After Miss Dental Display had faded from Malone's screen, he just sat
there, looking at the dead, gray front of the visiphone and feeling
about twice as dead and at least three times as gray.
Things, he told himself, were terrible. But even that sentence, which
was a good deal more cheerful than what he actually felt, did nothing
whatever to improve his mood. All of the evidence, after all, had been
practically living on the tip of his nose for God alone knew how long,
and not only had he done nothing about it, he hadn't even seen it.
There was the organization, staring him in the face. There was
Luba--nobody's fool, no starry-eyed dreamer of occult dreams. She was
part of the Psychical Research Society, why hadn't he thought to
wonder why she was connected with it?
And there was his own mind-shield. Why hadn't he wondered whether
other telepaths might not have the same shield?
He thought about Luba and told himself bitterly that from now on she
was Miss Ardanko. Enough, he told himself, was enough. From now on he
was calling her by her last name, formally and distantly. In his own
mind, anyhow.
Facts came tumbling in on him like the side of a mountain falling on a
hapless traveler, during a landslide season. And, Malone told himself,
he had never possessed less hap in all of his ill-starred life.
And then, very suddenly, one more fact arrived, and pushed the rest
out into the black night of Malone's bitter mind. He stood up, pushing
the books away, and closed his eyes. When he opened them he went to
the telephone in his Las Vegas hotel suite, and switched it on. A
smiling operator appeared. Malone wanted to see him die of poison,
slowly.
"Give me Room 4-T," he snapped. "Hurry."
"Room forty?" the operator asked.
"Damn it," Malone said, "I said 4-T and I meant 4-T. Four as in four
and T as in--as in China. And hurry."
"Oh," the operator said. "Yes, sir." He turned away from the screen.
"That would have been Miss Luba Ardanko's room, sir?" he said.
"Right," Malone snapped. "I ... wait a minute. Would have been?"
"That's correct, sir," the operator said. "She checked out, sir, early
this morning. The room is unoccupied."
Malone swallowed hard. It was all true, then. Sir Lewis' note hadn't
simply been one last wave of the red cape before an angry bull. Luba
was one of them.
_Miss Ardanko_, he corrected himself savagely.
"What time?" he said.
The operator consulted an information board before him. "Approximately
one o'clock, sir," he said.
"In the morning?"
"Yes, sir," the clerk said.
Malone closed his eyes. "Thanks," he said.
"You're quite welcome, sir," the operator said. "A courtesy of the
Great Universal Ho--"
Malone cut him off. "Ho, indeed," he said bitterly. "Not to mention ha
and hee--hee and yippe-ki-yay. A great life." He whisked himself back
to New York in a dismal, rainy state of mind. As he sat down again to
the books and papers the door to the room opened.
"You still here?" the agent-in-charge said. "I'm just going off duty
and I came by to check. Don't you ever sleep?"
"I'm on vacation, remember?"
"Some vacation," the a-in-c said. "If you're on special assignment why
not tell the rest of us?"
"I want it to be a surprise," Malone said. "And meantime, I'd
appreciate it if I were left entirely to my own devices."
"Still conjuring up ghosts?" the a-in-c said.
"That," Malone said, "I don't know. I've got some long-distance calls
to make."
* * * * *
He started with the overseas calls, leaving the rest of the United
States time for the sun to get round to them. His first call, which
involved a lot of cursing on Malone's part and much hard work for the
operator, who claimed plaintively that she didn't know how things had
gotten so snarled up, but overseas calls were getting worse and worse,
went to New Scotland Yard in London. After great difficulty, Malone
managed to get Assistant Commissioner C. E. Teal, who promised to
check on the inquiry at once.
It seemed like years before he called back, and Malone leaped to the
phone.
"Yes?" he said.
Teal, red-faced and apparently masticating a stick of gum, said: "I
got C. I. D. Commander Gideon to follow up on that matter, Mr. Malone.
As you know, it's after noon here--"
"And they're all out to lunch," Malone said.
"As a matter of fact," Teal went on, "they seem to have disappeared
entirely. On vacation, that sort of thing. It is rather difficult
attempting any full-scale tracing job just now; our men are terribly
overworked. I imagine you've had reports from the New Scotland Yard
representatives working with you there--"
"Oh, certainly," Malone said. "But the hour; what does that have to do
with anything?"
