 If Tremaine didn't go see Miss Carroll, what would've happened?
In his room at the Elsby Commercial Hotel, Tremaine opened his luggage and took out a small tool kit, used a screwdriver to remove the bottom cover plate from the telephone. Meantime, I'm not sitting in this damned room crouched over a dial. Now I want answers, not questions! Tremaine left the hotel, walked two blocks west along Commerce Street and turned in at a yellow brick building with the words ELSBY MUNICIPAL POLICE cut in the stone lintel above the door. In a back room Tremaine said, "To everybody but you this is just a visit to the old home town. Tremaine covered the discovery of the powerful unidentified interference on the high-security hyperwave band, the discovery that each transmission produced not one but a pattern of "fixes" on the point of origin. It showed a set of concentric circles, overlapped by a similar group of rings. "I think what we're getting is an echo effect from each of these points of intersection. "The point is this, Jess: we think we've got it narrowed down to this section. "Course," said Jess, "there's always Mr. Bram ..." "Mr. Bram," repeated Tremaine. "I've never seen any harm in Bram," said Jess. You remember old Aunt Tress, used to know all about ancestors and such as that? They used to raise cain in the other drug store...."
 He wouldn't know what thing scares Mr. Bram and Miss Carroll wouldn't have given him the item.
 He wouldn't know how crazy Mr. Bram is and he wouldn't know the true culprit of the transmissions.  He wouldn't know what thing scares Mr. Bram and Miss Carroll wouldn't have given him the item.  He wouldn't know about the thing that scares Mr. Bram.  He wouldn't have the item that Miss Carroll gave him and he wouldn't know how mean she thinks Mr. Bram is.