"What did you want to talk to me about?" Greco demanded.
"You?" Pudge's glance wandered around the room; it was a look of amused distaste, the look of a grown man observing the smudgy mud play of children. "Oh, not you, Greek. I wanted to talk to Virgie. That sales territory you mentioned, Virgie. I've been thinking. I don't know if you're aware of it, but when my father passed away last winter, he left me—well, with certain responsibilities. And it occurred to me that you might be willing to let me invest some of the—"
I didn't even let him finish. I had him out of there so fast, we didn't even have a chance to say good-by to Greco. And all that stuff about demons and hot-and-cold water and so on, it all went out of my head as though it had never been. Old Pudge Detweiler! How was I to know that his father had left him thirty thousand dollars in one attractive lump of cash!
II
ell, there were business reverses. Due to the reverses, I was forced to miss the next few reunions. But I had a lot of time to think and study, in between times at the farm and the shop where we stamped out license plates for the state.
When I got out, I began looking for El Greco.
I spent six months at it, and I didn't have any luck at all. El Greco had moved his laboratory and left no forwarding address.
But I wanted to find him. I wanted it so badly, I could taste it, because I had begun to have some idea of what he was talking about, and so I kept on looking.