"Prove it," I demanded, opening a chink in my mind.
His long red face twisted in a crooked grin, showing poorly-cared-for teeth scattered here and there in his gums.
"Yo' think I never had no orthodonture, whatever thet is," he said.
I shut my mind like a clam. If there's anything I detest, it's the ghastly creeping of a telepath into my own thoughts. "Hello, Pete!" he exclaimed. "Yo' done shet yo' mind!" He shook his head. "Ain't never seen a body could do thet!" I'll bet he hadn't. There are only a few of us who can keep telepaths out of our thoughts. It takes a world of practice. Well, I'd had that.
"Can you do that?" I asked the snake.
He shook his head. "No, suh," he admitted.
"So here you are," I said, more heatedly. "Wandering around in a town full of secrets—Washington, the capital of your country, where the military, the diplomatic people, the security people, all of them have locked in their heads the things that keep us one step ahead of the Russians. Isn't that true?"
"I reckon. But—"
"But nothing," I snapped, getting sore about it for the thousandth time. "And you, you miserable snake, you can't keep your thoughts from being read by another telepath. No telepath can. Your mind is open two ways—to let thoughts in but, damn it, equally to leak out anything you know." I smiled coldly at him. "Can you get my thoughts now?"
The telepath shook his head. "Still got yo' mind closed," he said. He sounded bitter about it.