"I'm afraid I was thinking of our Inspector Ottermole," Teal said. "He
was sent to locate Dr. Carnacki, President of the Psychical Research
Society here. On being told that Dr. Carnacki was 'out to lunch,'
Ottermole investigated every restaurant and eating-place within ten
blocks of the offices. Dr. Carnacki was not present; he, like the rest
of the Society here, appears to have left for places unknown."
"Thorough work," Malone said.
"Ottermole's a good man," Teal said. "We've checked as quickly as
possible, Mr. Malone. I would like to ask you a question in return."
"Ask away," Malone said.
Teal looked worried. "Do you people think this may have anything to do
with the present ... ah ... trouble?" he said. "Things are quite upset
here, as you know; so many members of Parliament have resigned or ...
ah ... died that the realm is being run by a rather shakily assembled
coalition government. There is even some talk of giving executive
power to Her Majesty until a general election can be held."
For one brief moment, Malone thought Teal was talking about Rose
Thompson. Then he recalled Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and felt
better. Things weren't quite as bad as he'd thought.
But they were bad enough. "We simply don't know yet," he said
untruthfully. "But as soon as anything definite comes up, of course,
you'll be informed."
"Thank you, Mr. Malone," Teal said. "Of course, we'll do the same."
And then, still masticating, he switched off.
Paris was next, then Rome, Berlin and a couple more. Every one had the
same result. From Maigret of the Paris Sureté to Poirot in Belgium,
from Berlin's strict officialdom to the cheerful Hollanders, all the
reports were identical. The PRS of each country had gone underground.
Malone buried his face in his hands, thought about a cigar and decided
that even a cigar might make him feel worse. Where were they? What
were they doing now? What did they plan to do?
Where had they gone?
"Out of the everywhere," he heard himself say in a hollow, sepulchral
voice, "into the here."
But where was the here?
He tried to make up his mind whether or not that made sense.
Superficially, it sounded like extremely bad English, but he wasn't
sure of anything any more. Things were getting much too confused.
He close his eyes wearily, and vanished.
When he opened them, he was in his Washington apartment. He went over
to the big couch and sat down, feeling that if he were going to curse
he might as well be comfortable while he did it. But, some minutes
later, when the air was a bright electric blue around him, he didn't
feel any better. Cursing was not the answer.
Nothing seemed to be.
What was his next move?
Where did he go from here?
The more he thought about it, the more his mind spun. He was, he
realized, at an absolute, total dead end.
Oh, there were things he could do. Malone knew that very well. He
could make a lot of noise and go through a lot of waste motion; that
was what it amounted to. He could have all the homes of all the
missing PRS members checked somehow. That would undoubtedly result in
the startling discovery that the PRS members involved weren't home. He
could have their dossiers sent to him, which would clutter everything
with a great many more pieces of paper. But he felt quite sure that
the pieces of paper would do no good at all. In general, he could
raise all hell--and find nothing whatever.
Now, he told himself sadly, he had the evidence to start the FBI in
motion. The only trouble was that he could think of nowhere for them
to go.
And, though he had evidence that might convince Burris--the PRS
members, after all, _had_ done a rather unusual fadeout--he had
nowhere near enough to carry the case into court, much less make a
try at getting the case to stand up once carried in. That was one
thing he couldn't do, he realized, he couldn't issue warrants for the
arrest of anybody at all.
[Illustration]
But, vacation or no vacation, he thought solemnly, he was an FBI
Agent, and his motto was: "There's always a way." No normal method of
tracking down the PRS members, or finding their present whereabouts,
was going to work. They'd been covering themselves for such an
emergency, undoubtedly, for a good many years--and if anyone got
close, a burst of mental energy was quite enough to turn the seeker
aside.
Nobody, Malone told himself grimly, was perfect. There were clues
lying around somewhere; he was sure of that. There had to be. The
problem was simply to figure out where to look, and how to look, and
what to look for.
Somewhere, the clues were sitting quietly and waiting for him to find
them. The thought cheered him slightly, but not very much. He stood up
slowly and went into the kitchen to start heating water for coffee.
There was, he told himself, a long night ahead of him. He sighed
gently. But there was no help for it; the work had to be done--and
done quickly.
But when eight cigars had been reduced to ash, and what seemed like
several gallons of coffee had sloshed their way into Malone's interior
workings, his mind was as blank as a baby's. The lovely, opalescent
dawn began to show in the East, and Malone tendered it some extremely
rude words. Then, Haggard, red-eyed, confused, violently angry, and
not one inch closer to a solution, he fell into a fitful doze on his
couch.
