Malone found he had to assume that the spy was in the United States— that, in other words, there was some effective range to telepathic communication. Otherwise, there was no point in bothering to continue the search.
Therefore, he found one other thing to do. He alerted every agent to the job of discovering how the spy was getting his information out of the country.
He doubted that it would turn up anything, but it was a chance. And Malone hoped desperately for it, because he was beginning to be sure that the field agents were never going to turn up any telepathic imbeciles.
He was right. They never did.
3
The telephone rang.
Malone rolled over on the couch and muttered four words under his breath. Was it absolutely necessary for someone to call him at seven in the morning?
He grabbed at the receiver with one hand, and picked up his cigar from the ashtray with the other. It was bad enough to be awakened from a sound sleep—but when a man hadn't been sleeping at all, it was even worse.
He'd been sitting up since before five that morning, worrying about the telepathic spy, and at the moment he wanted sleep more than he wanted phone calls.
"Gur?" he said, sleepily and angrily, thankful that he'd never had a visiphone installed in his apartment. A taste for blondes was apparently hereditary. At any rate, Malone felt he had inherited it from his father, and he didn't want any visible strangers calling him at odd hours to interfere with his process of collection and research.