Cesare, linking him with a cult of Satanists and all sorts of picturesque orgies and abominations.
"The correspondence stirred up a bit of professional controversy. If forged, it's skillfully done, and the noble family in question has been well bribed and well rehearsed. I suspect that is the case, myself. However, Owens has not unnaturally used the chance, not just to brag himself up as a scholarly detective, as if he'd found another cache of Boswell papers—he makes it pivotal to his whole book."
"Ah, yes. And now my Book of Witches manuscript—"
"Disproves it. The Book of Witches is unquestionably genuine, and certain statements in it pretty well clinch matters. La vecchia religione had been rooted out of the Romagna, even out of Liguria, long before Cesare Borgia was as much as a gleam in his daddy's apostolic eye. Therefore Owens' letters must be spurious. Either Owens had them cooked, or Owens was taken for a sucker himself.
"When he established this, some time back, Bruce wrote to the man. That was Bruce, of course. Give the poor chap a chance to back out gracefully, before publishing the evidence that will smear him over the landscape. Owens replied politely enough, asking for personal discussions. And so he arrived Sunday a week ago, en route to Hollywood from New York, and here he's been ever since."
"I shouldn't think he could keep the producer waiting like that," said Clayton.