But as she spoke, for just a moment her thick woolly mind shield thinned
out enough for me to catch a strange, puzzled grasp for understanding.
As if for the first time she had been shown how admiration for physical
attractiveness could be both honest and good. That my repugnant attitude
over her Pittsburgh stogies was not so much based upon the spoiling of
beauty by the addition of ugliness, but the fact that the act itself
cheapened her in my eyes.
Then she caught me peeking and clamped down a mind screen that made the
old so-called "Iron Curtain" resemble a rusty sieve.
"I'm the one that's supposed to keep track of you, you remember," she
said, once more covering up and leaping mentally to the attack.
"I'll remember," I said. "But will you tell me something?"
"Maybe," she said in a veiled attitude.
"Is your boy friend really interested in cleaning up, or is he
interested in watching me squirm out of a trap he set for me?"
"In the first place," she said, "I may have been seen in Barcelona's
presence but please remember that my association with Mr. Joseph
Barcelona has always been strictly on a financial plane. This eliminates
the inference contained under the phrase 'Boy Friend.' Check?"
"O.K., Tomboy, if that's the--"
"That's not only the way I want it," she said, "but that's the way it
always has been and always will be. Second, I have been getting tired of
this nickname 'Tomboy'. If we're going to be racked this close together,
you'll grate on my nerves less if you use my right name. It's just plain
'Nora' but I'd like to hear it once in a while."
I nodded soberly. I held out a hand but she put her empty highball glass
in it instead of her own little paw. I shrugged and mixed and when I
returned and handed it to her I said, "I'll make you a deal. I'll call
you 'Nora' just so long as you maintain the manners and attitude of a
female, feminine, lady-type woman. I'll treat you like a woman, but
you've got to earn it. Is that a deal?"
She looked at me, her expression shy and as defenseless as a
bruiser-type caught reading sentimental poetry. I perceived that I had
again touched a sensitive spot by demanding that she be more than
physically spectacular. Her defenses went down and I saw that she really
did not know the answer to my question. I did. It had to do with
something that only the achievement of a God-like state--or extreme old
age--would change.
This time it was not so much the answer to why little boys walk high
fences in front of little girls. It had much more to do with the result
of what happens between little boys when the little girl hides her
baseball bat and straightens the seams of her stockings when one certain
little boy comes into sight. Joseph Barcelona did not admire my ability.
He had, therefore, caused me to back myself into a corner where I'd be
taken down a peg, shown-up as a second-rater--with the little girl as a
witness.
And why had Barcelona been so brash as to send the little girl into my
company in order for her to witness my downfall?
Let me tell you about Joe Barcelona.
* * * * *
Normally honest citizens often complain that Barcelona is living high
off'n the hawg instead of slugging it out in residence at Stateville,
Joliet, Illinois.
With their straight-line approach to simple logic, these citizens argue
that the advent of telepathy should have rendered the falsehood
impossible, and that perception should enable anybody with half a talent
to uncover hidden evidence. Then since Mr. Joseph Barcelona is
obviously not languishing in jail, it is patent that the police are not
making full use of their talented extrasensory operators, nor the
evidence thus collected.
And then after having argued thus, our upstanding citizen will fire off
a fast thought to his wife and ask her to invite the neighbors over that
evening for a game of bridge.
None of these simple-type of logicians seem to be aware of the rules for
bridge or poker that were in force prior to extrasensory training
courses. Since no one recognized psionics, the rules did not take
telepathy, perception, manipulation, into any consideration whatsoever.
Psionics hadn't done away with anything including the old shell game.
All psionics had done was to make the game of chance into a game of
skill, and made the game of skill into a game of talent that required
better control and longer training in order to gain full proficiency.
In Barcelona's case, he had achieved his own apparent immunity by
surrounding himself with a number of hirelings who drew a handsome
salary for sitting around thinking noisy thoughts. Noisy thoughts,
jarring thoughts, stunts like the concentration-interrupter of playing
the first twenty notes of Brahms' Lullaby in perfect pitch and timing
and then playing the twenty-first note in staccato and a half-tone flat.
Making mental contact with Barcelona was approximately the analogue of
eavesdropping upon the intimate cooing of a lover sweet-talking his lady
in the middle of a sawmill working on an order three days late under a
high priority and a penalty clause for delayed delivery.
People who wonder how Barcelona can think for himself with all of that
terrific mental racket going on do not know that Barcelona is one of
those very rare birds who can really concentrate to the whole exclusion
of any distraction short of a vigorous threat to his physical
well-being.
And so his trick of sending Nora Taylor served a threefold purpose. It
indicated his contempt for me. It removed Nora from his zone of
interference so that she could really witness firsthand my mental
squirmings as I watched my own comeuppance bearing down on me. It also
gave him double the telepathic contact with me and my counter-plans--if
any.
In the latter, you see, Barcelona's way of collecting outside
information was to order a temporary cease-fire of the mental noise
barrage and then he'd sally forth like a one-man mental commando raid to
make a fast grab for what he wanted. Since the best of telepaths cannot
read a man's opinion of prunes when he's thinking of peanuts, it is
necessary for someone to be thinking of the subject he wants when he
makes his raid. Having two in the know and interested doubled his chance
for success.
