_ After the great mass of teeth, vaguely surrounded by a face, had faded from Malone's screen, he just sat there, looking at the dead, grey screen of the visiphone and feeling about twice as dead and at least three times as grey.
Things, he told himself, were terrible. But even that sentence, which was a good deal more cheerful than what he actually felt, didn't do anything to improve his mood. All of the evidence, after all, had been practically living on the tip of his nose for nearly twenty-four hours, and not only had he done nothing about it, but he hadn't even seen it.
Two or three times, for instance, he'd doubted the possibility of teleporting another human being. All his logic had told him it wasn't so. But, he'd thought, he and Her Majesty had teleported Lou, and so, obviously, his logic was wrong.
No, it wasn't, he thought now. There _would_ be too much mental resistance, even if the person were unconscious. Teleportation of another human being _would_ be impossible.
Unless, of course, the other human being was able to teleport on her own.
True, she had been no more than semiconscious. She probably couldn't have teleported on her own. But Malone and Her Majesty had, ever so kindly and ever so mistakenly, helped her, and Lou had managed to teleport to the plane.
And that wasn't all, he thought dismally. That was far from all.
"Let's take another for-instance," he said savagely, in what he thought was a caricature of the Manelli voice. In order for all three to teleport, there had to be perfect synchronization.
Otherwise, they'd have arrived either at different places, or at the same place but at different times.
And perfect synchronization on a psionic level meant telepathy. At least two of the three had to be telepathic. Her Majesty was, of course. Malone wasn't.
So Lou had to be telepathic, too.
Malone told himself bitterly to quit calling the girl Lou. After the way she'd deceived him, she didn't deserve it. Her name was Luba Garbitsch, and from now on he was going to call her Luba Garbitsch. In his own mind, anyway.
Facts came tumbling in on him like the side of a mountain, falling on a hapless traveler during a landslide. And, Malone told himself, he had never had less help in all of his ill-starred life.
Her Majesty had never, never suspected that Luba Garbitsch was anything other than the girl she pretended to be. That was negative evidence, true, and taken alone it meant nothing at all. But when you added the other facts to it, it showed, with perfect plainness, that Luba Garbitsch was the fortunate possessor of a mind shield as tough, as strong and as perfect as any Malone, O'Connor or good old Cartier Taylor had ever even thought of dreaming up.
And then, very suddenly, another fact arrived, and pushed the rest out into the black night of Malone's bitter mind. He punched hard on the intercom button and got the desk of the agent-in-charge.
"Now what's wrong?" the A-in-C said. "Ghosts got loose? Or do you want some help with a beautiful blonde heiress?"
"What would I be doing," Malone snapped, "with a beautiful blonde heiress?"
The agent-in-charge looked thoughtful. It was obvious that he had been saving his one joke up for several hours. "You might be holding her," he suggested, "for ransom, of course."
"That's not funny," Malone said. "Nothing is funny any more."
"Oh, all right," the A-in-C said. "You Washington boys are just too good for the rest of us. What's on your mind?"
"You've got a twenty-four-hour watch on Luba Garbitsch, haven't you?" Malone said.
"Sure we have," the A-in-C said. "Boyd said--"
"Yes, I know what he said," Malone cut in. "Give me a check on those men. I want to find out where she is right now. Right this minute."
The agent-in-charge shrugged. "Sure," he said. "It's none of my business. Hang on a second."
The screen went blank, but it didn't go silent. Each of the agents, on a stakeout job like the Garbitsch one, would be carrying personal communicators, and Malone could hear the voice of the agent-in-charge as he spoke to them.
He couldn't make out all the words, and it wasn't important anyhow. He'd know soon enough, he kept telling himself; just as soon as the A-in-C came back and reported.
It seemed like about twelve years before he did.
"She's all right," he said. "Nothing to worry about; she's probably working late at her office, that's all. She hasn't gone home yet."
"Want to bet?" Malone snapped.
"Don't tempt me," the A-in-C said. "I wouldn't take your money--it's probably counterfeit, printed in Washington."
"I'll give you ten to one," Malone said.
"Ten to one, I'll take," the A-in-C said rapidly. "Ten to one is like taking candy from a traffic cop. I'm no amateur, even if I am stuck away in dull little old New York--and I know the boys I've got on stakeout. I'll check, and--"
"Let me know when you do," Malone said. "I've got some long-distance calls to make."
