Occasion for Disaster

in whatwas going on--though I remember telling myself that there was a kindof justice in the way this thing was just as hard on gangsters as itwas on businessmen and Congressmen.

  "The Congressman from Gahoochie County, Arkansas, gets himself in ajam over fraudulent election returns on the same day that theaccountant for the Truckers Union sends Mike Sands' books to theAttorney General. Simple justice, I call it.

  "And, you know, seen from that viewpoint, this whole caper might comeout looking pretty good. If most of the characters you've taken careof are just the boys who needed taking care of, I'd say more power toyou--except for one thing. It's all right to get rid of all the fools,idiots, maniacs, blockheads, morons, psychopaths, paranoids,timidity-ridden, fear-worshipers, fanatics, thieves, and the rest ofthe general, all-round, no-good characters; I'm all for it. But notthis way. Oh, no.

  "You've pressed the panic button, that's what you've done.

  "You've done more damage in two weeks than all those fumblebrains havebeen able to do in several myriads of lifetimes. You've loused up theeconomy of this nation and every other civilized nation. You've causedriots in which innocent people have died; you've caused thousands moreto lose their businesses and their savings. And only God Himself knowshow many more are going to die of starvation and murder before thisthing is over.

  "And you can't tell me that _all_ of those people deserve to die."

  He slowed down as he came to a small town, and for the first time inmany miles he focused on the road ahead with his full mind. The town,he saw, looked like a shambles. There were four cars tastefullyarranged on the lawn of what appeared to be the local library. Acrossthe street, a large drugstore was in flames, and surprised people werehurrying to put it out. There didn't seem to be any State Police orArmy men around, but they'd passed through; Malone saw a forgottenoverseas cap lying on the road ahead.

  With a shock, he realized that he was now in Pennsylvania, close towhere he wanted to go. A signboard told him the town he was looking atwas Milford. It was a mess, and Malone hoped fervently that it was amess that could eventually be cleaned up.

  The town was a small one, and Malone was glad to get out of it soquickly.

  "That's the kind of thing I mean," he said aloud. Then he paused. "Areyou there, anybody?"

  He imagined he heard Luba's voice saying: _Yes, Ken. Yes, I'm here.Listening to you._

  Imagination was fine but, of course, there was no way for them to getthrough to him. They were telepathic, but Kenneth J. Malone, he toldhimself sadly, was not.

  "Hello, out there," he went on. "I hope you've been listening so far,because there isn't too much more for me to say.

  "Just this: you've wrecked my country, and you've wrecked almost allof the rest of civilization. You've brought my world down around myears.

  "I have every logical reason to hate your guts. By all the evidence Ihave, you are a group of the worst blackguards who ever existed; byall the evidence, I should be doing everything in my power toexterminate you.

  "But I'm not.

  "My prescience tells me that what you've been doing is right andnecessary. I'm damned if I can see it, but there it is. I just hopeyou can explain it to me."

  XV

  Soon, he was in the midst of the countryside. It was, of course,filled with country. It spread around him in the shape of hills,birds, trees, flowers, grass, billboards and other distractions to thepassing motorist.

  It took Malone better than two hours more to find the place he waslooking for. Long before he found it, he had come to the conclusionthat finding country estates in Pennsylvania was only a shade easierthan finding private homes in the Borough of Brooklyn. In both cases,he had found himself saddled with the same frantic search down whatseemed likely routes which turned out to lead nowhere. He had found,in both cases, complete ignorance of the place on the part of localcitizens, and even strong doubts that the place could possibly haveany sort of existence.

  The fact that is was growing dark didn't help much, either.

  But he found it at last. Rounding a curve in a narrow, blacktop road,he saw the home behind a grove of trees.

  He recognized it instantly.

  He had seen it so often that he felt as if he knew it intimately.

