Free Reprise by Joan Smith Page B

doing.”
    “Listen to this, Allan,” Hettie said, tittering in pleasure. “This must be Cybele--’His current mistress was noted for the metallic luster of her tresses, and the metallic hardness of her heart!’ How horrid! What does she say of you? Who are you in this story?”
    “‘Guelph.’ The name won’t be hard to find.”
    She scrabbled around through the sheets till she found it. "'He dabbled in the arts, but his real vocation was lechery.’ That is coming it a bit strong. Are you sure ‘Guelph’ is you?”
    “Of course he’s me! And there’s worse than that. I’d like to ring her neck, but strangling is too good for her. She should be whipped at the cart’s tail.”
    Hettie meanwhile had settled against the pillows and was reading merrily, quoting a phrase at him from time to time. “Dammit, Hettie, get out of bed. Come with me and prevent me from killing her.”
    “Why don’t you run along and talk to Murray, Allan? Pick me up later. You can’t go storming down her door at eight-thirty in the morning. My God, it’s only eight-thirty! I didn’t go to bed till three hours ago.”
    “I should murder him while I’m about it. Not to give me a warning of this, he with my sonnets ready to be distributed: Love sonnets to that creature! What a jackass I’ll look! Publicly declaring my undying devotion while she bastes me and serves me up done to a turn, with an apple stuck between my jaws. I’ve got to stop him. Yes, you’re right. I’ll see Murray and slap an injunction on him to stop circulation. Glad you thought of it.”
    Hettie hadn’t even heard him. She was reading and chuckling, trying to sort the pages into order for a proper perusal. Dammler made only one stop before going to Murray. When he entered the office, he was accompanied by the sharpest lawyer in town, but was too incensed to allow this expensive minion to speak for him.
    “Ah, Dammler,” Murray said, rising to greet him.
    “I am here on business,” Dammler said abruptly. “I have an injunction stopping distribution of my sonnets. I want to serve notice, Mr. Murray, that henceforth you are not my publisher.”
    Murray, who had been worried for some days, was in no doubt as to what had happened. He had given Dammler the book in a seemingly casual way, hoping to divert his suspicions by this ruse, but clearly it had not worked. “What seems to be..."
    “Cut line, Murray. You know what this is all about. I want every one of those copies of my sonnets delivered to my home on Berkeley Square. If I hear of so much as one in circulation, you’ll regret it.”
    “We have a contract!”
    “We had a contract. If you’re wise you’ll tear it up, as I have done mine. Go ahead with circulation and you’ll have a suit for a hundred thousand pounds damages for that scurrilous piece of trash of Miss’ Mallow’s you had the ill judgment to publish.”
    “If I hadn’t, someone else would have, Dammler. It’s done anonymously. No reason to think anyone will suspect..."
    "The whole town will know it’s me! You knew it. The book is out, and I won’t have my sonnets on the same shelves as that tripe. Do you understand?”
    “It might be possible to get the copies of Miss Mallow’s book back..."
    “Let her have her little joke, but I won’t add to it by having the sonnets out for a comparison of our styles.”
    Murray was not simple enough to think the styles had anything to do with it, and tried once more to talk him around. “Those poems are the best thing you’ve done, Dammler. The finest poetry I’ve seen in several years. Surely you’re not going to suppress them entirely.”
    “Come to the bonfire,” Dammler said, and stomped from the office, while his lawyer wordlessly laid the injunction on Murray’s desk, tipped his hat, and trotted out at his master’s heels. He wondered why he had been brought along. It was still only nine-thirty, an unseemly hour to call on a lady, but not too early, Dammler felt, to rouse