rshadowed
Quinn.

But in spite of all the publicity, not one word, not one hint about the
method by which Stanley Martin intended to bring the Nipe in was
released. There were all kinds of speculations, ranging from the
mystically sublime to the broadly comical. One self-styled archbishop of
a California nut cult declared that Martin was a saint appointed by God
to exorcise the Demon Nipe that had been plaguing Mankind and that the
Millennium was therefore due at any moment. He was, he said, sending
Stanley Martin a sealed letter which contained a special exorcism prayer
that would do the job very nicely. Why hadn't he used it himself?
Because if anyone other than a saint or an angel used it, it would
backfire on the user and destroy him. Naturally the archbishop did not
claim himself to be a saint, but he knew that Martin was because he had
plainly seen the halo around the detective's head when he saw him on TV.

An inventor in Palermo, Sicily, solemnly declared that he had sent
Stanley Martin the plans for a device that would render him invisible to
the Nipe and therefore make the Nipe easy to conquer. No, there was no
danger that the device might fall into the wrong hands and be used by
human criminals, since it did not render a person invisible to human
eyes, only to Nipe eyes.

The first item was played up big in the newscasts. The second was
quashed--fast!--for the very simple reason that the Nipe just might have
believed it.

One note throbbed in the background of every interview with responsible
persons. It was the unobtrusive note of a soft clarinet played in a
great symphony, all the more telling because it was never played loudly
or insistently, but it was there all the same. Whenever the question of
the Nipe's actual whereabouts came up, the note seemed to ring a trifle
more clearly, but never more loudly. That single throbbing note was the
impression given by everyone who was interviewed, or who expressed any
views on the subject, that the Nipe was hiding somewhere in the
Amazonian jungles of South America. It was the last place on Earth that
had still not been thoroughly explored, and it seemed to be the only
place that the Nipe could hide.

Only a small handful of the vast array of people who were dispensing
this carefully tailored propaganda knew what was going on. More than
ninety-nine percent of the newsmen involved in the affair thought they
were honestly giving the news as they saw it, and none