Brain Twister p-1 Read online

  The door opened instantly.

  “Yes?” said the man inside, a tall, balding fellow wearing doctor’s whites amd a sad, bloodhound-like expression.

  “Yes,” Malone said automatically. “I mean — my name is Kenneth J. Malone.”

  “Mine,” said the bloodhound, “is Blake. Doctor Andrew Blake.” There was a brief pause. “Is there anything we cam do for you?” the doctor went on.

  “Well,” Malone said, “I’m looking for people who can read minds.”

  Blake didn’t seem at all surprised. He nodded quietly. “Of course,” he said. “I understand perfectly.”

  “Good,” Malone told him. “You see, I thought I’d have a little trouble finding—”

  “Oh, no trouble at all, I assure you,” Blake went on, just as mournfully as ever. “You’ve come to the right place, believe me, Mr. — ah—”

  “Malone,” Malone said. “Kenneth J. Frankly, I didn’t think I’d hit the jackpot this early — I mean, you were the first on my list—”

  The doctor seemed suddenly to realize that the two of them were standing out on the portico. “Won’t you come inside?” he said, with a friendly gesture. He stepped aside and Malone walked through the doorway.

  Just inside it, three men grabbed him.

  Malone, surprised by this sudden reception, fought with every ounce of his FBI training. But the three men had his surprise on their side, and three against one was heavy odds for any man, trained or not.

  His neck placed firmly between one upper and lower arm, his legs pinioned and his arms flailing wildly, Malone managed to shout: “What the hell is this? What’s going on?”

  Dr. Blake was watching the entire operation from a standpoint a few feet away. He didn’t look as if his expression were ever going to change.

  “It’s all for your own good, Mr. Malone,” he said calmly. “Please believe me.”

  “My God!” Malone said. He caught somebody’s face with one hand and then somebody else grabbed the hand and folded it back with irresistible force. He had one arm free, and he tried to use it — but not for long. “You think I’m nuts!” he shouted, as the three men produced a strait-jacket from somewhere and began to cram him into it. “Wait!” he cried, as the canvas began to cramp him. “You’re wrong! You’re making a terrible mistake!”

  “Of course,” Dr. Blake said. “But if you’ll just relax we’ll soon be able to help you—”

  The strait-jacket was on. Malone sagged inside it like a rather large and sweaty butterfly rewrapped in a cocoon. Dimly, he realized that he sounded like every other nut in the world. All of them would be sure to tell the doctor and the attendants that they were making a mistake. All of them would claim they were sane.

  There was, of course, a slight difference. But how could Malone manage to prove it? The three men held him up.

  “Now, now,” Dr. Blake said. “You can walk, Mr. Malone. Suppose you just follow me to your room—”

  “My room?” Malone said. “Now, you listen to me, Doctor. If you don’t take this stuff off me at once I promise you the President will hear of it. And I don’t know how he’ll take interference in a vital mission—”

  “The President?” Blake asked quietly. “What President, Mr. Malone?”

  “The President of the United States, damn it!” Malone shouted.

  “Hmm,” Blake said.

  That was no good, either, Malone realized. Every nut would have some sort of direct pipeline to the President, or God, or somebody high up. Nuts were like that.

  But he was an FBI Agent. A special agent on a vital mission.

  He said so.

  “Now, now, Mr. Malone,” Blake told him. “Let’s get to your room, shall we, and then we can talk things over.”

  “I can prove it!” Malone told him. The three men picked him up. “My identification is in my pocket—”

  “Really?” Blake said.

  They started moving down the long front hall.

  “All you have to do is take this thing off so I can get at my pockets—” Malone began.

  But even he could see that this new plan wasn’t going to work, either.

  “Take it off?” Blake said. “Oh, certainly, Mr. Malone. Certainly. Just as soon as we have you comfortably settled.”

  It was ridiculous, Malone told himself as the men carried him away. It couldn’t happen: an FBI agent mistaken for a nut, wrapped in a strait-jacket and carried to a padded cell.

  Unfortunately, ridiculous or not, it was happening.

  And there was absolutely nothing to do about it.

  Malone thought with real longing of his nice, safe desk in Washington. Suddenly he discovered in himself a great desire to sit around and collate reports. But no — he had to be a hero. He had to go and get himself involved.

  This, he thought, wili teach me a great lesson. The next time I get offered a job a chimpanzee can do, I’ll start eating bananas.

  It was at this point in his reflections that he reached a small door. Dr. Blake opened it and the three men carried Malone inside. He was dumped carefully on the floor. Then the door clanged shut.

  Alone, Malone told himself bitterly, at last.

  After a minute or so had gone by he began to think about getting out. He could, it occurred to him, scream for help. But that would only bring more attendants, and very possibly Dr. Blake again, and somehow Malone felt that further conversation with Dr. Blake was not likely to lead to any very rational end.

  Sooner or later, he knew, they would have to let him loose.

  After all, he was an FBI agent, wasn’t he?

  Alone, in a single cheerless cell, caught up in the toils of a strait-jacket, he began to doubt the fact. Maybe Blake was right; maybe they were all right. Maybe he, Kenneth J. Malone, was totally mad.

