"Sorry," Groff said. "I didn't mean you. I just thought of something I
forgot to do."
Which was a lie. He forced himself to set up the chair again, sat
down and reread the headline, pulses hammering at his temples. BORO
MAY GRANT SWANSCOMB MILL TO CHESBRO AT NOMINAL RENT; MOVE HAILED AS
EMPLOYMENT BOOM; OLD PLANT TO BE USED AS WAREHOUSE.
The former Swanscomb Mill was the building he had his eye on as the
shell for his projected new factory. It was ideal. It was empty
and unwanted by anybody since Swanscomb had moved south; it was
a low-maintenance brick shell with plenty of adjoining room for
expansion; it was solidly built and able to support his machine tools;
it had its own siding and a loading deck for trucks. And somebody
else, by incredible coincidence, was after it too. The pounding pulses
subsided and he steadied himself to read the story. It was one column
down the right and it was strangely uninformative. It led off: "Civic
leaders today hailed the announcement that Arthur Chesbro hopes to
secure the old Swanscomb Mill from the Borough as a warehouse for the
storage of materials and supplies." It didn't say who the civic leaders
were. It went on to recapitulate the familiar history of the plant. It
concluded by quoting Arthur Chesbro as hoping that at least a dozen
local citizens would be employed as warehousemen in the plant.
* * * * *
A car's headlights outside turned the streaming store window into a
sheet of refracted yellow glare. A woman bustled in and peered about
uncertainly in the gloom. The storekeeper yes-ma'amed her and she
apologized for coming so late, the rain was so terrible she could
barely _crawl_, and could she have three cans of catfood?
The storekeeper gave her the cans, and when he closed the door behind
her--rain drove in during the brief moment and drenched a square yard
of floor--turned to Groff and said: "What did I tell you?"
"Who's this Arthur Chesbro?" Groff demanded. "The one in the paper."
"Chesbro? A big wheel over in the next county. Justice of the Peace.
Owns business buildings; couple of radio stations; the newspaper, I
don't know the name. I just get copies of the _Weekly Times_; they send
them so I can check my ads. Every week I take one. You look on page
seven, tell me what you think of it."
Groff yanked the paper open, looked at the grocer's little ad on page
seven and said: "You're Sam Zehedi? Syrian?"