That Sweet Little Old Lady Part 30

Barbara remained standing. She went to the Queen and put an arm around the little old lady's shoulder. Her Majesty did not object. "I knew,"

she said. "You couldn't have been a spy."

"Listen, dear," the Queen said. "Your Kenneth has seen the truth of the matter. Listen to him."

"Her Majesty not only caught the spy," Malone said, "but she turned the spy right over to us."

He turned at once and went back down the long red carpet to the door. _I really ought to get a sword_, he thought, and didn't see Her Majesty smile. He opened the door with a great flourish and said quietly: "Bring him in, boys."

The FBI men from Las Vegas marched in. Between them was their prisoner, a boy with a vacuous face, clad in a strait jacket that seemed to make no difference at all to him. His mind was--somewhere else. But his body was trapped between the FBI agents: the body of William Logan.

"Impossible," one of the psychiatrists said.

Malone spun on his heel and led the way back to the throne. Logan and his guards followed closely.

"Your Majesty," Malone said, "may I present the prisoner?"

"Perfectly correct, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said. "Poor Willie is your spy. You won't be too hard on him, will you?"

"I don't think so. Your Majesty," Malone said. "After all--"

"Now wait a minute," Burris exploded. "How did _you_ know any of this?"

Malone bowed to Her Majesty, and winked at Barbara. He turned to Burris.

"Well," he said, "I had one piece of information none of the rest of you had. When we were in the Desert Edge Sanitarium, Dr. Dowson called you on the phone. Remember?"

"Sure I remember," Burris said. "So?"

"Well," Malone said, "Her Majesty said she knew just where the spy was.

I asked her where--"

"Why didn't you tell me?" Burris screamed. "You knew all this time and you didn't tell me?"

"Hold on," Malone said. "I asked her where--and she said: 'He's right there.' And she was pointing right at your image on the screen."

Burris opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He closed it and tried again.

At last he managed one word.

"Me?" he said.

"You," Malone said. "But that's what I realized later. She wasn't pointing at you. She was pointing at Logan, who was in the next room."

Barbara whispered: "Is that right, Your Majesty?"

"Certainly, dear," the Queen said calmly. "Would I lie to Sir Kenneth?"

Malone was still talking. "The thing that set me off this noon was something you said, Sir Andrew," he went on. "You said there weren't any sane telepaths--remember?"

Burris, incapable of speech, merely nodded.

"But according to Her Majesty," Malone said, "we had every telepath in the United States right here. She told me that--and I didn't even see it!"

"Don't blame yourself, Sir Kenneth," the Queen put in. "I did do my best to mislead you, you know."

"You sure did!" Malone said. "And later on, when we were driving here, you said the spy was 'moving around.' That's right; he was in the car behind us, going eighty miles an hour."

Barbara stared. Malone got a lot of satisfaction out of that stare. But there was still more ground to cover.

"Then," he said, "you told us he was here at Yucca Flats--after we brought him here! It had to be one of the other six telepaths."

The psychiatrist who'd muttered: "Impossible," was still muttering it.

Malone ignored him.

"And when I remembered her pointing at you," Malone told Burris, "and remembered that she'd only said: 'He's right there,' I knew it had to be Logan. You weren't there. You were only an image on a TV screen. Logan was there--in the room behind the phone."

Burris had found his tongue. "All right," he said. "O.K. But what's all this about misleading us--and why didn't she tell us right away, anyhow?"

Malone turned to Her Majesty on the throne. "I think that the Queen had better explain that--if she will."

Queen Elizabeth Thompson nodded very slowly. "I ... I only wanted you to respect me," she said. "To treat me properly." Her voice sounded uneven, and her eyes were glistening with unspilled tears. Lady Barbara tightened her arm about the Queen's shoulders once more.

"It's all right," she said. "We do--respect you."

The Queen smiled up at her.

Malone waited. After a second Her Majesty continued.

"I was afraid that as soon as you found poor Willie you'd send me back to the hospital," she said. "And Willie couldn't tell the Russian agents any more once he'd been taken away. So I thought I'd just ... just let things stay the way they were as long as I could. That's ... that's all."

Malone nodded. After a second he said: "You see that we couldn't possibly send you back now, don't you?"

"I--"

"You know all the State Secrets, Your Majesty," Malone said. "We would rather that Dr. Harman in San Francisco didn't try to talk you out of them. Or anyone else."

The Queen smiled tremulously. "I know too much, do I?" she said. Then her grin faded. "Poor Dr. Harman," she said.

"Poor Dr. Harman?"

"You'll hear about him in a day or so," she said. "I ... peeked inside his mind. He's very ill."

"Ill?" Lady Barbara asked.

"Oh, yes," the Queen said. The trace of a smile appeared on her face.

"He thinks that all the patients in the hospital can see inside his mind."