Four days later, he was more than
tired. He was exhausted. The six psychopaths including
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I had been housed
in a converted dormitory in the Westinghouse area,
together with four highly nervous and even more highly
trained and investigated psychiatrists from St. Elizabeths
in Washington. The Convention of Nuts, as Malone
called it privately, was in full swing.
And it was every bit as strange as
he’d thought it was going to be. Unfortunately,
five of the six (Her Majesty being the only exception)
were completely out of contact with the world.
The psychiatrists referred to them in worried tones
as “unavailable for therapy,” and spent
most of their time brooding over possible ways of bringing
them back into the real world for a while, at least
far enough so that they could be spoken with.
Malone stayed away from the five who
were completely psychotic. The weird babblings
of fifty-year-old Barry Miles disconcerted him.
They sounded like little Charlie O’Neill’s
strange semi-connected jabber, but Westinghouse’s
Dr. O’Connor said that it seemed to represent
another phenomenon entirely. William Logan’s
blank face was a memory of horror, but the constant
tinkling giggles of Ardith Parker, the studied and
concentrated way that Gordon Macklin wove meaningless
patterns in the air with his waving fingers, and the
rhythmless, melodyless humming that seemed to be all
there was to the personality of Robert Cassiday were
simply too much for Malone. Taken singly, each
was frightening and remote; all together, they wove
a picture of insanity that chilled him more than he
wanted to admit.
When the seventh telepath was flown
in from Honolulu, Malone didn’t even bother
to see her. He let the psychiatrists take over
directly, and simply avoided their sessions.
Queen Elizabeth I, on the other hand,
he found genuinely likeable.
According to the psych boys, she had
been (as both Malone and Her Majesty had theorized)
heavily frustrated by being the possessor of a talent
which no one else recognized. Beyond that, the
impact of other minds was disturbing; there was a
slight loss of identity which seemed to be a major
factor in every case of telepathic insanity. But
the Queen had compensated for her frustrations in
the easiest possible way; she had simply traded her
identity for another one, and had rationalized a single,
overruling delusion: that she was Queen Elizabeth
I of England, still alive and wrongfully deprived of
her throne.
“It’s a beautiful rationalization,”
one of the psychiatrists said with more than a trace
of admiration in his voice. “Complete and
thoroughly consistent. She’s just traded
identities and everything else she does everything
else stems logically out of her delusional
premise. Beautiful.”
She may have been crazy, Malone realized.
But she was a long way from stupid.
The project was in full swing.
The only trouble was that they were no nearer finding
the telepath than they had been three weeks before.
With five completely blank human beings to work with,
and the sixth Queen Elizabeth (Malone heard privately
that the last telepath, the girl from Honolulu, was
no better than the first five; she had apparently
regressed into what one of the psychiatrists called
a “non-identity childhood syndrome.”
Malone didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded
terrible.) with that crew, Malone could
see why progress was their most difficult commodity.
Dr. Harry Gamble, the head of Project
Isle, was losing poundage by the hour with worry.
And, Malone reflected, he could ill afford it.
Burris, Malone and Boyd had set themselves
up in a temporary office within the Westinghouse area.
The Director had left his assistant in charge in Washington.
Nothing, he said over and over again, was as important
as the spy in Project Isle.
Apparently Boyd had come to believe
that, too. At any rate, though he was still truculent,
there were no more outbursts of rebellion.
But, on the fourth day:
“What do we do now?” Burris asked.
“Shoot ourselves,” Boyd said promptly.
“Now, look here ” Malone began,
but he was overruled.
“Boyd,” Burris said levelly,
“if I hear any more of that sort of pessimism,
you’re going to be an exception to the beard
rule. One more crack out of you, and you can
go out and buy yourself a razor.”
Boyd put his hand over his chin protectively, and
said nothing at all.
“Wait a minute,” Malone
said. “Aren’t there any sane
telepaths in the world?”
“We can’t find any,” Burris said.
“We ”
There was a knock at the office door.
“Who’s there?” Burris called.
“Dr. Gamble,” said the man’s surprisingly
baritone voice.
Burris called: “Come in,
Doctor,” and the door opened. Dr. Gamble’s
lean face looked almost haggard.
