"And what's more," Malone added, "from now on she's 'Your Majesty.'
Got that?"
"Ken," Boyd said, "you've gone nuts."
Malone shook his head. "No, I haven't," he said. "I just wish I had.
It would be a relief."
"Me too," Boyd said. He started for the door and turned. "I wish I
could have stayed in San Francisco," he said. "Why should she insist
on taking _me_ along?"
"The beard," Malone said. "My beard?" Boyd recoiled.
"Right," Malone said. "She says it reminds her of someone she knows.
Frankly, it reminds me of someone, too. Only I don't know who."
Boyd gulped. "I'll shave it off," he said, with the air of a man who
can do no more to propitiate the Gods.
"You will not," Malone said firmly. "Touch but a hair of yon black
chin, and I'll peel off your entire skin."
Boyd winced.
"Now," Malone said, "go back to that costume shop and arrange things.
Here." He fished in his pockets and came out with a crumpled slip of
paper and handed it to Boyd. "That's a list of my clothing sizes. Get
another list from B--Miss Wilson." Boyd nodded. Malone thought he
detected a strange glint in the other man's eye. "Don't measure her
yourself," he said. "Just ask her."
Boyd scratched his bearded chin and nodded slowly. "All right, Ken,"
he said. "But if we just don't get anywhere, don't blame me."
"If you get anywhere," Malone said, "I'll snatch you baldheaded. And
I'll leave the beard."
"I didn't mean with Miss Wilson, Ken," Boyd said. "I meant in
general." He left, with the air of a man whose world has betrayed him.
His back looked, to Malone, like the back of a man on his way to the
scaffold or guillotine.
The door closed.
Now, Malone thought, who does that beard remind me of? Who do I know
who knows Miss Thompson?
And what difference does it make?
Nevertheless, he told himself, Boyd's beard (Beard's boyd?) was really
an admirable fact of nature. Ever since beards had become popular
again in the mid-sixties, and FBI agents had been permitted to wear
them, Malone had thought about growing one. But, somehow, it didn't
seem right.
Now, looking at Boyd, he began to think about the prospect again.
He shrugged the notion away. There were things to do.
He picked up the phone and called Information.
"Can you give me," he said, "the number of the Desert Edge
Sanatorium?"
* * * * *
The crimson blob of the setting sun was already painting the desert
sky with its customary purples and oranges by the time the little
caravan arrived at the Desert Edge Sanatorium, a square white building
several miles out of Las Vegas. Malone, in the first car, wondered
briefly about the kind of patients they catered to. People driven mad
by vingt-et-un or poker-dice? Neurotic chorus ponies? Gambling czars
with delusions of non-persecution?
Sitting in the front seat next to Boyd, he watched the unhappy San
Francisco agent manipulating the wheel. In the back seat, Queen
Elizabeth Thompson and Lady Barbara, the nurse, were located, and Her
Majesty was chattering away like a magpie.
Malone eyed the rearview mirror to get a look at the car following
them and the two local FBI agents in it. They were, he thought,
unbelievably lucky. He had to sit and listen to the Royal Personage in
the back seat.
"Of course, as soon as Parliament convenes and recognizes me," she was
saying, "I shall confer personages on all of you. Right now, the best
I could do was to knight you all, and of course that's hardly enough.
But I think I shall make Sir Kenneth the Duke of Columbia."
Sir Kenneth, Malone realized, was himself. He wondered how he'd like
being Duke of Columbia--and wouldn't the President be surprised!
"And Sir Thomas," the Queen continued, "will be the Duke of--what? Sir
Thomas?"
"Yes, Your Majesty?" Boyd said, trying to sound both eager and
properly respectful.
"What would you like to be Duke of?" she said.
"Oh," Boyd said after a second's thought, "anything that pleases Your
Majesty." But apparently, his thoughts gave him away.
"You're from upstate New York?" the Queen said. "How very nice. Then
you must be made the Duke of Poughkeepsie."
"Thank you, Your Majesty," Boyd said. Malone thought he detected a
note of pride in the man's voice, and shot a glance at Boyd, but the
agent was driving with a serene face and an economy of motion.
_Duke of Poughkeepsie!_ Malone thought. _Hah!_
He leaned back and adjusted his fur-trimmed coat. The plume that fell
from his cap kept tickling his neck, and he brushed at it without
success.
All four of the inhabitants of the car were dressed in late Sixteenth
Century costumes, complete with ruffs and velvet and lace filigree.
Her Majesty and Lady Barbara were wearing the full skirts and small
skullcaps of the era (and on Barbara, Malone thought privately, the
low-cut gowns didn't look at all disappointing), and Sir Thomas and
Malone (Sir Kenneth, he thought sourly) were clad in doublet, hose and
long coats with fur trim and slashed sleeves. And all of them were
loaded down, weighted down, staggeringly, with gems.
Naturally, the gems were fake. But then, Malone thought, the Queen was
mad. It all balanced out in the end.
