Boyd was waiting in his office when he arrived.
“Well, there, Kenneth,” he said. “And how are all our little Slavic brothers?”
“Unreasonable,” Malone said, “and highly unpleasant.”
“You refer, no doubt,” Boyd said, “to the _Meeneestyerstvoh Vnootrenikh Dyehl_?”
“_Gesundheit_,” Malone said kindly.
“The MVD,” Boyd said. “I’ve been studying for days to pull it on you when you got back.”
Malone nodded. “Very well, then,” he said in a stately, orotund tone. “Say it again.”
“Damn it,” Boyd said, “I _can’t_ say it again.”
“Cheer up,” Malone said. “Maybe some day you’ll learn. Meantime, Thomas, did you get the stuff we talked about?”
Boyd nodded. “I think I got enough of it,” he said. “Anyhow, there is a definite trend developing. Come on into the private office, and I’ll show you.”
There, on Boyd’s massive desk, were several neat piles of paper.
“It looks like enough,” Malone said. “As a matter of fact, it looks like too much. Haven’t we been through all this before?”
“Not like this, we haven’t,” Boyd said. “Information from all over, out of the everywhere, into the here.” He picked up a stack of papers and handed them to Malone.
“What’s this?” Malone said.
“That,” Boyd said, “is a report on the Pacific Merchant Sailors’ Brotherhood.”
“Goody,” Malone said doubtfully.
Boyd came over, pulling at his beard thoughtfully, and took the top few sheets out of Malone’s hands. “The report,” he said, looking down at the sheets, “includes the checks we made on the office of the president of the Brotherhood, as well as the Los Angeles local and the San Francisco local.”
“Only two?” Malone said. “That seems as if you’ve been lying down on the job.”
“They’re the top two in membership,” Boyd said. “But listen to this: the president and three of his underlings resigned day before yesterday, and not quite in time. The law—by which I mean us, and a good many other people—is hot on their tails. It seems somebody accidentally mixed up a couple of envelopes.”
“Sounds like a case for the Post Office,” Malone said brightly.
“Not these envelopes,” Boyd said. “There was a letter that was supposed to go to the head of the San Francisco local, dealing with a second set of books—not the ones used for tax purposes, but the real McCoy. The letter didn’t get to the San Francisco man. Instead, it went to the attorney general of the state of California.”
“Lovely,” Malone said. “Meanwhile, what was San Francisco doing?”
Boyd smiled. “San Francisco was getting confused,” he said. “Like everybody else. The San Francisco man got a copy of an affidavit dealing with merchant-ship tonnage. That was supposed to go to the attorney general.”
“Good work,” Malone said. “So when the Frisco boys woke up to what was happening—”
“They called the head man, and he put two and two together, resigned and went into hiding. Right now, he’s probably living an undercover life as a shoe salesman in Paris, Kentucky.”
“And, after all,” Malone added, “why not? It’s a peaceful life.”
“The attorney general, of course, impounded the second set of books,” Boyd went on. “A grand jury is hearing charges now.”
“You know,” Malone said reflectively, “I almost feel sorry for the man. Almost, but not quite.”
“I see what you mean,” Boyd said. “It is a hell of a thing to happen.”
“On the other hand—” Malone leafed through the papers in a hurry, then put them back on Boyd’s desk with a sigh of relief. “I’ve got the main details now,” he said. “I can go through the thing more thoroughly later. Anything else?”
“Oh, lots,” Boyd said. “And all in the same pattern. The FPM, for instance, literally dropped one in our laps.”
“Literally?” Malone said. “What was the Federation of Professional Musicians doing in your lap?”
“Not mine,” Boyd said hastily. “Not mine. But it seems that some secretary put a bunch of file folders on the windowsill of their second-floor offices, and they fell off. At the same time, an agent was passing underneath, slipped on a banana peel and sat down on the sidewalk. Bingo, folders in lap.”
“Wonderful,” Malone said. “The hand of God.”
“The hand of something, for sure,” Boyd said. “Those folders contain all the ammunition we’ve ever needed to get after the FPM. Kickbacks, illegal arrangements with night-clubs, the whole works. We’re putting it together now, but it looks like a long, long term ahead for our friends from the FPM.”
And Boyd went to his desk, picked up a particularly large stack of papers. “This,” he said, “is really hot stuff.”
“What do you call the others?” Malone said. “Crime on ice?”
“The new show at the Winter Garden,” Boyd said blithely. “Don’t miss it if you can.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “So what’s so hot?”
