"Good morning, Mr. Clark," she said. "What's that you're setting—an anti-Hoover handbill?"
"Hello, Al. How are you this fine altitudinous day?"
"Super. Or should it be supra? I want you to meet Don Cort. Don, Mr. Clark."
The men shook hands and Clark looked curiously at Don's handcuff.
"It's my theory he's an embezzler," Alis said, "and he's made this his getaway town."
"As a matter of fact," Don said, "the Riggs National Bank will be worried if I don't get in touch with them soon. I guess you'd know, Mr. Clark—is there any communication at all out of town?" By prearrangement, a message from Don to Riggs would be forwarded to Military Intelligence.
"I don't know of any, except for the Civek method—a bottle tossed over the edge. The telegraph and telephone lines are cut, of course. There is a radio station in town, WCAV, operated from the campus, but it's been silent ever since the great severance. At least nothing local has come over my old Atwater Kent."
"Isn't anybody doing anything?" Don asked.
"Sure," Clark said. "I'm getting out my paper—there was even an extra this morning—and doing job printing. The job is for a jeweler in Ladenburg. I don't know how I'll deliver it, but no one's told me to stop so I'm doing it. I guess everybody's carrying on pretty much as before."
"That's what I mean. Business as usual. But how about the people who do business out of town? What's Western Union doing, for instance? And the trucking companies? And the factories? You have two factories, I understand, and pretty soon there's going to be a mighty big surplus of kitchen sinks and chewing gum."