Juggernaut
By Alice Campbell
A plaster bust of Voltaire on the mantelpiece was flanked by Louis Philippe candlesticks, the whole reflected in a gilt-framed mirror extending to the ceiling. Across the middle of the room stretched a reproduction Louis Quinze table with ormolu mounts, and on it were stacked regular piles of magazines, French and English. Everything was in meticulous order. The parquet shone with a glassy finish.
From the corner, a tall clock ticked loudly, deliberately. The house was very still. Suddenly, Esther felt uncomfortable and oppressed. Yet why? There was no reason to dread the coming interview. Indeed, she could think of no plausible explanation for the absurd panic which overtook her in a flash. Why, for a single instant, she had half a mind to bolt out of the house before the doctor appeared. What utter nonsense! How ashamed she would have been!
To steady herself, she picked up the folded copy of the morning paper facing her and, opening it, re-read the advertisement that had brought her here. It was plain and to the point: “Dr. Gregory Sartorius of 86, Route de Grasse, wishes to find a well-educated young Englishwoman, trained nurse preferred, to assist him in his work. Good references are essential. Applicants may call between two and four.”
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Alice Campbell
Biography.
In 1927, Alice Dorothy Ormond Campbell—a thirty-nine-year-old native of Atlanta, Georgia, who for the last fifteen years had lived successively in New York, Paris, and London, never once returning to the so-called Empire City of the South—published her first novel, an unstoppable crime thriller called Juggernaut, selling the serialization rights to the Chicago Tribune for $4000 ($60,000 today), a tremendous sum for a brand new author.
On its publication in January 1928, the book and its author caught the keen eye of Bessie S. Stafford, society page editor of the Atlanta Constitution, a genteel southern lady who seemingly, like the Bourbons of France, had forgotten nothing. Back when Alice Ormond, as she was then known, lived in Atlanta, Miss Bessie breathlessly informed her readers she had been “an ethereal blonde-like type of beauty, prevalent, and always thought she was in love with somebody. She took high honours in school, and her gentleness of manner and breeding bespoke an aristocratic lineage. She grew to a charming womanhood—”
Alice Campbell
