without stating
very many facts. "Sir Lewis," he said, "I trust you'll keep this
conversation confidential."

"Naturally," Sir Lewis said. He removed the pipe, stared at it, and
replaced it.

"I can't give you the full details," Malone went on, "but the FBI is
presently engaged in an investigation which requires the specialized
knowledge your organization seems to have."

"FBI?" Sir Lewis said. "Specialized investigation?" He seemed pleased,
but a trifle puzzled. "Dear boy, anything we have is at your disposal,
of course. But I quite fail to see how you can consider us--"

"It's rather an unusual problem," Malone said, feeling that that was
the understatement of the year. "But I understand that your records go
back nearly a century."

"Quite true," Sir Lewis murmured.

"During that time," Malone said, "the Society investigated a great
many supposedly supernatural or supernormal incidents."

"Many of them," Sir Lewis said, "were discovered to be fraudulent, I'm
afraid. The great majority, in fact."

"That's what I'd assume," Malone said. He fished in his pockets, found
a cigarette and lit it. Sir Lewis went on chewing at his unlit pipe.
"What we're interested in," Malone said, "is some description of the
various methods by which these frauds were perpetrated."

"Ah," Sir Lewis said. "The tricks of the trade, so to speak?"

"Exactly," Malone said.

"Well, then," Sir Lewis said. "The luminous gauze, for instance, that
passes for ectoplasm; the various methods of table-lifting; control of
the ouija board--things like that?"

"Not quite that elementary," Malone said. He puffed on the cigarette,
wishing it was a cigar. "We're pretty much up to that kind of thing.
But had it ever occurred to you that many of the methods used by phony
mind-reading acts, for instance, might be used as communication
methods by spies?"

"Why, I believe some have been," Sir Lewis said. "Though I don't know
much about that, of course; there was a case during the First World
War--"

"Exactly," Malone said. He took a deep breath. "It's things like that
we're interested in," he said, and spent the next twenty minutes
slowly approaching his subject. Sir Lewis, apparently fascinated, was
perfectly willing to unbend in any direction, and jotted down notes on
some of Malone's more interesting cases, murmuring: "Most unusual,
most unusual," as he wrote.

The various types of phenomena that the Society had investigated came
into the dis