e along and
see what Fu Manchu has to say for himself. First off though I shall have
to phone in to Fleet Street--I mean to W R."

"Fine. You can ask him at the same time to authorize you to give me the
other thirty."

Gootes lost his British speech instantly. "What other thirty, bum?"

"Why, the balance of the fifty. For an introduction to Mi--to the maker
of the Metamorphizer. To compensate me, you know, for my loss of
revenue."

"Weener, you have all the earmarks of a castiron moocher. Let me tell
you, suh--such methods are unbecoming. They suggest damyankee push and
blackmail. Remember Reconstruction and White Supremacy, suh."

If I were hypersensitive to the silly things people say, I should have
given up selling long before. I pretended not to hear him. We walked
into a drugstore and he dropped a nickel into a payphone, hunching the
receiver between ear and shoulder. "Fifty your last word?" he asked out
of the corner of his mouth.

I nodded.

"Hello? _'Gencer?_ Gootes. Hya, beautiful? Syphilis all cleared up? Now
... now, baby ... well, if youre going to be formal--gimme W R." He
turned to me and leered while he waited.

"... Chief? Gootes. Got the Dinkman story. You know--Freak Growth
Swallows Hollywood Mansion. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But, Chief--this was
what I wanted you for--on the followup; I have the fellow who put the
stuff on the grass. Yeah. Sure I did. Yeah. And the sonofabitch wants to
hold us up for another thirty. Or else he won't sing. Yeah. Yeah. I
know. But I can't, Chief. I havent got a lead. I don't know, Chief, not
much of a one, I guess. Wait a minute."

He turned to me. "Listen, little man: Mr Le ffacase"--he pronounced it
l'fassassy and he pronounced it with awe. I too was properly solemn, for
I hadnt realized before to whom he referred when he talked so lightly of
"W R." I knew--as what newspaper reader didnt--of William Rufus Le
ffacase, "The Last of the Great Editors," but I hadnt connected him with
the _Daily Intelligencer_-- "--Mr Le ffacase will shoot you another
sawbuck and no more. What's the deal?"

Now, the famous editor's reputation was such that you didnt tell him to
go to the devil, even through the medium of an agent; it would have been
like writing your name on the Lincoln Memorial. It was reluctantly
therefore that I shook my head. "I'm sorry, Mr Gootes," I apologized,
"I'd certainly like to oblige--"

He cut me off with a waving hand and turned cheerfully back to t