There was also the possibility that Barcelona might consider his
deliberate "Leak" to Gimpy Gordon ineffective. Most sensible folks are
disinclined to treat Gimpy's delusions of grandeur seriously despite the
truth of the cliché that states that a one-to-one correspondence does
indeed exist between the perception of smoke and the existence of
pyrotic activity. Nora Taylor would add some certification to the rumor.
One thing simply had to be: There must be no mistake about placing
information in Lieutenant Delancey's hands so as to create the other jaw
of the pincers that I was going to be forced to close upon myself.
* * * * *
I tried a gentle poke in the general direction of Barcelona and found
that the mental noise was too much to stand. I withdrew just a bit and
closed down the opening until the racket was no more than a mental
rumor, and I waited. I hunched that Barcelona would be curious to know
how his contact-girl was making out, and might be holding a cease-fire
early in this phase of the operation. I was right.
The noise diminished with the suddenness of turning off a mental switch,
and as it stopped I went in and practically popped Barcelona on the
noodle with:
"How-de-do, Joseph."
He recoiled at the unexpected thrust, but came back with: "Wally Wilson!
Got a minute?"
I looked at the calendar, counted off the days to Derby Day in my mind
and told him that I had that long--at the very least and probably much,
much longer.
"Thinks you!"
"Methinks," I replied.
"Wally boy," he returned, "you aren't playing this very smart."
"Suppose you tell me how you'd be playing it," I bounced back at him.
"Tell you how I have erred?"
He went vague on me. "If I were of a suspicious nature, I would begin to
wonder about certain connective events. For instance, let's hypothecate.
Let's say that a certain prominent bookmaker had been suspected of
planning to put a fix on a certain important horse race, but of course
nothing could be proved. Now from another source we suddenly discover
strong evidence to suggest that this bookmaker is not accepting wagers
on the horses he is backing, but conversely is busy laying wagers on the
same nags through the help of a rather inept go-between."
I grunted aloud which caused Nora Taylor to look up in surprise. I was
tempted to say it aloud but I did not. I thought:
"In simple terms, Joseph, you are miffed because I will not cover your
bets."
"I thought nothing of the sort."
"Let's hedge? I love you too, Joseph."
"Well, are you or aren't you?"
"Are I what? Going to top the frosting by financing your little scheme
to put the pinch on me?"
"Now, Wally--"
"Can it, Joseph. We're both big boys now and we both know what the score
is. You know and I know that the first time I or one of my boys takes a
bet on any one of the three turtles you like, the guy who laid the bet
is going to slip the word to one of your outside men. And you're going
to leap to the strange conclusion that if Wally Wilson is accepting bets
against his own fix, he must know something exceedingly interesting."
[Illustration]
"Now, who's been saying anything about a fix, Wally?"
"The people," I thought bluntly, "who have most recently been associated
with your clever kind of operator."
"That isn't very nice, Wally."
If it had been a telephone conversation, I'd have slammed the telephone
on him. The mealymouthed louse and his hypocritical gab was making me
mad--and I knew that he was making me mad simply to make me lose control
of my blanket. I couldn't stop it, so I let my anger out by thinking:
"You think you are clever because you're slipping through sly little
loopholes, Joseph. I'm going to show you how neat it is to get
everything I want including your grudging admission of defeat by the
process of making use of the laws and rules that work in my favor."
"You're a wise guy," he hurled back at me.
"I'm real clever, Barcelona. And I'm big enough to face you, even
though Phil Howland, The Greek, and Chicago Charlie make like cold clams
at the mention of your name."
"Why, you punk--"
"Go away, Barcelona. Go away before I make up my mind to make you eat
it."
I turned to Nora Taylor and regarded her charms and attractions both
physical and mental with open and glowing admiration. It had the
precalculated result and it wouldn't have been a whit different if I'd
filed a declaration of intent and forced her to read it first.
It even satisfied my ambient curiosity about what a telepathed grinding
of the teeth in frustrated anger would transmit as. And when it managed
to occur to an unemployed thought-center of my brain that the lines of
battle were soft and sweetly curved indeed, Joseph Barcelona couldn't
stand it any more. He just gave a mental sigh and signaled for the
noisemakers to shut him off from contact.
* * * * *
Derby Day, the First Saturday in May, dawned warm and clear with a fast,
dry track forecast for post time. The doorbell woke me up and I dredged
my apartment to identify Nora fiddling in my two-bit kitchen with ham
and eggs. Outside it was Lieutenant Delancey practising kinematics by
pressing the button with a levitated pencil instead of shoving on the
thing directly. (I'd changed the combination on the mindwarden at Nora's
suggestion.)
As I struggled out of bed, Nora flashed, "You get it, Wally," at me. She
was busy manipulating the ham slicer and the coffee percolator and
floating more eggs from the refrigerator. The invitation and the
acceptance for and of breakfast was still floating in the mental
atmosphere heavy enough to smell the coffee.