The Seven Minutes by Irving Wallace

Author:Irving Wallace
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-05-23T01:50:21+00:00

‘Yes. Obscene. Nothing more. A prose aphrodisiac. Nothing else. I have no doubt about that. The author knew it. His mistress, who was his agent, knew it. I knew it. It was a commercial enterprise for all of us, with no redeeming purpose. Today, looking back, I am ashamed of what I helped perpetuate. Today, by this confession of truth, perhaps I can make reparation and cleanse my soul.’

‘We understand and appreciate that, Mr Leroux.’

At the defense table, Zelkin had Barrett’s ear. ‘Our witness is a sanctimonious prick,’ he whispered, ‘and so is our D.A.’

Surprised at his partner’s blunt language, which revealed the depth of his anger, Barrett nodded his agreement, and unhappily turned his attention back to the witness box.

‘Mr Leroux,’ said Duncan, ‘can you now tell us, in your own words, sparing us nothing, how you came to publish The Seven Minutes and of your relationship with the author and his agent?’

‘Yes. I will relate only what I can recollect clearly and what is true.’ Leroux rubbed his veiny nose, squinted up at the ceiling, and then resumed speaking. ‘Late in the year 1934, an attractive young lady appeared in my office in the Rue de Berri and identified herself as Miss Cassie McGraw. She was an American girl of Irish descent. She had come to Paris several years earlier from the American Middle West, to be an artist, and she had lived in the St-Germain-desPres section of the Left Bank ever since. There she had met another American expatriate, and they had become friends. Later she admitted to me they were lovers. This other expatriate, her lover, was J J Jadway. He had rebelled against his father, who was an important Catholic, and against his New England strictness of upbringing, and, leaving his parents and two younger sisters behind, he had fled to Paris. He was determined to live as a bohemian, and to write, and as a writer to liberate not only himself but all of literature. Unfortunately, he was one of those writers so familiar to publishers who talk writing but do not write. Because he was weak and frustrated, he drank and took to drugs -‘

‘Pardon me, Mr Leroux. What you are speaking of now is not hearsay, not knowledge acquired second hand?’

This I heard first hand, directly from the lips of J J Jadway himself, in times when he was in despair, and I heard it again from Miss McGraw herself when I saw her after Jadway’s death.’

‘Mr Leroux, since anything you may have heard from Cassie McGraw, who was Jadway’s mistress as well as his agent, would be regarded as hearsay evidence, and therefore not admissible in this courtroom, let us confine ourselves strictly to what you heard from J J Jadway first hand. How many times did you speak with him?’

‘Four times.’

‘You spoke to Jadway four times ? Were these lengthy conversations ? By that I mean, did the conversations go on for more than -well, let’s say for more than a few minutes?’

‘Always longer.

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