
Erd Neff lives alone inside a steel‑clad vault, a concrete bunker that doubles as his bedroom, bathroom, and office. The only creature he tolerates is a brown rat he’s named John, a creature he teaches to beg for grain and to mimic speech. Their odd companionship is a ritual that fills the endless, windowless days of a recluse who despises the world outside.
Neff dominates the wheat county’s loan market, buying foreclosed farms and turning them into grain elevators and warehouses. His low‑interest, hard‑line contracts keep the local farmers locked into his grip, and his monopoly on storage makes every harvest pass through his hands. Yet his wealth comes with a cold, calculated edge that leaves the townspeople wary and resentful.
When a lone black sedan rolls toward his secluded stronghold, Neff’s carefully constructed isolation is suddenly threatened. He slides the massive door shut, hears the tires grind, and wonders whether this unexpected visit will finally breach the wall he built around himself.
Language
en
Duration
~25 minutes (24K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2010-04-21
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1915–1979
A mid-century science fiction writer with a knack for brisk plotting and human-scale ideas, this California-born author also spent years in advertising and public relations. His stories appeared in magazines such as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and he later gathered some of his work into collections and novels.
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