FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108  
109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   >>  
said, "I knew you couldn't be American. Not after the phone call. You don't have to hide your nationality here; we're quite accustomed to foreign visitors. And we don't have special prices for tourists." Malone waited two breaths. "Will you please tell me," he said slowly, "what it is you're talking about?" "Certainly," BeeBee said with aplomb. "There's a call for you in the upstairs booth. A long-distance call, personal." "Oh," Malone said. "Who'd know I was--" He stopped, thinking hard. There was no way for anybody in the world to know he was in Topp's. Therefore, nobody could be calling him. "They've got the wrong name," he said decisively. "Oh, no," BeeBee said. "I heard them quite distinctly. You _are_ Sir Kenneth Malone, aren't you?" Malone gaped for one long second, and then his mind caught up with the facts. "Oh," he said. "Sure." He raced upstairs to the phone booth, said, "This is Sir Kenneth Malone," into the blank screen, and waited. After a while an operator said, "Person-to-person call, Sir Kenneth, from Yucca Flats. Will you take this call?" "I'll take it," Malone said. A face appeared on the screen, and Malone knew he was right. He knew exactly how he'd been located, and by whom. Looking only at the face in the screen, it might have been thought that the woman who appeared there was somebody's grandmother, kindly, red-cheeked, and twinkle-eyed. Perhaps that wasn't the only stereotype; she could have been an old-maid schoolteacher, one of the kindly schoolteachers who taught, once upon a time that never was, in the little red schoolhouses of the dim past. The face positively radiated kindliness, and friendship, and peace. But if the face was the face of a sentimental dream, the garb was the garb of royalty. Somebody's grandmother was on her way to a costume party. She wore the full court costume of the days of Queen Elizabeth I, complete with brocaded velvet gown, wide ruff collar, and bejeweled skullcap. She was, Malone knew, completely insane. Like all the other telepaths Malone and the rest of the FBI had found during their work in uncovering a telepathic spy, she had been located in an insane asylum. Months of extensive psychotherapy, including all the newest techniques and some so old that psychiatrists were a little afraid to use them, had done absolutely nothing to shake the firm conviction in the mind of Miss Rose Thompson. She was, she insisted, Elizabeth Tudor, rightf
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108  
109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   >>  



Top keywords:

Malone

 

Kenneth

 

screen

 
appeared
 
upstairs
 

costume

 

Elizabeth

 

insane

 
BeeBee
 

grandmother


kindly
 

waited

 

located

 

royalty

 

Somebody

 

schoolteacher

 

radiated

 

schoolhouses

 
positively
 

kindliness


sentimental

 

schoolteachers

 

taught

 

friendship

 

psychiatrists

 

afraid

 

techniques

 

extensive

 

psychotherapy

 

including


newest

 

absolutely

 
Thompson
 

insisted

 

rightf

 

conviction

 

Months

 
asylum
 
collar
 

bejeweled


skullcap

 
completely
 

complete

 

brocaded

 
velvet
 
uncovering
 

telepathic

 

telepaths

 

stereotype

 

stopped