"But that doesn't mean there isn't such a thing," Malone said.
"Even your own star witness," Burris said, "even the Queen herself, told you it couldn't be done."
"Nevertheless--" Malone began. But he felt puzzled. There was no way, he decided, to finish a sentence that started with _nevertheless_. It was the wrong kind of word.
"What are you trying to do?" Burris said. "Beat your head against a stone wall?"
Malone realized that that was just what he felt like. Of course, Burris thought the stone wall was his psionic theory. Malone knew that the stone wall was Andrew J. Burris. But it didn't matter, he thought confusedly. Where there's a stone, there's a way.
"I feel," he said carefully, "like a man with a stone head."
"And I don't blame you," Burris said in an understanding tone. "Here you are trying to make evidence to fit your theories. What real evidence is there, Malone, that these three spies ... these three comic-opera spies--are innocent?"
"What evidence is there that they're guilty?" Malone said. "Now, listen, Chief--"
"Don't call me Chief," Burris murmured.
"Another five minutes," Malone said in a sudden rage, "and I won't even call you."
"Malone!" Burris said.
Malone swallowed hard. "Sorry," he said at last. "But isn't it just barely possible that these three spies aren't the real criminals? Suppose you were a spy."
"All right," Burris said. "I'm a spy." Something in his tone made Malone look at him with a sudden suspicion. Burris, he thought, was humoring him.
Is it possible, Malone asked himself, that _I_ am the one who is as a little child?
Little children, he told himself with decision, do not capture Russian spies and then argue about it. They go home, eat supper and go to bed.
* * * * *
He stopped thinking about sleep in a hurry, and got back to the business at hand. "If you were a spy," he said, "and you knew that a lot of other spies had been arrested and charged with the crimes you were committing, what would you do?"
Burris appeared to think deeply. "I would celebrate," he said at last, in a judicious tone.
"I mean, would you just go on with the same crimes?" Malone said.
"What are you talking about, Malone?" Burris said cautiously.
"If you knew we'd arrested Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch," Malone went on doggedly, "you'd lay off for a while, just to make us think we'd caught the right men. Doesn't that make sense?"
"Of course it makes sense," Burris said in what was almost a pitying tone. "But don't push it too far. Malone, I want you to know something."
Malone sighed. "Yes, sir?" he said.
"Contrary to popular opinion," Burris said, "I was not appointed Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation just because I own a Hoover vacuum cleaner."
"Of course not," Malone said, feeling that something of the sort was called for.
"And I think you ought to know by now," Burris went on, "that I wouldn't fall for a trick like that any more than you would. There are obviously more members in this spy ring. Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch are just a start."
"Well, then--" Malone began.
"_I'm_ not going to be taken in by what these three say," Burris said. "But now, Malone, we know what to look for. All we have to do is pretend to be taken in. Get it?"
"Sure," Malone said. "We pretend to be taken in. And in the meantime I can go on looking for--"
"We don't have to look for anything," Burris said calmly.
Malone took a deep breath. Somehow, he told himself, things were not working out very well. "But the other spies--"
"The next time they try anything," Burris said, "we'll be able to reach out and pick them up as easy as falling off a log."
"It's the wrong log!" Malone said.
Burris folded his hands on the desk and looked at them for a second, frowning slightly like a psychiatrist. "Malone," he said at last, "I want you to listen to me. Calmly. Coolly. Collectedly."
Malone shrugged. "All right," he said. "I'm calm and cool."
"And collected," Burris added.
"That, too," Malone said vaguely.
"Malone," Burris began, "you've got to get rid of this idea that everything the FBI investigates these days is somehow linked with psionics. I know you've done a lot of work in that connection--"
"Now, wait a minute," Malone said. "There are those errors. How did the technicians feed the wrong data into the machines?"
"Errors do happen," Burris said. "If I slip on a banana peel, do I blame psionics? Do I even blame the United Fruit Growers? I do not, Malone. Instead, I tell myself that errors do happen. All the time."