As they approached the sanitarium, Malone breathed a thankful prayer
that he'd called up to tell the head physician how they'd all be
dressed. If he hadn't....
He didn't want to think about that.
He didn't even want to pass it by hurriedly on a dark night.
The head physician, Dr. Frederic Dowson, was waiting for them on the
steps of the building. He was a tall, thin, cadaverous-looking man
with almost no hair and very deep-sunken eyes. He had the kind of face
that a gushing female would probably describe, Malone thought, as
"craggy," but it didn't look in the least attractive to Malone.
Instead, it looked tough and forbidding.
He didn't turn a hair as the magnificently robed Boyd slid from the
front seat, opened the rear door, doffed his plumed hat, and in one
low sweep made a great bow. "We are here, Your Majesty," Boyd said.
Her Majesty got out, clutching at her voluminous skirts in a worried
manner, to keep from catching them on the door-jamb. "You know, Sir
Thomas," she said when she was standing free of the car, "I think we
must be related."
"Ah?" Boyd said worriedly.
"I'm certain of it, in fact," Her Majesty went on. "You look just
exactly like my poor father. Just exactly. I dare say you come from
one of the sinister branches of the family. Perhaps you are a half-
brother of mine--removed, of course."
Malone grinned, and tried to hide the expression. Boyd was looking
puzzled, then distantly angered. Nobody had ever called him
illegitimate in just that way before.
But Her Majesty was absolutely right, Malone thought. The agent had
always reminded him of someone, and now, at last, he knew exactly who.
The hair hadn't been black, either, but red.
Boyd was, in Elizabethan costume, the deadest of dead ringers for
Henry VIII.
Malone went up the steps to where Dr. Dowson was standing.
"I'm Malone," he said, checking a tendency to bow. "I called earlier
today. Is this William Logan of yours ready to go? We can take him
back with us in the second car."
Dr. Dowson compressed his lips and looked worried. "Come in, Mr.
Malone," he said. He turned just as the second carload of FBI agents
began emptying itself over the hospital grounds.
The entire procession filed into the hospital office, the two local
agents following up the rear. Since they were not a part of Her
Majesty's personal retinue, they had not been required to wear court
costumes. In a way, Malone was beginning to feel sorry for them. He
himself cut a nice figure in the outfit, he thought--rather like Errol
Flynn in the old black-and-white print of _The Prince and the Pauper_.
But there was no denying that the procession looked strange. File
clerks and receptionists stopped their work to gape at the four
bedizened walkers and their plainly dressed satellites. Malone needed
no telepathic talent to tell what they were thinking.
"A whole roundup of nuts," they were thinking. "And those two fellows
in the back must be bringing them in--along with Dr. Dowson."
Malone straightened his spine. Really, he didn't see why Elizabethan
costumes had ever gone out of style. Elizabeth was back, wasn't she--
either Elizabeth II, on the throne, or Elizabeth I, right behind him.
Either way you looked at it....
When they were all inside the waiting room, Dr. Dowson said: "Now, Mr.
Malone, just what is all this about?" He rubbed his long hands
together. "I fail to see the humor of the situation."
"Humor?" Malone said.
"Doctor," Barbara Wilson began, "let me explain. You see--"
"These ridiculous costumes," Dr. Dowson said, waving a hand at them.
"You may feel that poking fun at insanity is humorous, Mr. Malone, but
let me tell you--"
"It wasn't like that at all," Boyd said.
"And," Dr. Dowson continued in a somewhat louder voice, "wanting to
take Mr. Logan away from us. Mr. Logan is a very sick man, Mr. Malone.
He should be properly cared for."
"I promise we'll take good care of him," Malone said earnestly. The
Elizabethan clothes were fine outdoors, but in a heated room one had a
tendency to sweat.
"I take leave to doubt that," Dr. Dowson said, eyeing their costumes
pointedly.
"Miss Wilson here," Malone volunteered, "is a trained psychiatric
nurse."
Barbara, in her gown, stepped forward. "Dr. Dowson," she said, "let me
assure you that these costumes have their purpose. We--"
"Not only that," Malone said. "There are a group of trained men from
St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington who are going to take the best
of care of him." He said nothing whatever about Yucca Flats, or about
telepathy.
Why spread around information unnecessarily?
"But I don't understand," Dr. Dowson said. "What interest could the
FBI have in an insane man?"
"That's none of your business," Malone said. He reached inside his
fur-trimmed robe and, again suppressing a tendency to bow deeply,
withdrew an impressive-looking legal document. "This," he said, "is a
court order, instructing you to hand over to us the person of one
William Logan, herein identified and described." He waved it at the
Doctor.
"That's your William Logan," he said, "only now he's ours."
Dr. Dowson took the papers and put in some time frowning at them. Then
he looked up again at Malone. "I assume that I have some discretion in
this matter," he said. "And I wonder if you realize just how ill Mr.
Logan is? We have his case histories here, and we have worked with him
for some time."