ful.

Unfortunately, it was impossible.

"What's this business about a static explosion?" Boyd said.

"Don't ask silly questions," Malone said. "A static explosion is a
contradiction in terms. If something is static, it doesn't move--and
whoever heard of a motionless explosion?"

"If it is a contradiction in terms," Boyd said, "they're your terms."

"Sure," Malone said. "But I don't know what they mean. I don't even
know what I mean."

"You're in a bad way," Boyd said, looking sympathetic.

"I'm in a perfectly terrible way," Malone said, "and it's going to get
worse. You wait and see."

"Of course I'll wait and see," Boyd said. "I wouldn't miss the end of
the world for anything. It ought to be a great spectacle." He paused.
"Want them to bring in the next one?"

"Sure," Malone said. "What have we got to lose but our minds? And who
is the next one?"

"Borbitsch," Boyd said. "They're saving Garbitsch for a big finish."

Malone nodded wearily. "Onward," he said, and picked up the phone. He
punched a number, spoke a few words and hung up.

A minute later, the four FBI agents came back, leading a man. This one
was tall and thin, with the expression of a gloomy, degenerate and
slightly nauseated bloodhound. He was led to the chair and he sat down
in it as if he expected the worst to start happening at once.

"Well," Malone said in a bored, tired voice. "So this is the one who
won't talk."

VI

Midnight.

Kenneth J. Malone sat at his desk, in his Washington office,
surrounded by piles of papers covering the desk, spilling off onto the
floor and decorating his lap. He was staring at the papers as if he
expected them to leap up, dance round him and shout the solution to
all his problems at him in trained choral voices. They did nothing at
all.

Seated cross-legged on the rug in the center of the room, and looking
like an impossible combination of the last Henry Tudor and Gautama
Buddha, Thomas Boyd did nothing either. He was staring downward, his
hands folded on his ample lap, wearing an expression of utter, burning
frustration. And on a nearby chair sat the third member of the
company, wearing the calm and patient expression of the gently born
under all vicissitudes: Queen Elizabeth I.

"All right," Malone said into the silence. "Now let's see what we've
got."

"I think we've got cerebral paresis," Boyd said. "It's been coming on
for years."

"Don't be funny," Malone said.

Boyd gave a short, mir