* * * * *
When he awoke, the sun was high in the sky, and outside his window the
cheerful sound of too much traffic floated in the air. Downstairs
somebody was playing a television set too loudly, and the voice
reached Malone's semiaware mind in a great tinny shout:
"The President, taking action on the current crisis, has declared martial
law throughout the nation," a voice said in an important-sounded
monotone. "Exempt from this proclamation are members of the Armed
Services, Special Agents and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The
proclamation, issued this morning, was made public in a special news
conference which--"
Malone ripped out a particularly foul oath and sat up on the couch.
"That," he muttered, "is a fine thing to wake up to." He focused his
eyes, with only slight difficulty, on his watch. The time was a little
after two.
"Later developments will be reported as and when they occur," the
announcer was saying, "and in one hour a special panel of newscasters
will be assembled here to discuss this latest action in the light of
present happenings. Any special rules and regulations will be
broadcast over this station--"
"Shut up," Malone said. He had wasted a lot of time doing nothing but
sleeping, he told himself. This was no time to be listening to
television. He got up and found, to his vague surprise, that he felt a
lot better and clearer-headed than he had been. Maybe the sleep had
actually done him some good.
He yawned, blinked and stretched, and then padded into the bathroom
for a shower and shave. After he'd changed he thought about a morning
or afternoon cup of coffee, but last night's dregs appeared to have
taken up permanent residence in his digestive tract, and he decided
against it at last. He swallowed some orange juice and toast and
then, heaving a great sigh of resignation and brushing crumbs off his
shirt, he teleported himself over to his office.
Now he knew that, sooner or later, he was going to have to talk to
Burris. Burris _had_ to know, even if there was nothing to be done.
And now was just as good--or as bad--a time as any.
He didn't hesitate. He punched the button on his intercom for Burris'
office and then sat back, with his eyes closed, waiting for the
well-known voice.
It didn't come.
Instead, Wolf, the Director's secretary, spoke up.
"Burris isn't in, Malone," he said. "He had to fly to Miami. I can get
a call through to him on the plane, if it's urgent, but he'll be
landing in about fifteen minutes. And he did say he'd call in this
afternoon."
"Oh," Malone said. "Sure. O.K. It isn't urgent." He was just as glad
of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through
to a solution, and hand it to Burris on a silver platter. "But why
Miami?" he added.
"Don't you hear about anything any more?" Wolf asked.
"I've been on vacation."
"Oh," Wolf said. "Well, the Governor of Mississippi was assassinated
yesterday, at Miami Beach."
"Ah," Malone said. He thought about it for a second. "Frankly," he
said, "this does not strike me as an irreparable loss to the nation.
Not even to Mississippi."
"You express my views precisely," Wolf said.
"How about the killer?" Malone said. "I gather they haven't got him
yet, or Burris wouldn't be on his way down."
"No," Wolf said. "The killer would be on his way here instead. But you
know how things are--everything's confused. Governor Flarion was
walking along Collins Avenue when somebody fired at him, using a
high-powered rifle with, I guess, a scope sight."
"Professional," Malone commented.
"It looks like it," Wolf said. "And he picked the right time for it,
too--the way things are he was just one more confusion among the rest.
Nobody even heard the sniper's shot; the governor just fell over,
right there in the street. And by the time his bodyguards found out
what had happened, it was impossible even to be sure just which way he
was facing when the shot had been fired."
"And as I remember Collins Avenue--" Malone started.
"Right," Wolf said. "But it's even worse now, with everything going
nuts. Out where Governor Flarion was taking his stroll, there's an
awful lot of it to search. The boys are trying to find somebody who
saw a man acting suspicious in any of the nearby buildings, or heard a
shot, or saw anybody at all lurking or loitering anywhere near to the
scene."
"Lovely," Malone said. "Sounds like a nice complicated job."
"You don't know the half of it," Wolf said. "There's also the Miami
Beach Chamber of Commerce. According to them, Flarion died of a heart
attack, and not even in Miami Beach. Everything happening down there
isn't happening, according to them; Miami Beach is the one unsullied
beauty spot in a mixed-up United States."
"All I can say," Malone offered, "is good luck. This is the saddest
day in American history since the assassination of Huey P. Long."
