doing, but this was ridiculous.

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 suddenness and he stood silent upon a peak in
Yucca Flats, contemplating it. A second went by.

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.

"That," Burris said, "was one hell of a quick lunch. What's Her
Majesty doing now--running a diner?"

Malone ignored the bait, and drew himself to his full height.
"Gentlemen," he said solemnly, "Her Majesty has asked that all of us
attend her in audience. She has information of the utmost gravity to
impart, and wishes this audience at once."

Dr. Gamble made a puzzled, circular gesture with one hand. "What's the
matter?" he asked. "Is something--"

The hand dropped--"wrong?"

Burris barely glanced at him. A startled expression came over his
features. "Has she--" he began, and stopped, leaving his mouth open
and the rest of the sentence unfinished.

Malone nodded gravely and drew in a breath. Elizabethan periods were
hard on the lungs, he h