“A joke,” Malone said. “You were perfectly right. The pig-Latin is a joke.” He waited for Fred’s expression to clear, and then added: “But what I want to talk to you about isn’t.”
“It sounds very confused,” Fred said after a pause. “Not at all the sort of thing that—that usually goes on.”
“You have no idea,” Malone said. “It’s about the political machines, all right, but it isn’t anything as simple as pig-Latin.” He explained, taking his time over it.
When he had finished, Fred was nodding his head slowly. “I see,” he said. “I understand just what you want me to do.”
“Good,” Malone said.
“I’ll take a team over to the Senate Office Building,” Fred said, “and check the computer-secretaries there. That way, you see, I’ll be able to do a full running check on them without taking any one machine out of operation for too long.”
“Sure,” Malone said.
“And it shouldn’t take long,” Fred went on, “to find out just what the trouble is.” He looked very confident.
“How long?” Malone asked.
Fred shrugged. “Oh,” he said, “five or six days.”