V.
The door didn't say anything at all except "Lt. P. Lynch." Malone lookedat it for a couple of seconds. He'd asked the Desk Sergeant for Lynch,shown his credentials and been directed up a set of stairs and around ahall. But he still didn't know what Lynch did, who he was, or what hisname was doing in the little black notebook.
Well, he told himself, there was only one way to find out.
He opened the door.
The room was small and dark. It had a single desk in it, and threechairs, and a hatrack. There wasn't any coat or hat on the hatrack, andthere was nobody in the chairs. In a fourth chair, behind the desk, ahuskily-built man sat. He had steel-gray hair, a hard jaw and, Malonenoticed with surprise, a faint twinkle in his eye.
"Lieutenant Lynch?" Malone said.
"Right," Lynch said. "What's the trouble?"
"I'm Kenneth J. Malone," Malone said. "FBI." He reached for his walletand found it. He flipped it open for Lynch, who stared at it for whatseemed a long, long time and then burst into laughter.
"What's so funny?" Malone asked.
Lynch laughed some more.
"Oh, come on," Malone said bitterly. "After all, there's no reason totreat an FBI agent like some kind of a--"
"FBI agent?" Lynch said. "Listen, buster, this is the funniest gag I'veseen since I came on the Force. Who told you to pull it? Jablonskidownstairs? Or one of the boys on the beat? I know those beat patrolmen,always on the lookout for a new joke. But this tops 'em all. This isthe--"
"You're a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said tartly.
"A what?" Lynch said. "I'm not Irish."
"You talk like an Irishman," Malone said.
"I know it," Lynch said, and shrugged. "Around some precincts, you sortof pick it up. When all the other cops are ... hey, listen. How'd we getto talking about me?"
"I said you were a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said.
"I was a--what?"
"Disgrace." Malone looked carefully at Lynch. In a fight, he considered,he might get in a lucky punch that would kill Malone. Otherwise, Malonedidn't have a thing to worry about except a few months ofhospitalization.
Lynch looked as if he were about to get mad, and then he looked down atMalone's wallet again and started to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Malone demanded.
He grabbed the wallet and turned it toward him. At once, of course, herealized what had happened. He had not flipped it open to his badge atall. He'd flipped it open, instead, to a card in the card-case:
KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS THAT Sir Kenneth Malone, Knight, is hereby formally installed with the title of KNIGHT OF THE BATH and this card shall signify his right to that title and his high and respected position as officer in and of THE QUEENS OWN F.B.I.
In a very small voice, Malone said: "There's been a terrible mistake."
"Mistake?" Lynch said.
Malone flipped the wallet open to his FBI shield. Lynch gave it a goodlong examination, peering at it from every angle and holding it up tothe light two or three times. He even wet his thumb and rubbed at thebadge with it. At last he looked up.
"I guess you are the FBI," he said. "But what was with the gag?"
"It wasn't a gag," Malone said. "It's just--" He thought of the littleold lady in Yucca Flats, the little old lady who had been the primemover in the last case he and Boyd had worked on together. Without thelittle old lady, the case might never have been solved--she was anauthentic telepath, about the best that had ever been found.
But with her, Boyd and Malone had had enough troubles. Besides being atelepath, she was quite thoroughly insane. She had one fixed delusion:she believed she was Queen Elizabeth I.
She was still at Yucca Flats, along with the other telepaths Malone'sinvestigation had turned up. And she still believed, quite calmly, thatshe was Good Queen Bess. Malone had been knighted by her during thecourse of the investigation. This new honor had come to him through themail; apparently she had decided to ennoble some of her friends stillfurther.
Malone made a note mentally to ask Boyd if he'd received one. After all,there couldn't be too many Knights of the Bath. There was no sense inletting _everybody_ in.
Then he realized that he was beginning to believe everything again.There had been times, when he'd been working with the little old lady,when he had been firmly convinced that he was, in fact, the swaggering,ruthless swordsman, Sir Kenneth Malone. And even now....
