Sir Lewis Carter himself was a well-known astronomer and mathematician. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Mathematical Society. He had been knighted for his contributions in higher mathematics only two years before he had come to live in the United States. Malone went over the papers dealing with his entry into the country carefully, but they were all in order and they contained absolutely no clues he could use. Sir Lewis’ books on political and historical philosophy had been well-received, and he had also written a novel, _But Some Are More Equal_, which, for a few weeks after publication, had managed to reach the bottom of the best-seller list. And that was that. Malone tried to figure out whether all this information did him any good at all, and he didn’t have to think for very long. The answer was no. He opened the next dossier. Luba Vasilovna Garbitsch had been born in New York. Her mother had been a woman of Irish descent named Mary O’Keefe, and had died in ’68. Her father, of course, had now been revealed as a Russian agent, and was at present making his home, such as it probably was, in good old Moscow. Malone sighed. Somewhere in the dossiers, he was sure, there was a clue, the basic clue that would tell him everything he needed to know. His prescience had never been so strong; he knew perfectly well that he was staring at the biggest, most startling and most complete disclosure of all. And he couldn’t see it. He stared at the folders for a long minute. What did they tell him? What was the clue? And then, very slowly, the soft light of a prodigal sun illuminated his mind. “Mr. Malone,” Malone said gently, “you are a damned fool. There are times when it is necessary to discard the impossible after you have seen that the obscure is the obvious.” He wasn’t sure whether that meant anything, or even whether he knew what he was saying. He was sure of only one thing: the final answer. And it _was_ obvious. Obvious as all hell. 13 There was, of course, only one thing to do, and only one place to go. Malone went downstairs without even stopping to wave farewell to the agent-in-charge, and climbed into the big, specially-built FBI Lincoln that waited for him. “Want a driver?” one of the mechanics asked. “No, thanks,” Malone said. “This one’s a solo job.” That was for sure. He drove out onto the streets and into the heavy late afternoon traffic of Washington, D. C. The Lincoln handled smoothly, but Malone didn’t press his luck among the rushing cars. He wasn’t in any hurry. He had all the time in the world, and he knew it. They—and, for once, Malone knew just who “they” were—would still be waiting for him when he got there.