  It was a big, rambling, Colonial-type mansion, painted a blinding andbeautiful white, with a broad, pillared porch and a great carved frontdoor. The front windows were curtained in rich purples, and before thehouse was a great front garden, and tall old trees. Malonehalf-expected Scarlett O'Hara to come tripping out of the house at anyminute shouting: "Rhett! The children's mush is on fire!" or somethingequally inappropriate.

  Inside it, however, if Malone were right, was not the magneticScarlett. Inside the house were some of the most important members ofthe PRS--and one person who was not a member.

  But it was impossible to tell from the outside. Nothing moved on thewell-kept grounds, and the windows didn't show so much as the flutterof a purple curtain. There was no sound. No cars were parked aroundthe house--nor, Malone realized, thinking of "Gone With the Wind,"were there any horses or carriages.

  The place looked deserted.

  Malone thought he knew better, but it took a few minutes for him toget up enough courage to go up the long driveway. He stared at thehouse. It was an old one, he knew, built long before the Civil War andoriginally commanding a huge tract of land. Now, all that remained ofthe vast acreage was the small portion that surrounded the house.

  But the original family still inhabited it, proud of the house and oftheir part in its past. Over the years, Malone knew, they had kept itup scrupulously, and the place had been both restored and modernizedon the inside without harming the classic outlines of thehundred-and-fifty-year-old structure.

  A fence surrounded the estate, but the front gate was swinging open.Malone saw it and took a deep breath. Now, he told himself, or never.He drove the Lincoln through the opening slowly, alert for almostanything.

  There was no disturbance. Thirty yards from the front door he pulledthe car to a cautious stop and got out. He started to walk toward thebuilding. Each step seemed to take whole minutes, and everything hehad thought raced through his mind again. Nothing seemed to moveanywhere, except Malone himself.

  Was he right? Were the people he'd been beaming to really here? Or hadhe been led astray by them? Had he been manipulated, in spite of hisshield, as easily as they had manipulated so many others?

  That was possible. But it wasn't the only possibility.

  Suppose, he thought, that he was perfectly right, and that the groupwas waiting inside. And suppose, too, that he'd misunderstood theirmotives.

  Suppose they were just waiting for him to get a little closer.

  Malone kept walking. In just a few steps, he could be close enough sothat a bullet aimed at him from the house hadn't a real chance ofmissing him.

  And it didn't have to be bullets, either. They might have set a trap,he thought, and were waiting for him to walk into it. Then they wouldhold him prisoner while they devised ways to....

  To what?

  He didn't know. And that was even worse; it called up horrible terrorsfrom the darkest depths of Malone's mind. He continued to walkforward.

  Finally he reached the steps that led up to the porch, and took themone at a time.

  He stood on the porch. A long second passed.

  He took a step toward the high, wide and handsome oaken door. Then hetook another step, and another.

  What was waiting for him inside?

  He took a deep breath, and pressed the doorbell button.

  The door swung open immediately, and Malone involuntarily steppedback.

  The owner of the house smiled at him from the doorway. Malone let outhis breath in one long sigh of relief.

  "I was hoping it would be you," he said weakly. "May I come in?"

  "Why, certainly, Malone. Come on in. We've been expecting you, youknow," said Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI.

  XVI

  Malone sat,
quietly relaxed and almost completely at ease, in thedepths of a huge, comfortable, old-fashioned Morris chair. Threesimilar chairs were clustered around a squat, massive coffee table,made of a single slab of dark wood set on short, curved legs. Malonelooked around at the other three with a relaxed feeling ofrecognition: Andrew J. Burris, Sir Lewis Carter and Luba Ardanko.

  Sir Lewis softly exhaled a cloud of smoke as he removed the briar fromhis mouth. "Malone," he asked gently, "how did you know we would behere?"

  "Well," Malone said, "I just ... I mean, it was obvious as soon asI--" He stopped, frowning. "I had one thing to go on, anyway," hesaid. "I figured out the PRS was responsible for all the troublesbecause it was so efficient. And then, while I was sitting and staringat the file reports, it suddenly came to me: the FBI was just asefficient. So it was