* * * * *
"Well?" Lynch said.
"It's too long a story," Malone said. "And besides, it's not what I camehere about."
Lynch shrugged again. "O.K.," he said. "Tell it your way."
"First," Malone said, "what's your job?"
"Me? Precinct Lieutenant."
"Of this precinct?"
Lynch stared. "What else?" he said.
"Who knows?" Malone said. He found the black notebook and passed itacross to Lynch. "I'm on this red Cadillac business, you know," he saidby way of introduction.
"I've been hearing about it," Lynch said. He picked up the notebookwithout opening it and held it like a ticking bomb. "And I mean hearingabout it," he said. "We haven't had any trouble at all in thisprecinct."
"I know," Malone said. "I've read the reports."
"Listen, not a single red Cadillac has been stolen from here, or beenreported found here. We run a tight precinct here, and let me tellyou--"
"I'm sure you do a fine job," Malone said hastily. "But I want you tolook at the notebook." He opened it to the page with Lynch's name on it.
Lynch opened his mouth, closed it and then took the notebook. He staredat the page for a few seconds. "What's this?" he said at last. "Anothergag?"
"No gag, lieutenant," Malone said.
"It's your name and mine," Lynch said. "What is that supposed to mean?"
Malone shrugged. "Search me," he said. "The notebook was found only acouple of feet away from another car theft, last night." That was thesimplest way he could think of to put it. "So I asked the Commissionerwho Peter Lynch was, and he told me it was you."
"And it is," Lynch said, staring at the notebook. He seemed to beexpecting it to rise and strike him.
Malone said: "Have you got any idea who'd be writing about you and me?"
Lynch shook his head. "If I had any ideas I'd feel a lot better," hesaid. He wet his finger and turned the notebook pages carefully. When hesaw the list of names on the second page he stopped again, and stared.This time he whistled under his breath.
Very cautiously, Malone said: "Something?"
"I'll be damned," Lynch said feelingly.
"What's wrong?" Malone said.
The police lieutenant looked up. "I don't know if it's wrong or what,"he said. "It gives me sort of the willies. I know every one of thesekids."
Malone took out a pill and swallowed it in a hurry. He felt exactly asif he had been given another concussion, absolutely free and without anyobligation. His mouth opened but nothing came out for a long time. Atlast he managed to say: "_Kids?_"
"That's right," Lynch said. "What did you think?"
Malone shrugged helplessly.
"Every single one of them," Lynch said. "Right from around here."
There was a little silence.
"Who are they?" Malone said carefully.
"They're some kind of kid gang, social club, something like that," Lynchsaid. "They call themselves the Silent Spooks."
"The what?" It seemed to Malone that the name was just a little fancy,even for a kid gang.
"The Silent Spooks," Lynch said. "I can't help it. But here they are:Ramon Otravez, Mario Grito, Silvo Envoz, Felipe Altapor, Alvarez laBarba, Juan de los Santos and Ray del Este. Right down the line." Helooked up from the notebook with a blank expression on his face."There's only one name missing, as a matter of fact. Funny it isn'tthere."
Malone tried to look as if he knew what was going on. "Oh?" he said.
"Yeah," Lynch
said. "The Fueyo kid--Miguel Fueyo. Everybody calls himMike."
While interesting, this did not provide much food for thought. "Whyshould his name be on it especially?" Malone said.
"Because he's the leader of the gang," Lynch said. "The boss. The bigshot." He pointed to the list of names. "Except for him, that's all ofthem--the Silent Spooks."
Malone considered the missing Mike Fueyo.
He knew perfectly well, now, why Fueyo's name was not in the book.
Who puts his own name on a list?
The notebook was Fueyo's. It had to be.
* * * * *
Lynch was looking at him expectantly. Malone thought of a question andasked it. "They know you?" he said.
"Sure they do," Lynch said. "They all know me. But do they know you?"
Malone thought. "They could have heard of me," he said at last, tryingto be as modest as possible.
