"That's pretty fast. You said you started it this morning."
"Yeah. And when my man phoned me from down there I told him to get black coffee and sober up. But I went down myself—and the job's done. Exactly the job we specified, too. Done by our plans. Furnished, painted, paint dry, curtains hung, the works, new bathrooms and kitchen and plumbing and electricity. The works. It's finished.
"My best man was down there moving the families out yesterday. He swears the building hadn't been touched then. The contractor says he's going to sue, because he arrived with his crews to start the job, and somebody else had done it. You come on. You've got to meet me here and tell me the answers.
"Just what do you put in that soap of yours, anyhow?"
By afternoon it was banners in every paper, wire-serviced across the nation and the world.
Most of the stories were written tongue-in-cheek about the miracle part. It was assumed that Witch Products had done the inside job in advance, and thrown in the outside cleanup during the night.
The tenants were interviewed—Oswald had the sense to move them right back into their new apartments—and not one of them could be made to break down and admit that those buildings hadn't been slums yesterday. Well, you couldn't blame them for sticking by Witch, look what Witch had done for them was the word that went around Bleek's.
Of course the thing was a curiosity natural, and the police had so many men assigned there by nightfall it looked like a concentration camp. TV portables and news photographer's flashbulbs didn't lessen the confusion any, and the crowds were being let in and through only when there was room for more.
Bill Howard was there when Randolph went through, in earnest conversation with a group of youngsters in one room. Oswald arranged that the Witch manufacturer should have a strong police escort, and the crowds moved back to make way for him in each apartment.