The look he received made all the previous conversation seem as warm
and friendly as a Christmas party by comparison. It was a look that
froze the air of the room into a solid chunk, Malone thought, a chunk
you could have chipped pieces from, for souvenirs, later, when Dr.
O'Connor had gone and you could get into the room without any danger
of being quick-frozen by the man's unfriendly eye.
"Mr. Burris," Dr. O'Connor said in a voice that matched the
temperature of his gaze, "please. Remember our slogan."
* * * * *
Malone sighed. He fished in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, found
one, and extracted a single cigarette. He stuck it in his mouth and
started fishing in various pockets for his lighter.
He sighed again. Perfectly honestly, he preferred cigars, a habit he'd
acquired from the days when he'd filched them from his father's cigar-
case. But his mental picture of a fearless and alert young FBI agent
didn't include a cigar. Somehow, remembering his father as neither
fearless nor, exactly, alert--anyway, not the way the movies and the
TV screens liked to picture the words--he had the impression that
cigars looked out of place on FBI agents.
And it was, in any case, a small sacrifice to make. He found his
lighter and shielded it from the brisk wind. He looked out over water
at the Jefferson Memorial, and was surprised that he'd managed to walk
as far as he had. Then he stopped thinking about walking, and took a
puff of his cigarette, and forced himself to think about the job in
hand.
Naturally, the Westinghouse gadget had been declared Ultra Top Secret
as soon as it had been worked out. Virtually everything was, these
days. And the whole group involved in the machine and its workings had
been transferred without delay to the United States Laboratories out
in Yucca Flats, Nevada.
Out there in the desert, there just wasn't much to do, Malone
supposed, except to play with the machine. And, of course, look at the
scenery. But when you've seen one desert, Malone thought confusedly,
you've seen them all.
So, the scientists ran experiments on the machine, and they made a
discovery of a kind they hadn't been looking for.
Somebody, they discovered, was picking the brains of the scientists
there.
Not the brains of the people working with the telepathy machine.
And not the brains of the people working on the several other Earth-
limited projects at Yucca Flats.
They'd been reading the minds of some of the scientists working on the
new and highly classified non-rocket space drive.
In other words, the Yucca Flats plant was infested with a telepathic
spy. And how do you go about finding a telepath? Malone sighed. Spies
that got information in any of the usual ways were tough enough to
locate. A telepathic spy was a lot tougher proposition.
Well, one thing about Andrew J. Burris. He had an answer for
everything. Malone thought of what his chief had said: "It takes a
thief to catch a thief. And if the Westinghouse machine won't locate a
telepathic spy, I know what will."
"What?" Malone had asked.
"It's simple," Burris had said. "Another telepath. There has to be one
around somewhere. Westinghouse did have one, after all, and the
Russians _still_ have one. Malone, that's your job: go out and find me
a telepath."
Burris had an answer for everything, all right, Malone thought. But he
couldn't see where the answer did him very much good. After all, if it
takes a telepath to catch a telepath, how do you catch the telepath
you're going to use to catch the first telepath?
Malone ran that through his mind again, and then gave it up. It
sounded as if it should have made sense, somehow, but it just didn't,
and that was all there was to that.
He dropped his cigarette to the ground and mashed it out with the toe
of his shoe. Then he looked up.
Out there, over the water, was the Jefferson Memorial. It stood, white
in the floodlights, beautiful and untouchable in the darkness. Malone
stared at it. What would Thomas Jefferson have done in a crisis like
this?
Jefferson, he told himself without much conviction, would have been
just as confused as he was.
But he'd have had to find a telepath, Malone thought. Malone
determined that he would do likewise, If Thomas Jefferson could do it,
the least he, Malone, could do was to give it a good try.
There was only one little problem:
_Where_, Malone thought, _do I start looking?_
2
Early the next morning, Malone awoke on a plane, heading across the
continent toward Nevada. He had gone home to sleep, and he'd had to
wake up to get on the plane, and now here he was, waking up again. It
seemed, somehow, like a vicious circle.
The engines hummed gently as they pushed the big ship through the
middle stratosphere's thinly distributed molecules. Malone looked out
at the purple-dark sky and set himself to think out his problem again.
