Occasion ... for Disaster
Society here. On being told that Dr. Carnacki was 'out to lunch,'
Ottermole investigated every restaurant and eating-place within ten
blocks of the offices. Dr. Carnacki was not present; he, like the rest
of the Society here, appears to have left for places unknown."
"Thorough work," Malone said.
"Ottermole's a good man," Teal said. "We've checked as quickly as
possible, Mr. Malone. I would like to ask you a question in return."
"Ask away," Malone said.
Teal looked worried. "Do you people think this may have anything to do
with the present ... ah ... trouble?" he said. "Things are quite upset
here, as you know; so many members of Parliament have resigned or ...
ah ... died that the realm is being run by a rather shakily assembled
coalition government. There is even some talk of giving executive
power to Her Majesty until a general election can be held."
For one brief moment, Malone thought Teal was talking about Rose
Thompson. Then he recalled Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and felt
better. Things weren't quite as bad as he'd thought.
But they were bad enough. "We simply don't know yet," he said
untruthfully. "But as soon as anything definite comes up, of course,
you'll be informed."
"Thank you, Mr. Malone," Teal said. "Of course, we'll do the same."
And then, still masticating, he switched off.
Paris was next, then Rome, Berlin and a couple more. Every one had the
same result. From Maigret of the Paris Sureté to Poirot in Belgium,
from Berlin's strict officialdom to the cheerful Hollanders, all the
reports were identical. The PRS of each country had gone underground.
Malone buried his face in his hands, thought about a cigar and decided
that even a cigar might make him feel worse. Where were they? What
were they doing now? What did they plan to do?
Where had they gone?
"Out of the everywhere," he heard himself say in a hollow, sepulchral
voice, "into the here."
But where was the here?
He tried to make up his mind whether or not that made sense.
Superficially, it sounded like extremely bad English, but he wasn't
sure of anything any more. Things were getting much too confused.
He close his eyes wearily, and vanished.
When he opened them, he was in his Washington apartment. He went over
to the big couch and sat down, feeling that if he were going to curse
he might as well be comfortable while he did it. But, some minutes
later, when the air was a bright electric blue around him, he didn't
feel any better. Cursing was not the answer.
Nothing seemed to be.
What was his next move?
Where did he go from here?
The more he thought about it, the more his mind spun. He was, he
realized, at an absolute, total dead end.
Oh, there were things he could do. Malone knew that very well. He
could make a lot of noise and go through a lot of waste motion; that
was what it amounted to. He could have all the homes of all the
missing PRS members checked somehow. That would undoubtedly result in
the startling discovery that the PRS members involved weren't home. He
could have their dossiers sent to him, which would clutter everything
with a great many more pieces of paper. But he felt quite sure that
the pieces of paper would do no good at all. In general, he could
raise all hell--and find nothing whatever.
Now, he told himself sadly, he had the evidence to start the FBI in
motion. The only trouble was that he could think of nowhere for them
to go.
And, though he had evidence that might convince Burris--the PRS
members, after all, _had_ done a rather unusual fadeout--he had
nowhere near enough to carry the case into court, much less make a
try at getting the case to stand up once carried in. That was one
thing he couldn't do, he realized, he couldn't issue warrants for the
arrest of anybody at all.
But, vacation or no vacation, he thought solemnly, he was an FBI
Agent, and his motto was: "There's always a way." No normal method of
tracking down the PRS members, or finding their present whereabouts,
was going to work. They'd been covering themselves for such an
emergency, undoubtedly, for a good many years--and if anyone got
close, a burst of mental energy was quite enough to turn the seeker
aside.
Nobody, Malone told himself grimly, was perfect. There were clues
lying around somewhere; he was sure of that. There had to be. The
problem was simply to figure out where to look, and how to look, and
what to look for.
Somewhere, the clues were sitting quietly and waiting for him to find
them. The thought cheered him slightly, but not very much. He stood up
slowly and went into the kitchen to start heating water for coffee.
There was, he told himself, a long night ahead of him. He sighed
gently. But there was no help for it; the work had to be done--and
done quickly.
But when eight cigars had been reduced to ash, and what seemed like
several gallons of coffee had sloshed their way into Malone's interior
workings, his mind was as blank as a baby's. The lovely, opalescent
dawn began to show in the East, and Malone tendered it some extremely
rude words. Then, Haggard, red-eyed, confused, violently angry, and
not one inch closer to a solution, he fell into a fitful doze on his
couch.
* * * * *
When he awoke, the sun was high in the sky, and outside his window the
cheerful sound of too much traffic floated in the air. Downstairs
somebody was playing a television set too loudly, and the voice
reached Malone's semiaware mind in a great tinny shout:
"The President, taking action on the current crisis, has declared martial
law throughout the nation," a voice said in an important-sounded
monotone. "Exempt from this proclamation are members of the Armed
Services, Special Agents and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The
proclamation, issued this morning, was made public in a special news
conference which--"
Malone ripped out a particularly foul oath and sat up on the couch.