“Mr. Burris,” he said,
extending his arms a trifle, “can’t anything
be done?” Malone had seen Gamble speaking before,
and had wondered if it would be possible for the man
to talk with his hands tied behind his back.
Apparently it wouldn’t be. “We feel
that we are approaching a critical stage in Project
Isle,” the scientist said, enclosing one fist
within the other hand. “If anything more
gets out to the Soviets, we might as well publish
our findings ” a wide, outflung gesture
of both arms “in the newspapers.”
Burris stepped back. “We’re
doing the best we can, Dr. Gamble,” he said.
All things considered, his obvious try at radiating
confidence was nearly successful. “After
all,” he went on, “we know a great deal
more than we did four days ago. Miss Thompson
has assured us that the spy is right here, within
the compound of Yucca Flats Labs. We’ve
bottled everything up in this compound, and I’m
confident that no information is at present getting
through to the Soviet Government. Miss Thompson
agrees with me.”
“Miss Thompson?” Gamble
said, one hand at his bearded chin.
“The Queen,” Burris said.
Gamble nodded and two fingers touched
his forehead. “Ah,” he said.
“Of course.” He rubbed at the back
of his neck. “But we can’t keep everybody
who’s here now locked up forever. Sooner
or later we’ll have to let them ”
His left hand described the gesture of a man tossing
away a wad of paper “go.”
His hands fell to his sides. “We’re
lost, unless we can find that spy.”
“We’ll find him,”
Burris said with a show of great confidence.
“But ”
“Give her time,” Burris
said. “Give her time. Remember her
mental condition.”
Boyd looked up. “Rome,”
he said in an absent fashion, “wasn’t built
in a daze.”
Burris glared at him, but said nothing.
Malone filled the conversational hole with what he
thought would be nice, and hopeful, and untrue.
“We know he’s someone
on the reservation, so we’ll catch him eventually,”
he said. “And as long as his information
isn’t getting into Soviet hands, we’re
safe.” He glanced at his wristwatch.
Dr. Gamble said: “But ”
“My, my,” Malone said.
“Almost lunchtime. I have to go over and
have lunch with Her Majesty. Maybe she’s
dug up something more.”
“I hope so,” Dr. Gamble
said, apparently successfully deflected. “I
do hope so.”
“Well,” Malone said, “pardon
me.” He shucked off his coat and trousers.
Then he proceeded to put on the doublet and hose that
hung in the little office closet. He shrugged
into the fur-trimmed, slash-sleeved coat, adjusted
the plumed hat to his satisfaction with great care,
and gave Burris and the others a small bow. “I
go to an audience with Her Majesty, gentlemen,”
he said in a grave, well-modulated voice. “I
shall return anon.”
He went out the door and closed it
carefully behind him. When he had gone a few
steps he allowed himself the luxury of a deep sigh.
Then he went outside and across the
dusty street to the barracks where Her Majesty and
the other telepaths were housed. No one paid any
attention to him, and he rather missed the stares he’d
become used to drawing. But by now, everybody
was used to seeing Elizabethan clothing. Her
Majesty had arrived at a new plateau.
She would now allow no one to have
audience with her unless he was properly dressed.
Even the psychiatrists whom she had, with
a careful sense of meiosis, appointed Physicians to
the Royal House had to wear the stuff.
Malone went over the whole case in
his mind for about the thousandth time,
he told himself bitterly.
Who could the telepathic spy be?
It was like looking for a needle in a rolling stone,
he thought. Or something. He did remember
clearly that a stitch in time saved nine, but he didn’t
know nine what, and suspected it had nothing to do
with his present problem.
How about Dr. Harry Gamble, Malone
thought. It seemed a little unlikely that the
head of Project Isle would be spying on his own men particularly
since he already had all the information. But,
on the other hand, he was just as probable a spy as
anybody else.
Malone moved onward. Dr. Thomas
O’Connor, the Westinghouse psionics man, was
the next nominee. Before Malone had actually found
Her Majesty, he had had a suspicion that O’Connor
had cooked the whole thing up to throw the FBI off
the trail and confuse everybody, and that he’d
intended merely to have the FBI chase ghosts while
the real spy did his work undetected.