He was still mulling things over when the ship lowered its landing
gear and rolled to a stop on the big field near Yucca Flats. Malone
sighed and climbed slowly out of his seat. There was a car waiting for
him at the airfield, though, and that seemed to presage a smooth time;
Malone remembered calling Dr. O'Connor the night before, and
congratulated himself on his foresight.
Unfortunately, when he reached the main gate of the high double fence
that surrounded the more than ninety square miles of United States
Laboratories, he found out that entrance into that sanctum sanctorum
of Security wasn't as easy as he'd imagined--not even for an FBI man.
His credentials were checked with the kind of minute care Malone had
always thought people reserved for disputed art masterpieces, and it
was with a great show of reluctance that the Special Security guards
passed him inside as far as the office of the Chief Security Officer.
There, the Chief Security Officer himself, a man who could have
doubled for Torquemada, eyed Malone with ill-concealed suspicion while
he called Burris at FBI headquarters back in Washington.
Burris identified Malone on the video screen and the Chief Security
Officer, looking faintly disappointed, stamped the agent's pass and
thanked the FBI chief. Malone had the run of the place.
Then he had to find a courier jeep. The Westinghouse division, it
seemed, was a good two miles away.
As Malone knew perfectly well, the main portion of the entire Yucca
Flats area was devoted solely to research on the new space drive which
was expected to make the rocket as obsolete as the blunderbuss--at
least as far as space travel was concerned. Not, Malone thought
uneasily, that the blunderbuss had ever been used for space travel,
but--
He got off the subject hurriedly. The jeep whizzed by buildings, most
of them devoted to aspects of the non-rocket drive. The other projects
based at Yucca Flats had to share what space was left--and that
included, of course, the Westinghouse research project.
It turned out to be a single, rather small white building with a fence
around it. The fence bothered Malone a little, but there was no need
to worry; this time he was introduced at once into Dr. O'Connor's
office. It was paneled in wallpaper manufactured to look like pine,
and the telepathy expert sat behind a large black desk bigger than any
Malone had ever seen in the FBI offices. There wasn't a scrap of paper
on the desk; its surface was smooth and shiny, and behind it the
nearly transparent Dr. Thomas O'Connor was close to invisible.
He looked, in person, just about the same as he'd looked on the FBI
tapes. Malone closed the door of the office behind him, looked for a
chair and didn't find one. In Dr. O'Connor's office, it was perfectly
obvious, Dr. O'Connor sat down. You stood, and were uncomfortable.
Malone took off his hat. He reached across the desk to shake hands
with the telepathy expert, and Dr. O'Connor gave him a limp fragile
paw. "Thanks for giving me a little time," Malone said. "I really
appreciate it." He smiled across the desk. His feet were already
beginning to hurt.
"Not at all," Dr. O'Connor said, returning the smile with one of his
own special quick-frozen brand. "I realize how important FBI work is
to all of us, Mr. Malone. What can I do to help you?"
Malone shifted his feet. "I'm afraid I wasn't very specific on the
phone last night," he said. "It wasn't anything I wanted to discuss
over a line that might have been tapped. You see, I'm on the telepathy
case."
Dr. O'Connor's eyes widened the merest trifle. "I see," he said.
"Well, I'll certainly do everything I can to help you."
"Fine," Malone said. "Let's get right down to business, then. The
first thing I want to ask you about is this detector of yours. I
understand it's too big to carry around--but how about making a
smaller model?"
"Smaller?" Dr. O'Connor permitted himself a ghostly chuckle. "I'm
afraid that isn't possible, Mr. Malone. I would be happy to let you
have a small model of the machine if we had one available--more than
happy. I would like to see such a machine myself, as a matter of fact.
Unfortunately, Mr. Malone--"
"There just isn't one, right?" Malone said.
"Correct," Dr. O'Connor said. "And there are a few other factors. In
the first place, the person being analyzed has to be in a specially
shielded room, such as is used in encephalographic analysis.
Otherwise, the mental activity of the other persons around him would
interfere with the analysis." He frowned a little. "I could wish that
we knew a bit more about psionic machines. The trouble with the
present device, frankly, is that it is partly psionic and partly
electronic, and we can't be entirely sure where one part leaves off
and the other begins. Very trying. Very trying indeed."