"That," he muttered, "is a fine thing to wake up to." He focused his
eyes, with only slight difficulty, on his watch. The time was a little
after two.
"Later developments will be reported as and when they occur," the
announcer was saying, "and in one hour a special panel of newscasters
will be assembled here to discuss this latest action in the light of
present happenings. Any special rules and regulations will be
broadcast over this station--"
"Shut up," Malone said. He had wasted a lot of time doing nothing but
sleeping, he told himself. This was no time to be listening to
television. He got up and found, to his vague surprise, that he felt a
lot better and clearer-headed than he had been. Maybe the sleep had
actually done him some good.
He yawned, blinked and stretched, and then padded into the bathroom
for a shower and shave. After he'd changed he thought about a morning
or afternoon cup of coffee, but last night's dregs appeared to have
taken up permanent residence in his digestive tract, and he decided
against it at last. He swallowed some orange juice and toast and
then, heaving a great sigh of resignation and brushing crumbs off his
shirt, he teleported himself over to his office.
Now he knew that, sooner or later, he was going to have to talk to
Burris. Burris _had_ to know, even if there was nothing to be done.
And now was just as good--or as bad--a time as any.
He didn't hesitate. He punched the button on his intercom for Burris'
office and then sat back, with his eyes closed, waiting for the
well-known voice.
It didn't come.
Instead, Wolf, the Director's secretary, spoke up.
"Burris isn't in, Malone," he said. "He had to fly to Miami. I can get
a call through to him on the plane, if it's urgent, but he'll be
landing in about fifteen minutes. And he did say he'd call in this
afternoon."
"Oh," Malone said. "Sure. O.K. It isn't urgent." He was just as glad
of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through
to a solution, and hand it to Burris on a silver platter. "But why
Miami?" he added.
"Don't you hear about anything any more?" Wolf asked.
"I've been on vacation."
"Oh," Wolf said. "Well, the Governor of Mississippi was assassinated
yesterday, at Miami Beach."
"Ah," Malone said. He thought about it for a second. "Frankly," he
said, "this does not strike me as an irreparable loss to the nation.
Not even to Mississippi."
"You express my views precisely," Wolf said.
"How about the killer?" Malone said. "I gather they haven't got him
yet, or Burris wouldn't be on his way down."
"No," Wolf said. "The killer would be on his way here instead. But you
know how things are--everything's confused. Governor Flarion was
walking along Collins Avenue when somebody fired at him, using a
high-powered rifle with, I guess, a scope sight."
"Professional," Malone commented.
"It looks like it," Wolf said. "And he picked the right time for it,
too--the way things are he was just one more confusion among the rest.
Nobody even heard the sniper's shot; the governor just fell over,
right there in the street. And by the time his bodyguards found out
what had happened, it was impossible even to be sure just which way he
was facing when the shot had been fired."
"And as I remember Collins Avenue--" Malone started.
"Right," Wolf said. "But it's even worse now, with everything going
nuts. Out where Governor Flarion was taking his stroll, there's an
awful lot of it to search. The boys are trying to find somebody who
saw a man acting suspicious in any of the nearby buildings, or heard a
shot, or saw anybody at all lurking or loitering anywhere near to the
scene."
"Lovely," Malone said. "Sounds like a nice complicated job."
"You don't know the half of it," Wolf said. "There's also the Miami
Beach Chamber of Commerce. According to them, Flarion died of a heart
attack, and not even in Miami Beach. Everything happening down there
isn't happening, according to them; Miami Beach is the one unsullied
beauty spot in a mixed-up United States."
"All I can say," Malone offered, "is good luck. This is the saddest
day in American history since the assassination of Huey P. Long."
"Agreed," Wolf said. "Want me to tell Burris you called?"
"Right," Malone said, and switched off.
* * * * *
The assassination of Nemours P. Flarion, he told himself, obviously
meant something. It pointed straight toward some entirely new kind of
answer. Granted, old Nemours P. had been a horrible mistake, a
paranoid, self-centered, would-be, dictator whose final act was quite
in keeping with the rest of his official life. Who else would be in
Miami Beach, far away from his home state, while the President was
declaring nationwide martial law?
But that, Malone told himself, wasn't the point. Or not quite the
point, anyhow.
Maybe some work would dig up more facts. Anyhow, Malone was reasonably
sure that he could reassign himself from vacation time, at least until
he called Burris. And he had work to do; nobody was going to hand him
anything on a silver serving salver.
He punched the intercom again and got the Records office.
"Yes, sir?" a familiar voice said.
"Potter," Malone said, "this is Malone. I want facsimiles of
everything we have on the Psychical Research Society, on Sir Lewis
Carter, and on Luba Ardanko. Both of these last are connected with the
Society."
"You're back on duty, Malone?" Potter said.
"Right," Malone said. "Make that fast, will you?"
Potter nodded. "Right away," he said.
It didn't take long for the facsimile records to arrive, and Malone
went right to work on them. Maybe somewhere in those records was the
clue he had desperately needed. Where was the PRS? What were they
doing now? What did they plan to do?