The door to the next room had opened almost immediately, and two husky, white-clad men were bringing in a strait-jacketed figure whose arms were wrapped against his chest, while the jacket's extra-long sleeves were tied behind his back. He walked where the attendants led him, but his eyes weren't looking at anything in the room. They stared at something far away and invisible, an impalpable shifting nothingness somewhere in the infinite distances beyond the world.
For the first time, Malone felt the chill of panic. Here, he thought, was insanity of a very real and frightening kind. Queen Elizabeth Thompson was one thing—and she was almost funny, and likeable, after all. But William Logan was something else, and something that sent a wave of cold shivering into the room.
What made it worse was that Logan wasn't a man, but a boy, barely nineteen. Malone had known that, of course—but seeing it was something different. The lanky, awkward figure wrapped in a hospital strait-jacket was horrible, and the smooth, unconcerned face was, somehow, worse. There was no threat in that face, no terror or anger or fear. It was merely—a blank.
It was not a human face. Its complete lack of emotion or expression could have belonged to a sleeping child of ten—or to a member of a different race. Malone looked at the boy, and looked away.
Was it possible that Logan knew what he was thinking?
Answer me, he thought, directly at the still boy.
There was no reply, none at all. Malone forced himself to look away.
But the air in the room seemed to have become much colder.
The attendants stood on either side of him, waiting. For one long second no one moved, and then Dr. Dowson reached into his desk drawer and produced a sheaf of papers.
"If you'll sign these for the government," he said, "you may have Mr. Logan. There seems little else that I can do, Mr. Malone—in spite of my earnest pleas—"
"I'm sorry," Malone said. After all, he needed Logan, didn't he? After a look at the boy, he wasn't sure any more—but the Queen had said she wanted him, and the Queen's word was law. Or what passed for law, anyhow, at least for the moment.