"I'll bet it is," Malone said sympathetically, wishing he understood
what Dr. O'Connor was talking about.
The telepathy expert sighed. "However," he said, "we keep working at
it." Then he looked at Malone expectantly.
Malone shrugged. "Well, if I can't carry the thing around, I guess
that's that," he said. "But here's the next question: do you happen to
know the maximum range of a telepath? I mean: how far away can he get
from another person and still read his mind?"
Dr. O'Connor frowned again. "We don't have definite information on
that, I'm afraid," he said. "Poor little Charlie was rather difficult
to work with. He was mentally incapable of cooperating in any way, you
see."
"Little Charlie?"
"Charles O'Neill was the name of the telepath we worked with," Dr.
O'Connor explained.
"I remember," Malone said. The name had been on one of the tapes, but
he just hadn't associated "Charles O'Neill" with "Little Charlie." He
felt as if he'd been caught with his homework undone. "How did you
manage to find him, anyway?" he said. Maybe, if he knew how
Westinghouse had found their imbecile-telepath, he'd have some kind of
clue that would enable him to find one, too. Anyhow, it was worth a
try.
"It wasn't difficult in Charlie's case," Dr. O'Connor said. He smiled.
"The child babbled all the time, you see."
"You mean he talked about being a telepath?"
Dr. O'Connor shook his head impatiently. "No," he said. "Not at all. I
mean that he babbled. Literally. Here: I've got a sample recording in
my files." He got up from his chair and went to the tall gray filing
cabinet that hid in a far corner of the pine-paneled room. From a
drawer he extracted a spool of common audio tape, and returned to his
desk.
"I'm sorry we didn't get full video on this," he said, "but we didn't
feel it was necessary." He opened a panel in the upper surface of the
desk, and slipped the spool in. "If you like, there are other tapes--"
"Maybe later," Malone said.
Dr. O'Connor nodded and pressed the playback switch at the side of the
great desk. For a second the room was silent.
Then there was the hiss of empty tape, and a brisk masculine voice
that overrode it:
"Westinghouse Laboratories," it said, "sixteen April nineteen-seventy.
Dr. Walker speaking. The voice you are about to hear belongs to
Charles O'Neill: chronological age fourteen years, three months;
mental age, approximately five years. Further data on this case will
be found in the file _O'Neill_."
There was a slight pause, filled with more tape hiss.
Then the voice began.
"... push the switch for record ... in the park last Wednesday ... and
perhaps a different set of ... poor kid never makes any sense in ...
trees and leaves all sunny with the ... electronic components of the
reducing stage might be ... not as predictable when others are around
but ... to go with Sally some night in the...."
It was a childish, alto voice, gabbling in a monotone. A phrase would
be spoken, the voice would hesitate for just an instant, and then
another, totally disconnected phrase would come. The enunciation and
pronunciation would vary from phrase to phrase, but the tone remained
essentially the same, drained of all emotional content.
"... in receiving psychocerebral impulses there isn't any ...
nonsense and nothing but nonsense all the ... tomorrow or maybe
Saturday with the girl ... tube might be replaceable only if . . .
something ought to be done for the . . . Saturday would be a good time
for ... work on the schematics tonight if...."
There was a click as the tape was turned off, and Dr. O'Connor looked
up.
"It doesn't make much sense," Malone said. "But the kid sure has a
hell of a vocabulary for an imbecile."
"Vocabulary?" Dr. O'Connor said softly.
"That's right," Malone said. "Where'd an imbecile get words like
'psychocerebral?' I don't think I know what that means, myself."
"Ah," Dr. O'Connor said. "But that's not _his_ vocabulary, you see.
What Charlie is doing is simply repeating the thoughts of those around
him. He jumps from mind to mind, simply repeating whatever he
receives." His face assumed the expression of a man remembering a bad
taste in his mouth. "That's how we found him out, Mr. Malone," he
said. "It's rather startling to look at a blithering idiot and have
him suddenly repeat the very thought that's in your mind."
Malone nodded unhappily. It didn't seem as if O'Connor's information
was going to be a lot of help as far as catching a telepath was
concerned. An imbecile, apparently, would give himself away if he were
a telepath. But nobody else seemed to be likely to do that. And
imbeciles didn't look like very good material for catching spies with.
