right
back into their new apartments--and not one of them could be made to
break down and admit that those buildings hadn't been slums yesterday.
Well, you couldn't blame them for sticking by Witch, look what Witch
had done for them was the word that went around Bleek's.

Of course the thing was a curiosity natural, and the police had so
many men assigned there by nightfall it looked like a concentration
camp. TV portables and news photographer's flashbulbs didn't lessen
the confusion any, and the crowds were being let in and through only
when there was room for more.

Bill Howard was there when Randolph went through, in earnest
conversation with a group of youngsters in one room. Oswald arranged
that the Witch manufacturer should have a strong police escort, and
the crowds moved back to make way for him in each apartment.

The tenants answered his questions, but they did so with a sullenness
that surprised Randolph. Yes, it had been a mess the day before. Yes,
it had been rebuilt, obviously, during the night, while they were
gone. Yes, just the one night.

"They should be saying thank you," Randolph noted to Oswald. "They're
acting as though I were a suspicious character."

"It's our escort," Oswald explained suavely. "These people don't think
of cops as their friends. Besides, this is pretty new to them."

Randolph chewed his lip, and decided that Oswald was probably right.
But the attitude was general, and it irritated him. He left after the
briefest go-through.

* * * * *

That night Bill Howard was conservative in recounting the big
news-story of the "slum clearance." He wasn't giving it the real
Howard try, Randolph thought, sitting in front of his TV. There was a
quote in the story he told, too, from the father of the Jones family
that had been on the program the night before. "I reckon it's pretty
wonderful, Mr. Howard," Jones had told him. "But I don't rightly know
that I like it. Must admit I'm scared of this stuff," he had said, and
he waved his hand at the newness.

It was just a single sour note in the story, but it stuck out. The
rest was a description, without any mention of the "miracle" part.

At the break, the witches played the credit line to the hilt, though.

"Witches of the world unite to make it clean, clean, clean, Witch
clean--NOW!" they chanted their cry, and reenacted the scene of the
night before, while the announcer's voice rode over the muted jing