Occasion for Disaster

said. "But it's even worse now, with everything goingnuts. Out where Governor Flarion was taking his stroll, there's anawful lot of it to search. The boys are trying to find somebody whosaw a man acting suspicious in any of the nearby buildings, or heard ashot, or saw anybody at all lurking or loitering anywhere near to thescene."

  "Lovely," Malone said. "Sounds like a nice complicated job."

  "You don't know the half of it," Wolf said. "There's also the MiamiBeach Chamber of Commerce. According to them, Flarion died of a heartattack, and not even in Miami Beach. Everything happening down thereisn't happening, according to them; Miami Beach is the one unsulliedbeauty spot in a mixed-up United States."

  "All I can say," Malone offered, "is good luck. This is the saddestday in American history since the assassination of Huey P. Long."

  "Agreed," Wolf said. "Want me to tell Burris you called?"

  "Right," Malone said, and switched off.

  * * * * *

  The assassination of Nemours P. Flarion, he told himself, obviouslymeant something. It pointed straight toward some entirely new kind ofanswer. Granted, old Nemours P. had been a horrible mistake, aparanoid, self-centered, would-be, dictator whose final act was quitein keeping with the rest of his official life. Who else would be inMiami Beach, far away from his home state, while the President wasdeclaring nationwide martial law?

  But that, Malone told himself, wasn't the point. Or not quite thepoint, anyhow.

  Maybe some work would dig up more facts. Anyhow, Malone was reasonablysure that he could reassign himself from vacation time, at least untilhe called Burris. And he had work to do; nobody was going to hand himanything on a silver serving salver.

  He punched the intercom again and got the Records office.

  "Yes, sir?" a familiar voice said.

  "Potter," Malone said, "this is Malone. I want facsimiles ofeverything we have on the Psychical Research Society, on Sir LewisCarter, and on Luba Ardanko. Both of these last are connected with theSociety."

  "You're back on duty, Malone?" Potter said.

  "Right," Malone said. "Make that fast, will you?"

  Potter nodded. "Right away," he said.

  It didn't take long for the facsimile records to arrive, and Malonewent right to work on them. Maybe somewhere in those records was theclue he had desperately needed. Where was the PRS? What were theydoing now? What did they plan to do?

  And why had they started the whole row in the first place?

  The PRS, he saw, was even more widely spread than he had thought. Ithad branches in almost every major city in the United States, inEurope, South Africa, South America and Australia. There was even asmall branch society in Greenland. True, the Communist disapproval ofsuch nonmaterialistic, un-Marxian objectives as Psychical Researchshowed up in the fact that there were no registered branches in theSino-Soviet bloc. But that, Malone thought, hardly mattered. Maybe inRussia they called themselves the Lenin Study Group, or the BetterBorschch League. He was fairly sure, from all the evidence, that thePRS had some kind of organization even behind the Iron Curtain.

  Money backing didn't seem to be much of a problem, either. Malonechecked for the supporters of the organization and found a microfilmedlist that ran into the hundreds of thousands of names, most of themordinary people who seemed to be interested in spiritualism and thelike, and who donated a few dollars apiece to the PRS. Besides thismass of small donations, of course, there were a few large ones, fromindependently wealthy men who gave support to the organization andseemed actively interested in its aims.

  It wasn't an unusual picture; just an exceptionally big one.

  Malone sighed and went on to the personal dossiers.

  Sir Lewis Carter himself was a well-known astronomer andmathematician. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the RoyalAstronomical Society and the Royal Mathematical Society. He had beenknighted for his contributions in higher mathematics only two yearsbefore he had come to live in the United States. Malone went over thepapers dealing with his entry into the country carefully, but theywere all in order and they contained absolutely nothing in the way ofusable clues.

  Sir Lewis' books on political and historical philosophy had beenwell-received, and he had also written a novel, "But Some Are MoreEqual," which, for a few weeks after publication, had managed to clawits way to the bottom of the best-seller list.