Then he brightened. "Doctor, is it possible that the spy we're looking
for really isn't a spy?"
"Eh?"
"I mean, suppose he's an imbecile, too? I doubt whether an imbecile
would really be a spy, if you see what I mean."
Dr. O'Connor appeared to consider the notion. After a little while he
said: "It is, I suppose, possible. But the readings on the machine
don't give us the same timing as they did in Charlie's case--or even
the same sort of timing."
"I don't quite follow you," Malone said.
Truthfully, he felt about three miles behind. But perhaps everything
would clear up soon. He hoped so. On top of everything else, his feet
were now hurting a lot more.
"Perhaps if I describe one of the tests we ran," Dr. O'Connor said,
"things will be somewhat clearer." He leaned back in his chair. Malone
shifted his feet again and transferred his hat from his right to his
left hand.
"We put one of our test subjects in the insulated room," Dr. O'Connor
said, "and connected him to the detector. He was to read from a book--
a book that was not too common. This was, of course, to obviate the
chance that some other person nearby might be reading it, or might
have read it in the past. We picked _The Blood is the Death_ by
Hieronymus Melanchthon, which, as you may know, is a very rare book
indeed."
"Sure," Malone said. He had never heard of the book, but he was, after
all, willing to take Dr. O'Connor's word for it.
The telepathy expert went on: "Our test subject read it carefully,
scanning rather than skimming. Cameras recorded the movements of his
eyes in order for us to tell just what he was reading at any given
moment, in order to correlate what was going on in his mind with the
reactions of the machine's indicators, if you follow me."
Malone nodded helplessly.
"At the same time," Dr. O'Connor continued blithely, "we had Charlie
in a nearby room, recording his babblings. Every so often, he would
come out with quotations from _The Blood is the Death_, and these
quotations corresponded exactly with what our test subject was reading
at the time, and also corresponded with the abnormal fluctuations of
the detector."
Dr. O'Connor paused. Something, Malone realized, was expected of him.
He thought of several responses and chose one. "I see," he said.
"But the important thing here," Dr. O'Connor said, "is the timing. You
see, Charlie was incapable of continued concentration. He could not
keep his mind focused on another mind for very long, before he hopped
to still another. The actual amount of time concentrated on any given
mind at any single given period varied from a minimum of one point
three seconds to a maximum of two point six. The timing samples, when
plotted graphically over a period of several months, formed a skewed
bell curve with a mode at two point oh seconds."
"Ah," Malone said, wondering if a skewed ball curve was the same thing
as a belled skew curve, and if not, why not?
"It was, in fact," Dr. O'Connor continued relentlessly, "a sudden
variation in those timings which convinced us that there was another
telepath somewhere in the vicinity. We were conducting a second set of
reading experiments, in precisely the same manner as the first set,
and, for the first part of the experiment, our figures were
substantially the same. But--" He stopped.
"Yes?" Malone said, shifting his feet and trying to take some weight
off his left foot by standing on his right leg. Then he stood on his
left leg. It didn't seem to do any good.
"I should explain," Dr. O'Connor said, "that we were conducting this
series with a new set of test subjects: some of the scientists here at
Yucca Flats. We wanted to see if the intelligence quotients of the
subjects affected the time of contact which Charlie was able to
maintain. Naturally, we picked the men here with the highest IQ's, the
two men we have who are in the top echelon of the creative genius
class." He cleared his throat. "I did not include myself, of course,
since I wished to remain an impartial observer, as much as possible."
"Of course," Malone said without surprise.
"The other two geniuses," Dr. O'Connor said, "the other two geniuses
both happen to be connected with the project known as Project Isle--an
operation whose function I neither know, nor care to know, anything at
all about."
Malone nodded. Project Isle was the non-rocket spaceship. Classified.
Top Secret. Ultra Secret. And, he thought, just about anything else
you could think of.
"At first," Dr. O'Connor was saying, "our detector recorded the time
periods of--ah--mental invasion as being the same as before. Then, one
day, anomalies began to appear. The detector showed that the minds of
our subjects were being held for as long as two or three minutes. But
the phrases repeated by Charlie during these periods showed that his
own contact time remained the same; that is, they fell within the same
skewed bell curve as before, and the mode remained constant if nothing
but the phrase length were recorded."
