as
one of the _Times_ staff, now. "We got a lot of tips from him, but
nothing we give him gets out." He got his pipe lit again. "What about
that wax, Joe?" he asked. "Were you serious when you made that motion
about a price of seventy-five centisols?"

"I sure was!" Joe declared. "That's the real price, and always has
been, and that's what we get or Kapstaad doesn't get any more wax."

"If Murell can top it, maybe Kapstaad won't get any more wax, period,"
I said. "Who's he with--Interstellar Import-Export?"

Anybody would have thought a barbwire worm had crawled onto Joe
Kivelson's chair seat under him.

"Where'd you hear that?" he demanded, which is the Galaxy's silliest
question to ask any newsman. "Tom, if you've been talking--"

"He hasn't," I said. "He didn't need to. It sticks out a parsec in all
directions." I mentioned some of the things I'd noticed while
interviewing Murell, and his behavior after leaving the ship. "Even
before I'd talked to him, I wondered why Tom was so anxious to get
aboard with me. He didn't know we'd arranged to put Murell up here; he
was going to take him to see that wax, and then take him to the
_Javelin_. You were going to produce him at the meeting and have him
bid against Belsher, only that tread-snail fouled your lines for you.
So then you thought you had to stall off a new contract till he got
out of the hospital."

The two Kivelsons and Oscar Fujisawa were looking at one another; Joe
and Tom in consternation, and Oscar in derision of both of them. I was
feeling pretty good. Brother, I thought, Sherlock Holmes never did
better, himself.

That, all of a sudden, reminded me of Dr. John Watson, whom Bish
perceived to have been in Afghanistan. That was one thing Sherlock H.
Boyd hadn't deduced any answers for. Well, give me a little more time.
And more data.

"You got it all figured out, haven't you?" Joe was asking
sarcastically. The sarcasm was as hollow as an empty oil drum.

"The _Times_," Dad was saying, trying not to sound too proud, "has a
very sharp reportorial staff, Joe."

"It isn't Interstellar," Oscar told me, grinning. "It's Argentine
Exotic Organics. You know, everybody thought Joe, here, was getting
pretty high-toned, sending his daughter to school on Terra. School
wasn't the only thing she went for. We got a letter from her, the last
time the Cape Canaveral was in, saying that she'd contacted Argentine
Organics and that a man was coming out on the _Peenemue