"Did you try them out before you bought them, Jeff?"
For the first few days, Manning thought sourly. And then, like the one horse shay, it probably fell apart all at once.
"Wrap one up. And give me a copy of the newspaper."
He took the paper to the reading room of the public library at Randolph and Michigan and thumbed through it. Wheeler had missed a lot, he thought. There were Forsythe Carburetors, good for a hundred miles to the gallon of water; Forsythe pens, good for a lifetime; Forsythe lipsticks that would last for years; Forsythe hairbrushes with bristles that never broke.
All everyday items, all with impossible claims, and all attractively cheap.
Forsythe wasn't doing things in a small way, Manning thought slowly. But where did he get the goods? And who made them? And if Forsythe was a front, who for?
Clark Street in the late evening was a canyon of yellow street lights intermingled with the flicker of red neon. Manning stood in the shadow of a store front, watching the building across the street. The lights were out in all the windows; the building was dead.
He walked around the block and came up the alley in back. A cat leaped silently off a window ledge and Manning smiled to himself. No watch dogs. The rear door was locked but not barred and a thin sliver of strong steel inserted between the frame and the door sprung the lock with a small click. He closed it quietly behind him, listening for any sounds in the building. There were none.
He picked the lock on the Forsythe office and eased himself in. The crates and the packages were in the back room, a small filing cabinet by the window. He opened the cabinet and rifled through the two top drawers. There was nothing but mail orders from all over the country addressed to the Forsythe Company. A small but steady volume of business over a period of about six months.
The bottom drawer was something else again. Invoices between the Forsythe Company and the Timely Trading Corporation of Oswego City, New America. Shipments and receipted bills. Manning looked at them blankly.
There wasn't any Oswego City, New America.
And Forsythe didn't pay off in money. He paid off in refrigerators.
It didn't make sense, Manning thought, unless it was some kind of cover-up.