"Hmm," Malone said, feeling that he ought to be saying something.
Dr. O'Connor didn't notice him. "At first we thought of errors in the
detector machine," he went on. "That worried us not somewhat, since
our understanding of the detector is definitely limited at this time.
We do feel that it would be possible to replace some of the electronic
components with appropriate symbolization like that already used in
the purely psionic sections, but we have, as yet, been unable to
determine exactly which electronic components must be replaced by what
symbolic components."
Malone nodded, silently this time. He had the sudden feeling that Dr.
O'Connor's flow of words had broken itself up into a vast sea of
alphabet soup, and that he, Malone, was occupied in drowning in it.
"However," Dr. O'Connor said, breaking what was left of Malone's train
of thought, "young Charlie died soon thereafter, and we decided to go
on checking the machine. It was during this period that we found
someone else reading the minds of our test subjects--sometimes for a
few seconds, sometimes for several minutes."
"Aha," Malone said. Things were beginning to make sense again.
_Someone else._ That, of course, was the spy.
"I found," Dr. O'Connor said, "on interrogating the subjects more
closely, that they were, in effect, thinking on two levels. They were
reading the book mechanically, noting the words and sense, but simply
shuttling the material directly into their memories without actually
thinking about it. The actual thinking portions of their minds were
concentrating on aspects of Project Isle."
There was a little silence.
"In other words," Malone said, "someone was spying on them for
information about Project Isle?"
"Precisely," Dr. O'Connor said with a frosty, teacher-to-student
smile. "And whoever it was had a much higher concentration time than
Charlie had ever attained. He seems to be able to retain contact as
long as he can find useful information flowing in the mind being
read."
"Wait a minute," Malone said. "Wait a minute. If this spy is so
clever, how come he didn't read _your_ mind?"
"It is very likely that he has," O'Connor said. "What does that have
to do with it?"
"Well," Malone said, "if he knows you and your group are working on
telepathy and can detect what he's doing, why didn't he just hold off
on the minds of those geniuses when they were being tested in your
machine?"
Dr. O'Connor frowned. "I'm afraid that I can't be sure," he said, and
it was clear from his tone that, if Dr. Thomas O'Connor wasn't sure,
no one in the entire world was, had been, or ever would be. "I do have
a theory, however," he said, brightening up a trifle.
Malone waited patiently.
"He must know our limitations," Dr. O'Connor said at last. "He must be
perfectly well aware that there's not a single thing we can _do_ about
him. He must know that we can neither find nor stop him. Why should he
worry? He can afford to ignore us--or even bait us. We're helpless,
and he knows it."
That, Malone thought, was about the most cheerless thought he had
heard in sometime.
"You mentioned that you had an insulated room," the FBI agent said
after a while. "Couldn't you let your men think in there?"
Dr. O'Connor sighed. "The room is shielded against magnetic fields and
electro-magnetic radiation. It is perfectly transparent to psionic
phenomena, just as it is to gravitational fields."
"Oh," Malone said. He realized rapidly that his question had been a
little silly to begin with, since the insulated room had been the
place where all the tests had been conducted in the first place. "I
don't want to take up too much of your time, Doctor," he said after a
pause, "but there are a couple of other questions."
"Go right ahead," Dr. O'Connor said. "I'm sure I'll be able to help
you."
Malone thought of mentioning how little help the Doctor had been to
date, but decided against it. Why antagonize a perfectly good
scientist without any reason? Instead, he selected his first question,
and asked it. "Have you got any idea how we might lay our hands on
another telepath? Preferably one that's not an imbecile, of course."
Dr. O'Connor's expression changed from patient wisdom to irritation.
"I wish we could, Mr. Malone. I wish we could. We certainly need one
here to help us here with our work--and I'm sure that your work is
important, too. But I'm afraid we have no ideas at all about finding
another telepath. Finding little Charlie was purely fortuitous--
purely, Mr. Malone, fortuitous."
"Ah," Malone said. "Sure. Of course." He thought rapidly and
discovered that he couldn't come up with one more question. As a
matter of fact, he'd asked a couple of questions already, and he could
barely remember the answers. "Well," he said, "I guess that's about
it, then, Doctor. If you come across anything else, be sure and let me
know."
He leaned across the desk, extending a hand. "And thanks for your
time," he added.
