Part 31 (1/2)

There were lots and lots of people named Dorothy Francis, in Manhattan and in all the other boroughs.

Malone went back to the bar to think some more. He was on his second bourbon and soda, still thinking but without any new ideas, when BeeBee tapped him gently on the shoulder.

”Pardon me,” the maitre d' said, ”but are you English?”

”Am I what?” Malone said, spilling a little of his drink on the bar.

”Are you English?” BeeBee said.

”Oh,” Malone said. ”No. Irish. Very Irish.”

”That's nice,” BeeBee said.

Malone stared at him. ”I think it's fine,” he said, ”but I'd love to know why you asked me.”

”Well,” BeeBee said, ”I knew you couldn't be American. Not after the phone call. You don't have to hide your nationality here; we're quite accustomed to foreign visitors. And we don't have special prices for tourists.”

Malone waited two breaths. ”Will you please tell me,” he said slowly, ”what it is you're talking about?”

”Certainly,” BeeBee said with aplomb. ”There's a call for you in the upstairs booth. A long-distance call, personal.”

”Oh,” Malone said. ”Who'd know I was--” He stopped, thinking hard.

There was no way for anybody in the world to know he was in Topp's.

Therefore, n.o.body could be calling him. ”They've got the wrong name,”

he said decisively.

”Oh, no,” BeeBee said. ”I heard them quite distinctly. You _are_ Sir Kenneth Malone, aren't you?”

Malone gaped for one long second, and then his mind caught up with the facts. ”Oh,” he said. ”Sure.” He raced upstairs to the phone booth, said, ”This is Sir Kenneth Malone,” into the blank screen, and waited.

After a while an operator said, ”Person-to-person call, Sir Kenneth, from Yucca Flats. Will you take this call?”

”I'll take it,” Malone said. A face appeared on the screen, and Malone knew he was right. He knew exactly how he'd been located, and by whom.

Looking only at the face in the screen, it might have been thought that the woman who appeared there was somebody's grandmother, kindly, red-cheeked, and twinkle-eyed. Perhaps that wasn't the only stereotype; she could have been an old-maid schoolteacher, one of the kindly schoolteachers who taught, once upon a time that never was, in the little red schoolhouses of the dim past. The face positively radiated kindliness, and friends.h.i.+p, and peace.

But if the face was the face of a sentimental dream, the garb was the garb of royalty. Somebody's grandmother was on her way to a costume party. She wore the full court costume of the days of Queen Elizabeth I, complete with brocaded velvet gown, wide ruff collar, and bejeweled skullcap.

She was, Malone knew, completely insane.

Like all the other telepaths Malone and the rest of the FBI had found during their work in uncovering a telepathic spy, she had been located in an insane asylum. Months of extensive psychotherapy, including all the newest techniques and some so old that psychiatrists were a little afraid to use them, had done absolutely nothing to shake the firm conviction in the mind of Miss Rose Thompson.

She was, she insisted, Elizabeth Tudor, rightful Queen of England.

She claimed she was immortal, which was not true. She also claimed to be a telepath. This was perfectly accurate. It had been her help that had enabled Malone to find the telepathic spy, and a grateful government had rewarded her.

It had given her a special expense allotment for life, covering the clothing she wore, and the style in which she lived. Rooms had been set aside for her at Yucca Flats, and she held court there, sometimes being treated by psychiatrists and sometimes helping Dr. Thomas O'Connor in his experiments and in the development of new psionic machines.

She was probably the happiest psychopath on Earth.