Boyd smiled. “The police departments of seven major cities,” he said. “They’re all under attack either by the local prosecuting attorney or the state’s attorney general. It seems there’s a little graft and corruption going on.”
“This,” Malone said, “is not news.”
“It is to the people concerned,” Boyd said. “Four police chiefs have resigned, along with great handfuls of inspectors, captains and lieutenants. It’s making a lovely wingding all over the country, Ken.”
“I’ll bet,” Malone said.
“And I checked back on every one,” Boyd went on. “Your hunch was absolutely right, Ken. The prosecuting attorneys and the attorneys general are all new men—all the ones involved in this stuff. Each one replaced a previous incumbent in a recent election. In two cases, the governor was new, too—elected last year.”
“That figures,” Malone said. “What about the rest?”
Boyd’s grandiose wave of a hand took in all the papers on the desk. “It’s all the same,” he said. “They all follow a pattern, Ken, _the_ pattern. The one you were looking for.”
Malone blinked. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I’ll be doubly damned.”
“And how about the Russians?” Boyd said.
“You mean the _Meeneestyerstvoh Vnootrenikh Dyehl_?” Malone said.
“Now,” Boyd said, “I’ll be damned. And after I practiced for days.”
“Ah,” Malone said. “But I was _there_. The Russians are about as mixed up as a group of Transylvanian villagers with two vampires to track down and not enough flambeaux for all. Here, for instance, is just one example: the conflicting sets of orders that were given about me and Her Majesty and L—Miss Garbitsch.”
Briefly, he outlined what had happened.
“Sounds like fun,” Boyd said.
“They were so busy arguing with each other,” Malone finished, “that I have a feeling we hardly needed the teleportation to escape. It would just have taken longer, that’s all.” He paused. “By the way, Tom, about the stakeout—”
“Luba Garbitsch is being protected as if she were Fort Knox,” Boyd said. “If any Soviet agent tries to approach her with a threat of any kind, we’ll have him nabbed before he can say Ivan Robinovitch.”
“Or,” Malone suggested, “_Meeneestyerstvoh_—”
“If we waited for that one,” Boyd said, “we might have to wait all day.” He paused. “But who’s doing it?” he went on. “That’s still the question. Martians? Venerians? Or is that last one Venusians?”
“Aphrodisiacs,” Malone suggested diplomatically.
“Thank you, no,” Boyd said politely. “I never indulge while on duty.”
“Thomas,” Malone said, “you are a Rover Boy First-Class.”
“Good,” Boyd said. “But, meanwhile, who is doing all this? Would you prefer Evil Beings from the Planet Ploor?”
“I would not,” Malone said firmly.
“But I have a strange feeling,” Boyd said, “that, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, you do not hold with the Interplanetary Alien Theory.”
“Frankly,” Malone said, “I’m not sure of anything. Not really. But I do want to know why, if it’s interplanetary aliens doing this stuff, they’re picking such a strange way of going about it.”
“Strange?” Boyd said. “What’s strange about it? You wouldn’t expect Things from Ploor to come right out and _tell_ us what they want, would you? It’s against custom. It may even be against the law.”
“Well, maybe,” Malone said. “But it is pretty strange. The difference between what’s happening in Russia and what’s happening here—”
“What difference?” Boyd said. “Everybody’s confused. Here, and over there. It all looks the same to me.”
“Well, it isn’t,” Malone said. “Take a look at the paper, for instance.” He tossed the _Post_ at Boyd, who caught it with a spasmodic clutching motion and reassembled it slowly.
“Why throw things?” Boyd said. “You sore or something?”
“I guess I am,” Malone said. “But not at you. It’s—somebody or something. Person or persons unknown.”
“Or Ploorians,” Boyd said.
“Whatever,” Malone said. “But take a look at the paper and see if you see what I see.” He paused. “Does that mean anything?” he said.
“Probably,” Boyd said. “We’ll figure it out later.” He leafed through the newspaper slowly, pulling thoughtfully at his beard from time to time. Malone watched him in breathless silence.
“See it?” he said at last.
Boyd looked up and, very slowly, nodded. “You’re right, Ken,” he said in a quiet voice. “You’re absolutely right. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“And that,” Malone said, “sounds like an insult. It’s much plainer than that. Suppose you tell me.”
Boyd considered. “Over here,” he said at last, “there are a lot of confused jerks and idiots. Right?”