Fascinated in spite of himself, Malone said, “That’s impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible,” the old man said. “Work for a theater long enough and you find that out. Part bloodhound, I said, and part water spaniel. Should have seen that dog before you start talking about impossibilities. Hell of a strange-looking beast. And then there was the time—”
“About the notebook,” Malone said.
“Notebook?” the old man said.
“I lost a notebook,” Malone said. “I was hoping that—”
“Description?” the old man said, and poised his pencil again.
Malone heaved a great sigh. “Black plastic,” he said. “About so big.” He made motions with his hands. “No names or initials on it. But the first page had my name written on it, along with Lieutenant Peter Lynch.”
“Who’s he?” the old man said.
“He’s a cop,” Malone said.
“My, my,” the old man said. “Valuable notebook, with a cop’s name in it and all. You a cop, youngster?”
Malone shook his head.
“Too bad,” the old man said obscurely. “I like cops.” He stood up. “You said black plastic? Black?”
“That’s right,” Malone said. “Do you have it here?”
“Got no notebooks at all here, youngster,” the old man said. “Empty billfold, three hats, a couple of coats, and some pencils. And an umbrella. No dogs tonight, youngster, and no notebooks.”
“Oh,” Malone said. “Well—wait a minute.”
“What is it, youngster?” the old man said. “I’m busy this time of day. Got to sweep and clean. Got work to do. Not like you tourists.”
With difficulty, Malone leashed his temper. “Why did I have to describe the notebook?” he said. “You haven’t got any notebooks at all.”
“That’s right,” the old man said cheerfully.
“But you made me describe—”
“That’s the rules,” the old man said. “And I ain’t about to go against the rules. Not for no tourist.” He put the pencil down and rose. “Wish you were a cop,” he said. “I never met a cop. They don’t lose things like people do.”
Making a mental note to call up later and talk to the manager, if the notebook hadn’t turned up in the meantime, Malone went off to find the bars he had stopped in before the theater.
Saving Topp’s for last, he started at the Ad Lib, where a surprised bald-headed man told him they hadn’t found a notebook anywhere in the bar for something like six weeks. “Now if you’d been looking for umbrellas,” he said, “we could have accommodated you. Got over ten umbrellas downstairs, waiting for their owners. I wonder why people lose so many umbrellas?”
“Maybe they hate rain,” Malone said.
“I don’t know,” the bald man said. “I’m sort of a psychologist—you know, a judge of people. I think it’s an unconscious protest against the fetters of a society which is slowly strangling them by—”
Malone said good-bye in a hurry and left. His next stop was the Xochitl, the Mexican bar on 46th Street. He greeted the bartender warmly.
“Ah,” the bartender told him. “You come back. We look for you.”
“Look for me?” Malone said. “You mean you found my notebook?”
“Notesbook?” the bartender said.
“A little black plastic book,” Malone said, making motions, “about so big. And it—”
“Not find,” the bartender said. “You lose him?”
“Sure I lost him,” Malone said. “I mean it. Would I be looking for it if I hadn’t lost it?”
“Who knows?” the bartender said, and shrugged.
“But you said you were looking for me,” Malone said. “What about?”
“Oh,” the bartender said. “I only say that. Make customer feel good, think we miss him. Customers like, so we do. What your name?”
“Pizarro,” Malone said disgustedly, and went away.
The last stop was Topp’s. Well, he had to find the notebook there. It was the only place the notebook could be. That was logic, and Malone was proud of it. He walked into Topp’s, trying to remember the bartender’s name, and found it just as he walked into the bar.
“Hello, Wally,” he said gaily.
The bartender stared at him. “I’m not Wally,” he said. “Wally’s the night barman. My name’s Ray.”
“Oh,” Malone said, feeling deflated. “Well, I’ve come about a notebook.”
“Yes, sir?” Ray said.
“I lost the notebook here yesterday evening, between six and eight. If you’ll just take me to the Lost and Found—”
“One moment, sir,” Ray said, and left him standing at the bar, all alone.
In a few seconds he was back. “I didn’t see the notebook myself, sir,” he said. “But if Wally picked it up, he’d have turned it over to the maître d’. Perhaps you’d like to check with him.”
