e said. "I
ought to have known, Mr. Malone. And you want to talk to me a little
bit, right?"

"That's right," Malone said.

"But this is no way to act, Mr. Malone," Manelli said reproachfully.
"After all, we understand each other, you and me. What you should do,
you should come in through channels, in the correct way, so everything
it would be open and above the board."

"Through channels?" Malone said.

Manelli regarded him with a pitying glance. "You must be new on your
job, Mr. Malone," he said. "Because there is an entire system built
up, and you don't know about it. The way things work, we sit around
and we don't see people. And then somebody comes and presents his
credentials, you might say--search warrants, for instance, or
subpoenas. And then we know where we are."

Malone shook his head. "This isn't that kind of call," he said. "It's
more a friendly type of call."

"Mr. Malone," Manelli said. The reproach was stronger in his voice.
"You must be very new at your job."

"Nevertheless," Malone said.

Manelli hesitated only a second. "Because I like you," he said, "and
to teach you how things operate around here, I could do you a favor."

"Good," Malone said patiently.

"In an hour," Manelli said. "My place. Here."

The screen blanked out before Malone could even say goodbye.

Malone got up, went out to the corridor, and decided that, since he
had time to kill, he might as well walk on down to Manelli's office.
That, he told himself, would give him time to decide what he wanted to
say.

He toyed at first with the idea of a nice bourbon and soda in a
Madison Avenue bar, but he discarded that idea in a hurry. It was
always possible for him to get into a tight spot and have to teleport
his way out, and he didn't want to be fuzzy around the edges in case
that happened. _Trotkin's_ had showed him that, under enough stress,
he could manage the job with quite a lot of vodka in him. But there
was absolutely no sense, he told himself sadly, in taking chances.

He started off downtown along Fifth. Soon he was standing in front of
the blue-and-crystal tower of the Ravell Building.

That made up his mind for him. He checked his watch, mentally flipped
a coin and then cheated a little to make the answer come out right. He
went inside and stepped into an elevator.

"Six," he said with decision.

Lou was sitting at the Psychical Research Society desk, talking to the
tweedy Sir Lewis Carter. Malone waved at