The Celebrity by Laura Z. Hobson Read Free Book Online

pressure must be ten thousand over nine thousand. He thought of coronary thrombosis, but without emotion.
    The telephone shrilled again.
    “Will you accept a collect call from New York? Mr. Gregory—”
    “Put him on,” he begged.
    “Hello, Mr. Digby,” a voice said patiently. “Your phone’s been busy—I’ve tried it every twenty minutes for more than an hour.”
    “Oh, God.” Mr. Digby’s mind suddenly turned to hot pulp and inside that pulp frantic fingers scrabbled around to find the things he’d been prepared, so many hours ago, to say in congratulation and praise. Gregory Johns began to talk quietly of surprise and pleasure. Then at last Mr. Digby spoke.
    “Rights,” he said clearly.
    “What?”
    “Rights.” Silence fell between them. Luther Digby clutched violently at Sobriety and by the grace of necessity got a momentary hold. “That is, other rights,” he said, enunciating perfectly. “Dramatic rights or foreign rights or movie rights. What’s our deal with you on all of those?”
    There was a pause. “Let me think a minute.” There was a longer pause. “I don’t know. I haven’t any idea.”
    “Oh,” said Mr. Digby forlornly.
    “But my brother’s right here. He handles things like that for me. Just a minute.” The small clatter of a phone being laid down on a table came to Mr. Digby. Faintly the sounds of many voices came with it, laughter, high spirits, even a snatch of song. People could be carefree, he thought, relaxed, joyous. His throat began to ache. He had a passing conviction that Janet, at the switchboard years ago, had started to say something about a brother of Gregory Johns and that he had interrupted, but this he brushed aside as a fragment of nightmare. If Janet had mentioned any brother, he would have asked for his phone number, and perhaps have reached him before this torment had started. By God, if he ever discovered that Janet had willfully withheld—
    Gregory Johns said hello again. “I’m sorry, my brother says he’d have to look up my contract before saying anything and it’s in his office downtown.”
    To Luther Digby the conversation had become insupportable. Dimly he heard an offer to have the brother call him in the morning but he let it pass. With dignity he said, “Assure you, it’s not of great moment,” and offered something by way of good-bye. He had to close his eyes or he would die; he had to abandon everything and rest; a man could stand only so much torture before blacking out.
    He blacked out.
    At twenty-minute intervals for the next two hours Chicago Operator Number 25 clanged him back to consciousness with relentless reports of continuing failure on each of his four calls. At last, Luther Digby, in words he was mercifully never to recall, told her what she could do with Greenwich Village, Morningside Heights, East Orange, and the entire sovereign State of Connecticut.
    For Thornton Johns, the high moment of the evening, second in importance and pleasure only to that earlier one when Abby had read the telegram aloud, came when Gregory laid down the phone and asked about the terms of his contract.
    It was a reminder that he too would play a part in the big doings ahead, an essential part, an exciting part. Later on, Gregory would need a professional literary agent once more, like all authors with large-scale incomes, but tomorrow morning, questions about terms and payments would be handled in his office and nobody else’s. Hadn’t Gregory told Digby that he, Thorn would phone Chicago in the morning?
    Change, a break in the routine, a sense of being somebody—he had longed for them and now, for a while at least, he was to have them all. It would be as stimulating as a vacation; there was nothing humdrum in talk about fifty-two thousand dollars. He looked at his brother with gratitude.
    Even when the time did come for choosing a new agent, Gregory would discuss the matter with him, as he always discussed any business details, and in that