Dr. O'Connor stood up and shook his hand. "No trouble, I assure you,"
he said. "And I'll certainly give you all the information I can."
Malone turned and walked out. Surprisingly, he discovered that his
feet and legs still worked. He had thought they'd turned to stone in
the office long before.
* * * * *
It was on the plane back to Washington that Malone got his first
inkling of an idea.
The only telepath that the Westinghouse boys had been able to turn up
was Charles O'Neill, the youthful imbecile.
All right, then. Suppose there were another like him. Imbeciles
weren't very difficult to locate. Most of them would be in
institutions, and the others would certainly be on record. It might be
possible to find someone, anyway, who could be handled and used as a
tool to find a telepathic spy.
And--happy thought!--maybe one of them would turn out to be a high-
grade imbecile, or even a moron.
Even if they only turned up another imbecile, he thought wearily, at
least Dr. O'Connor would have something to work with.
He reported back to Burris when he arrived in Washington, told him
about the interview with Dr. O'Connor, and explained what had come to
seem a rather feeble brainstorm.
"It doesn't seem too productive," Burris said, with a shade of
disappointment in his voice, "but we'll try it."
At that, it was a better verdict than Malone had tried for. Though, of
course, it meant extra work for him.
Orders went out to field agents all over the United States, and,
quietly but efficiently, the FBI went to work. Agents began to probe
and pry and poke their noses into the files and data sheets of every
mental institution in the fifty states--as far, at any rate, as they
were able.
And Kenneth J. Malone was in the lead.
There had been some talk of his staying in Washington to collate the
reports as they came in, but that had sounded even worse than having
to visit hospitals. "You don't need me to do a job like that," he'd
told Burris. "Let's face it, Chief: if we find a telepath the agent
who finds him will say so. If we don't, he'll say that, too. You could
get a chimpanzee to collate reports like that."
Burris looked at him speculatively, and for one horrible second Malone
could almost hear him sending out an order to find, and hire, a
chimpanzee (after Security clearance, of course, for whatever
organizations a chimpanzee could join). But all he said, in what was
almost a mild voice, was: "All right, Malone. And don't call me
Chief."
The very mildness of his tone showed how worried the man was, Malone
realized, and he set out for the first hospital on his own list with
grim determination written all over his face and a heartbeat that
seemed to hammer at him that his country expected every man to do his
duty.
"I find my duty hard to do today," he murmured under his breath. It
was all right to tell himself that he had to find a telepath. But how
did you go about it? Did you just knock on hospital doors and ask them
if they had anybody who could read minds?
"You know," Malone told himself in a surprised tone, "that isn't such
a bad idea." It would, at any rate, let him know whether the hospital
had any patients who _thought_ they could read minds. From them on, it
would probably be simple to apply a test, and separate the telepathic
sheep from the psychotic goats.
The image that created in his mind was so odd that Malone, in self-
defense, stopped thinking altogether until he'd reached the first
hospital, a small place situated in the shrinking countryside West of
Washington.
It was called, he knew, the Rice Pavilion.
* * * * *
The place was small, and white. It bore a faint resemblance to
Monticello, but then that was true, Malone reflected, of eight out of
ten public buildings of all sorts. The front door was large and
opaque, and Malone went up the winding driveway, climbed a short
flight of marble steps, and rapped sharply.
The door opened instantly. "Yes?" said the man inside, a tall, balding
fellow wearing doctor's whites and a sad, bloodhound-like expression.
"Yes," Malone said automatically. "I mean--my name is Kenneth J.
Malone."
"Mine," said the bloodhound, "is Blake. Doctor Andrew Blake." There
was a brief pause. "Is there anything we can do for you?" the doctor
went on.
"Well," Malone said, "I'm looking for people who can read minds."
Blake didn't seem at all surprised. He nodded quietly. "Of course," he
said. "I understand perfectly."
"Good," Malone told him. "You see, I thought I'd have a little trouble
finding--"
"Oh, no trouble at all, I assure you," Blake went on, just as
mournfully as ever. "You've come to the right place, believe me, Mr.--
ah--"
"Malone," Malone said. "Kenneth J. Frankly, I didn't think I'd hit the
jackpot this early--I mean, you were the first on my list--"
The doctor seemed suddenly to realize that the two of them were
standing out on the portico. "Won't you come inside?" he said, with a
friendly gesture. He stepped aside and Malone walked through the
doorway.
