“Harris!” I thundered. Everybody except the two men in trance swiveled my way, open-mouthed. I walked to the hypnoteleset and snapped it off. They came to, groggily. “Mum-mum-mum-mister Courtenay,” Harris stuttered. “We didn’t expect-” “Obviously. The rest of you, carry on. Harris, let’s go into your office.” Unobtrusively, Kathy followed us. “Harris,” I said, “good work excuses a lot. We’ve been getting damn good work out of you on this project. I’m disturbed, gravely disturbed, by the slovenly atmosphere I see here. But that can be corrected-” His phone rang, and I picked it up. A voice said excitedly: “Ham? He’s here. Make it snappy; he took a limousine.” “Thanks,” I said and hung up. “Your tipster at the airport,” I told Harris. He went white. “Show me your tally sheets,” I said. “Your interview forms. Your punchcard codes. Your masters. Your sigma-progress charts. The works. Everything, in short, that you wouldn’t expect me to ask to see. Get them out.” He stood there a long, long time and finally said: “There aren’t any.” “What have you got to show me?” “Finalizations,” he muttered. “Composites.” “Fakes, you mean? Fiction, like the stuff you’ve been feeding us over the wire?” He nodded. His face was sick. “How could you do it, Harris?” I demanded. “How-could-you -do it?” He poured out a confused torrent of words. He hadn’t meant to. It was his first independent job. Maybe he was just no damn good. He’d tried to keep the lower personnel up to snuff while he was dogging it himself but it couldn’t be done; they sensed it and took liberties and you didn’t dare check them up. His self-pitying note changed; he became weakly belligerent. What difference did it make anyway? It was just preliminary paperwork. One man’s guess was as good as another’s. And anyway the whole project might go down the drain. What if he had been taking it easy; he bet there were plenty of other people who took it easy and everything came out all right anyway.
“No,” I said. “You’re wrong and you ought to know you’re wrong. Advertising’s an art, but it depends on the sciences of sampling, area-testing, and customer research. You’ve knocked the props from under our program. We’ll salvage what we can and start again.” He took a feeble stand: “You’re wasting your time if you do that, Mr. Courtenay. I’ve been working closely with Mr. Runstead for a long time. I know what he thinks, and he’s as big a shot as you are. He thinks this paperwork is just a lot of expensive nonsense.” I knew Matt Runstead better than that. I knew he was sound and so did everybody else. “What,” I asked sharply, “have you got to back that statement up with? Letters? Memos? Taped calls?” “I must have something like that,” he said, and dived into his desk. He flipped through letters and memos, and played snatches of tape for minutes while the look of fear and frustration on his face deepened. At last he said in bewilderment: “I can’t seem to find anything-but I’m sure-” Sure he was sure. The highest form of our art is to convince the customer without letting him know he’s being convinced. This weak sister had been indoctrinated by Runstead with the unrealistic approach and then sent in on my project, to do a good job of bitching it up. “You’re fired, Harris,” I said. “Get out and don’t come back. And I wouldn’t advise you to try for a job in the advertising profession after this.” I went out into the office and announced: “You’re through. All of you. Collect your personal stuff and leave the office. You’ll get your checks by mail.” They gaped. Beside me, Kathy murmured: “Mitch, is that really necessary?” “You’re damned right it’s necessary. Did one of them tip off the home office on what was going on? No; they just relaxed and drifted. I said it was an infection, didn’t I? This is it.” Ham Harris drifted past us toward the door, hurt bewilderment on his face. He had been so sure Runstead would back him up. He had his crammed briefcase in one hand and his raincoat in the other. He didn’t look at me. I went into his vacated office and picked up the direct wire to New York. “Hester? This is Mr. Courtenay. I’ve just fired the entire