“Sure,” Malone said. The daytime maître d’ turned out to be a shortish, heavy-set man with large blue eyes, a silver mane, and a thin, pencil-line mustache. He was addressed, for no reason Malone was able to discover, as BeeBee.
Ray introduced them. “This gentleman wants to know about a notebook,” he told BeeBee.
“Notebook?” BeeBee said.
Malone explained at length. BeeBee nodded in an understanding fashion for some moments and, when Malone had finished, disappeared in search of the Lost and Found. He came back rather quickly, with the disturbing news that no notebook was anywhere in the place.
“It’s got to be here,” Malone said.
“Well,” BeeBee said, “it isn’t. Maybe you left it some place else. Maybe it’s home now.”
“It isn’t,” Malone said. “And I’ve tried every place else.”
“New York’s a big city, Mr. Malone,” BeeBee said.
Malone sighed. “I’ve tried every place I’ve been. The notebook couldn’t be somewhere I haven’t been. A rolling stone follows its owner.” He thought about that. It didn’t seem to mean anything, but maybe it had. There was no way to tell for sure.
He went back to the bar to think things over and figure out his next move. A bourbon and soda while thinking seemed the obvious order, and Ray bustled off to get it.
Had he left the notebook on the street somewhere, just dropping it by accident? Malone couldn’t quite see that happening. It was, of course, possible; but the possibility was so remote that he decided to try and think of everything else first. There was Dorothy, for instance.
Had he got stewed enough so that he’d showed Dorothy the notebook?
He didn’t remember doing it, and he didn’t quite see why he would have. Most of the evening was more or less clear in his mind; he hadn’t apparently, forgotten any other details, either.
All the same, it was an idea. He decided to give the girl a call and find out for sure. Maybe she remembered something that would help him, anyway.
He took the drink from Ray and slid off the bar stool. Two steps away, he remembered one more little fact.
He didn’t have her number, and he didn’t know anything about where she lived, except that it could be reached by subway. That, Malone told himself morosely, limited things nicely to the five boroughs of New York.
And she said she was living with her aunt. Would she have a phone listing under her own name? Or would the listing be under her aunt’s name, which he also didn’t know?
At any rate, he could check listings under Dorothy Francis, he told himself.
He did so.
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 maître d’ said, “but are you English?”
“Am I what?” Malone said, spilling a little of his drink on the bar.
“Are you English?” Bee
Bee 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, nobody 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 friendship, 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.
Malone stared at her. For a second he could think of nothing to say but, “My God.” He said it.
“Not at all, Sir Kenneth,” the little old lady said. “Your Queen.”
Malone took a deep breath. “Good afternoon, Your Majesty,” he said.
“Good afternoon, Sir Kenneth,” she said, and waited. After a second Malone figured out what she was waiting for.
He inclined his head in as courtly a bow as he could manage over a visiphone. “I am deeply honored,” he said, “that Your Majesty has called on me. Is there any way in which I might be of service?”
“Oh, goodness me, no,” said the little old lady. “I don’t need a thing. They do one very well here in Yucca Flats. You must come out soon and see my new throne room. I’ve had the decorations done by—but I can see you’re not interested in that, Sir Kenneth.”
“But—” Malone realized it was useless to argue with the old lady. She was telepathic, and knew exactly what he was thinking. That, after all, was how he had been located; she had mentally “hunted” for him until she found him.
But why?
“I’ll tell you why, Sir Kenneth,” the little old lady said. “I’m worried about you.”
“Worried? About me, Your Majesty?”
“Certainly,” the little old lady said, inclining her head just the proper number of degrees, and raising it again. “You, Sir Kenneth, and that silly little notebook you lost. You’ve been stewing about it for the last hour.”
It was obvious that, for reasons of her own, the Queen had seen fit to look into Malone’s mind. She’d found him worrying, and called him about it. It was, Malone thought, sweet of her in a way. But it was also just a bit disconcerting.
He was perfectly well aware that the Queen could read his mind at any distance. But unless something reminded him of the fact, he didn’t have to think about it.
And he didn’t like to think about it.
“Don’t be disturbed,” the Queen said. “Please. I only want to help you, Sir Kenneth; you know that.”
“Well, of course I do,” Malone said. “But—”
“Heavens to Betsy,” she said. “Sir Kenneth, what kind of a detective are you?”
