hile interesting, was not really helpful. The fact was
that Malone needed more clues--or, anyhow, more facts--before he could
do anything at all. And there just weren't any new facts around. He
spent the week wandering morosely from one place to another, sometimes
accompanied by Thomas Boyd and sometimes all alone. Time, he knew, was
ticking by at its usual rate. But there wasn't a thing he could do about
it.

He did try to relax and have some fun, as Burris had suggested. But he
didn't seem to be able to get his mind off the case.

Boyd, after the first little while, had no such trouble. He entered the
social life of the city with a whoop of joy and disappeared from sight.
That was fine for Boyd, Malone reflected, but it did leave Malone
himself just a little bit at loose ends.

Not that he begrudged Boyd his fun. It was nice that one of them was
enjoying himself, anyway.

It was just that Malone was beginning to get fidgety. He needed to be
doing something--even if it were only taking a walk.

So he took a walk, and ended up, to his own surprise, downtown near
Greenwich Village.

And then he'd been bopped on the head.

IV.

The patrol car pulled up in front of St. Vincent's Hospital and one of
the cops helped Malone into the Emergency Receiving Room. He didn't
feel as bad as he had a few minutes before. The motion of the car hadn't
helped any, but his head seemed to be knitting a little, and his legs
were a little steadier. True, he didn't feel one hundred per cent
healthy, but he was beginning to think he might live, after all. And
while the doctor was bandaging his head a spirit of new life began to
fill the FBI agent.

He was no longer morose and undirected. He had a purpose in life, and
that purpose filled him with cold determination. He was going to find
the robot-operated car--or whatever it turned out to be.

The doctor, Malone noticed, was whistling "Greensleaves" under his
breath as he worked. That, he supposed, was the influence of the
bohemian folk singers of Greenwich Village. But he put the noise
resolutely out of his mind and concentrated on the red Cadillac.

It was one thing to think about a robot car, miles away, doing something
or other to somebody you'd never heard of before. That was just
theoretical, a case for solution, nothing but an ordinary job.

But when the car stepped up and bopped Malone himself on the head, it
became a personal matter. Now Malone had more than a job