4
The door didn"t say anything at all except _Lt. P. Lynch_. Malone looked at 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 a hall. But he still didn"t know what Lynch did, who he was, or what his name 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 three chairs, and a hatrack. There wasn"t any coat or hat on the hatrack, and there was n.o.body in the chairs. In a fourth chair, behind the desk, sat a huskily built man. He had steel-gray hair, a hard jaw and, Malone noticed with surprise, a faint twinkle in his eye.
"Lieutenant Lynch?" Malone said.
"Right," Lynch said. "What"s the trouble?"
"I"m Kenneth J. Malone, FBI." He reached for his wallet and found it.
He flipped it open for Lynch, who stared at it for what seemed 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 to treat an FBI agent like some kind of a--"
"FBI agent?" Lynch said. "Listen, buster, this is the funniest gag I"ve seen since I came on the force. Really a h.e.l.l of a funny thing.
Who told you to pull it? Jablonski downstairs? 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 is the--"
"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 sort of pick it up. When all the other cops are--hey, listen. How"d we get to 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, Malone didn"t have a thing to worry about except a few months of hospitalization.
Lynch looked as if he were about to get mad, and then he looked down at Malone"s wallet again and started to laugh.
"For G.o.d"s sake," Malone said. "What"s so d.a.m.ned funny?"
He grabbed the wallet and turned it toward him. At once, of course, he realized what had happened. He hadn"t flipped it open to his badge at all. 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 t.i.tle of KNIGHT OF THE BATH and this card shall signify his right to that t.i.tle and his high and respected position as officer in and of THE QUEEN"S OWN FBI
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 good long examination, peering at it from every angle and holding it up to the light two or three times. He even wet his thumb and rubbed the badge with it. At last he looked up.
"I guess you are the FBI," he said. "But what"s with the gag?"
"It isn"t a gag," Malone said. "It"s just--" He thought of the little old lady in Yucca Flats, the little old lady who had been the prime mover in the last case he and Boyd had worked on together. Without the little old lady, the case might never have been solved; she was an authentic telepath, about the best that had ever been found.
But with her, Boyd and Malone had had enough troubles. Besides being a telepath, 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"s investigation had turned up. And she still believed, quite calmly, that she was Good Queen Bess. Malone had been knighted by her during the course of the investigation. This new honor had come to him through the mail; apparently she had decided to enn.o.ble some of her friends still further.
Malone made a mental note to ask Boyd if he"d received one. After all, there couldn"t be too many Knights of the Bath. There was no sense in letting _everybody_ in.
Then he realized that he was beginning to believe everything again.
There had been times, 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 came here about."
Lynch shrugged again. "Okay," 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 pa.s.sed it across to Lynch. "I"m on this red Cadillac business, you know," he said by way of introduction.
"I"ve been hearing about it," Lynch said. He picked up the notebook without opening it and held it like a ticking bomb. "And I mean hearing about it," he said. "We haven"t had any trouble at all in this precinct."
"I know," Malone said. "I"ve read the reports."
"Listen, not a single red Cadillac has been stolen from here, or been reported found here. We run a tight precinct here, and let me tell you--"
"I"m sure you do a fine job," Malone said hastily. "But I want you to look at the notebook. The first page."
Lynch opened his mouth, closed it, and then flipped the notebook cover. He stared at the first page for a few seconds. "What"s this?"
he said at last. "Another gag?"
"No gag, Lieutenant," Malone said.
"It"s your name and mine," Lynch said. "What is that supposed to mean?"