Gogarty shrugged. "Well, she reacted to it. 'Thomas Wills,' I said. She'd been acting pretty stand-offish, but she warmed up quick. Maybe she just likes the name, but right then is when she told me she liked Americans." I cleared my throat. "Mr. Gogarty," I said determinedly, "please get me straight on something. You say this girl's father is in some kind of trouble, and you imply she knows me. I want to know if you've ever had any kind of report, or even heard any kind of rumor, that would make you think that I was in the least sympathetic to any anti-Company groups? I'm aware that there were stories--" He stopped me. "I never heard any, Tom," he said definitely. I hesitated. It seemed like a good time to open up to Gogarty; I opened my mouth to start, but I was too late. Susan called him off for what she claimed was an urgent phone call and, feeling let-down, I watched him waddle away. Because it was, after all, time that I took down my back hair with my boss. * * * * * Well, I hadn't done anything too terribly bad--anyway, I hadn't _meant_ to do anything bad. And the circumstances sort of explained it, in a way. And it was all in the past, and-- And nothing. I faced the facts. I had spent three solid weeks getting blind drunk, ranting and raving and staggering up to every passer-by who would listen and whining to him that the Company was evil, the Company was murderous, the Company had killed my wife. There was no denying it. And I had capped it all off one bleary midnight, with a brick through the window of the Company branch office that served my home. It was only a drunken piece of idiocy, I kept telling myself. But it was a drunken piece of idiocy that landed me in jail, that had been permanently indorsed on every one of my policies, that was in the confidential pages of my Company service record. It was a piece of idiocy that anyone might have done. But it would have meant deep trouble for me, if it hadn't been for the intercession of my wife's remote relative, Chief Underwriter Defoe. It was he who had bailed me out. He had never told me how he had found out that I was in jail. He appeared, read the riot-act to me and got me out. He put me over the coals later, yes, but he'd bailed me out. He'd told me I was acting like a child--and convinced me of it, which was harder. And when he was convinced I had snapped out of it, he personally backed me for an appointment to the Company's school as a cadet Claims Adjuster. I owed a considerable debt of gratitude to my ex-remote-in-law, Chief Underwriter Defoe. * * * * *