ars. So far, there had
been neither thefts nor discoveries in Pennsylvania, but Malone
couldn't see why.

There was absolutely no pattern that he, Boyd, or anyone else could
find. The list of thefts and recoveries had been fed into an
electronic calculator, which had neatly regurgitated them without
being in the least helpful. It had remarked that the square of seven
was forty-nine, but this was traced to a defect in the mechanism.

Whoever was borrowing the red Caddies exhibited a peculiar combination
of burglarious genius and what looked to Malone like outright idiocy.
This was plainly impossible.

Unfortunately, it had happened.

Locking the car doors didn't do a bit of good. The thief, or thieves,
got in without so much as scratching the lock. This obviously proved
that the criminal was either an extremely good lock-pick or else knew
where to get duplicate keys.

However, the ignition was invariably shorted across.

This proved neatly that the criminal was not a very good lock-pick,
and did not know where to get duplicate keys.

Query: Why work so hard on the doors, and not work at all on the
ignition?

That was the first place. The second place was just what had been
bothering Malone all along. There didn't seem to be any purpose to the
car thefts. They hadn't been sold, or used as getaway cars. True,
teenage delinquents sometimes stole cars just to use them joy-riding,
or as some sort of prank.

But a car or two every night? How many joy-rides can one gang take?
Malone thought. And how long does it take to get tired of the same
prank?

And why, Malone asked himself wearily for what was beginning to feel
like the ten thousandth time, why only red Cadillacs?

Burris, he told himself, must have been right all along. The red
Cadillacs were only a smoke screen for something else. Perhaps it was
the robot car, perhaps not; but whatever it was, Burris' general
answer was the only one that made any sense at all.

That should have been a comforting thought, Malone reflected. Somehow,
though, it wasn't.

After they'd finished with the files and personnel at 69th Street,
Malone and Boyd started downtown on what turned out to be a sort of
unguided tour of the New York Police Department. They spoke to some of
the eyewitnesses, and ended up in Centre Street asking a lot of
reasonably useless questions in the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. In
general, they spent nearly six hours on the Affair of the
Self-Propelled