a--"

"FBI agent?" Lynch said. "Listen, buster, this is the funniest gag I've
seen since I came on the Force. Who told you to pull it? Jablonski
downstairs? Or one of the boys on the beat? I know those beat patrolmen,
always on the lookout for a new joke. But this tops 'em all. This is
the--"

"You're a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said tartly.

"A what?" Lynch said. "I'm not Irish."

"You talk like an Irishman," Malone said.

"I know it," Lynch said, and shrugged. "Around some precincts, you sort
of pick it up. When all the other cops are ... hey, listen. How'd we get
to talking about me?"

"I said you were a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said.

"I was a--what?"

"Disgrace." Malone looked carefully at Lynch. In a fight, he considered,
he might get in a lucky punch that would kill Malone. Otherwise, Malone
didn't have a thing to worry about except a few months of
hospitalization.

Lynch looked as if he were about to get mad, and then he looked down at
Malone's wallet again and started to laugh.

"What's so funny?" Malone demanded.

He grabbed the wallet and turned it toward him. At once, of course, he
realized what had happened. He had not flipped it open to his badge at
all. He'd flipped it open, instead, to a card in the card-case:

KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE
PRESENTS THAT Sir Kenneth
Malone, Knight, is hereby formally
installed with the title of
KNIGHT OF THE BATH
and this card shall signify his right
to that title and his high and respected
position as officer in and of
THE QUEENS OWN F.B.I.

In a very small voice, Malone said: "There's been a terrible mistake."

"Mistake?" Lynch said.

Malone flipped the wallet open to his FBI shield. Lynch gave it a good
long examination, peering at it from every angle and holding it up to
the light two or three times. He even wet his thumb and rubbed at the
badge with it. At last he looked up.

"I guess you are the FBI," he said. "But what was with the gag?"

"It wasn't a gag," Malone said. "It's just--" He thought of the little
old lady in Yucca Flats, the little old lady who had been the prime
mover in the last case he and Boyd had worked on together. Without the
little old lady, the case might never have been solved--she was an
authentic telepath, about the best that had ever been found.

But with her, Boyd and Malone had had enough troubles. Besides being a
telepath, she was quite thoroughly insane. She had