"I guess," Lynch said grudgingly.
"How old are they?" Malone said.
"Fourteen to seventeen," Lynch said. "Somewhere in there. You know howthese kid things run."
"The Silent Spooks," Malone said meditatively. It was a nice name, in away; you just had to get used to it for a while. When he had been a kid,he'd belonged to a group that called itself the East Division StreetKids. There just wasn't much romance in a name like that. Now, theSilent Spooks--
With a wrench, he brought his mind back to the subject at hand. "Do theyget into much trouble?" he said.
"Well, no," Lynch said reluctantly. "As a matter of fact, they don't.For a bunch like that, around here, they're pretty well-behaved, as faras that goes."
"What do you mean?" Malone said.
Lynch's face took on a delicately unconcerned appearance. "I don'tknow," he said. "They just don't get into neighborhood trouble. Maybe ascrap now and then--nothing big, though. Or maybe one of them cuts aclass at school or argues with his teacher. But there's nothing unusual,and little of anything." He frowned.
Malone said: "Something's got to be wrong. What is it?"
"Well," Lynch said, "they do seem to have a lot of money to spend."
Malone sat down in a chair across the desk, and leaned eagerly towardLynch. "Money?" he said.
"Money," Lynch said. "New clothes. Cigarettes. Malone, three of them areeven supporting their parents. Old Jose Otravez--Ramon's old man--quithis job a couple of months ago, and hasn't worked since. Spends all histime in bars, and never runs out of dough--and don't tell me you can dothat on Unemployment Insurance. Or Social Security payments."
"O.K.," Malone said. "I won't tell you."
"And there's others. All the others, in fact. Mike Fueyo'ssister--dresses fit to kill, like a high-fashion model. And the Gritokid--"
"Wait a minute," Malone said. "From what you tell me, this isn't just alittle extra money. These kids must be rolling in the stuff. Up to theirears in dough."
"Listen," Lynch said sadly. "Those kids spend more than I do. They dobetter than that--they spend more than I _earn_." He looked remotelysorry for himself, but not for long. "Every one of those kids spendslike a drunken sailor, tossing his money away on all sorts of things."
"Like an expense account," Malone said idly. Lynch looked up. "Sorry,"Malone said. "I was thinking about something else."
"I'll bet you were," Lynch said with unconcealed envy.
"No," Malone said. "Really. Listen, I'll check with Internal Revenue onthat money. But have you got a list of the kids' addresses?"
"I can get one," Lynch said, and went to the door.
It closed behind him. Malone sat waiting alone for a few minutes, andthen Lynch came back. "List'll be here in a minute," he said. He satdown behind his desk and reached for the notebook again. When he turnedto the third page his expression changed to one of surprise.
"Be damned," said. "There does seem to be a connection, doesn't there?"He held up the picture of the red Cadillac for Malone to see.
"Sure does," Malone said. "That's why I want those addresses. If thereis a connection, I sure want to find out about it."
Ten minutes later, Malone was walking out of the precinct station withthe list of addresses in his pocket. He was heading for his GreatAdventure, but he didn't know it. All he was thinking about was the redCadillacs, and the eight teen-agers. "I'm going to get to the bottom ofthis if it takes me all summer," he said, muttering to himself.
"That's the spirit," he told himself. "Never say die."
Then, realizing he had just said it, he frowned. Perhaps it hadn'treally counted. But, then again....
* * * * *
He was on his way down the steps when he hit the girl.
The mutual collision was not catastrophic. On the other hand, it was notexactly minor. It fell somewhere between the two, as an unclassifiablephenomenon of undoubted potency. Malone said: "Oog," with some fervor asthe girl collided with his chest and rebounded like a handball strikinga wall. Something was happening to her, but Malone had no time to spareto notice just what. He was falling through space, touching a concretestep once in a while, but not long enough to make any real acquaintancewith it. It seemed to take him a long time to touch bottom, and when hehad, he wondered if _touch_ was quite the word.
