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were Cardinal Spellman and myself. Now that Cardinal Spellman has died, I'm a loner. It's only a question of time until I'll be overruled because the property becomes more valuable everyday.

Will they tear the building down?

Oh, a lot of people in the Church and a lot of people at Random House have long suggested that we sell out. We'd get an enormous profit. That building, which cost us just over a half million dollars with all the improvements, is probably today worth about two and a half million dollars. We'd make about two million dollars on the building. That's more than we made in publishing in twenty years! They'll put up a big skyscraper there. The idea of a courtyard on Fifty-first Street and Madison Avenue...!

Would you like to discuss Cardinal Spellman at all? You must have had many dealings with him.

We had lots of very pleasant dealings with the Cardinal. We would have two lunches a year together. I usually would take him out once, and I would go over and have lunch with him once a year. This was not a regular rule, but this was about it. We were good neighbors, and I liked him although he was a very reactionary man. He was a very decent man if you could get over his reactionary ideas,