Science fiction; Spy stories; Telepathy -- Fiction; United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation -- Fiction
"That's right," Malone said. "Where'd an imbecile get words like
'psychocerebral?' I don't think I know what that means, myself."
"Ah," Dr. O'Connor said. "But that's not _his_ vocabulary, you see.
What Charlie is doing is simply repeating the thoughts of those around
him. He jumps from mind to mind, simply repeating whatever he
receives." His face assumed the expression of a man remembering a bad
taste in his mouth. "That's how we found him out, Mr. Malone," he
said. "It's rather startling to look at a blithering idiot and have
him suddenly repeat the very thought that's in your mind."
Malone nodded unhappily. It didn't seem as if O'Connor's information
was going to be a lot of help as far as catching a telepath was
concerned. An imbecile, apparently, would give himself away if he were
a telepath. But nobody else seemed to be likely to do that. And
imbeciles didn't look like very good material for catching spies with.
Then he brightened. "Doctor, is it possible that the spy we're looking
for really isn't a spy?"
"Eh?"
"I mean, suppose he's an imbecile, too? I doubt whether an imbecile
would really be a spy, if you see what I mean."
Dr. O'Connor appeared to consider the notion. After a little while he
said: "It is, I suppose, possible. But the readings on the machine
don't give us the same timing as they did in Charlie's case--or even
the same sort of timing."
"I don't quite follow you," Malone said.
Truthfully, he felt about three miles behind. But perhaps everything
would clear up soon. He hoped so. On top of everything else, his feet
were now hurting a lot more.
"Perhaps if I describe one of the tests we ran," Dr. O'Connor said,
"things will be somewhat clearer." He leaned back in his chair. Malone
shifted his feet again and transferred his hat from his right to his
left hand.
"We put one of our test subjects in the insulated room," Dr. O'Connor
said, "and connected him to the detector. He was to read from a book--
a book that was not too common. This was, of course, to obviate the
chance that some other person nearby might be reading it, or might
have read it in the past. We picked _The Blood is the Death_ by
Hieronymus Melanchthon, which, as you may know, is a very rare book
indeed."
"Sure," Malone said. He had never heard of the book, but he was, after
all, willing to take Dr. O'Connor's word for it.
The telepathy expert went on: "Our test subject read it carefully,
scanning rather than skimming. Cameras recorded the movements of his
eyes in order for us to tell just what he was reading at any given
moment, in order to correlate what was going on in his mind with the
reactions of the machine's indicators, if you follow me."
Malone nodded helplessly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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