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he knew. So he came to me. We had gotten along very nicely. I had always laughed at his stories. They were hilariously funny.

Later he brought in some detective stories...wild detective stories. One was called Hugger Mugger in the Louvre, which was quite successful.

Paul was an unprincipled man, I must say. He once had a contract that he had to fulfill with Liveright while I was there. He and Liveright had a terrible fight and he said he wouldn't give him the book and Liveright got equally stubborn and said that he couldn't publish anywhere. So Elliot Paul went home and wrote a novel in a week and turned it in to Liveright to fulfill his contract. It was terrible. And Liveright, for spite, published it. That was the kind of man that Liveright was. He knew that nobody would buy it. He said, “I'll ruin his reputation. He brings in this piece of trash. We're going to publish it.” So everybody thought that it was hilariously funny that he published it. Nobody bought it. He didn't do much to push it. It was terrible.

I want to come to the story of Helen Thompson.

I have one more thing on my mind about Elliot Paul. Did you ever have any disagreements with him at all?

Well, I do have one more story to tell you about Elliot Paul. He decided that he was going to write his autobiography, in twenty-four volumes. Of course we laughed this off, but he