* * * * *
Forty-five minutes later, he had all the news he needed. Spot checks on PRS offices on the West Coast, where it wasn't closing time yet, showed that all the executive officers had suddenly felt the need of extended vacations to parts unknown.
That, if not exactly cheering news, was still welcome; Malone had more backing for his theory.
An overseas call to New Scotland Yard in London took a little more time, and several arguments with bored overseas operators who, apparently, had nothing better to do than to confuse the customers. But Malone finally managed to get Assistant Commissioner C. E. Teal, who promised to check on Malone's 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. It is rather late here, as you must realize--"
"Yes?" Malone said. "And they've all gone?"
"Why, no," Teal said, surprised. "A spot check shows that most of the executives of the London branch of the Psychical Research Society are spending quiet evenings in their homes. Our Inspector Ottermole actually spoke to Dr. Carnacki, the head of the office here."
"Oh," Malone said.
"They haven't skipped," Teal went on. "Is this in connection with anything serious, Mr. Malone?"
"Not yet," Malone said. "But I'll let you know at once if there are any further developments. Thanks very much, Mr. Teal."
"A pleasure, Mr. Malone," Teal said. "A pleasure." And then, still masticating, he switched off.
And that, Malone told himself, was definitely that. Of course the British PRS hadn't gone underground; why should they? The British police weren't on to them, as Scotland Yard showed. And, no matter what opinions Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I might hold in the matter, the FBI had absolutely no jurisdiction in the British Isles.
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 said 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 plain bad English, but he wasn't sure of anything any more. Things were getting much too confused.
There was a knock at the door.
Malone, without any hope at all, called: "Come in," and the door opened.
The agent-in-charge came in, and dropped a dollar on Malone's desk.
"So you checked," Malone said.
"I checked," the A-in-C said sadly. "The boys went through the entire damned building. Not a sign of her. Not even a trace."
"There wouldn't be one," Malone said, shoving the dollar back to waiting hands. "Take the money; I knew what would happen. It was a sucker bet."
"Well, I feel like the sucker, all right," the A-in-C said. "I don't know how she did it."
"I do," Malone said quietly. "Teleportation."
The A-in-C whistled. "Well," he said, "it was a great secret as long as it was FBI property. But now, friend, all hell is going to bust loose."
"It already has," Malone said hollowly.
"Great," the A-in-C said. "What now?"
"Now," Malone said, "I am going to go back to Washington. Take care of poor little old New York for me."
He closed his eyes, 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 when the air was bright blue, some minutes later, 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 would amount to. He could have all the homes of all the missing PRS members checked. That would result, undoubtedly, in the discovery that the PRS members involved weren't in their homes. He could have their files impounded, which would clutter everything with a great many more pieces of paper, and none of the pieces of paper would do any good to him. In general, he could have the entire FBI chasing all over hell and gone--and finding nothing whatever.
No, it would be a waste of time, he told himself. That much was certain.
And, though he probably had enough evidence to get the FBI in motion, he had nowhere near enough to carry the case into court, much less make a try at getting the case to stand up in court. That was one thing he couldn't do, even if he wanted to: issue warrants for arrest on any basis whatever.
But Malone was an FBI agent, and his motto was: "There's always a way." No normal method of tracking down the PRS members, and finding their present whereabouts, was going to work. They'd been covering themselves for such an emergency, undoubtedly, for a good many years and, due to telepathy, they certainly knew enough not to leave any clues around, of any kind.
But nobody, Malone told himself, 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 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. Instead, he went into the kitchen and started heating water for coffee. He thought there might be a long night ahead of him, and 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 swore at it. 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 traffic floated in the air. Downstairs somebody was playing a television set too loudly, and the voice reached Malone's semi-aware mind in a great tinny shout:
"And now, the makers of Bon-Ton B-Complex Bolsters--the blanket of health--present Mother Kohler's Chit-Chat Hour!"
The invisible audience screamed and howled. 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 exactly noon.
"But first," the announcer burbled downstairs, "a word from Mother Kohler herself, about the brand new special B-Complex _Irradiated_ Bolster you can get at your neighborhood stores..."
"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 more clear-headed than he'd been feeling. Maybe the sleep had done him some good.
He yawned, blinked and stretched, and then he padded into the bathroom, showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes. He thought about having a morning 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.
He was going to have to face Burris eventually, he knew.
And now was just as good, or as bad, a time as any.
Malone didn't hesitate. He punched the button on his intercom for Burris' office and then sat back, with his eyes closed, 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 this afternoon."