But what if O’Connor were the
spy himself a telepath? What if he
were so confident of his ability to throw the Queen
off the track that he had allowed the FBI to find
all the other telepaths? There was another argument
for that: he’d had to report the findings
of his machine no matter what it cost him; there were
too many other men on his staff who knew about it.
O’Connor was a perfectly plausible
spy, too. But he didn’t seem very likely.
The head of a government project is likely to be a
much-investigated man. Could any tie-up with
Russia even a psionic one stand
up against that kind of investigation? It was
possible. Anything, after all, was possible.
You eliminated the impossible, and then whatever remained,
however improbable....
Malone told himself morosely to shut up and think.
O’Connor, he told himself, might
be the spy. It would be a pleasure, he realized,
to go to the office of that superior scientist and
arrest him. “I know your true name,”
he muttered. “It isn’t O’Connor,
it’s Moriarty.” He wondered if the
Westinghouse man had ever done any work on the dynamics
of an asteroid. Then he wondered what the dynamics
of an asteroid were.
But if O’Connor were the spy,
nothing made sense. Why would he have disclosed
the fact that people were having their minds read in
the first place?
Sadly, Malone gave up the idea.
But, then, there were other ideas. The other
psychiatrists, for instance....
The only trouble with them, Malone
realized, was that there seemed to be neither motive
nor anything else to connect them to the case.
There was no evidence, none in any direction.
Why, there was just as much evidence
that the spy was really Kenneth J. Malone, he told
himself.
And then he stopped.
Maybe Tom Boyd had been thinking that
way about him. Maybe Boyd suspected that he,
Malone, was really the spy.
Certainly it worked in reverse. Boyd...
No, Malone told himself firmly. That was silly.
If he were going to consider Boyd,
he realized, he might as well go whole hog and think
about Andrew J. Burris.
And that really was ridiculous. Absolutely
ridic....
Well, Queen Elizabeth had seemed pretty
certain when she’d pointed him out in Dr. Dowson’s
office. And the fact that she’d apparently
changed her mind didn’t have to mean very much.
After all, how much faith could you place in Her Majesty
at the best of times? If she’d made a mistake
about Burris in the first place, she could just as
well have made a mistake in the second place.
Or about the spy’s being at Yucca Flats at all.
In which case, Malone thought sadly,
they were right back where they’d started from.
Behind their own goal line.
One way or another, though, Her Majesty
had made a mistake. She’d pointed Burris
out as the spy, and then she’d said she’d
been wrong. Either Burris was a spy, or else
he wasn’t. You couldn’t have it both
ways.
And if Burris really were the spy,
Malone thought, then why had he started the investigation
in the first place? You came back to the same
question with Burris, he realized, that you had with
Dr. O’Connor: it didn’t make sense
for a man to play one hand against the other.
Maybe the right hand sometimes didn’t know what
the left hand was doing, but this was ridiculous.
So Burris wasn’t the spy.
And Her Majesty had made a mistake when she’d
said....
“Wait a minute,” Malone told himself suddenly.
Had she?
Maybe, after all, you could
have it both ways. The thought occurred to him
with a startling suddenness and he stood silent upon
a peak in Yucca Flats, contemplating it. A second
went by.
And then something Burris himself
had said came back to him, something that
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
He came to a dead stop in the middle
of the street. In one sudden flash of insight,
all the pieces of the case he’d been looking
at for so long fell together and formed one consistent
picture. The pattern was complete.
Malone blinked.
In that second, he knew exactly who the spy was.
A jeep honked raucously and swerved
around him. The driver leaned out to curse and
Malone waved at him, dimly recognizing a private eye
he had once known, a middle-aged man named Archer.
Wondering vaguely what Archer was doing this far East,
and in a jeep at that, Malone watched the vehicle
disappear down the street. There were more cars
coming, but what difference did that make? Malone
didn’t care about cars. After all, he had
the answer, the whole answer....
“I’ll be damned,”
he said again, abruptly, and wheeled around to head
back to the offices.
On the way, he stopped in at another
small office, this one inhabited by the two FBI men
from Las Vegas. He gave a series of quick orders,
and got the satisfaction, as he left, of seeing one
of the FBI men grabbing for a phone in a hurry.
