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“Yeah?”

“Play it straight when you go out there. You’re a reporter, looking for news; you haven’t made any previous judgments.”

Elshawe’s pipe had gone out. He fired it up again with his desk lighter. “I don’t want to be,” he said between puffs, “too cagey. If he’s got … any brains … he’ll know it’s … a phony act … if I overdo it.” He snapped off the lighter and looked at his employer through a cloud of blue-gray smoke. “I mean, after all, he’s on the records as being a crackpot. I’d be a pretty stupid reporter if I believed everything he said. If I don’t act a little skeptical, he’ll think I’m either a blockhead or a phony or both.”

“Maybe,” Winstein said doubtfully. “Still, some of these crackpots fly off the handle if you doubt their word in the least bit.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” Elshawe said. “He used to live here in New York, didn’t he?”

“Still does,” Winstein said. “He has a two-floor apartment on Central Park West. He just uses that New Mexico ranch of his for relaxation.”

“He’s not hurting for money, is he?” Elshawe asked at random. “Anyway, what I’ll do is look up some of the people he knows and get an idea of what kind of a bird he is. Then, when I get out there, I’ll know more what kind of line to feed him.”

“That sounds good. But whatever you do, play it on the soft side. My confidential informant tells me that the only reason we’re getting this inside info is because Malcom Porter is sore about the way our competition treated him four years ago.”

“Just who is this confidential informant, anyway, Ole?” Elshawe asked curiously.

Winstein grinned widely. “It’s supposed to be very confidential. I don’t want it to get any further than you.”

“Sure not. Since when am I a blabbermouth? Who is it?”

“Malcom Porter.”

* * * * *

Two days later, Terrence Elshawe was sitting in the front seat of a big station wagon, watching the scenery go by and listening to the driver talk as the machine tooled its way out of Silver City, New Mexico, and headed up into the Mogollon Mountains.

“Was a time, not too long back,” the driver was saying, “when a man couldn’t get up into this part of the country ‘thout a pack mule. Still places y’can’t, but the boss had t’ have a road built up to the ranch so’s he could bring in all that heavy equipment. Reckon one of these days the Mogollons ‘ll be so civilized and full a people that a fella might as well live in New York.”

Elshawe, who hadn’t seen another human being for fifteen minutes, felt that the predicted overcrowding was still some time off.

“‘Course,” the driver went on, “I reckon folks have t’ live some place, but I never could see why human bein’s are so all-fired determined to bunch theirselves up so thick together that they can’t hardly move–like a bunch of sheep in a snowstorm. It don’t make sense to me. Does it to you, Mr. Skinner?”

That last was addressed to the other passenger, an elderly man who was sitting in the seat behind Elshawe.

“I guess it’s pretty much a matter of taste, Bill,” Mr. Skinner said in a soft voice.

“I reckon,” Bill said, in a tone that implied that anyone whose tastes were so bad that he wanted to live in the city was an object of pity who probably needed psychiatric treatment. He was silent for a moment, in obvious commiseration with his less fortunate fellows.

Elshawe took the opportunity to try to get a word in. The chunky Westerner had picked him up at the airport, along with Mr. Samuel Skinner, who had come in on the same plane with Elshawe, and, after introducing himself as Bill Rodriguez, he had kept up a steady stream of chatter ever since. Elshawe didn’t feel he should take a chance on passing up the sudden silence.