d have
to check every decision he made to be sure that it was not capricious;
now he made a resolve that he'd kept his mental faculties on a
perpetual watch for that sort of interference. Of course, it was more
than barely possible that he wouldn't notice it if anything happened.
But it would be pretty stupid to succumb to that sort of defeatism
now, he told himself grimly.

Now that everything was narrowing down so nicely, anyhow, he thought.
There were only two real possibilities. Malone numbered them in his
mind:

1. Her Majesty has developed a new delusion. In this case, he thought,
Burris was perfectly right. I can enjoy a month of free vacation.

2. Her Majesty is no nuttier than before. If this is the case, he
thought, then there's more to the case than has appeared, and Kenneth
J. Malone, with or without the FBI, is going to get to the bottom of
it.

Therefore, he summed up, everything now hinged on whether or not Her
Majesty was unhinged.

That was confusing, but he managed to straighten it out after a
second. He put his half-smoked cigar carefully in an ashtray and stood
up. He went over to the phone and dialed the special unlisted number
of the FBI.

The face that appeared was faintly sallow and looked sad. "Pelham
here," it said in the tones of a discouraged horse.

"Hello, Pelham," Malone said. "Kenneth Malone here."

"Trouble?" Pelham said. It was obvious that he expected trouble, and
always had, and probably always would.

"Nope," Malone said. Pelham looked even sadder. "Just checking out for
vacation. You can tell the Chief I'm going to take off for Las Vegas.
I'm taking his advice, tell him; I'm going to carouse and throw my
money away and look at dancing girls and smoke and drink and stay out
late. I'll let the local office know where I'm staying when I get
there, just in case something comes up."

"O.K.," Pelham said unhappily. "I'll check you out." He tried a smile,
but it looked more like the blank expression on the face of a local
corpse. "Have fun," he said.

"Thanks," Malone said. "I'll try."

But his precognitive sense suddenly rose up on its hind legs as he
broke the connection. The attempt to have fun, it told him in no
uncertain terms, was going to be a morbid failure.

"Nevertheless," Malone muttered, heaved a great sigh, and started for
the suitcase and the door.

VIII

The Great Universal was not the tops in every field. Not by a long
shot. As Las Vegas resorts went