It was good to be doing things
again, important things.
Burris, Boyd and Dr. Gamble were still
talking as Malone entered.
“That,” Burris said, “was
one hell of a quick lunch. What’s Her Majesty
doing now running a diner?”
Malone ignored the bait, and drew
himself to his full height. “Gentlemen,”
he said solemnly, “Her Majesty has asked that
all of us attend her in audience. She has information
of the utmost gravity to impart, and wishes this audience
at once.”
Dr. Gamble made a puzzled, circular
gesture with one hand. “What’s the
matter?” he asked. “Is something ”
The hand dropped “wrong?”
Burris barely glanced at him.
A startled expression came over his features.
“Has she ” he began, and stopped,
leaving his mouth open and the rest of the sentence
unfinished.
Malone nodded gravely and drew in
a breath. Elizabethan periods were hard on the
lungs, he had begun to realize: you needed a lot
of air before you embarked on a sentence. “I
believe, gentlemen,” he said, “that Her
Majesty is about to reveal the identity of the spy
who has been battening on Project Isle.”
The silence lasted no more than three
seconds. Dr. Gamble didn’t even make a
gesture during that time. Then Burris spoke.
“Let’s go,” he snapped.
He wheeled and headed for the door. The others
promptly followed.
“Gentlemen!” Malone said,
sounding, as far as he could tell, properly shocked
and offended. “Your dress!”
“What?” Dr. Gamble said, throwing up both
hands.
“Oh, no,” Boyd chimed in.
“Not now.”
Burris simply said: “You’re
quite right. Get dressed, Boyd I mean,
of course, Sir Thomas.”
While they were dressing, Malone put
in a call to Dr. O’Connor’s office.
The scientist was as frosty as ever.
“Yes, Mr. Malone?” The
sound of that voice, Malone reflected, was enough
to give anybody double revolving pneumonia with knobs
on.
“Dr. O’Connor,”
he said, “Her Majesty wants you in her court
in ten minutes and in full court dress.”
O’Connor merely sighed, like
Boreas. “What is this,” he asked,
“more tomfoolery?”
“I really couldn’t say,”
Malone told him coyly. “But I’d advise
you to be there. It might interest you.”
“Interest me?” O’Connor
stormed. “I’ve got work to do here important
work. You simply do not realize, Mr. Malone ”
“Whatever I realize,”
Malone cut in, feeling brave, “I’m passing
on orders from Her Majesty.”
“That insane woman,” O’Connor
stated flatly, “is not going to order me about.
Good Lord, do you know what you’re saying?”
Malone nodded. “I certainly
do,” he said cheerfully. “If you’d
rather, I can have the orders backed up by the United
States Government. But that won’t be necessary,
will it?”
“The United States Government,”
O’Connor said, thawing perceptibly about the
edges, “ought to allow a man to do his proper
work, and not force him to go chasing off after the
latest whims of some insane old lady.”
“You will be there, now, won’t
you?” Malone asked. His own voice reminded
him of something, and in a second he had it: the
cooing, gentle persuasion of Dr. Andrew Blake of Rice
Pavilion, who had locked Malone in a padded cell.
It was the voice of a man talking to a mental case.
It sounded remarkably apt. Dr.
O’Connor went slightly purple, but controlled
himself magnificently. “I’ll be there,”
he said.
“Good,” Malone told him, and snapped the
phone off.
Then he put in a second call to the
psychiatrists from St. Elizabeths and told them the
same thing. More used to the strange demands of
neurotic and psychotic patients, they were readier
to comply.
Everyone, Malone realized with satisfaction,
was now assembling. Burris and the others were
ready to go, sparklingly dressed and looking impatient.
Malone put down the phone and took one great breath
of relief.
Then, beaming, he led the others out.
Ten minutes later, there were nine
men in Elizabethan costume standing outside the room
which had been designated as the Queen’s Court.
Dr. Gamble’s costume did not quite fit him;
his sleeve-ruffs were half way up to his elbows and
his doublet had an unfortunate tendency to creep.
The St. Elizabeths men, all four of them, looked just
a little like moth-eaten versions of old silent pictures.
