1. Her Majesty has developed a new delusion. In this case, he thought, Burris was perfectly right. I can enjoy a month of free vacation.
2. Her Majesty is no nuttier than before. If this is the case, he thought, then there's more to the case than has appeared, and Kenneth J. Malone, with or without the FBI, is going to get to the bottom of it.
Therefore, he summed up, everything now hinged on whether or not Her Majesty was unhinged.
That was confusing, but he managed to straighten it out after a second. He put his half-smoked cigar carefully in an ashtray and stood up. He went over to the phone and dialed the special unlisted number of the FBI.
The face that appeared was faintly sallow and looked sad. "Pelham here," it said in the tones of a discouraged horse.
"Hello, Pelham," Malone said. "Kenneth Malone here."
"Trouble?" Pelham said. It was obvious that he expected trouble, and always had, and probably always would.
"Nope," Malone said. Pelham looked even sadder. "Just checking out for vacation. You can tell the Chief I'm going to take off for Las Vegas. I'm taking his advice, tell him; I'm going to carouse and throw my money away and look at dancing girls and smoke and drink and stay out late. I'll let the local office know where I'm staying when I get there, just in case something comes up."
"O.K.," Pelham said unhappily. "I'll check you out." He tried a smile, but it looked more like the blank expression on the face of a local corpse. "Have fun," he said.
"Thanks," Malone said. "I'll try."