ged to get
underneath him.

As soon as he was standing, he wished he'd stayed on the nice
horizontal sidewalk. His head was spinning dizzily, and his mind was
being sucked down into the whirlpool. He held on to the post grimly
and tried to stay conscious.

A long time, possibly two or three seconds, passed. Malone hadn't
moved at all when the two cops came along.

One of them was a big man with a brassy voice and a face that looked
as if it had been overbaked in a waffle iron. He came up behind Malone
and tapped him on the shoulder, but Malone barely felt the touch. Then
the cop bellowed into Malone's ear: "What's the matter, buddy?"

Malone appreciated the man's sympathy. It was good to know that you
had friends. But he wished, remotely, that the cop and his friend, a
shorter and thinner version of the beat patrolman, would go away and
leave him in peace. Maybe he could lie down on the sidewalk again and
get a couple of hundred years' rest.

Who could tell? "Mallri," he said.

"You're all right?" the big cop said. "That's fine. That's great. So
why don't you go home and sleep it off?"

"Sleep?" Malone said. "Home?"

"Wherever you live, buddy," the big cop said. "Come on. Can't stand
around on the sidewalk all night."

Malone shook his head, and decided at once never to do it again. He
had some kind of rare disease, he realized. His brain was loose, and
the inside of his skull was covered with sandpaper. Every time his
head moved, the brain jounced against some of the sandpaper.

But the policemen thought he was drunk. That wasn't right. He couldn't
let the police get the wrong impression of FBI agents. Now the men
would go around telling people that the FBI was always drunk and
disorderly.

"Not drunk," he said clearly.

"Sure," the big cop said. "You're fine. Maybe just one too many, huh?"

"No," Malone said. The effort exhausted him, and he had to catch his
breath before he could say anything else. But the cops waited
patiently. At last he said, "Somebody slugged me."

"Slugged?" the big cop said.

"Right." Malone remembered just in time not to nod his head.

"How about a description, buddy?" the big cop said.

"Didn't see him," Malone said. He let go of the post with one hand,
keeping a precarious grip with the other. He stared at his watch. The
hands danced back and forth, but he focused on them after a while. It
was 1:05. "Happened just--a few minutes ago," he said. "Maybe you can
catch him.