Malone looked them over with a somewhat sardonic eye.
Not only did he have the answer to the whole problem
that had been plaguing them, but his costume
was a stunning, perfect fit.
“Now, I want you men to let
me handle this,” Malone said. “I know
just what I want to say, and I think I can get the
information without too much trouble.”
One of the psychiatrists spoke up.
“I trust you won’t disturb the patient,
Mr. Malone,” he said.
“Sir Kenneth,” Malone snapped.
The psychiatrist looked both abashed
and worried. “I’m sorry,” he
said doubtfully.
Malone nodded. “That’s
all right,” he said. “I’ll try
not to disturb Her Majesty unduly.”
The psychiatrists conferred.
When they came out of the huddle one of them Malone
was never able to tell them apart said:
“Very well, we’ll let you handle it.
But we will be forced to interfere if we feel you’re ah going
too far.”
Malone said: “That’s fair enough,
gentlemen. Let’s go.”
He opened the door.
It was a magnificent room. The
whole place had been done over in plastic and synthetic
fibers to look like something out of the Sixteenth
Century. It was as garish, and as perfect, as
a Hollywood movie set which wasn’t
surprising, since two stage designers had been hired
away from color-TV spectaculars to set it up.
At the far end of the room, past the rich hangings
and the flaming chandeliers, was a great throne, and
on it Her Majesty was seated. Lady Barbara reclined
on the steps at her feet.
Malone saw the expression on Her Majesty’s
face. He wanted to talk to Barbara but
there wasn’t time. Later, there might be.
Now, he collected his mind and drove one thought at
the Queen, one single powerful thought:
Read me! You know by this
time that I have the truth but read
deeper!
The expression on her face changed
suddenly. She was smiling a sad, gentle little
smile. Lady Barbara, who had looked up at the
approach of Sir Kenneth and his entourage, relaxed
again, but her eyes remained on Malone. “You
may approach, my lords,” said the Queen.
Sir Kenneth led the procession, with
Sir Thomas and Sir Andrew close behind him. O’Connor
and Gamble came next, and bringing up the rear were
the four psychiatrists. They strode slowly along
the red carpet that stretched from the door to the
foot of the throne. They came to a halt a few
feet from the steps leading up to the throne, and bowed
in unison.
“You may explain, Sir Kenneth,” Her Majesty
said.
“Your Majesty understands the conditions?”
Malone asked.
“Perfectly,” said the Queen. “Proceed.”
Now the expression on Barbara’s
face changed, to wonder and a kind of fright.
Malone didn’t look at her. Instead, he turned
to Dr. O’Connor.
“Dr. O’Connor, what are
your plans for the telepaths who have been brought
here?” He shot the question out quickly, and
O’Connor was caught off-balance.
“Well ah we
would like their cooperation in further research which
we ah plan to do into the actual
mechanisms of telepathy. Provided, of course ”
He coughed gently “provided that they
become ah accessible.
Miss I mean, of course, Her Majesty has
already been a great deal of help.” He
gave Malone an odd look. It seemed to say:
What’s coming next?
Malone simply gave him a nod, and
a “Thank you, Doctor,” and turned to Burris.
He could feel Barbara’s eyes on him, but he went
on with his prepared questions. “Chief,”
he said, “what about you? After we nail
our spy, what happens to Her Majesty, I
mean? You don’t intend to stop giving her
the homage due her, do you?”
Burris stared, openmouthed. After
a second he managed to say: “Why, no, of
course not, Sir Kenneth. That is ”
and he glanced over at the psychiatrists “if
the doctors think....”
There was another hurried consultation.
The four psychiatrists came out of it with a somewhat
shaky statement to the effect that treatments which
had been proven to have some therapeutic value ought
not to be discontinued, although of course there was
always the chance that....
“Thank you, gentlemen,”
Malone said smoothly. He could see that they
were nervous, and no wonder; he could imagine how difficult
it was for a psychiatrist to talk about a patient
in her presence. But they’d already realized
that it didn’t make any difference; their thoughts
were an open book, anyway.
Lady Barbara said: “Sir I
mean Ken are you going to ”
“What’s this all about?” Burris
snapped.