"Now," Malone said, "you've contradicted yourself."
"I have?" Burris said with a look of complete surprise.
"Sure," Malone said. He leaned forward across the desk. "If the errors were just ordinary accidental errors, then how were the spies responsible? And why did they stop after the spies were arrested? When you slip on a banana peel, does it matter whether or not the United Fruit Growers are out on strike?"
"Oh," Burris said.
"You see?" Malone said. "You've gone and contradicted yourself." He felt victorious, but somewhere in the back of his mind was the horrible sensation that someone was about to come up behind him and hit him on the head with a wet sock full of old sand.
A long second passed. Then Burris said: "Oh. Malone, I forgot to give you the analysis report."
That, Malone realized dimly, was supposed to be the wet sock. Fate, he told himself, was against him. Anyhow, something was against him. It was a few seconds before he came to the conclusion that what he had heard didn't really make any sense. "Analysis report?" he said.
"On the water cooler," Burris explained cheerfully.
"There is an analysis report on a water cooler," Malone said. "Everything now becomes as clear as crystal." He heard his voice begin to rise. "You analyzed a water cooler and discovered that it was a Siberian spy in disguise," he said, trying to make himself sound less hysterical.
"No, no," Burris said, pushing at Malone with his palms. "The water in it, Malone. The water in it."
"No Siberian spy," Malone said with decision, "could disguise himself as the water in a water cooler."
"I didn't say that," Burris went on. "But what do you think was in that water cooler, Malone?"
"Water," Malone said. "_Cool_ water."
"Congratulations," Burris said, in the hearty tones usually reserved for announcers on programs where housewives win trips to Nome. "You are just a shade less than ninety-nine point nine nine per cent correct."
"The rest of the water," Malone hazarded, "was warm?"
"The rest of the water," Burris said, "wasn't water. Aside from the usual minerals, there was also a trace of one of the psychodrugs."
* * * * *
The word seemed to hang in mid-air, like somebody's sword. Malone knew perfectly well what the psychodrugs were. Over the past twenty years, a great number of them had been developed by confused and anxious researchers. Some were solids, some liquids and a few gaseous at normal temperatures. Some were weak and some were highly potent. Some were relatively innocuous, and quite a few were as deadly as any of the more common poisons. They could be administered by mouth, by injection, by spray, as drops, grains, whiffs or in any other way conceivable to medical science. But they all had one thing in common. They affected the mental functioning--what seemed to be the personality itself--of the person dosed with them.
The effect of the drugs was, in most cases, highly specific. One might make a normally brave man a craven coward; laboratory tests on that one had presented the interesting spectacle of terrified cats running from surprised, but by no means displeased, experimental mice. Another drug reversed this picture, and made the experimental mice mad with power. They attacked cats in battalions or singly, cheering and almost waving large flags as they went over the top, completely foolhardy in the presence of any danger whatever. Others made man abnormally suspicious and still others disassociated judgment to the point where all decisions were made completely at random.
The FBI had a large file on psychodrugs, Malone knew. But he didn't need the file to see what was coming. He asked the question anyhow, just for the record: "What particular psychodrug was this one?"
"One of the judgment-warpers," Burris said. "Haenlingen's Mixture; it's more or less a new development, but the Russians probably know as much about it as we do. In large doses, the drug affects even the automatic nervous system and throws the involuntary functions out of whack; but it isn't usually used in killing amounts."
"And in the water cooler?" Malone asked.
"There wasn't much of it," Burris said, "but there was enough. The technicians could be depended on to make a great many more mistakes than usual--just how many we can't determine, but the order of magnitude seems about right. It would depend on how much water each one of them drank, of course, and we haven't a chance of getting anything like a precise determination of that now."
"Oh," Malone said. "But it comes out about right, doesn't it?" He felt hopeless.