"Agreed," Wolf said. "Want me to tell Burris you called?"
"Right," Malone said, and switched off.
* * * * *
The assassination of Nemours P. Flarion, he told himself, obviously
meant something. It pointed straight toward some entirely new kind of
answer. Granted, old Nemours P. had been a horrible mistake, a
paranoid, self-centered, would-be, dictator whose final act was quite
in keeping with the rest of his official life. Who else would be in
Miami Beach, far away from his home state, while the President was
declaring nationwide martial law?
But that, Malone told himself, wasn't the point. Or not quite the
point, anyhow.
Maybe some work would dig up more facts. Anyhow, Malone was reasonably
sure that he could reassign himself from vacation time, at least until
he called Burris. And he had work to do; nobody was going to hand him
anything on a silver serving salver.
He punched the intercom again and got the Records office.
"Yes, sir?" a familiar voice said.
"Potter," Malone said, "this is Malone. I want facsimiles of
everything we have on the Psychical Research Society, on Sir Lewis
Carter, and on Luba Ardanko. Both of these last are connected with the
Society."
"You're back on duty, Malone?" Potter said.
"Right," Malone said. "Make that fast, will you?"
Potter nodded. "Right away," he said.
It didn't take long for the facsimile records to arrive, and Malone
went right to work on them. Maybe somewhere in those records was the
clue he had desperately needed. Where was the PRS? What were they
doing now? What did they plan to do?
And why had they started the whole row in the first place?
The PRS, he saw, was even more widely spread than he had thought. It
had branches in almost every major city in the United States, in
Europe, South Africa, South America and Australia. There was even a
small branch society in Greenland. True, the Communist disapproval of
such nonmaterialistic, un-Marxian objectives as Psychical Research
showed up in the fact that there were no registered branches in the
Sino-Soviet bloc. But that, Malone thought, hardly mattered. Maybe in
Russia they called themselves the Lenin Study Group, or the Better
Borschch League. He was fairly sure, from all the evidence, that the
PRS had some kind of organization even behind the Iron Curtain.
Money backing didn't seem to be much of a problem, either. Malone
checked for the supporters of the organization and found a microfilmed
list that ran into the hundreds of thousands of names, most of them
ordinary people who seemed to be interested in spiritualism and the
like, and who donated a few dollars apiece to the PRS. Besides this
mass of small donations, of course, there were a few large ones, from
independently wealthy men who gave support to the organization and
seemed actively interested in its aims.
It wasn't an unusual picture; just an exceptionally big one.
Malone sighed and went on to the personal dossiers.
Sir Lewis Carter himself was a well-known astronomer and
mathematician. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal
Astronomical Society and the Royal Mathematical Society. He had been
knighted for his contributions in higher mathematics only two years
before he had come to live in the United States. Malone went over the
papers dealing with his entry into the country carefully, but they
were all in order and they contained absolutely nothing in the way of
usable clues.
Sir Lewis' books on political and historical philosophy had been
well-received, and he had also written a novel, "But Some Are More
Equal," which, for a few weeks after publication, had managed to claw
its way to the bottom of the best-seller list.
And that was that. Malone tried to figure out whether all this
information did him any good, and the answer came very quickly. The
answer was no. He opened the second dossier.
Luba Ardanko had been born in New York. Her mother had been a woman of
Irish descent named Mary Foley, and had died in '69. Her father had
been a Hungarian named Chris Yorgen Ardanko, and had died in the same
year.
Malone sighed. Somewhere in the dossiers, he was sure, there was a
clue, the basic clue that would tell him everything he needed to know.
His prescience had never been so strong; he knew perfectly well that
he was staring at the biggest, most startling and most complete
disclosure of all. And he couldn't see it.
He stared at the folders for a long minute. What did they tell him?
What was the clue.
And then, very slowly, the soft light of a prodigal sun illuminated
his mind.
"Mr. Malone," Malone said gently, "you are a damned fool. There are
times when it is necessary to discard the impossible after you have
seen that the obscure is the obvious."
He wasn't sure whether that meant anything, or even whether he knew
what he was saying. But, as the entire structure of facts became
clear, and then turned right upside down in his mind and changed into
something else entirely--something that told him not only who, and
where, but also why, he became absolutely sure of one thing.
He knew the final answer.
And it _was_ obvious. Obvious as all hell!