t, we met a man busily
tilling the soil with a tractor plow.

Farrow stopped her car. I leaned out and started to call, but something
stopped me.

"He is no Mekstrom, Steve," said Farrow in a whisper.

"But this is a way station, according to the road sign."

"I know. But it isn't, according to him. He doesn't know any more about
Mekstrom's Disease than you did before you met Catherine."

"Then what the devil is wrong?"

"I don't know. He's perceptive, but not too well trained. Name's William
Carroll. Let me do the talking, I'll drop leading remarks for you to
pick up."

The man came over amiably. "Looking for someone?" he asked cheerfully.

"Why, yes," said Gloria. "We're sort of mildly acquainted with
the--Mannheims who used to live here. Sort of friends of friends of
theirs, just dropped by to say hello, sort of," she went on, covering up
the fact that she'd picked the name of the former occupant out of his
mind.

"The Mannheims moved about two months ago," he said. "Sold the place to
us--we got a bargain. Don't really know, of course, but the story is
that one of them had to move for his health."

"Too bad. Know where they went?"

"No," said Carroll regretfully. "They seem to have a lot of friends.
Always stopping by, but I can't help 'em any."

#So they moved so fast that they couldn't even change their Highway
Sign?# I thought worriedly.

Farrow nodded at me almost imperceptibly. Then she said to Carroll,
"Well, we won't keep you. Too bad the Mannheims moved, without leaving
an address."

"Yeah," he said with obvious semi-interest. He eyed his half-plowed
field and Farrow started her car.

We started off and he turned to go back to his work. "Anything?" I
asked.

"No," she said, but it was a very puzzled voice. "Nothing that I can put
a finger on."

"But what?"

"I don't know much about real estate deals," she said. "I suppose that
one family could move out and another family move in just in this short
a time."

"Usually they don't let farmlands lie fallow," I pointed out. "If
there's anything off color here, it's the fact that they changed their
residence without changing the Highway sign."

"Unless," I suggested brightly, "this is the coincidence. Maybe this
sign is really one that got busted."

Farrow turned her car into the main highway and we went along it. I
could have been right about the spoke actually being broken instead of
removed for its directing purpose. I hoped so. In f