_Bottom_ certainly was. He had fallen backward and landed directly onhis _glutei maximi_, obeying the law regarding equal and oppositereaction and several other laws involving falling bodies.
His first thought was that he was now neatly balanced. His tail hadreceived the same treatment as his head. He wondered if a person couldget concussion of the tail bones, and had reached no definite conclusionwhen, unexpectedly, his eyes focused again.
He was looking at a girl. That was all he saw at first. She hadapparently fallen just as he had, bounced once and sat down rather hard.She was now lying flat on her back, making a sound like "_rrr_" betweenher teeth.
Malone discovered that he was sitting undignifiedly on the steps. Heopened his mouth to say something objectionable, took another look atthe girl, and shut it with a snap. This was no ordinary girl.
He smiled at her. She shook her head and sat up, still going "_rrr_."Then she stopped and said, instead: "What do you think--"
"I'm sorry," Malone said in what he hoped was a charming, debonair andapologetic voice. It was quite a lot to get into one voice, but he triedhis very hardest. "I just didn't see--"
"You didn't?" the girl said. "If you didn't, you must be completelyblind."
Malone noticed with hope that there was no anger in her voice. The lastthing in the world he wanted was to get this girl angry at him.
"Oh, no," Malone said. "I'm not blind. Not blind at all." He smiled ather and stood up. His face was beginning to get a little tired, but heretained the smile as he went over to her, extended a hand and pulledher to her feet.
She was something special. Her hair was long and dark, and fell in softwaves to her shoulders. The shoulders were something all by themselves,but Malone postponed consideration of them for a minute to take a lookat her face.
It was heart-shaped and rather thin. She had large brown liquid eyesthat could look, Malone imagined, appealing, loving, worshiping--or,like a minute ago, downright furious. Below these features, she had astraight lovely nose and a pair of lips which Malone immediatelyclassified as Kissable.
Her figure, including the shoulders, was on the slim side, but she wasvery definitely all there. Malone could not think of any parts theCreator had left out, and if there were any he didn't want to hear aboutthem. In an instant, Malone knew that he had met the only great love ofhis life.
Again.
His mind was whirling and for a second he didn't know what to do. Andthen he remembered the Queen's Own FBI. Phrases flowered forth in hismind as if it were a garden packed corner to corner with the mostexquisite varieties of blooming idiots.
"My deepest apologies, my dear," Sir Kenneth Malone said gallantly, evenmanaging a small display bow for the occasion. "May I be of anyassis
tance?"
The girl smiled up at him as she came to her feet. The smile was radiantand beautiful and almost loving. Malone felt as if he couldn't stand it.Tingles of the most wonderful kind ran through him, reached his toes andthen ran back the other way, meeting a whole new set going forward.
"You're very nice," the girl said, and the tingles became positive wavesof sensation. "Actually, it was all my fault. Please don't apologize,Mr.--" She paused, expectantly.
"Me?" Malone said, his gallantry deserting him for the second. But itreturned full force before he expected it. "I'm Malone," he said."Kenneth Joseph Malone." He had always liked the middle name he hadinherited from his father, but he never had much opportunity to use it.He made the most of it now, rolling it out with all sorts of subsidiaryflourishes. As a matter of fact, he barely restrained himself fromputting a "Sir" before his name.
The girl's brown eyes widened just a trifle. Malone felt as if he couldhave fallen into them and drowned. "Oh, my," she said. "You must be adetective." And then, like the merest afterthought: "My name's Dorothy."
_Dorothy._ It was a beautiful name. It made Malone feel all choked up,inside. He blinked at the girl and tried to look manly and wonderful. Itwas an effort, but he nearly carried it off.
* * * * *
After a second or two he realized that she had asked him a question. Hedidn't want to disillusion her in any way, and, after all, an FBI agentwas a kind of detective, but he thought it was only fair that she shouldknow the whole truth about him right from the start.
"Not exactly a detective," he said.