  And that was that. Malone tried to figure out whether all thisinformation did him any good, and the answer came very quickly. Theanswer was no. He opened the second dossier.

  Luba Ardanko had been born in New York. Her mother had been a woman ofIrish descent named Mary Foley, and had died in '69. Her father hadbeen a Hungarian named Chris Yorgen Ardanko, and had died in the sameyear.

  Malone sighed. Somewhere in the dossiers, he was sure, there was aclue, the basic clue that would tell him everything he needed to know.His prescience had never been so strong; he knew perfectly well thathe was staring at the biggest, most startling and most completedisclosure of all. And he couldn't see it.

  He stared at the folders for a long minute. What did they tell him?What was the clue.

  And then, very slowly, the soft light of a prodigal sun illuminatedhis mind.

  "Mr. Malone," Malone said gently, "you are a damned fool. There aretimes when it is necessary to discard the impossible after you haveseen that the obscure is the obvious."

  He wasn't sure whether that meant anything, or even whether he knewwhat he was saying. But, as the entire structure of facts becameclear, and then turned right upside down in his mind and changed intosomething else entirely--something that told him not only who, andwhere, but also why, he became absolutely sure of one thing.

  He knew the final answer.

  And it _was_ obvious. Obvious as all hell!

  XIV

  There was, of course, only one thing to do and only one place to go.Malone teleported to the New York offices of the FBI and wentimmediately downstairs to the garage, where a specially-built Lincolnawaited him at all times.

  One of the mechanics looked up curiously as Malone headed for the car."Want a driver?" he said.

  Malone thanked his lucky stars that he didn't have to get into anylengthy and time-consuming argument about whether or not he was onvacation. "No, thanks," he said. "This is a solo job."

  That, he told himself, was for sure. He drove out onto the streets andinto the heavy late-afternoon traffic of New York. The Lincoln handledsmoothly, but Malone didn't press his luck in the traffic which hethought was even worse than the mess he'd driven through with thehappy cab driver two days before. He wasn't in any hurry now, afterall. He had all the time in the world, and he knew it. They--and, foronce, Malone could put real names to that "they"--would still bewaiting for him when he got there.

  _If_ he got there, he thought suddenly, turning a corner and beingconfronted with a great mass of automobiles wedged solidly fender tofender as far as the eye could see. The noise of honking horns wasdeafening, and great clouds of smoke rose up to make the scene looklike the circle of Hell devoted to hot-rod drivers. Malone cursed andsweated until the line began to move, and then cursed and sweated somemore until he was out of the city at last.

  It took quite a lot of time. New York traffic, in the past forty-eighthours, hadn't gotten better; it had gotten a lot worse. He was nearlyexhausted by the time he finally crossed the George Washington Bridgeand headed west. And, while he drove, he began to let his reflexestake over most of the automotive problems now that New York City wasbehind him.

  He took all his thoughts from behind the shield that had shelteredthem and arrayed them neatly before him. They were beamed, he toldhimself firmly, to one particular group of persons and to no one else.Everything was perfectly clear; all he had to do now was explain it.

  Malone had wondered, over the years, about the detectives in books.They always managed to wrap everything up in the last chapter, whichwas perfectly all right by itself. But they always had a whole crowdof suspects listening t
o them, too. Malone knew perfectly well that hecould never manage a setup like that. People would interrupt him.Things would happen. Two dogs would rush in and start a battle royalon the floor. There would be an earthquake or an invasion of littlegreen Venusians, or else somebody would just decide to faint andcause a furor.

  But now, at long last, he realized, he had his chance. Nobody couldinterrupt him. And he could explain to his heart's content.

  Because the members of the PRS were telepathic. And Kenneth J. Malone,he thought happily, was not.

  Luba, he was sure, would be tuned in on him as he drove toward theirPennsylvania hiding place. At least, he wanted to think so; it madethings much more pleasant. And he hoped that Luba, or whoever wasreally tuned in, would alert everybody else, so they could all hook inand hear his grand final explanation of