Phil spun around guiltily and found himself facing a very old man as
tall and frail as a ghost, and apparently as silent as one, since Phil
hadn't heard him coming up the walk. His thin, wrinkle-netted face,
crowned by close cropped white hair, was hauntingly familiar. It had
something of the grandeur of a pre-Christian ascetic, yet there was
a note of Puckish humor in it, as if its owner had arrived at a wise
second childhood. Although Phil's heart was pounding at the alarmingly
accurate question, he found himself liking the man at first sight.
As he hesitated, the old man went on, "My interest, by the way, is
purely academic--or else childish curiosity, which comes to the same
thing." His eyes flashed impishly. "Is it by any chance a green cat?"
he asked Phil rapidly. "No, you don't have to answer that question, at
least not any more than you have already. I don't want to distress you.
It's just that I have a mind that automatically makes the far-fetched
deductions first."
He beamed at Phil, who, though flustered, found himself grinning.
"Perhaps you're a journalist," the oldster went on smoothly, "or at
least we can pretend you are. Dr. Garnett always calls in the press
when the Humberford Foundation makes a discovery, though I'm sorry
to say the press stopped coming about twenty years ago. They'd quit
thinking of para-psychology as newsworthy. But perhaps there's been
time to breed a new race of journalists with a revived interest in
esping and all the teles. In any case Garnett and the whole staff will
be overjoyed at the presence of a pressman."
"You mean the Humberford Foundation investigates extrasensory
perception and things like that?" Phil asked.
"You should know, since you've been sent here to get a story," the old
man said reprovingly. "Still, reporters often haven't the foggiest idea
what they've been sent out to report, so you're excused."
Phil found himself grinning again. He hadn't any notion of how the old
man knew about Lucky or where he stood in the general picture, except
that he felt strangely certain that the old man didn't have anything
to do with the organizations out to get Lucky. And the oldster's
mischievous pretense that Phil was a reporter might at least get him
past the imposing door and let him spy around.
"So the Humberford Foundation has made a new discovery in
para-psychology?" he said conversationally.
The other nodded. "Dr. Garnett was most excited. So much so that he
didn't have time to tell me what it was all about, except that they'd
started to get some amazing results--and just this morning. So I
hurried over. Good esp is apt to go poof, so it's best to get it when
it's hot. I have a standing order with Garnett to call me over the
moment anything starts to flash. For that matter, I have the same
orders with practically every scientific laboratory in the area--though
the others don't always call me. But--thank Thoth!--Garnett isn't in
a field that's under the benign aegis of security and he isn't at all
security minded himself. In fact, I'm not certain he's ever heard of
the FBL. So you may get a real scoop, Mr...?"
"Gish. Phil Gish."
The oldster's thin hand pressed his with a feathery touch. "Morton
Opperly."