"But doesn't it seem just awful to think of anything as miraculous as telepathy being used for—for—"
She was trying to avoid the word "immoral" because she was of an age and experience that felt sensitive about its use. Unfortunately the only substitute was the word "sin."
I came to her rescue. "It's deplorable but true that nothing was ever developed for the benefit of mankind without a few sharpshooters quickly figuring out some way to make it pay them a dishonest buck."
"But it would be frightfully hard to bamboozle a telepathic policeman, wouldn't it?" she asked hopefully.
I thought of my PSI-man, whose only mistake in the sealed room murder of Gordon Andrews had been in being so good that he'd actually disclosed the existence of a criminal who employed Psi faculties.
"Wouldn't that depend upon whether the policeman or the criminal was the more talented?" I parried. "But that supposes that the police force would have a corps of Psi policemen."
"Wouldn't they?"
"Honey-chile," I said, "at the first thin hint that the Commissioner was even interested in the possibility of hiring someone who knew what the term 'parapsychic phenomena' really meant, there would be a universal howl against 'Thought Police' so loud that it would shatter the polar icecaps."
"But why?" she asked, bewildered.