I stopped, trying to keep my glower going.
"Passarelli would have to be in on it, too," he decided. "And I can't figure him for a louse. O.K., Maragon. I'll pick you up at your office at about eight o'clock."
With nearly two hours to kill, I went out to eat. I still felt glum and lousy. Part of it was the knifelike penetration of Crescas' intuition—his knowing that I was just a stalking horse so that the big guns could zero in on Mary Hall. And there was that little tremor of fear that comes from knowing that a Psi may think you've doublecrossed him. They have some powerful abilities when it comes to exacting vengeance. Well, if everything about the deal was as much screwed up as the part I had heard so far, I decided, I might get out with a whole skin at that.
That was my attempt at consolation—that and an order of sweet-breads, Financiere, which is a ridiculous dish for a sawed-off shyster tending toward overweight.
I was back in the law library by ten minutes of eight, trying to occupy my mind with the latest Harvard Law Review, when the 'phone rang. Keys' face, a little tight-lipped and bright-eyed, peered at me from the screen, which it completely filled. He must have darned near swallowed the 'scope.
"Ready?" he asked softly.
"Sure. You picking me up?"
His lip curled in half a smile. "What do I look like?" he sneered. "Grab a cab. You know a bar called the Moldy Fig?" I nodded. "That's where." He cut the image.
Well, this was more like it. You can't deal with Psis without the whole affair acting like something out of E. Phillips Oppenheim. I closed up the office, turned out the ceiling, and rode the elevator down to the street.