That was the fifteenth of October, and we had promised the book to the public for the first of November, but we had it already in type and the young man, his name was Gilkowsky, promised to work night and day on the illustrations. The next morning, almost as soon as I reached the office, Gilkowsky came in. He seemed a little hesitant, but I welcomed him warmly, and he spoke up. "I have a girl to go with," he said, and I wondered what I had to do with Mr. Gilkowsky's girl, but he continued: "She's a nice girl and a good looker, but she's got bad taste in some things. She's too loud in hats, and too trashy in literature. I don't like to say this about her, but it's true and I'm trying to educate her in good hats and good literature. So I thought it would be a good thing to take around this 'Crimson Cord' and let her read it to me." I nodded. "Did she like it?" I asked. Mr. Gilkowsky looked at me closely. "She did," he said, but not so enthusiastically as I had expected. "It's her favorite book. Now, I don't know what your scheme is, and I suppose you know what you are doing better than I do; but I thought perhaps I had better come around before I got to work on the illustrations and see if perhaps you hadn't given me the wrong manuscript." "No, that was the right manuscript," I said. "Was there anything wrong about it?" Mr. Gilkowsky laughed nervously. "Oh, no!" he said. "But did you read it?" I told him I had not because I had been so rushed with details connected with advertising the book. "Well," he said, "I'll tell you. This girl of mine reads pretty trashy stuff, and she knows about all the cheap novels there are. She dotes on 'The Duchess,' and puts her last dime into Braddon. She knows them all by heart. Have you ever read 'Lady Audley's Secret'?" "I see," I said. "One is a sequel to the other." "No," said Mr. Gilkowsky. "One is the other. Some one has flim-flammed you and sold you a typewritten copy of 'Lady Audley's Secret' as a new novel." V When I told Perkins he merely remarked that he thought every publishing house ought to have some one in it who knew something about books, apart from the advertising end, although that was, of course, the most important. He said we might go ahead and publish "Lady Audley's Secret" under the title of "The Crimson Cord," as such things had been done before, but the best thing to do would be to charge Rosa Belle Vincent's thousand dollars to Profit and Loss and hustle for another novel--something reliable and not shop-worn. Perkins had been studying the literature market a little and he advised me to get something from Indiana this time, so I telegraphed an advertisement to the Indianapolis papers and two days later we had ninety-eight historical novels by Indiana authors from which to choose. Several were of the right length, and we chose one and sent it to Mr. Gilkowsky with a request that he read it to his sweetheart. She had never read it before.