The parking lot was still crowded with rescue vehicles and demolition trucks. Randolph 
said nothing as they approached but Neil remarked, 'It was pretty bad. I tried to tell 
you on the phone, but I think you'd better be ready for a shock.'
  They drew up outside. The plant manager, Tim Shelby, was there in a crumpled cotton 
suit, looking drawn and tired and sweaty. He came over, opened Randolph's door and shook 
his hand.
  'I'm sorry about the vacation,' he said. Randolph dismissed his condolences with a wave 
of the hand. I'm sorry you lost Bill Douglas.'
  They were joined by the technical manager and the wintering-plant supervisor, and then 
they walked in silence around the side of the Victorian offices until they reached the 
factory itself. Randolph had dramatically expanded the No.2 plant over the past three 
years and the wintering plant was shiny and gleaming and modern, with chilling equipment 
that looked as if it were part of a spaceship.
  At least it had looked like that, before the fire. Now, under a battery of arc lights, 
there was nothing but a cavernous ruin of twisted girders, tangled wires, pipes distorted 
beyond recognition and scorched stainless-steel vats. Neil Sleaman had been right: it was 
far worse than he had been able to describe over the telephone, and Randolph stepped into 
the ruins with a profound sense of shock. As he looked around, he felt as if he were 
standing in the ruins of a bombed-out city. There was a sharp stench of smoke as well as 
that distinctly nutty odour of burned cottonseed oil.
  'The man who was burned?' Randolph asked.
  'He was standing right over there by the refrigeration controls, according to his 
buddies,' Tim Shelby said. 'There was a terrific explosion. The wintering tank burst 
apart and three hundred gallons of purified oil came bursting out and caught fire. He 
didn't stand a chance. They saw him struggling, they said, but he was just like a burning 
scarecrow.'
  'How about the others?'
  They were trapped in the corridor outside. They weren't burned but the door wouldn't 
open because it was buckled, and nobody could get in to save them because the fire was so 
fierce.'
  Randolph bent down and picked up a workman's safety helmet. It was blackened and 
bubbled but he could still make out the name 'Clare' on the front of it. He set it down 
again and said, 'Goddam it.' He rarely profaned but there was no other way to describe 
how he felt now.
  'Have the police been here?' he asked after a while.
  They took a look. Chief Moyne came up in person.'
  'What did he say?'
  Tim Shelby wiped the sweat from his face. 'He commiserated.'
  Randolph nodded. That sounds like Chief Moyne. Did his forensic people find anything?'
  'If they did, they didn't tell us. They took away one or two pieces of piping and part 
of the tank casing, but that's all.'
  'Well, I'll talk to Chief Moyne in the morning,' Randolph said.
  He was just about to leave the ruins when a small group of five or six men appeared and 
stood outside the shattered factory, inspecting it with obvious interest. Randolph 
recognized them at once. Nobody could mistake the bulky, three-hundred-pound figure in 
the flapping white double-breasted suit and the wide-brimmed cotton-plantation hat. It 
was Orbus Greene, president of Brooks Cottonseed and chairman of the Cottonseed 
Association. Orbus had been a mayor of Memphis in the days before urban renewal, and 
plenty of local politicians still privately held the opinion that Memphis would not have 
needed half so much urban renewal had it not been for him and his friends.
  The men who accompanied him were his minders: men who opened doors for him and 
reorganized restaurant tables so he could squeeze into his seat. They had the look of 
dressed-up yokels: gold rings, gold teeth, greasy kids' stuff on their hair.'
  Randolph picked his way out of the ruins. Orbus was standing so that his swollen, 
sallow face was half hidden by the brim of his hat.
  'It pains me to see this, Randolph,' he said. His voice was as high and as clear as a 
young boy's. Somebody had once told Randolph that Orbus could sing soprano solos from 
Verdi's operas capable of bringing tears to your eyes provided you were not required to 
look at him while he sang.
  'Still,' Orbus continued, 'there's always insurance, isn't there? Insurance is better 
than ointment.'
  'I lost three good men here, Orbus,' Randolph retorted. 'Neither insurance nor ointment 
will bring any of them back. Now, if you'll forgive me, I have work to do.'
  Orbus thrust his pig's-trotter hands into his sagging coat pockets and raised his head 
so he was squinting at Randolph from underneath the brim of his hat, one-eyed.
  'You're not the man your daddy was, you know,' he remarked provocatively.
  'I know that,' Randolph replied equably.
  'Your daddy was always an independent kind of man. Free-thinking, free-spirited. But he 
respected the cottonseed business, and he respected the people who make their living at 
it.'
  'I hope this isn't yet another invitation to join the Cottonseed Association,' Randolph 
told him. 'Believe me, I have enough clubs to go to. Useful, interesting clubs, where I 
do useful, interesting things, like playing squash. I have no interest at all in spending 
my evenings in smoke-filled rooms manipulating people and prices.'
  'Well, you sure paint a lurid picture of us,' smiled Orbus. 'Maybe you should remember 
the kidney machines the Cottonseed Association bought last year for the Medical Centre 
and the vacations we gave to those crippled kids.'
  'I'm sure you didn't forget to enter those charitable donations on your tax returns,' 
Randolph said. 'Now, please, I just came back from Canada and I'm very pushed for time.'
  'You just wait up one minute,' said Orbus. 'What you've been doing these past three 
years, playing the market, selling what you choose to whom you choose at whatever price 
you choose, well, that was understandable to begin with. Your daddy had been letting 
Clare Cottonseed stagnate, hadn't he? For quite a long spell. Me and my fellow members of 
the Association, we were prepared to some extent to let you re-energize your business, 
reinvest, build it up again to what it was. That's why - even though we expressed our 
disapproval - we didn't lean on you too hard. If Clare flourished, we thought it would be 
good for all of us.'
  Orbus licked his lips and then, as slowly and menacingly as a waking lizard, opened his 
other eye.
  'Point is now,' he said, 'that you've gone way beyond re-energizing, way beyond 
rebuilding. Point is now that you're undercutting the rest of us on major contracts and 
that you've built up the processing capacity to handle them, the last straw that broke 
the camel's back being Sun-Taste.'
  Neil Sleaman broke in. 'You listen here, Mr Greene. Clare Cottonseed has every legal 
right to sell cottonseed oil to whomever it likes and at whatever price it likes. So 
kindly butt out. Mr Clare has urgent business to attend to.'
  Randolph raised his hand. 'Hold on a moment, Neil. Don't let Orbus get under your skin. 
I want to hear what he's got to say.'
  Orbus smiled fatly. His minders smiled too, in vacant imitation of their boss's 
smugness. Orbus said, 'You're going to be pushed to the limit to meet your contractual