orders."

* * * * *

I turned on the telepath. "Before I sentence you," I said. "What have
you got to say?"

"I never hurt nothin'," he grumbled.

They're all alike, so help me. "You are a telepath?" I asked him.

"Shoah."

"Prove it," I demanded, opening a chink in my mind.

His long red face twisted in a crooked grin, showing poorly-cared-for
teeth scattered here and there in his gums.

"Yo' think I never had no orthodonture, whatever _thet_ is," he said.

I shut my mind like a clam. If there's anything I detest, it's the
ghastly creeping of a telepath into my own thoughts. "Hello, Pete!" he
exclaimed. "Yo' done shet yo' mind!" He shook his head. "Ain't never
seen a body could do _thet_!" I'll bet he hadn't. There are only a few
of us who can keep telepaths out of our thoughts. It takes a world of
practice. Well, I'd had that.

"Can you do that?" I asked the snake.

He shook his head. "No, suh," he admitted.

"So here you are," I said, more heatedly. "Wandering around in a town
full of _secrets_--Washington, the capital of your country, where the
military, the diplomatic people, the security people, all of them have
locked in their heads the things that keep us one step ahead of the
Russians. Isn't that true?"

"I reckon. But--"

"But nothing," I snapped, getting sore about it for the thousandth time.
"And you, you miserable snake, you _can't_ keep your thoughts from being
read by another telepath. No telepath can. Your mind is open _two_
ways--to let thoughts in but, damn it, equally to leak out anything you
know." I smiled coldly at him. "Can you get my thoughts now?"

The telepath shook his head. "Still got yo' mind closed," he said. He
sounded bitter about it.

"You're right," I told him. "Something that few can do, and that _no
telepath can do_! How can we let you wander around Washington leaking
out thoughts of every secret your mind might accidentally have overheard
from some ranking official? How many Russian telepaths have been
accredited to their Embassy? How many crypto-telepaths have the Reds got
in town? How many secrets have you _already_ given away? How big a
traitor have you been?"

That was the one that got him. "Traitor!" he yelled at me, starting
across the office to where I stood leaning against my desk. Fred grabbed
him and twisted his arm cruelly to stop all movement.

"Cut that out!" he snapped.

"Cut it out yourself, Fred," I said. "Just