"I'll tell you why, Sir Kenneth," the little old lady said. "I'm worried about you." "Worried? About me, Your Majesty?" "Certainly," the little old lady said, inclining her head just the proper number of degrees, and raising it again. "You, Sir Kenneth, and that silly little notebook you lost. You've been stewing about it for the last hour." It was obvious that, for reasons of her own, the Queen had seen fit to look into Malone's mind. She'd found him worrying, and called him about it. It was, Malone thought, sweet of her in a way. But it was also just a bit disconcerting. He was perfectly well aware that the Queen could read his mind at any distance. But unless something reminded him of the fact, he didn't have to think about it. And he didn't like to think about it. "Don't be disturbed," the Queen said. "Please. I only want to help you, Sir Kenneth; you know that." "Well, of course I do," Malone said. "But--" "Heavens to Betsy," she said. "Sir Kenneth, what kind of a detective are you?" "What?" Malone said, and added at once: "Your Majesty." He knew perfectly well, of course, that Miss Thompson was not Queen Elizabeth I--and he knew that Miss Thompson knew what he thought. But she didn't mind. Politeness, she held, was the act of being pleasant on the surface, no matter what a person really thought. People were polite to their bosses, she pointed out, even though they were perfectly sure that they could do a better job than the bosses were doing. So she insisted on the surface pretense that Malone was going through, treating her like a Queen. The psychiatrists had called her delusion a beautifully rationalized one. As far as Malone was concerned, it made more sense than most of real life. * * * * * "That's very nice of you, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said. "But I want to ask you again: what kind of detective are you? Haven't you got any common sense at all?" Malone hated to admit it, but he had always had just that suspicion. After all, he wasn't a very good detective. He was just lucky. His luck had enabled him to break a lot of tough cases. But some day people would find out, and then-- "Well," the Queen said, "at the very least you ought to _act_ like a detective." She sniffed audibly. "Sir Kenneth, I'm ashamed that a member of My Own FBI can't do any better than you're doing now." Malone blinked into the screen. He did feel ashamed in a vague sort of way, and he was willing to admit it. But he did feel, wistfully, that it would be nice to know just what he was being ashamed of. "Have I been missing something?" he said. "Outside of the obvious," the Queen said, "that you've been missing your notebook--or, rather, Mike Fueyo's notebook." "Yes?" Malone said. "You certainly have," the Queen said. "Don't you see what happened to that notebook? You've been missing the only possible explanation." "All I can figure," Malone said, "is that Dorothy Francis picked my pocket."