tead, a question was thrown furiously over
our heads. "Where is he? What bristling and baseless egomania sways him
to affront the _Daily Intelligencer_ with his contumacious and indecent
unpunctuality?"

"Who, chief?" asked Gootes.

Le ffacase ignored him. "When this great newspaper condescends to shed
the light of acceptance, to say nothing of an obese and taxable
paycheck, upon the gross corpus of an illiterate moviecameraman, a false
Daguerre, a spurious Steichen, a dubious Eisenstein, it has a right to
expect a return for the goods showered upon such a deceitful sluggard."

Still ignoring Gootes, he turned to me, and apparently putting the
berated one from his mind, went on with comparative mildness: "Weener,
an unparalleled experience is to fall to your lot. You have not achieved
this opportunity through any excellence of your own, for I must say,
after lengthy contact, no vestige of merit in you is perceptible either
to the nude eye or through an ultramicroscope. Nevertheless, by pure
unhappy chance you are the property of the _Intelligencer_, and as such
this illustrious organ intends to confer upon you the signal honor of
being a Columbus, a Van Diemen, an Amundsen. You, Weener, in your
unworthy person, shall be the first man to set foot upon a virgin land."

This speech being no more comprehensible to me than his excoriation of
an unknown individual, I could only stay silent and try to look
appreciative.

"Yes, Weener, you; some refugee from the busy newsroom of the Zwingle
(Iowa) _Weekly Patriot_," a disdainful handwave referred this
description to Gootes; "some miserable castoff from a fourthrate quickie
studio masquerading as a newscameraman; and a party of sheep--perhaps I
could simplify my whole sentence by saying merely a party of bloody
sheep--will be landed by parachute on top of the grass this very
afternoon."

He smacked his lips. "I can see tomorrow's bannerline now: 'Agent of
Destruction Views Handiwork.' Should you chance to survive, your
ghostwritten impressions--for which we pay too high a price, far too
high a price--will become doubly valuable. Should you come, as I
confidently expect, to a logical conclusion, the _Intelligencer_ will
supply a suitable obituary. Now get the bloody hell out of here and
either let me see you never again, or as a triumphant Balboa who has
sat, if not upon a peak in Darien, at least upon something more
important than your own backside."

_23._ The inside