"Hello? _'Gencer?_ Gootes. Hya, beautiful? Syphilis all cleared up? Now
... now, baby ... well, if youre going to be formal--gimme W R." He
turned to me and leered while he waited.
"... Chief? Gootes. Got the Dinkman story. You know--Freak Growth
Swallows Hollywood Mansion. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But, Chief--this was
what I wanted you for--on the followup; I have the fellow who put the
stuff on the grass. Yeah. Sure I did. Yeah. And the sonofabitch wants to
hold us up for another thirty. Or else he won't sing. Yeah. Yeah. I
know. But I can't, Chief. I havent got a lead. I don't know, Chief, not
much of a one, I guess. Wait a minute."
He turned to me. "Listen, little man: Mr Le ffaçasé"--he pronounced it
l'fassassy and he pronounced it with awe. I too was properly solemn, for
I hadnt realized before to whom he referred when he talked so lightly of
"W R." I knew--as what newspaper reader didnt--of William Rufus Le
ffaçasé, "The Last of the Great Editors," but I hadnt connected him with
the _Daily Intelligencer_-- "--Mr Le ffaçasé will shoot you another
sawbuck and no more. What's the deal?"
Now, the famous editor's reputation was such that you didnt tell him to
go to the devil, even through the medium of an agent; it would have been
like writing your name on the Lincoln Memorial. It was reluctantly
therefore that I shook my head. "I'm sorry, Mr Gootes," I apologized,
"I'd certainly like to oblige--"
He cut me off with a waving hand and turned cheerfully back to the
telephone. "No soap, Chief. O K. O K. All right--put the rewrite man
on." And for the next ten minutes he went over the events at the
Dinkmans', carefully spelling out all names including the napoleonic
firechief's. I began to suspect Gootes wasnt so inefficient a reporter
as he appeared.
The story given in, he hung up and turned to me. "Well, so long, little
man--been nice knowing you."
"But--what about meeting the discoverer of the Metamorphizer?"
"Oh, that. Well, W R thinks we don't need him anymore. Not enough in
that angle."
I suspected he was bluffing; still it was possible he wasnt. In such a
delicate situation there was nothing I could do but bluff in turn. If
you are a good salesman, I always say, you must have psychology at your
fingertips. "Very well, Mr Gootes; perhaps I shall see you again
sometime."
I was immediately confronted by a Frenchman, affable, volatile,
affectionate. "Ah cher ami, do not leave me with the abruptness. You
desolate mon coeur. Alors--return to me the twenty dollars."
"But, Mr Gootes--"
"None of it, bud." He whisked the cards out and showed them to me, the
ace of spades ghoulishly visible, its ominousness tempered only by the
word "Bicycle" printed across it. "Don't hold out on your Uncle Jacson
or I might have the boys take you for a little trip. A block of concrete
tastefully inscribed 'A Weener' ought to make an amusing base for a
birdbath, say."
"Listen, Gootes." I was firm. "I'm reasonably certain youve been
authorized to advance me the other thirty, but I hope we're both
sensible people and I'll be glad to sign a receipt for the full amount
if youll let me have twentyfive."
"Albert, youre a fine fellow--a prince." On a page from his notebook he
wrote, _Of Jacson Gootes, $50 U.S._ and I signed it. He handed me
another twentydollarbill and put his wallet away. "Charge the other five
to agent's fees," he suggested. "Lead us to your Steinmetz."
You just can't expect everyone to have the same standards of probity, so
philosophically I pocketed my loss and gains together. Life is full of
ups and downs and take the bad with the good. Gootes was in high spirits
after his piece of chicanery and as we went down the street he
practiced, quite unsuccessfully, a series of ventriloquial exercises.
_10._ The appearance of the apartmenthouse drew the comment from him
that it was a good thing for their collective bloodpressures the Chamber
of Commerce and the All Year Club didnt know such things existed in the
heart of Hollywood. "It's no better than I live in myself," he added.
He whistled at the dismal livingroom and raised his eyebrows at the
kitchen. Before I could mutter an introduction, Miss Francis growled
without turning around, "If youve come about the icebox--"
"Zounds!" exclaimed Gootes. "A female Linnaeus. Shades of Dorothy Dix!"
