"Didn't arrest them," he said. "Tom Boyd did."
"Acting," Burris pointed out gently, "under your orders, Kenneth."
It was the second time Burris had called him Kenneth, Malone realized. It started a small warning bell in the back of his mind. When Burris called him by his first name, Burris was feeling paternal and kindly. And that, Malone thought determinedly, boded Kenneth J. Malone very little good indeed.
"He was under my orders to arrest them because they were spies," he said at last. He wondered if the sentence made any real sense, but shrugged his shoulders and plunged on. "But they're not the real spies," he said. "Not the ones everybody's been looking for."
"Kenneth," Burris said, his voice positively dripping with what Malone thought of as the heavy, Grade A, Government-inspected cream of human kindness, "all the confusion with the computer-secretaries has stopped. Everything is running fine in that department."
"But—" Malone began.
"The technicians," Burris said, hypnotized by this poem of beauty, "aren't making any more mistakes. The information is flowing through beautifully. It's a pleasure to see their reports. Believe me, Kenneth—"
"Call me Chief," Malone said wearily.
Burris blinked. "What?" he said. "Oh. Ha. Indeed. Very well, then: Malone, what more proof do you want?"
"Is that proof?" Malone said. "The spies didn't even confess to that. They—"