med. "You'd all be a bunch of
bums if I hadn't showed you that! And you know it! You'd all--"

"Don't give us that!" Silvo said. "We'd have been able to do it, same as
you. Like you said, anybody who's got talent could do it. There were
guys you tried to teach--"

"Sure," said a fourth voice. "Listen, Fueyo, you're so bright--so why
don't you try teaching it to somebody who don't have the talent?"

"Yeah!" said voice number five. "You think you could teach that flashy
sister of yours the Vanish?"

"You shut up about my sister, Phil!" Mike screamed.

"So what's so great about her?"

"She got that book back from the Fed," Mike said. "That's what. It's
enough!"

A voice said, "Any dame with a little--"

"Shut your face before I shut it for you!"

* * * * *

Malone couldn't tell who was yelling what at who after a minute. They
all seemed unhappy about being on the run from the police, and they were
all tired of being cooped up in a warehouse under Mike's orders. Mike
was the only person they could take it out on--and Mike was under heavy
attack.

Two of the boys, surprisingly, seemed to side with him. The other five
were trying to outshout them. Malone wondered if it would become a
fight, and then realized that these kids could hardly fight each other
when the one who was losing could always fade out.

He leaned over and whispered to Dorothea and Boyd: "Let's sneak up there
while the argument's going on."

"But--" Boyd began.

"Less chance of their noticing us," Malone explained, and started
forward.

They tiptoed up the stairs and got behind a pile of crates in the
shadows, while invectives roared around them. This floor was lit by a
single small bulb hanging from a socket in the ceiling. The windows were
hung with heavy blankets to keep the light from shining out.

The kids didn't notice anything except each other. Malone took a couple
of deep breaths and began to look around.

All things considered, he thought, the kids had fixed the place up
pretty nicely. The unused warehouse had practically been made over into
an apartment. There were chairs, beds, tables and everything else in the
line of furnishings for which the kids could conceivably have any use.
There were even some floor lamps scattered around, but they weren't
plugged in. Malone guessed that a job would have to be done on the
warehouse wiring to get the floor lamps in operation, and the kids just
hadn't got