ying that I deserved the credit for pulling the
Radicals out of the mud and getting the party back on the tracks.
Well, I couldn't have begun to do it without Frank Cardon."

* * * * *

Frank Cardon stood on the sidewalk, looking approvingly into the window
of O'Reilly's Tavern, in which his display crew had already set up the
spread for the current week. On either side was a giant six-foot
replica, in black glass, of the Cardon bottle, in the conventional shape
accepted by an Illiterate public as containing beer, bearing the red
Cardon label with its pictured bottle in a central white disk. Because
of the heroic size of the bottles, the pictured bottle on the label bore
a bottle bearing a label bearing a bottle bearing a bottle on a
label.... He counted eight pictured bottles, down to the tiniest dot of
black. There were four-foot bottles next to the six-foot bottles, and
three-foot bottles next to them, and, in the middle background, a
life-size tri-dimensional picture of an almost nude and incredibly
pulchritudinous young lady smiling in invitation at the passing throng
and extending a foaming bottle of Cardon's in her hand. Aside from the
printed trademark-registry statements on the labels, there was not a
printed word visible in the window.

He pushed through the swinging doors and looked down the long room,
with the chairs still roosting sleepily on the tables, and made a
quick count of the early drinkers, two thirds of them in white smocks
and Sam Browne belts, obviously from Literates' Hall, across the
street. Late drinkers, he corrected himself mentally; they'd be the
night shift, having their drinks before going home.

"Good morning, Mr. Cardon," the bartender greeted him. "Still drinking
your own?"

"Hasn't poisoned me yet," Cardon told him. "Or anybody else." He
folded a C-bill accordion-wise and set it on edge on the bar. "Give
everybody what they want."

"Drink up, gentlemen, and have one on Mr. Cardon," the bartender
announced, then lowered his voice. "O'Reilly wants to see you.
About--" He gave a barely perceptible nod in the direction of the
building across the street.

"Yes; I want to see him, too." Cardon poured from the bottle in front
of him, accepted the thanks of the house, and, when the bartender
brought the fifteen-dollars-odd change from the dozen drinks, he
pushed it back.

He drank slowly, looking around the room, then set down his empty
glass and wen