the runners crawled forward speculatively,
the green fronds began overlapping like clasping fingers, then with
accelerating speed came together much as a pack of cards in the hands of
a deft shuffler slides edge under edge to make a compact and indivisible
whole. The line of division disappeared, the two became one, and where
before there had been left a narrow path for men to tread, now only a
serene line of vegetation outlined itself against the unblinking sky.

_22._ I have said Mr Le ffacase had softened his brutality toward me,
but his favor did not extend--so pervasive is literary jealousy--to
printing my own reports. He continued to subject me to the indignity of
being "ghosted," a thoroughly expressive term, which by a combination of
bad conjugation and the suggestion of insubstantiality defines the sort
of prose produced, by Jacson Gootes. This arrangement, instead of giving
me some freedom, shackled me to the reporter, who dashed from celebrity
to celebrity, grass to nuclei, office to point of momentary interest,
with unflagging energy and infuriating jocosity. I knew his repertory of
tricks and accents down to the last yawn.

Most of all I resented his irregular habits. He never arrived at the
_Intelligencer_ office on time or quit after a proper day's work. He
thought nothing of getting me out of bed before I'd had my eight hours'
sleep to accompany him on some ridiculous errand. "Bertie, old dormouse,
the grass is knocking at the doors of NBC."

"All right," I answered, annoyed. "It started down Vine Street
yesterday. It would be more surprising if it obligingly paused before
the studios."

"Cynic," he said, pulling the bedclothes away from my face. I consider
this the lowest form of horseplay I know of. "How quickly your ideals
have been tarnished by contact with the vulgar world of newspaperdom.
Front and center, Bertie lad, we must catch the grass making its own
soundeffects before they jerk out the microphones."

Protests having no effect I reluctantly went with him, but the scene was
merely a repetition of hundreds of previous ones, the grass being no
more or less spectacular for NBC than for Watanabe's Nursery and Cut
Flower Shop a halfmile away. Its aftereffects, however, were immediate.
The governor declared martial law in Los Angeles County and ordered the
evacuation of an area five miles wide on the perimeter of the grass.

Furious cries of anguish went up from those affected by the arbitra