“What?” Malone said, and added at once, “Your Majesty.” He knew perfectly well, of course, that Miss Thompson was not Queen Elizabeth I—and he knew that Miss Thompson knew what he thought.
But she didn’t mind. Politeness, she held, was the act of being pleasant on the surface, no matter what a person really thought. People were polite to their bosses, she pointed out, even though they were perfectly sure that they could do a better job than the bosses were doing.
So she insisted on the surface pretense that Malone was going through, treating her like a Queen.
The psychiatrists had called her delusion a beautifully rationalized one. As far as Malone was concerned, it made more sense than most of real life.
“That’s very nice of you, Sir Kenneth,” the Queen said. “But I ask you again, what kind of detective are you? Haven’t you got any common sense at all?”
Malone hated to admit it, but he had always had just that suspicion. After all, he wasn’t a very good detective. He was just lucky. His luck had enabled him to break a lot of tough cases. But some day people would find out, and then—
“Well,” the Queen said, “at the very least you ought to act like a detective.” She sniffed audibly. “Sir Kenneth, I’m ashamed that a member of my own FBI can’t do any better than you’re doing now.”
Malone blinked into the screen. He did feel ashamed in a vague sort of way, and he was willing to admit it. But he did feel, wistfully, that it would be nice to know just what he was being ashamed of. “Have I been missing something?” he said.
“Outside of the obvious,” the Queen said, “that you’ve been missing your notebook—or rather Mike Fueyo’s notebook—”
“Yes?” Malone said.
“You certainly have,” the Queen said. “Don’t you see what happened to that notebook? You’ve been missing the only possible explanation.”
“But there isn’t any,” Malone said. “Unless Miss Francis has it.”
Her Majesty gave him a bright smile. “There!” she said.
“There, what?” Malone said.
“I knew you could do it,” the Queen said. “All you had to do was apply your intelligence, and you’d come up with just the fact you needed.”
“What fact?” Malone said.
“That Miss Francis has your notebook,” the Queen said. “You just told me.”
“All right,” Malone said, and stopped and took a deep breath. “My God,” he said after a pau
se. “What is that supposed to mean? Did I give it to her after all?”
“No,” the Queen said.
“Did I lose it, and did she pick it up?”
“No,” the Queen said.
“My God,” Malone said again. “All right. I give up. Is this Twenty Questions?”
“Sir Kenneth!” the Queen said. “What a way to talk to your Queen!”
Malone took another breath. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “But—”
“Yes, I know,” the Queen said sympathetically. “You’re upset. But you didn’t give Miss Francis the notebook, and she didn’t find it after you’d lost it.”
“Then—” Malone stared. “She stole it. She stole it from me.”
“I imagine she took it right from your jacket pocket,” the Queen said. “Now, if you’d only wear proper clothing, and a proper pouch at your belt—”
“I’d be stared at,” Malone said. “In court clothing.”
“No one in New York would stare at you,” the Queen said. “They’d think it was what they call an advertising stunt.”
“Anyhow,” Malone said, “I wasn’t wearing court clothing. So that made it easy for her to steal the notebook. But why, for God’s sake? Why?”
“Because,” the Queen said, “she needed it.”
“Needed it?” Malone shrieked.
“Please, Sir Kenneth,” the Queen said. “Don’t talk to your Sovereign in that manner. And I do wish you’d stop thinking of that girl as Dorothy Francis. She isn’t at all, you know.”
“No,” Malone said. “I don’t know. If she isn’t Dorothy Francis, who in hell is she?”
“Don’t swear, Sir Kenneth,” the Queen said. “She’s Dorothea Francisca Fueyo, if you want to know.”
Malone gulped. “Then she’s—”
“That’s right,” the Queen said. “She’s little Miguel Fueyo’s older sister.”
CHAPTER 10
Malone put in a great deal of time, he imagined, just staring at the face of the little old lady on the screen. At last he spoke. “My God,” he said. “Her name is Fueyo. I’ll be damned.”
“I’ve told you,” the Queen said with some asperity, “not to swear, Sir Kenneth.”
“I know,” Malone said. “But—”
“You’re excited,” the Queen said. “You’re stunned. Goodness, you don’t need to tell me that, Sir Kenneth. I know.”
The Second Randall Garrett Megapack Page 85