“Just a minute, Sir Andrew,”
Malone said. “I’d like to ask one
of the doctors here or all of them, for
that matter one more question.”
He whirled and faced them. “I’m assuming
that not one of these persons is legally responsible
for his or her actions. Is that correct?”
Another hurried huddle. The psych
boys were beginning to remind Malone of a semi-pro
football team in rather unusual uniforms.
Finally one of them said: “You
are correct. According to the latest statutes,
all of these persons are legally insane including
Her Majesty.” He paused and gulped.
“I except the FBI, of course and
ourselves.” Another pause. “And
Dr. O’Connor and Dr. Gamble.”
“And,” said Lady Barbara,
“me.” She smiled sweetly at them all.
“Ah,” the psychiatrist
said. “Certainly. Of course.”
He retired into his group with some confusion.
Malone was looking straight at the
throne. Her Majesty’s countenance was serene
and unruffled.
Barbara said suddenly: “You
don’t mean but she ”
and closed her mouth. Malone shot her one quick
look, and then turned to the Queen.
“Well, Your Majesty?”
he said. “You have seen the thoughts of
every man here. How do they appear to you?”
Her voice contained both tension and
relief. “They are all good men, basically and
kind men,” she said. “And they believe
us. That’s the important thing, you know.
Their belief in us.... Just as you said that
first day we met. We’ve needed belief for
so long ... for so long....” Her voice
trailed off; it seemed to become lost in a constellation
of thoughts. Barbara had turned to look up at
Her Majesty.
Malone took a step forward, but Burris
interrupted him. “How about the spy?”
he said.
Then his eyes widened. Boyd,
standing next to him, leaned suddenly forward.
“That’s why you mentioned all that about
legal immunity because of insanity,” he whispered.
“Because ”
“No,” Barbara said. “No.
She couldn’t she’s not ”
They were all looking at Her Majesty,
now. She returned them stare for stare, her back
stiff and straight and her white hair enhaloed in the
room’s light. “Sir Kenneth,”
she said and her voice was only the least
bit unsteady “they all think I’m
the spy.”
Barbara stood up. “Listen,”
she said. “I didn’t like Her Majesty
at first well, she was a patient, and that
was all, and when she started putting on airs ...
but since I’ve gotten to know her I do like her.
I like her because she’s good and kind herself,
and because because she wouldn’t
be a spy. She couldn’t be. No matter
what any of you think even you Sir
Kenneth!”
There was a second of silence.
“Of course she’s not,” Malone said
quietly. “She’s no spy.”
“Would I spy on my own subjects?” she
said. “Use your reason!”
“You mean ” Burris began, and
Boyd finished for him:
“ she isn’t?”
“No,” Malone snapped.
“She isn’t. Remember, you said it
would take a telepath to catch a telepath?”
“Well ” Burris began.
“Well, Her Majesty remembered it,” Malone
said. “And acted on it.”
Barbara remained standing. She
went to the Queen and put an arm around the little
old lady’s shoulder. Her Majesty did not
object. “I knew,” she said.
“You couldn’t have been a spy.”
“Listen, dear,” the Queen
said. “Your Kenneth has seen the truth of
the matter. Listen to him.”
“Her Majesty not only caught
the spy,” Malone said, “but she turned
the spy right over to us.”
He turned at once and went back down
the long red carpet to the door. I really ought
to get a sword, he thought, and didn’t see
Her Majesty smile. He opened the door with a
great flourish and said quietly: “Bring
him in, boys.”
The FBI men from Las Vegas marched
in. Between them was their prisoner, a boy with
a vacuous face, clad in a straitjacket that seemed
to make no difference at all to him. His mind
was somewhere else. But his body was
trapped between the FBI agents: the body of William
Logan.
“Impossible,” one of the psychiatrists
said.
Malone spun on his heel and led the
way back to the throne. Logan and his guards
followed closely.
“Your Majesty,” Malone
said. “May I present the prisoner?”
“Perfectly correct, Sir Kenneth,”
the Queen said. “Poor Willie is your spy.
You won’t be too hard on him, will you?”
“I don’t think so, Your
Majesty,” Malone said. “After all ”
“Now wait a minute,” Burris
exploded. “How the hell did you know
any of this?”