"I don't know who you are, young man, but youre extremely impudent to
come tramping into my kitchen, adding nothing to the sum of knowledge
but a confirmation of my sex which would be plain to any mammal. If
youve--"
"Nein, Fräulein Doktor," said Gootes hastily, "about z' kelvinators I
know nossing. I represent, Fräulein Doktor, z' _Daily Intelligencer_
zeitung--"
Miss Francis pierced his turgid explanation with a sharp spate of words
in what I took to be German. Gootes answered with difficult slowness,
but he fumbled and halted before long and abandoning the Central
European, became again the Southern Gentleman. "I quite understand, mam,
how any delicately reared gentlewoman would resent having her privacy
intruded upon by rude agents of the yellow press. But consider, mam: we
live in a progressive age and having made a great contribution to
Science you can hardly escape the fame rightfully yours. You are a
public figure now and must stand in the light. Would it not be
preferable, mam, to talk as lady to gentleman (I am related to the
Taliaferros of Ruffin County on the distaff side) than to be badgered by
some hack journalist?"
Miss Francis squatted ungracefully on her heels and looked up from the
flowerpot she had been engaged with. "I havent any objection to
publicity, hack or otherwise," she said mildly. "I am merely impressed
again by the invulnerability of newspapers to thousands of important
discoveries and inventions, newsworthy 'contributions to Science' as you
call them in your bland ignorance of semantics, in contrast to their
acute, almost painful sensitivity to any mischance."
Gootes, unjointing disproportioned length carelessly against the sink to
the peril of several jars of specimens, didnt reply. Instead he
fluttered his arms and produced a halfdollar, apparently from Miss
Francis' hair, which after exhibiting he prudently pocketed.
"Tell me, Dr Francis--"
"Miss. Show me how you did that trick."
"In a minute, Miss Francis. It's a honey, isnt it? Paid fourbits to a
funhouse in Utica, New York, for it. Tell me, how did you come to make
your great discovery?"
"I was born. I went to school. I read books. I reached maturity. I
looked through a microscope."
"Yes?" prodded Gootes.
"That's all."
"Lassie," urged Gootes, underlining the honey of his voice with a
tantalizing glimpse of a rapidfire snatching of three colored
handkerchiefs out of the air, "tis no sensible course ye follow. Think,
gurrl, what the press can do to a recalcitrant lass like yoursel. Ye
wouldna like it if tomorrow's paper branded you--and I quote--'an
unsexed harpy, a traitor to mankind, a heartless, soulless--'"
"Oh, shut up. What do you want to know?"
"First," said Gootes briskly, "what is this stuff?"
"The Metamorphizer?"
He nodded.
"You want the chemical formula?"
"Wouldnt do me or my readers the least bit of good and you wouldnt give
it to me if I asked. Why should you? No, enlighten me in English."
"It is a compound on the order of colchicine, acting through the
somaplasm of the plant. It is apparently effective only on the family
Gramineae, producing a constitutional metabolic change. I have no means
of knowing as yet whether this change is transmissible through seed to
offspring--"
"Hay, wait a minute. 'Producing a constitutional metabolic change.' How
do you spell metabolic--never mind, the proofreaders'll catch it. What
constitutional change?"
"Are you a botanist, young man?" Gootes shook his head. "An
agrostologist? Even an agronomist? Then you can't have the slightest
idea what I'm talking about."
"Maybe not," retorted Gootes, "but one of my readers might. Just give me
a rough idea."
"Plants absorb certain minerals in suspension. That is, they absorb some
and reject others. The Metamorphizer seems to give them the ability to
break down even the most stable compound, select what they need, and
also fix the inert nitrogen of the air to nourish themselves."
"'Themselves,'" repeated Gootes, writing rapidly. "O K. If I get
you--which is doubtful--so far it sounds just like a good new
fertilizer."
"Really? I tried to make myself clear."
"Now don't get sore, Professor. Just give out on what made the grass go
wild."
"I can only hazard a guess. As I told Weener, if you create a capacity,
you engender an appetite. I imagine that patch of _Cynodon dactylon_
just couldnt stop absorbing once it had been inoculated."
"Aha. Like giving a man a taste for bourbon."
"If it pleases you to put it that way."
"O K. O K. Now let's have an idea how this growth can be stopped.
Theoretical, you know."
"As far as I know," said Miss Francis, "it cannot be stopped."