"String it all together. Collect all the information, get it down in black and white -- hell, build one of your scanners and run it through so you can view it, the way you do."
"It's impossible," he said. "We have no point of reference. Nothing to judge by."
"Simple contradictions," Vic disagreed. "This magazine with an article about a world-famous movie star we haven't heard of; that's a contradiction. We ought to comb the magazine, read every word and line. See how many other contradictions there are, with what we know outside the magazine."
"And the phone book," he said. The yellow section, the business listings. And perhaps, at the Ruins, there was other material.
The point of reference. The Ruins.
five
Bill Black parked his '57 Ford in the reserved slot in the employees' lot of the MUDO -- Municipal Utility District Office -- building. He meandered up the path to the door and inside the building, past the receptionist's desk, to his office.
First he opened the window, and then he removed his coat and hung it up in the closet. Cool morning air billowed into the office. He inhaled deeply, stretched his arms a couple of times, and then he dropped himself into his swivel chair and wheeled it around to face his desk. In the wire basket lay two notes. The first turned out to be a gag, a recipe clipped from some household column describing a way to fix a casserole of chicken and peanut butter. He tossed the recipe into the wastebasket and lifted out the second note; with a flourish he unfolded it and read it.
_Man at the house tried to call Bridgeland, Sherman, Devonshire, Walnut, and Kent field numbers._
I can't believe it, Black thought to himself. He stuck the note in his pocket, got up from his desk and went to the closet for his coat, closed the window, left his office and walked down the corridor and past the receptionist's desk, outside onto the path, and then across the parking lot to his car. A moment later he had backed out onto the street and was driving downtown.
Well, you can't have everything in life perfect, he said to himself as he drove through the morning traffic. I wonder what it means. I wonder how it could have happened.
Some stranger could have stepped in off the street and asked to use the phone. Oh? What a laugh that was.
I give up, he said to himself. It's just one of those deadly things that defies analysis. Nothing to do but wait and see what took place. Who made the call, why, and how.
What a mess, he said to himself.
Across the street from the back entrance of the _Gazette_ building he parked and got out of his car, stuck a dime in the parking meter, and then entered the _Gazette_ offices by the back stairs.
"Is Mr. Lowery around?" he asked the girl at the counter. "I don't think he is, sir," the girl said. She moved toward the switchboard. "If you want to wait, I'll call around and see if they can locate him."
"Thanks," he said. "Tell him it's Bill Black."
The girl tried various offices and then said to him, "I'm sorry, Mr. Black. They say he hasn't come in yet, but he ought to be in soon. Do you want to wait?"
"Okay," he said, feeling glum. He threw himself down on a bench, lit a cigarette, and sat with his hands folded.
After fifteen minutes he heard voices along the hall. A door opened and the tall, lean, baggy-tweed figure of Stuart Lowery put in its appearance. "Oh, hello Mr. Black," he said in his reasonable fashion.
"Guess what was waiting for me in my office," Bill Black said. He handed Lowery the note. Lowery read it carefully.
"I'm surprised," Lowery said.
"Just a freak accident," Black said. "One chance in a billion. Somebody printed up a list of good restaurants and stuck it in his hat, and then he got into one of the supply trucks and rode on in, and while he was unloading stuff from the truck the list fell out of his hat." A notion struck him. "Unloading cabbages, for instance. And when Vic Nielson started to carry the cabbages into the storage locker, he saw the list and said to himself, Just what I need; a list of good restaurants. So he picked it up, carried it home, and pasted it on the wall by the phone."
Lowery smiled uncertainly.
"I wonder if anyone wrote down the numbers he called," Black said. "That might be important."
"Seems to me that one of us will have to go over to the house," Lowery said. "I wasn't planning to go again until the end of the week. You could go this evening."
"Do you suppose we could have been infiltrated by some traitor?"
"Successful approach," Lowery said.
"Yes," he said.
"Let's see if we can find out."
"I'll drop over tonight," Black said. "After dinner. I'll take over something to show Ragle and Vic. By then I can whip up some sort of thing." He started to leave and then he said, "How'd he do on his entries for yesterday?"
"Seemed to be all right."
"He's getting distraught again. The signs are all there. More empty beer cans on the back porch, a whole bagful of them. How can he guzzle beer and work at the same time? I've watched him at it for three years, and I don't understand it."
Dead-pan, Lowery said, "I'll bet that's the secret. It's not in Ragle; it's in the beer."
Nodding good-bye, Black left the _Gazette_ building.
On the drive back to the MUDO building, one thought kept returning to him. There was just that one possibility that he could not face. Everything else could be handled. Arrangements could be made. But--
Suppose Ragle was becoming sane again?
That evening, after he left the MUDO building, he stopped by a drugstore and searched for something to buy. At last his attention touched on a rack of ball-point pens. He tore several of the pens loose and started out of the store with them.
"Hey, mister!" the clerk said, with indignation.
"I'm sorry," Black said. "I forgot." That certainly was true; it had slipped his mind, for a moment, that he had to go through the motions. From his wallet he took some bills, accepted change, and then hurried out to his car.
It was his scheme to show up at the house with the pens, telling Vic and Ragle that they had been mailed to the waterworks as free samples but that city employees weren't allowed to accept them. You fellows want them? He practiced to himself as he drove home.
The best method was always the simple method.
Parking in the driveway he hopped up the steps to the porch and inside. Curled up on the couch, Junie was sewing a button on a blouse; she ceased working at once and looked up furtively, with such a flutter of guilt that he knew she had been out strolling with Ragle, holding hands and exchanging vows.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi," Junie said. "How'd it go at work today?"
"About the same."
"Guess what happened today."
"What happened today?"
Junie said, "I was down at the launderette picking up your clothes and I ran into Bernice Wilks, and we got to talking about school -- she and I went to Cortez High together -- and we drove downtown in her car and had lunch, and then we took in a show. And I just got back. So dinner is four frozen beef pies." She eyed him apprehensively.
"I love beef pies," he said.
She got up from the couch. In her long quilted skirt and sandals and wide-collared blouse with the medal-sized buttons she looked quite charming. Her hair had been put up artfully, a coil tied at the back in a classical knot. "You're real sterling," she said, with relief. "I thought you'd be mad and start yelling."
"How's Ragle?" he said.
"I didn't see Ragle today."
"Well," he said reasonably, "how was he last time you saw him?"