Malone bowed to Her Majesty, and winked
at Barbara. He turned to Burris. “Well,”
he said, “I had one piece of information none
of the rest of you had. When we were in the Desert
Edge Sanatorium, Dr. Dowson called you on the phone.
Remember?”
“Sure I remember,” Burris said. “So?”
“Well,” Malone said, “Her
Majesty said she knew just where the spy was.
I asked her where ”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Burris screamed. “You knew all this time
and you didn’t tell me?”
“Hold on,” Malone said.
“I asked her where and she said:
’He’s right there.’ And she
was pointing right at your image on the screen.”
Burris opened his mouth. Nothing
came out. He closed it and tried again.
At last he managed one word.
“Me?” he said.
“You,” Malone said.
“But that’s what I realized later.
She wasn’t pointing at you. She was pointing
at Logan, who was in the next room.”
Barbara whispered: “Is that right, Your
Majesty?”
“Certainly, dear,” the
Queen said calmly. “Would I lie to Sir
Kenneth?”
Malone was still talking. “The
thing that set me off this noon was something you
said, Sir Andrew,” he went on. “You
said there weren’t any sane telepaths remember?”
Burris, incapable of speech, merely nodded.
“But according to Her Majesty,”
Malone said, “we had every telepath in the United
States right here. She told me that and
I didn’t even see it!”
“Don’t blame yourself,
Sir Kenneth,” the Queen put in. “I
did do my best to mislead you, you know.”
“You sure did!” Malone
said. “And later on, when we were driving
here, she said the spy was ‘moving around.’
That’s right; he was in the car behind us, going
eighty miles an hour.”
Barbara stared. Malone got a
lot of satisfaction out of that stare. But there
was still more ground to cover.
“Then,” he said, “she
told us he was here at Yucca Flats after
we brought him here! It had to be one of the
other six telepaths.”
The psychiatrist who’d muttered:
“Impossible,” was still muttering it.
Malone ignored him.
“And when I remembered her pointing
at you,” Malone told Burris, “and remembered
that she’d only said: ‘He’s
right there,’ I knew it had to be Logan.
You weren’t there. You were only an image
on a TV screen. Logan was there in
the room behind the phone.”
Burris had found his tongue.
“All right,” he said. “Okay.
But what’s all this about misleading us and
why didn’t she tell us right away, anyhow?”
Malone turned to Her Majesty on the
throne. “I think that the Queen had better
explain that if she will.”
Queen Elizabeth Thompson nodded very
slowly. “I I only wanted you
to respect me,” she said. “To treat
me properly.” Her voice sounded uneven,
and her eyes were glistening with unspilled tears.
Lady Barbara tightened her arm about the Queen’s
shoulders once more.
“It’s all right,” she said.
“We do respect you.”
The Queen smiled up at her.
Malone waited. After a second Her Majesty continued.
“I was afraid that as soon as
you found poor Willie you’d send me back to
the hospital,” she said. “And Willie
couldn’t tell the Russian agents any more once
he’d been taken away. So I thought I’d
just just let things stay the way they
were as long as I could. That’s that’s
all.”
Malone nodded. After a second
he said: “You see that we couldn’t
possibly send you back now, don’t you?”
“You know all the State Secrets,
Your Majesty,” Malone said. “We would
rather that Dr. Harman in San Francisco didn’t
try to talk you out of them. Or anyone else.”
The Queen smiled tremulously.
“I know too much, do I?” she said.
Then her grin faded. “Poor Dr. Harman,”
she said.
“Poor Dr. Harman?”
“You’ll hear about him
in a day or so,” she said. “I peeked
inside his mind. He’s very ill.”
“Ill?” Lady Barbara asked.
“Oh, yes,” the Queen said.
The trace of a smile appeared on her face. “He
thinks that all the patients in the hospital can see
inside his mind.”
“Oh, my,” Lady Barbara
said and began to laugh. It was the
nicest sound Malone had ever heard.
“Forget Harman,” Burris
snapped. “What about this spy ring?
How was Logan getting his information out?”
“I’ve already taken care
of that,” Malone said. “I had Desert
Edge Sanatorium surrounded as soon as I knew what
the score was.” He looked at one of the
agents holding Logan.
