u can see, that leaves us no alternative. Sorry.
Miss Luba A. sends her apologies to you, since she is joining us; my
apologies are also tendered." The girl looked up. "It's signed by Sir
Lewis," she said. "Does that mean anything to you, Mr. Malone?"

"I'm afraid it does," Malone said blankly. "It means entirely too
much."

XIII

After Miss Dental Display had faded from Malone's screen, he just sat
there, looking at the dead, gray front of the visiphone and feeling
about twice as dead and at least three times as gray.

Things, he told himself, were terrible. But even that sentence, which
was a good deal more cheerful than what he actually felt, did nothing
whatever to improve his mood. All of the evidence, after all, had been
practically living on the tip of his nose for God alone knew how long,
and not only had he done nothing about it, he hadn't even seen it.

There was the organization, staring him in the face. There was
Luba--nobody's fool, no starry-eyed dreamer of occult dreams. She was
part of the Psychical Research Society, why hadn't he thought to
wonder why she was connected with it?

And there was his own mind-shield. Why hadn't he wondered whether
other telepaths might not have the same shield?

He thought about Luba and told himself bitterly that from now on she
was Miss Ardanko. Enough, he told himself, was enough. From now on he
was calling her by her last name, formally and distantly. In his own
mind, anyhow.

Facts came tumbling in on him like the side of a mountain falling on a
hapless traveler, during a landslide season. And, Malone told himself,
he had never possessed less hap in all of his ill-starred life.

And then, very suddenly, one more fact arrived, and pushed the rest
out into the black night of Malone's bitter mind. He stood up, pushing
the books away, and closed his eyes. When he opened them he went to
the telephone in his Las Vegas hotel suite, and switched it on. A
smiling operator appeared. Malone wanted to see him die of poison,
slowly.

"Give me Room 4-T," he snapped. "Hurry."

"Room forty?" the operator asked.

"Damn it," Malone said, "I said 4-T and I meant 4-T. Four as in four
and T as in--as in China. And hurry."

"Oh," the operator said. "Yes, sir." He turned away from the screen.
"That would have been Miss Luba Ardanko's room, sir?" he said.

"Right," Malone snapped. "I ... wait a minute. Would have been?"

"That's correct, sir," the operator said. "She chec