s said: "You're coming right on back."

"But--"

"No arguments," Burris told him. "If you're going to let things like
that happen to you you're better off here. Besides, there are plenty
of men doing the actual searching. There's no need--"

Secretly, Malone felt relief. "Well, all right," he said. "But let me
check out this place first, will you?"

"Go ahead," Burris said. "But get right on back here."

Malone agreed and snapped the phone off. Then he turned back to find
Dr. Blake.

* * * * *

Examining hospital records was not an easy job. The inalienable right
of a physician to refuse to disclose confidences respecting a patient
applied even to idiots, imbecile and morons. But Malone had a slight
edge, due to Dr. Blake's embarrassment, and he put it mercilessly to
work.

For all the good it did him he might as well have stayed in his cell.
There wasn't even the slightest suspicion in any record that any of
the Rice Pavilion patients were telepathic.

"Are you sure that's what you're looking for?" Blake asked him, some
hours later.

"I'm sure," Malone said. "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"Oh," Blake said. After a second he added: "What does that mean?"

Malone shrugged. "It's an old saying," he told the doctor. "It doesn't
have to mean anything. It just sounds good."

"Oh," Blake said again.

After a while, Malone said farewell to good old Rice Pavilion, and
headed back to Washington. There, he told himself, everything would be
peaceful.

And so it was. Peaceful and dispiriting.

Every agent had problems getting reports from hospitals--and not even
the FBI could open the private files of a licensed and registered
psychiatrist.

But the field agents did the best they could and, considering the
circumstances, their best was pretty good.

Malone, meanwhile, put in two weeks sitting glumly at his Washington
desk and checking reports as they arrived. They were uniformly
depressing. The United States of America contained more sub-normal
minds than Malone cared to think about. There seemed to be enough of
them to explain the results of any election you were unhappy over.
Unfortunately, subnormal was all you could call them. Like the
patients at Rice Pavilion, not one of them appeared to possess any
abnormal psionic abilities whatever.

There were a couple who were reputed to be poltergeists--but in
neither