“They ought to be in the Las
Vegas jail within half an hour,” he said in
confirmation.
“Dr. Dowson was in on it, wasn’t
he, Your Majesty?” Malone said.
“Certainly,” the Queen
said. Her eyes were suddenly very cold. “I
hope he tries to escape. I hope he tries it.”
Malone knew just how she felt.
One of the psychiatrists spoke up
suddenly. “I don’t understand it,”
he said. “Logan is completely catatonic.
Even if he could read minds, how could he tell Dowson
what he’d read? It doesn’t make sense.”
“In the first place,”
the Queen said patiently, “Willie isn’t
catatonic. He’s just busy, that’s
all. He’s only a boy, and well,
he doesn’t much like being who he is. So
he visits other people’s minds, and that way
he becomes them for a while. You see?”
“Vaguely,” Malone said.
“But how did Dowson get his information?
I had everything worked out but that.”
“I know you did,” the
Queen said, “and I’m proud of you.
I intend to award you with the Order of the Bath for
this day’s work.”
Unaccountably, Malone’s chest swelled with pride.
“As for Dr. Dowson,” the
Queen said, “that traitor hurt
Willie. If he’s hurt enough, he’ll
come back.” Her eyes weren’t hard
any more. “He didn’t want to be a
spy, really,” she said, “but he’s
just a boy, and it must have sounded rather exciting.
He knew that if he told Dowson everything he’d
found out, they’d let him go go away
again.”
There was a long silence.
“Well,” Malone said, “that about
wraps it up. Any questions?”
He looked around at the men, but before
any of them could speak up Her Majesty rose.
“I’m sure there are questions,”
she said, “but I’m really very tired.
My lords, you are excused.” She extended
a hand. “Come, Lady Barbara,” she
said. “I think I really may need that nap,
now.”
Malone put the cufflinks in his shirt
with great care. They were great stones, and
Malone thought that they gave his costume that necessary
Elizabethan flair.
Not that he was wearing the costumes
of the Queen’s Court now. Instead, he was
dressed in a tailor-proud suit of dark blue, a white-on-white
shirt and no tie. He selected one of a gorgeous
peacock pattern from his closet rack.
Boyd yawned at him from the bed in
the room they were sharing. “Stepping out?”
he said.
“I am,” Malone said with
restraint. He whipped the tie round his neck
and drew it under the collar.
“Anybody I know?”
“I am meeting Lady Barbara, if you wish to know,”
Malone said.
“My God,” Boyd said.
“Come down. Relax. Anyhow, I’ve
got a question for you. There was one little
thing Her Everlovin’ Majesty didn’t explain.”
“Yes?” said Malone.
“Well, about those hoods who
tried to gun us down,” Boyd said. “Who
hired ’em? And why?”
“Dowson,” Malone said.
“He wanted to kill us off, and then kidnap Logan
from the hotel room. But we foiled his plan by
killing his hoods. By the time he could work
up something else, we were on our way to Yucca Flats.”
“Great,” Boyd said.
“And how did you find out this startling piece
of information? There haven’t been any
reports in from Las Vegas, have there?”
“No,” Malone said.
“Okay,” Boyd said. “I give
up, Mastermind.”
Malone wished Boyd would stop using
that nickname. The fact was as he,
and apparently nobody else, was willing to recognize that
he wasn’t anything like a really terrific FBI
agent. Even Barbara thought he was something
special.
He wasn’t, he knew. He was just lucky.
“Her Majesty informed me,” Malone said.
“Her ” Boyd
stood with his mouth dropped open, like a fish waiting
for some bait. “You mean she knew?”
“Well,” Malone said, “she
did know the guys in the Buick weren’t the best
in the business and she knew all about the
specially-built FBI Lincoln. She got that from
our minds.” He knotted his tie with an air
of great aplomb, and went slowly to the door.
“And she knew we were a good team. She
got that from our minds, too.”
“But,” Boyd said.
After a second he said: “But,” again,
and followed it with: “Why didn’t
she tell us?”
Malone opened the door.
“Her Majesty wished to see the
Queen’s Own FBI in action,” said Sir Kenneth
Malone.