nto a high, appreciative cackle. Le ffacase turned the
deathray of his left eye on him. "Youre a syncophant, Gootes," he stated
flatly, "a miserable groveling lowlivered cringing fawning mealymouthed
chickenhearted toadeating arselicking, slobbering syncophant."

I couldnt see how we were ever to reach the point this way, so I
ventured, "I understand in view of the fact that I inoculated Mrs
Dinkman's lawn you want me to contribute--"

"Desires grow smaller as intelligence expands," growled Le ffacase. "I
want nothing except to find a few undisturbed moments in which to read
the work of the immortal Hobbes."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I understood you wished me to report the progress
of the wildly growing grass."

"Cityeditor's province," he declared uninterestedly.

"No such thing on the _Intelligencer_," Gootes informed me in a loud
whisper. Le ffacase, who evidently heard him, glared, reached down and
retrieved the telephone from its concealment under the desk and snarled
into the mouthpiece, "I hate to interrupt your crapgame with the trivial
concerns of this organ men called a newspaper till you got on the
payroll. I'm sending you a man who knows something about the crazy
grass. Divorce yourself from whatever pornography youre gloating over at
the moment to see if we can use him."

His immediate obliviousness to our presence was so insulting that if
Gootes had not made the first move to leave I should have done so
myself. I don't know what vast speculations swept upon him as he hung up
the telephone, but I thought he might at least have had the courtesy to
nod a dismissal.

"Youre hired, bejesus," proclaimed Gootes, and of course I was, for
there was no doubt a brilliantly successful figure like Le
ffacase--whatever my opinion of his intemperate language or failure in
the niceties of deportment, he was a forceful man--had sized me up in a
flash and sensed my ability before I'd written a single line for his
paper.

_14._ The wage offered by the _Daily Intelligencer_--even assuming, as
they undoubtedly did, that the affair of the grass would be over shortly
and my service ended--was high enough to warrant my buying a secondhand
car. A previous unpleasantness with a financecompany made the
transaction difficult, with as little cash as I had on hand, but a
phonecall to the paper established my bonafides and I was soon driving
out Sunset Boulevard in a tomatocolored roadster, meditating on the
longdelayed upsurg