"Have you an assignment?" she asked without a trace of interest in the
answer.
"Not this time. I'm strictly freelance. I like it better this way
because I can write whatever I like."
Her glacial air melted a bit at the inference that my writing had not
been in vain. "Where have you been published?" she asked.
I made a fast stab in the dark, aiming in a direction that looked safe.
"Last article was one on the latest archeological findings in Assyria.
Got my source material direct from the Oriental Institute in Chicago."
"Too bad I missed it," she said, looking regretful. I had to grin, I'd
carefully avoided giving the name of the publication and the supposed
date. She went on, "I suppose you would not be happy with the usual
press release?"
"Handouts contain material, all right, but they're so confounded trite
and impersonal. People prefer to read anecdotes about the people rather
than a listing of facts and figures."
She nodded at that. "Just a moment," she said. Then she addressed her
telephone in a voice that I couldn't hear. When she finished, she smiled
in a warmish-type manner as if to indicate that she'd gone all out in my
behalf and that I'd be a heel to forget it. I nodded back and tried to
match the tooth-paste-ad smile. Then the door opened and a man came in
briskly.
He was a tall man, as straight as a ramrod, with a firm jaw and a
close-clipped moustache. He had an air like a thin-man's Captain Bligh.
When he spoke, his voice was as clipped and precise as his moustache; in
fact it was so precise that it seemed almost mechanical.
"I am Dr. Lyon Sprague," he clipped. "What may I do for you?"
"I'm Steve Cornell," I said. "I'm here after source material for a
magazine article about Mekstrom's Disease. I'd prefer not to take my
material from a handout."
"Do you hope to get more?" he demanded.
"I usually do. I've seen your handouts; I could get as much by taking
last year's medical encyclopedia. Far too dry, too uninteresting, too
impersonal."
"Just exactly what do you have in mind?"
I eyed him with speculation. Here was not a man who would take kindly to
imaginative conjecture. So Dr. Lyon Sprague was not the man I'd like to
talk to. With an inward smile, I said, "I have a rather new idea about
Mekstrom's that I'd like to discuss with the right party."
He looked down at me, although our eyes were on the same level. "I doubt
that any layman could possibly come up with an idea that has not been
most thoroughly discussed here among the research staff."
"In cold words you feel that no untrained lunk has a right to have an
idea."