 What kind of area is Elsby?
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. I'm set up in Elsby. Hyperwave is my baby, remember? And since it seems to be pinpointed in your home area—" "You don't have to justify yourself. 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. He still walks in town every Wednesday ... or he did up till yesterday anyway." They used to raise cain in the other drug store...." Hull are back in the streets playin' with matches by now. I used to think she was some kind of princess...." Miss Linda was maybe in her twenties—and that made her an old maid, in those times. He was a good-looking young feller then, over six foot, of course, broad backed, curly yellow hair—and a stranger to boot. "After dark. II Back in the street, Tremaine headed south toward the Elsby Town Hall, a squat structure of brownish-red brick, crouched under yellow autumn trees at the end of Sheridan Street. Ten yards along the dim corridor, a hand-lettered cardboard sign over a black-varnished door said "MUNICIPAL OFFICE OF RECORD." It was ten minutes before he beckoned Tremaine over to the table where a two-foot-square book lay open. NW Quarter Section 24, Township Elsby. (see Vol. 9 & cet.)" "That's the ledger for 1901; means Bram bought a quarter section on the nineteenth of May. "I never thought of it before, but you know, old Bram must be dern near to ninety years old. "There's one story that's not superstition...."
 Rural and old-fashioned
 Rural and old-fashioned  Urban and busy  Flashy and rich  Run-down and dirty