  He told himself firmly that the idea was ridiculous.

  But, then, what wasn’t?

  The minutes ticked slowly by. After a while the three guards came back, opening the door and filing into the room carefully. Malone, feeling more than ever like something in a cocoon, watched them with interest. They shut the door carefully behind them and stood before him.

  “Now, then,” one of them said. “We’re going to take the jacket off, if you promise to be a good boy.”

  “Sure,” Malone said. “And when you take my clothing, look in the pockets.”

  “The pockets?”

  “To find my FBI identification,” Malone said wearily. He only half-believed the idea himself, but half a belief, he told himself confusedly, was better than no mind at all. The attendants nodded solemnly.

  “Sure we will,” one of them said, “if you’re a good boy and don’t act up rough on us now. Okay?”

  Malone nodded. Carefully, two of the attendants began to unbuckle him while the third stood by for reinforcements. Malone made no fuss.

  In five minutes he was naked as — he told himself — a jay-bird. What was so completely nude about those particular birds escaped him for the moment, but it wasn’t important. The three men were all holding various parts of the strait-jacket or of his clothing.

  They were still watching him warily.

  “Look in the pockets,” Malone said.

  “Sure,” one said. The man holding the jacket reached into it and dropped it as if it were hot.

  “Hey,” he announced in a sick voice, “the guy’s carrying a gun.”

  “A gun?” the second one asked.

  The first one gestured toward the crumpled jacket on the floor. “Look for yourself,” he said. “A real honest-to-God gun. I could feel it.”

  Malone leaned against one wall, looking as nonchalant as it was possible for him to look in the nude. The room being cool, he felt he was succeeding reasonably well. “Try the other pocket,” he suggested.

  The first attendant gave him a long stare. “What’ve you got in there, buddy?” he asked. “A howitzer?”

  “Jesus,” the second attendant said, without moving toward the jacket. “An arm
ed nut. What a world.”

  “Try the pocket,” Malone said.

  A second went by. The first attendant bent down slowly, picked up the jacket and slipped his hand into the other inside pocket. He came out with a wallet and flipped it open.

  The others looked over his shoulder. There was a long minute of silence.

  “Jesus,” the second attendant said, as if it were the only word left in the language.

  Malone sighed. “There, now,” he said. “You see? Suppose you give me back my clothes and let’s get down to brass tacks.”

  It wasn’t that simple, of course.

  First the attendants had to go and get Dr. Blake, and everybody had to explain everything three or four times, until Malone was just as sick of being an FBI agent as he had ever been of being a padded-cell case. But, at last, he stood before Dr. Blake in the corridor outside, once again fully dressed. Slightly rumpled, of course, but fully dressed. It did, Malone thought, make a difference, and if clothes didn’t exactly make the man they were a long way from a hindrance.

  “Mr. Malone,” Blake was saying, “I want to offer my apologies—”

  “Perfectly okay,” Malone said agreeably. “But I would like to know something. Do you treat all your visitors like this? I mean — the milkman, the mailman, relatives of patients—”

  “It’s not often we get someone here who claims to be from the FBI,” Blake said. “And naturally our first thought was that — well, sometimes a patient will come in, just give himself up, so to speak. His unconscious mind knows that he needs help, and so he comes to us. We try to help him.”

  Privately, Malone told himself that it was a hell of a way to run a hospital. Aloud, all he said was: “Sure. I undersand perfectly, Doctor.”

  Dr. Blake nodded. “And now,” he said, “what did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Just a minute.” Malone closed his eyes. He’d told Burris he would check in, and he was late. “Have you got a phone I can use?”

  “Certainly,” Blake said, and led him down the corridor to a small office. Malone went to the phone at one end and began dialing even before Blake shut the door and left him alone.

  The screen lit up instantly with Burris’ face. “Malone, where the hell have you been?” the head of the FBI roared. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you—”

  “Sorry,” Malone said. “I was tied up.”

  “What do you mean, tied up?” Burris said. “Do you know I was just about to send out a general search order? I thought they’d got you.”

  “They?” Malone said, interested. “Who?”

  “How the hell would I know who?” Burris roared.

  “Well, nobody got me,” Malone said. “I’ve been investigating Rice Pavilion, just like I’m supposed to do.”

  “Then why didn’t you check in?” Burris asked.

  Malone sighed. “Because I got myself locked up,” he said, and explained. Burris listened with patience.

  When Malone was finished, Burris said: “You’re coming right on back.”

  “But—”

  “No arguments,” Burris told him. “If you’re going to let things like that happen to you you’re better off here. Besides, there are plenty of men doing the actual searching. There’s no need—”

  Secretly, Malone felt relief. “Well, all right,” he said. “But let me check out this place first, will you?”

  “Go ahead,” Burris said. “But get right on back here.”

  Malone agreed and snapped the phone off. Then he turned back to find Dr. Blake.

  Examining hospital records was not an easy job. The inalienable right of a physician to refuse to disclose confidences respecting a patient applied even to idiots, imbecile and morons. But Malone had a slight edge, due to Dr. Blake’s embarrassment, and he put it mercilessly to work.