"Not exactly?" she said, looking puzzled. She looked positively gloriouswhen puzzled, Malone decided at once.
"That is," he said carefully, "I do detect, but not for the city of NewYork."
"Oh," she said. "A private eye. Is that right?"
"Well," Malone said, "no."
She looked even more puzzled. Malone hastened to explain before he gotto the point where conversation was impossible.
"Federal Bureau of Investigation," he said. After a second he thoughtof a clarification and added: "FBI."
"Oh," the girl said. "_Oh._"
"But you can call me Ken," Malone said.
"All right--Ken," she said. "And you call me Dorothy."
"Sure," he said. He tried it out. "Dorothy." It felt swell.
"Well--" she said after a second.
"Oh," Malone said. "Were you looking for a detective? Because if I canhelp in any way--"
"Not exactly," Dorothy said. "Just a little routine business. I'll go onin and--"
Malone suddenly found himself talking without having any idea why he'dstarted, or what he was going to say. At first he said: "_Urr_," as ifthe machine were warming up, and this stopped Dorothy and caused her togive him a rather sharp, baffled stare. Then he found some words andused them hurriedly, before they got away.
"Dorothy," he said, "would you like to take in a show this evening? Ithink I can get tickets to ... well, I guess I could get tickets toalmost anything, if I really tried." His expression attempted to leaveno doubt that he would really try.
Dorothy appeared to consider for a moment. "Well," she said at last,"how about 'The Hot Seat'?"
Malone felt just the way he had several years before when he had bluffedhis way into a gigantic pot during a Washington poker game, with only apair of fours to work with. At the last moment, his bluff had beencalled.
It had, he realized, been called again. "The Hot Seat" had set some sortof record, not only for Broadway longevity, but for audience frenzy.Getting tickets for it was about the same kind of proposition as buyinggrass on the Moon, and getting them with absolutely no prior noticewould require all the wire-pulling Malone could manage. He thought about"The Hot Seat" and wished Dorothy had picked something easy, likearranging for her to meet the Senate.
But he swallowed bravely. "I'll do my best," he said. "Got any secondchoice?"
"Sure," she said, and laughed. "Pick any one you want. I haven't seenthem all, and the ones I have seen are worth seeing again."
"Oh," Malone said.
"I really didn't expect you to get tickets for 'The Hot Seat,'" shesaid.
"Nothing," Malone said, "is impossible." He grinned at her. "Meanwhile,where can I pick you up? Your home?"
Dorothy frowned and shook her head. "No," she said. "You see, I'm livingwith an aunt, and I ... well, never mind." She thought for a minute. "Iknow," she said. "Topp's."
"What?" Malone said.
"Topp's," Dorothy said. "On Forty-second Street, just East of Broadway?It's a restaurant."
"I don't exactly know where it is," Malone said, "but if it's there,I'll find it." He looked gallant and determined. "We can get somethingto eat there before the show--whatever the show turns out to be."
"Fine," Dorothy said.
"How about making it at six?" Malone said.
She nodded. "Six it is," she said. "Now bye-bye." She touched herforefinger to her lips, and brushed Malone's cheek with the kissedfinger.
By the time the new set of tingles had begun to evaporate, she had goneinto the police station. Malone heaved a great sigh of passion, and helddown a strong impulse to follow her and protect her. He wasn't quitesure what he was going to protect her from, but he felt certain thatthat would come to him when the time arrived.
Nevertheless, he had work to do, unpleasant as the idea had suddenlybegun to seem. He pulled the list of addresses out of his pocket andlooked at the first one.
_Mike Fueyo._
Mike was the leader of the Silent Spooks, according to Lieutenant Lynch.Logically, therefore, he would be the first one to talk to. Malone triedto think of some good questions, but the best one he could come up withwas: "Well, what about all those red Cadillacs?"
Somehow he doubted that this would provide a satisfactory reply. Hechecked the address again and started firmly down the street, trying tothink of some better questions along the way.