"Okay. I'll give you a job, for one week. See what outer Marsport is like. Find what can be done, if anything, and do it if you can. Then come back and give me six columns on it. I'll pay Mother Corey for your food—and for your wife's—and if I can find one column's worth of news in it, maybe I'll give you a second week. I can't see a man's wife starve because he doesn't know how to make an honest living!"
Rusty and one of Mother Corey's men were on guard, and the others had turned in. Gordon went up the stairs and threw himself onto the bed in disgust.
"Bruce!" Sheila stood outlined in the doorway against the dim glow of a phosphor bulb. Her robe was partly open, and hunger burned in him; then, before he could lift himself, she bent over and began unfastening his boots. "You all right, Bruce? I heard you tossing around."
"I'm fine," he told her mechanically. "Just making plans for tomorrow."
He watched her turn back slowly, then lay quietly, trying not to disturb her again. Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow he'd find some kind of an answer; and it wouldn't be Randolph's charity.
Chapter XV
MURDOCH'S MANTLE
There were three men, each with a white circle painted on chest and left arm, talking to Mother Corey when Bruce Gordon came down the rickety steps. He stopped for a second, but there was no sign of trouble. Then the words of the thin man below reached him.