"Mistake?" Lynch said.
Malone flipped the wallet open to his FBI shield. Lynch gave it a good
long examination, peering at it from every angle and holding it up to
the light two or three times. He even wet his thumb and rubbed the
badge with it. At last he looked up.
"I guess you are the FBI," he said. "But what's with the gag?"
"It isn't a gag," Malone said. "It's just--" He thought of the little
old lady in Yucca Flats, the little old lady who had been the prime
mover in the last case he and Boyd had worked on together. Without the
little old lady, the case might never have been solved; she was an
authentic telepath, about the best that had ever been found.
But with her, Boyd and Malone had had enough troubles. Besides being a
telepath, she was quite thoroughly insane. She had one fixed delusion:
she believed she was Queen Elizabeth I.
She was still at Yucca Flats, along with the other telepaths Malone's
investigation had turned up. And she still believed, quite calmly,
that she was Good Queen Bess. Malone had been knighted by her during
the course of the investigation. This new honor had come to him
through the mail; apparently she had decided to ennoble some of her
friends still further.
Malone made a mental note to ask Boyd if he'd received one. After all,
there couldn't be too many Knights of the Bath. There was no sense in
letting _everybody_ in.
Then he realized that he was beginning to believe everything again.
There had been times, working with the little old lady, when he had
been firmly convinced that he was, in fact, the swaggering, ruthless
swordsman, Sir Kenneth Malone. And even now...
"Well?" Lynch said.
"It's too long a story," Malone said. "And besides, it's not what I
came here about."