e other cops are--hey, listen. How'd we
get to talking about me?"

"I said you were a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said.

"I was a--_what_?"

"Disgrace." Malone looked carefully at Lynch. In a fight, he
considered, he might get in a lucky punch that would kill Malone.
Otherwise, Malone didn't have a thing to worry about except a few
months of hospitalization.

Lynch looked as if he were about to get mad, and then he looked down
at Malone's wallet again and started to laugh.

"For God's sake," Malone said. "What's so damned funny?"

He grabbed the wallet and turned it toward him. At once, of course, he
realized what had happened. He hadn't flipped it open to his badge at
all. He'd flipped it open, instead, to a card in the card case:

KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS THAT
Sir Kenneth Malone, Knight, is hereby formally installed
with the title of
KNIGHT OF THE BATH
and this card shall signify his right to that title
and his high and respected position as officer in and of
THE QUEEN'S OWN FBI

In a very small voice, Malone said, "There's been a terrible mistake."

"Mistake?" Lynch said.

Malone flipped the wallet open to his FBI shield. Lynch gave it a good
long examination, peering at it from every angle and holding it up to
the light two or three times. He even wet his thumb and rubbed the
badge with it. At last he looked up.

"I guess you are the FBI," he said. "But what's with the gag?"

"It isn't a gag," Malone said. "It's just--" He thought of the little
old lady in Yucca Flats, the little old lady who had been the prime
mover in the last case he and Boyd had worked on together. Without the
little old lady, the case might never have been solved; she was an
authentic telepath, about the best that had ever been found.

But with her, Boyd and Malone had had enough troubles. Besides being a
telepath, she was quite thoroughly insane. She had one fixed delusion:
she believed she was Queen Elizabeth I.

She was still at Yucca Flats, along with the other telepaths Malone's
investigation had turned up. And she still believed, quite calmly,
that she was Good Queen Bess. Malone had been knighted by her during
the course of the investigation. This new honor had come to him
through the mail; apparently she had decided to ennoble some of her
friends still further.

Malone made a mental note to ask Boy