Malone began to obey.
"With your hands up!" the captain snapped. Malone dropped the .44
unobtrusively into his jacket pocket and complied. Then, as he came
out of the car, he teleported himself back to a section of the road
he'd memorized, ten feet behind the car. The four men were gaping,
dumbfounded, as Malone drew his gun and shot them. Then he removed the
sawhorses, got back in his car, reloaded the .44, put it back in his
holster and drove on.
"Now," he said in a thoughtful tone. "Where was I?"
He imagined Luba's voice saying: _You were telling us how, all this
time, it's hardly surprising--_
"Oh, yes," he said. "Well, then. So you solved some of the problems,
you'd set. You learned how to use and control telepathy and
teleportation, maybe, long before scientific boys like Dr. O'Connor
became interested. But you never announced it publicly. You kept the
knowledge all to yourself. 'Is this what the common folk call
telepathy, Lord Bromley?' 'Yes, Lady Bromley.' 'Much too good for
them, isn't it?' And maybe it is, at that; I don't know."
His thoughts, he recognized, were veering slightly. After a second he
got back on the track.
"At any rate," he went on, "you--all of your out there--are
responsible for what's happening to this country and all of Europe and
Asia--and, for all I know, the suburbs of Hell.
"I remember one of the book facsimiles you got me, for instance," he
said. "The writer tried for an 'expose' of the Society, in which he
attempted to prove that Sir Lewis Carter and certain other members
were trying to take over the world and run it to suit themselves,
using their psionic powers to institute a rather horrible type of
dictatorship over the world.
"It was a pretty convincing book in a lot of ways. The author
evidently know a lot about what he was dealing with."
* * * * *
At this point, Malone ran into another roadblock. There had been a
fight of some kind up ahead, and a lot of cars with what looked like
shell-holes in them were piled on one side of the road. The State
Police were working under the confused direction of an Army major to
straighten things out, while a bulldozer pushed the cars off the road
onto the grass bordering it. The major stopped what he was doing and
came to meet Malone as the car stopped.
"Get off the road," the major said surlily.
Malone looked up at him. "I've got some identification here," he said.
"Mind if I get it out?"
The major reached for a gun and held it. "Go ahead," he said. "Don't
try anything funny. It's been hell up and down this road, mister."
Malone flipped out his wallet and showed the identification.
"FBI?" the Major said. "What're you doing out here?"
"Special assignment," Malone said. "Oh ... by the way ... you might
send some men back a ways. There are four dead mean in military
uniforms lying on the road near a couple of sawhorses."