He stopped with a sock in his hand, and stared at it in wonder. O'Connor hadn't said there were no books. As a matter of fact, Malone realized, he'd said exactly the opposite.
There were books. But they were "crackpot" books. O'Connor had never read them. He had, he said, probably never even heard of many of them.
"Crackpot" was a fighting word to O'Connor. But to Malone it had all the sweetness of flattery. After all, he'd found telepaths in insane asylums, and teleports among the juvenile delinquents of New York. "Crackpot" was a word that was rapidly ceasing to have any meaning at all in Malone's mind.
He realized that he was still staring at the sock, which was black with a gold clock. Hurriedly, he put it on, and finished dressing. He reached for the phone and made a few fast calls, and then teleported himself to his locked office in FBI Headquarters, on East Sixty-ninth Street in New York. He let himself out, and strolled down the corridor. The agent-in-charge looked up from his desk as Malone passed, blinked, and said: "Hello, Malone. What's up now?"
"I'm going prowling," Malone said. "But there won't be any work for you, as far as I can see."
"Oh?"
"Just relax," Malone said. "Breathe easy."
"I'll try to," the agent-in-charge said, a little sadly. "But every time you show up, I think about that wave of red Cadillacs you started. I'll never feel really secure again."
"Relax," Malone said. "Next time it won't be Cadillacs. But it might be spirits, blowing on ear-trumpets. Or whatever it is they do."
"Spirits, Malone?" the agent-in-charge said.