The storekeeper—as most people did—sensed his mood. "Like to look at the paper?" he asked, and handed him an eight-page sheet. It was the latest—yesterday's—issue of the Hebertown Weekly Times. Groff had studied the last four issues preceding it, as well as those of a dozen other country papers, trying to get the feel of the communities they served. On one of those communities he would soon have to stake his play for the jump from forty employees to a hundred.
He held the paper up to the lamplight and read the main headline, covering the three right columns. The chair crashed behind him as he snapped to his feet. "God damn it to hell!" he said.
The storekeeper backed away, scared. "What's the matter, mister?"
"Sorry," Groff said. "I didn't mean you. I just thought of something I forgot to do."
Which was a lie. He forced himself to set up the chair again, sat down and reread the headline, pulses hammering at his temples. BORO MAY GRANT SWANSCOMB MILL TO CHESBRO AT NOMINAL RENT; MOVE HAILED AS EMPLOYMENT BOOM; OLD PLANT TO BE USED AS WAREHOUSE.
The former Swanscomb Mill was the building he had his eye on as the shell for his projected new factory. It was ideal. It was empty and unwanted by anybody since Swanscomb had moved south; it was a low-maintenance brick shell with plenty of adjoining room for expansion; it was solidly built and able to support his machine tools; it had its own siding and a loading deck for trucks. And somebody else, by incredible coincidence, was after it too. The pounding pulses subsided and he steadied himself to read the story. It was one column down the right and it was strangely uninformative. It led off: "Civic leaders today hailed the announcement that Arthur Chesbro hopes to secure the old Swanscomb Mill from the Borough as a warehouse for the storage of materials and supplies." It didn't say who the civic leaders were. It went on to recapitulate the familiar history of the plant. It concluded by quoting Arthur Chesbro as hoping that at least a dozen local citizens would be employed as warehousemen in the plant.
A car's headlights outside turned the streaming store window into a sheet of refracted yellow glare. A woman bustled in and peered about uncertainly in the gloom. The storekeeper yes-ma'amed her and she apologized for coming so late, the rain was so terrible she could barely crawl, and could she have three cans of catfood?
The storekeeper gave her the cans, and when he closed the door behind her—rain drove in during the brief moment and drenched a square yard of floor—turned to Groff and said: "What did I tell you?"
"Who's this Arthur Chesbro?" Groff demanded. "The one in the paper."