Just inside it, three men grabbed him.
Malone, surprised by this sudden reception, fought with every ounce of
his FBI training. But the three men had his surprise on their side,
and three against one was heavy odds for any man, trained or not.
His neck placed firmly between one upper and lower arm, his legs
pinioned and his arms flailing wildly, Malone managed to shout: "What
the hell is this? What's going on?"
Dr. Blake was watching the entire operation from a standpoint a few
feet away. He didn't look as if his expression were ever going to
change.
"It's all for your own good, Mr. Malone," he said calmly. "Please
believe me."
"My God!" Malone said. He caught somebody's face with one hand and
then somebody else grabbed the hand and folded it back with
irresistible force. He had one arm free, and he tried to use it--but
not for long. "You think I'm nuts!" he shouted, as the three men
produced a strait-jacket from somewhere and began to cram him into it.
"Wait!" he cried, as the canvas began to cramp him. "You're wrong!
You're making a terrible mistake!"
"Of course," Dr. Blake said. "But if you'll just relax we'll soon be
able to help you--"
The strait-jacket was on. Malone sagged inside it like a rather large
and sweaty butterfly rewrapped in a cocoon. Dimly, he realized that he
sounded like every other nut in the world. All of them would be sure
to tell the doctor and the attendants that they were making a mistake.
All of them would claim they were sane.
There was, of course, a slight difference. But how could Malone manage
to prove it? The three men held him up.
"Now, now," Dr. Blake said. "You can walk, Mr. Malone. Suppose you
just follow me to your room--"
"My room?" Malone said. "Now, you listen to me, Doctor. If you don't
take this stuff off me at once I promise you the President will hear
of it. And I don't know how he'll take interference in a vital
mission--"
"The President?" Blake asked quietly. "What President, Mr. Malone?"
"The President of the United States, damn it!" Malone shouted.
"Hmm," Blake said.
That was no good, either, Malone realized. Every nut would have some
sort of direct pipeline to the President, or God, or somebody high up.
Nuts were like that.
But he was an FBI Agent. A special agent on a vital mission.
He said so.
"Now, now, Mr. Malone," Blake told him. "Let's get to your room, shall
we, and then we can talk things over."
"I can prove it!" Malone told him. The three men picked him up. "My
identification is in my pocket--"
"Really?" Blake said.
They started moving down the long front hall.
"All you have to do is take this thing off so I can get at my
pockets--"
Malone began.
But even he could see that this new plan wasn't going to work, either.
"Take it off?" Blake said. "Oh, certainly, Mr. Malone. Certainly. Just
as soon as we have you comfortably settled."
It was ridiculous, Malone told himself as the men carried him away. It
couldn't happen: an FBI agent mistaken for a nut, wrapped in a strait-
jacket and carried to a padded cell.
Unfortunately, ridiculous or not, it was happening.
And there was absolutely nothing to do about it.
Malone thought with real longing of his nice, safe desk in Washington.
Suddenly he discovered in himself a great desire to sit around and
collate reports. But no--he had to be a hero. He had to go and get
himself involved.
This, he thought, will teach me a great lesson. The next time I get
offered a job a chimpanzee can do, I'll start eating bananas.
It was at this point in his reflections that he reached a small door.
Dr. Blake opened it and the three men carried Malone inside. He was
dumped carefully on the floor. Then the door clanged shut.
Alone, Malone told himself bitterly, at last.
* * * * *
After a minute or so had gone by he began to think about getting out.
He could, it occurred to him, scream for help. But that would only
bring more attendants, and very possibly Dr. Blake again, and somehow
Malone felt that further conversation with Dr. Blake was not likely to
lead to any very rational end.
Sooner or later, he knew, they would have to let him loose.
After all, he was an FBI agent, wasn't he?
Alone, in a single cheerless cell, caught up in the toils of a strait-
jacket, he began to doubt the fact. Maybe Blake was right; maybe they
were all right. Maybe he, Kenneth J. Malone, was totally mad.
He told himself firmly that the idea was ridiculous.
But, then, what wasn't?