  For all the good it did him he might as well have stayed in his cell. There wasn’t even the slightest suspicion in any record that any of the Rice Pavilion patients were telepathic.

  “Are you sure that’s what you’re looking for?” Blake asked him, some hours later.

  “I’m sure,” Malone said. “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  “Oh,” Blake said. After a second he added: “What does that mean?”

  Malone shrugged. “It’s an old saying,” he told the doctor. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. It just sounds good.”

  “Oh,” Blake said again.

  After a while, Malone said farewell to good old Rice Pavilion, and headed back to Washington. There, he told himself, everything would be peaceful.

  And so it was. Peaceful and dispiriting.

  Every agent had problems getting reports from hospitals — and not even the FBI could open the private files of a licensed and registered psychiatrist.

  But the field agents did the best they could and, considering the circumstances, their best was pretty good.

  Malone, meanwhile, put in two weeks sitting glumly at his Washington desk and checking reports as they arrived. They were uniformly depressing. The United States of America contained more sub-normal minds than Malone cared to think about. There seemed to be enough of them to explain the results of any election you were unhappy over. Unfortunately, sub-normal was all you could call them. Like the patients at Rice Pavilion, not one of them appeared to possess any abnormal psionic abilities whatever.

  There were a couple who were reputed to be poltergeists — but in neither case was there a single shred of evidence to substantiate the claim.

  At the end of the second week, Malone was just about convinced that his idea had been a total washout. He himself had been locked up in a padded cell, and other agents had spent a full fortnight digging up imbeciles, while the spy at Yucca Flats had been going right on his merry way, scooping information out of the men at Project Isle as though he were scooping beans out of a pot. And, very likely, laughing himself silly at the feeble efforts of the FBI.

  Who could he be?

  Anyone, Malone told himself unhappily. Anyone at all. He could be the janitor who swept out the buildings, one of the guards at the gate, one of the minor technicians on another project, or even some old prospector wandering around the desert with a scintillation counter.

  Is there any limit to telepathic range?

  The spy could even be sitting quietly in an armchair in the Kremlin, probing through several thousand miles of solid earth to peep into the brains of the men on Project Isle.

  That was, to say the very least, a depressing idea.

  Malone found he had to assume that the spy was in the United States — that, in other words, there was some effective range to telepathic communication. Otherwise, there was no point in bothering to continue the search.

  Therefore, he found one other thing to do. He alerted every agent to the job of discovering how the spy was getting his information out of the country.

  He doubted that it would turn up anything, but it was a chance. And Malone hoped desperately for it, because he was beginning to be sure that the field agents were never going to turn up any telepathic imbeciles.

  He was right.

  They never did.

  Chapter 3

  The telephone rang.

  Malone rolled over on the couch and muttered four words under his breath. Was it absolutely necessary for someone to call him at seven in the morning?

  He grabbed at the receiver with one hand, and picked up his cigar from the ashtray with the other. It was bad enough to be awakened from a sound sleep — but when a man hadn’t been sleeping at all, it was even worse.

  He’d been sitting up since before five that morning, worrying about the telepathic spy, and at the moment he wanted sleep more than he wanted phone calls.

  “Gur?” he said, sleepily and angrily, thankful that he’d never had a visiphone installed in his apartment. A taste for blondes was apparently hereditary. At any rate, Malone felt he had inherited it from his father, and h
e didn’t want any visible strangers calling him at odd hours to interfere with his process of collection and research.

  He blinked at the audio circuit, and a feminine voice said: “Mr. Kenneth J. Malone?”

  “Who’s this?” Malone said peevishly, beginning to discover himself capable of semirational English speech.

  “Long distance from San Francisco,” the voice said.

  “It certainly is,” Malone said. “Who’s calling?”

  “San Francisco is calling,” the voice said primly.

  Malone repressed a desire to tell the voice that he didn’t want to talk to St. Francis, not even in Spanish, and said instead: “Who in San Francisco?”

  There was a momentary hiatus, and then the voice said: “Mr. Thomas Boyd is calling, sir. He says this is a scramble call.”

  Malone took a drag from his cigar and closed his eyes. Obviously the call was a scramble. If it had been clear, the man would have dialled direct, instead of going through what Malone now recognized as an operator.

  “Mr. Boyd says he is the Agent-in-Charge of the San Francisco office of the FBI,” the voice offered.

  “And quite right, too,” Malone told her. “All right. Put him on.”

  “One moment.” There was a pause, a click, another pause and then another click. At last the operator said: “Your party is ready, sir.”

  Then there was still another pause. Malone stared at the audio receiver. He began to whistle When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

  …And the sound of Irish laughter…

  “Hello? Malone?”

  “I’m here, Tom,” Malone said guiltily. “This is me. What’s the trouble?”

  “Trouble?” Boyd said. “There isn’t any trouble. Well, not really. Or maybe it is. I don’t know.”

  Malone scowled at the audio receiver, and for the first time wished he had gone ahead and had a video circuit put in, so that Boyd could see the horrendous expression on his face.

  “Look,” he said. “It’s seven here and that’s too early. Out there, it’s four, and that’s practically ridiculous. What’s so important?”