He looked down at the top of his desk; he had picked up a paper clip and was nervously toying with it.

“I’ve got a nasty feeling that I haven’t been told the whole truth about this problem I’ve been asked to solve,” I said. “What is this legal question involving Sigueiras, anyway?”

“Well, it’s damnably complicated, actually. But I’ll try to boil it down for you.” Angers sat back, avoiding my eyes as Caldwell had done, but for a different reason. “When the city was incorporated, all of us foreign-born citizens, and those native-born citizens who’d qualified in particular ways by contributing to the creation of the city, were given what we call a citizens’ rights endowment. That’s to say, guarantees of options on particular official positions, at fixed levels of salary, or leases on undeveloped land, or something of the kind, and their duration was to be fifty years or the lifetime of the recipient, whichever was shorter. They can’t be inherited, you see — although citizenship as such descends to the progeny and all that.

“The problem with Sigueiras, of course, is that he managed to fiddle the undisputed use of that land under the monorail central as part of his citizens’ rights endowment, and it’s legally unassailable. The only loophole lies in the proviso that the city council retains powers of development, and it can dispossess any leaseholder on payment of compensation. Well, what we’ve got to try to do is dispossess Sigueiras — using this city development clause.”

Caldwell had been listening in mounting excitement to Angers; now he burst out as though unable to control himself any longer.

“We’ve got to get him out. Everybody s-says we must! The health problems are gh-ghastly; the education department is t-terribly worried; it’s affecting the tourists — it’s sh-shocking, Mr. Hakluyt!”

I got up. “Look,” I said, “for the last time. You hired me to do a job, and I’m going to do it if it can be done. I don’t have to be told that this slum development is a blot on the face of Ciudad de Vados — I can see. Suppose you try to be patient — and better still, let me get on with the work.”

I was leaving the traffic department building when I had my first sight of el Presidente in person — from a distance, but unmistakable. Well, how could one mistake him when he drove down the street and into the Plaza del Norte behind a flying wedge of black-uniformed motorcyclists with police sifens howling?

He sat in the back of an open convertible, one arm resting along the side. Next to him was a dark and very beautiful girl — his second wife, presumably. His first, so I had vaguely heard, was a girl he had married in his twenties and who had died soon after the foundation of Ciudad de Vados. He looked older than he had in the photograph at the airport, even behind the dark glasses that hid his eyes.

There was no doubt that he was still popular. People on the sidewalks and in the middle of the square stopped talking to turn and wave at the passing cavalcade, and a bunch of children ran yelling behind his car. El Presidente acknowledged the acclaim with no more than a languid lift of his hand, but his wife smiled and blew kisses at the children.

The car pulled up outside the City Hall, and Vados went inside — to attend to his mayoral duties, presumably. As soon as he had disappeared from sight, his wife leaned forward and said something to the driver; still attended by the motorcycles, the car purred off in the direction of the main shopping streets.

I strolled away, deep in thought, when the interruption was over. Angers, plainly, hadn’t much liked my parting remarks; it was certain that if he got to hear about my actions for the next few days, he wasn’t going to approve of that, either. I intended to spend the immediate future on foot, looking at the places I was supposed to clear up, with a camera slung around my neck, a white Panama hat on my head, and the biggest dark glasses I could find on my nose.

And, in direct contradiction to Angers’ request, I proposed to concentrate first on what I considered the major problem: the street market and the attendant slum area. Sigueiras’s set of pigsties were not in fact essentially a traffic problem; if there were as many people who wanted to get rid of them as Caldwell had claimed, they could be cleared away on the basis of something little stronger than a pretext. But to get rid of the market was going to call for some rather subtle and organic planning.

I’d arrived on Tuesday; today was Friday. The market area deserved at least three days’ close study, and the fact that I would have the end and beginning of the working week in the period meant that I would see it in both its busiest and slackest moments, which was ideal.

The slackest period of all, of course, was Sunday — there was no market at all, and I concentrated on the outward and return flow of cars bearing people out of town for the day.

But with that interruption, I stayed in and around the market area until Monday evening; three or four times a day I worked my way through the market and its surrounding streets, noting the volume of traffic on foot and on wheels at different times of day, estimating how many people had to pass this way, anyway, how many came here only because the market was here, and how many might come this way if it weren’t for the market and the resulting low character of the neighborhood.

There were valuable pointers to public opinion, too, to be followed up — sources of irritation and resentment against the market that could be gently magnified until it became possible to decree it out of existence without opposition.

It was fascinating. But then I’m one of those lucky people to whom it is given to enjoy his regular job. There are so many aspects of human existence reflected in the way people move through their streets. I’d had to allow for the snarls in traffic flow caused by the muezzins in Moslem cities calling the devout to prayer, and the consequent five-times-daily interruption of everything, much to the annoyance of the nonreligious citizens. I’d had to work out a design for an embankment along the Ganges where it was certain that at least a million people would suddenly turn up once a year, but which had to cope with them and with its ordinary traffic without wasting unduly much space on the million-strong crowd which would remain idle the rest of the year. I’d helped develop the signal system in Galveston, Texas, designed to get every fire appliance within twenty miles nonstop to any outbreak without interfering with traffic on any route not used by the engines. Those were large-scale tasks, and they had their own interest. But this — by comparison — half-pint puzzle was equally intriguing.

By Monday afternoon I was coming to a tentative conclusion.

I was wandering along the sidewalk, pausing to turn over things displayed for sale and rechecking my guess about how many people came this way just to do their shopping when the offices and businesses nearby closed for the night, when a hoarse voice called out to me. “Ay, señor!”

I glanced around. The only people in the direction from which the yell had come were two shabby old men deep in thought over a chessboard resting on an empty packing case — I saw that the white king was lost or broken and had been replaced by the neck of a bottle, broken off short and stood on its jagged end — and a fat man in a white suit that was soaked with sweat under the arms. He sat on a rickety chair tilted back against the wall. A hat shaded his plump face; one pudgy hand clutched a bottle of some sickly-colored soft drink with a straw in it; the other held a ropy cigar.

I looked inquiring; he beckoned; I went over to him. As I came up, he said something in rapid Spanish, and I had to ask for a repeat.