The minutes ticked slowly by. After a while the three guards came
back, opening the door and filing into the room carefully. Malone,
feeling more than ever like something in a cocoon, watched them with
interest. They shut the door carefully behind them and stood before
him.
"Now, then," one of them said. "We're going to take the jacket off, if
you promise to be a good boy."
"Sure," Malone said. "And when you take my clothing, look in the
pockets."
"The pockets?"
"To find my FBI identification," Malone said wearily. He only half-
believed the idea himself, but half a belief, he told himself
confusedly, was better than no mind at all. The attendants nodded
solemnly.
"Sure we will," one of them said, "if you're a good boy and don't act
up rough on us now. Okay?"
Malone nodded. Carefully, two of the attendants began to unbuckle him
while the third stood by for reinforcements. Malone made no fuss.
In five minutes he was naked as--he told himself--a jay-bird. What
was so completely nude about those particular birds escaped him for
the moment, but it wasn't important. The three men were all holding
various parts of the strait-jacket or of his clothing.
They were still watching him warily.
"Look in the pockets," Malone said.
"Sure," one said. The man holding the jacket reached into it and
dropped it as if it were hot.
"Hey," he announced in a sick voice, "the guy's carrying a gun."
"A gun?" the second one asked.
The first one gestured toward the crumpled jacket on the floor. "Look
for yourself," he said. "A real honest-to-God gun. I could feel it."
Malone leaned against one wall, looking as nonchalant as it was
possible for him to look in the nude. The room being cool, he felt he
was succeeding reasonably well. "Try the other pocket," he suggested.
The first attendant gave him a long stare. "What've you got in there,
buddy?" he asked. "A howitzer?"
"Jesus," the second attendant said, without moving toward the jacket.
"An armed nut. What a world."
"Try the pocket," Malone said.
A second went by. The first attendant bent down slowly, picked up the
jacket and slipped his hand into the other inside pocket. He came out
with a wallet and flipped it open.
The others looked over his shoulder.
There was a long minute of silence.
"Jesus," the second attendant said, as if it were the only word left
in the language.
Malone sighed. "There, now," he said. "You see? Suppose you give me
back my clothes and let's get down to brass tacks."
* * * * *
It wasn't that simple, of course.
First the attendants had to go and get Dr. Blake, and everybody had to
explain everything three or four times, until Malone was just as sick
of being an FBI agent as he had ever been of being a padded-cell case.
But, at last, he stood before Dr. Blake in the corridor outside, once
again fully dressed. Slightly rumpled, of course, but fully dressed.
It did, Malone thought, make a difference, and if clothes didn't
exactly make the man they were a long way from a hindrance.
"Mr. Malone," Blake was saying, "I want to offer my apologies--"
"Perfectly okay," Malone said agreeably. "But I would like to know
something. Do you treat all your visitors like this? I mean--the
milkman, the mailman, relatives of patients--"
"It's not often we get someone here who claims to be from the FBI,"
Blake said. "And naturally our first thought was that--well, sometimes
a patient will come in, just give himself up, so to speak. His
unconscious mind knows that he needs help, and so he comes to us. We
try to help him."
Privately, Malone told himself that it was a hell of a way to run a
hospital. Aloud, all he said was: "Sure. I understand perfectly,
Doctor."
Dr. Blake nodded. "And now," he said, "what did you want to talk to me
about?"
"Just a minute." Malone closed his eyes. He'd told Burris he would
check in, and he was late. "Have you got a phone I can use?"
"Certainly," Blake said, and led him down the corridor to a small
office. Malone went to the phone at one end and began dialing even
before Blake shut the door and left him alone.
The screen lit up instantly with Burris' face. "Malone, where the hell
have you been?" the head of the FBI roared. "I've been trying to get
in touch with you--"
"Sorry," Malone said. "I was tied up."
"What do you mean, tied up?" Burris said. "Do you know I was just
about to send out a general search order? I thought they'd got you."
"They?" Malone said, interested. "Who?"
"How the hell would I know who?" Burris roared.
"Well, nobody got me," Malone said. "I've been investigating Rice
Pavilion, just like I'm supposed to do."
"Then why didn't you check in?" Burris asked.
Malone sighed. "Because I got myself locked up," he said, and
explained. Burris listened with patience.