eading a man. This one
was tall and thin, with the expression of a gloomy, degenerate and
slightly nauseated bloodhound. He was led to the chair and he sat down
in it as if he expected the worst to start happening at once.

"Well," Malone said in a bored, tired voice. "So this is the one who
won't talk."

6

Midnight.

Kenneth J. Malone sat at his desk, in his Washington office,
surrounded by piles of papers covering the desk, spilling off onto the
floor and decorating his lap. He was staring at the papers as if he
expected them to leap up, dance round him and shout the solution to
all his problems at him in trained choral voices. They did nothing at
all.

Seated cross-legged on the rug in the center of the room, and looking
like an impossible combination of the last Henry Tudor and Gautama
Buddha, Thomas Boyd did nothing either. He was staring downward, his
hands folded on his ample lap, wearing an expression of utter, burning
frustration. And on a nearby chair sat the third member of the
company, wearing the calm and patient expression of the gently-born
under all vicissitudes: Queen Elizabeth I.

"All right," Malone said into the silence. "Now let's see what we've
got."

"I think we've got cerebral paresis," Boyd said. "It's been coming on
for years."

"Don't be funny," Malone said.

Boyd gave a short, mirthless bark. "Funny?" he said. "I'm absolutely
hysterical with joy and good humor. I'm out of my mind with
happiness." He paused. "Anyway," he finished, "I'm out of my mind.
Which puts me in good company. The entire FBI, Brubitsch, Borbitsch,
Garbitsch, Dr. Thomas O'Connor and Sir Lewis Carter--we're all out of
our minds. If we weren't, we'd all move away to the moon."

"And drink to forget," Malone added. "Sure. But let's try and get some
work done."

"By all means, Sir Kenneth," Her Majesty said. Boyd had not included
her in his list of insane people, and she looked slightly miffed. It
was hard for Malone to tell whether she was miffed by the mention of
insanity, or at being left out.

"Let's review the facts," Malone said. "This whole thing started with
some inefficiency in Congress."

"And some upheavals elsewhere," Boyd said. "Labor unions, gangster
organizations."

"Just about all over," Malone said. "And though we've found three
spies, it seems pretty obvious that they aren't causing this."

"They aren't causing much of anything," Boyd said. "Except a lot of
unbelieving laughter furth