Brain Twister

“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’Co

But what if O’Co

O’Co

Malone told himself morosely to shut up and think.

O’Co

But if O’Co

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 co

Why, there was just as much evidence that the spy was really Ke

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’Co

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 sudde

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.