"Oh," Malone said. "Sure. Okay. 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 report success instead of failure. "But what's going on in Miami?" he added.
"Don't you read the papers?" Wolf asked.
Everybody, Malone reflected, seemed to be asking him that lately. "I haven't had time," he said.
"The governor of Mississippi was assassinated yesterday, at Miami Beach," Wolf said.
"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. They haven't got him, Malone. It seems 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. "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. "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 might have seen a man acting suspicious in any of the nearby buildings, or heard a shot, or seen anybody at all lurking or loitering anywhere remotely close 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. The bullet and the body are supposed to be written off as just coincidences, to keep the fair name of Miami Beach unsullied."
"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. He flicked off.
Now, he asked himself, how did the assassination of Governor Nemours P. Flarion fit in with anything? Granted, good old Nemours P. had been a horrible mistake, a paranoid, self-centered, would-be dictator whose talents as a rabble-rouser and a fearmonger had somehow managed to get him elected to a governorship. Certainly nobody felt particularly unhappy about his death. But he wouldn't fit into the pattern. Malone reminded himself that that was one more thing he had to find out when he got the chance.
The trouble lay in finding an opportunity, he thought--and then he corrected himself.
Not _finding_ it--_making_ it. 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 Vasilovna Garbitsch. Both of those last are connected with the Society."
"Right," Potter said. "They'll be up at once."
Then he punched again, and asked for the latest copy of the Washington _Post_. He gave the article on Governor Flarion one quick glance, but it didn't contain anything in the way of facts that he hadn't already had from Wolf. After that, he left it and concentrated on the more prosaic, human-interest news, the smaller stories.
FIFTH SPLINTER GROUP FORMS IN DCA BATTLE
That was an interesting one, he thought. The Daughters of Colonial Americans had about reached the point of diminishing returns in their battle over the claims of Rose Carswell Elder, a descendant of a Negro freedman named William Elder who had lived in Boston in 1776 and fought on the side of the Colonies during the Revolution. One more splinter group, Malone thought, and there'd be as many splinters as members. Rose Carswell Elder was pressing her claim for membership, and the ladies were replying by throwing crockery and hard words at each other.
Then there was the Legion of American War Veterans. The headline on this one read:
LAWV OUSTS 'ROWDIES': AID MEETING CONTINUES
The "rowdies," Malone discovered, were a large minority group that wanted the good old days of electric canes, paper hats, whistles and pretty girls. "The Legion has grown up," a spokesman told them. "This convention is being held to discuss the possibility of increased technological aid to India and Africa. There is no place for tomfoolery or high jinks."
The expulsion order had been carried by a record majority.
And then there were two items, on different pages, that seemed to contradict each other. The first was a small headline on page fourteen:
RESIGNATIONS REACH NEW HIGH IN U.S. COLLEGE FACULTIES
Teachers were apparently resigning all over the place, in virtually every department of virtually every college. That made sense. And the other item, on page three, made just as much sense:
HIGHER TAXES VOTED THROUGHOUT U.S.
FOR TEACHER INCOME RISE
State and Federal Aid Also Promised
in Drive to Raise Salaries Now
Apparently, teachers were resigning just as they were about to get more money than they'd ever seen before. But Malone could fit that into the pattern easily enough; it was perfectly obvious, once he thought about it.
Malone didn't have time to go through much more of the paper; the facsimile records he'd been waiting for arrived, and he put the _Post_ aside and concentrated on them instead. Maybe somewhere in the records was the clue he desperately needed.
The PRS was widely spread, all right. 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 non-materialistic, 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, didn't really matter. Maybe in Russia they called themselves the Lenin Study Group, or the Better Borshcht League. He was fairly sure, from what he'd experienced, that the PRS had some kind of organization even behind the Iron Curtain.
Money 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 each year 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; it was 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 no clues he could use.
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 reach the bottom of the best-seller list.
And that was that. Malone tried to figure out whether all this information did him any good at all, and he didn't have to think for very long. The answer was no. He opened the next dossier.
Luba Vasilovna Garbitsch had been born in New York. Her mother had been a woman of Irish descent named Mary O'Keefe, and had died in '68. Her father, of course, had now been revealed as a Russian agent, and was at present making his home, such as it probably was, in good old Moscow.
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. He was sure of only one thing: the final answer.
And it _was_ obvious. Obvious as all hell. _