“What do you do, Mr.—”
“Eskin, Sidney Eskin,” the man said. “I’m a scientist, sir.” He drew his ragged jacket together, assuming an absurd dignity. “I observe people, I watch them, and note down what they are doing, all in strict accordance with the best scientific methods and procedure.”
“I see,” Waverley said. “You say you escaped?”
“From the Blackstone Sanitarium, sir. Frightened by my investigations, secret enemies had me locked up. But I escaped, and have come to you for aid and sanctuary.”
Tentatively, Waverley classified the man as paranoidal. He wondered whether Eskin would become violent if he tried to call Blackstone.
“You say you observe people,” Waverley said mildly. “That doesn’t sound supernormal—”
“Let me show you,” the man said, with a sudden show of panic. He stared intently at Waverley. “Your secretary is in the reception room, seated at her desk. She is, at the moment, powdering her nose. She is doing it very delicately, applying the strokes with a circular motion. Now she is reaching forward, the powder box in her hand—ah! She has inadvertently spilled it against the typewriter. She says ‘Damn!’ under her breath. Now she—”
“Hold it,” Waverley said. He hurried over and opened the door to the reception room.
Doris Fleet, his secretary, was mopping up spilled powder. Some of it had dusted her black hair a creamy white, giving her the appearance of a kitten that had rolled in flour.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said.
“On the contrary,” Waverley said, “I’m grateful.” He didn’t bother to explain, but closed the door and hurried back to Eskin.
“You will protect me?” Eskin asked, leaning over the desk. “You won’t let them take me back?”
“Can you observe like that all the time?” Waverley asked.
“Of course!”
“Then don’t worry about a thing,” Waverley said calmly, but with a pulse of excitement rising within him. Lunatic or not, Eskin wasn’t going to waste his talents in any sanitarium. Not if Waverley had anything to do about it.
The intercom on his desk buzzed. He flipped the switch, and Doris Fleet said, “The reporters are here, Mr. Waverley.” “Hold them a moment,” Waverley said, smiling to himself at her “official” tone of voice. He ushered Eskin to a little room adjoining his office. “Stay here,” he told him. “Don’t make any noise, and don’t worry.”
He closed the door, locked it, and told Doris to let the reporters in.
There were seven of them, pads out, and Waverley thought he could detect a certain grudging respect in their faces. Wild Talents, Inc. wasn’t back-page filler anymore. Not since Billy Walker, Waverley’s star psi, had aided the flight of the Venture to Mars with a terrific telekinetic boost. Since then, Wild Talents had been front-page news.
Waverley had played it for all it was worth, holding back until he felt the maximum point of interest had been reached.
This was the point. Waverley waited until they were all quiet.
“Wild Talents, Incorporated, gentlemen,” he told them, “is an attempt to find the occasional person among the general population who has what we call psi powers.”
“What is a psi power?” a lanky reporter asked.
“It is difficult to define,” Waverley said, smiling with what he hoped was perfect candor. “Let me put it to you this way—”
“Sam!” He heard Doris Fleet’s voice in his head as clearly as though she were standing beside him. Although she might not be the best of secretaries, Doris was a telepath. Her ability worked only about twenty percent of the time, but that twenty percent sometimes came in useful.
“Sam, two of the men in your office. They’re not reporters.”
“What are they?” he thought back.
“I don’t know,” Doris told him. “But I think they might mean trouble.”
“Can you get a line on what sort of trouble?”
“No. They’re the ones in the dark suits. They’re thinking—” Her thought died out.
Telepathy is lightning-fast. The entire exchange had taken perhaps a second. Waverley spotted the two men, sitting a little apart from the rest, and taking no notes. He went on.
“A psi, gentlemen, is a person with some form of mental control or development, the true nature of which we can only guess at. Today, most psis are to be found in circuses and sideshows. They lead, for the most part, unhappy, neurotic lives. My organization is trying to find the work that their special talents equip them for. Next we hope to discover why and how it works, and what makes it so erratic. We want—”
He continued, laying it on thick. Public acceptance was a big factor in his work, a factor he had to have on his side. The public, stimulated by atomic power and enormously excited by the recent flights to the moon and Mars, was prepared to accept the idea of psi, if it could be made sufficiently understandable for them.
So he painted the picture in rosy colors, skipping over most of the stumbling blocks. He showed the psi, capable of dealing with his environment on a direct mental level; the psi, not a deviation or freak, but mankind fully realized.
He almost had tears in his eyes by the time he was through.
“To sum up,” he told them, “our hope is that, someday, everyone will be capable of psi powers.”
After a barrage of questions, the conference broke up. The two men in dark suits remained.
“Was there some further information you wanted?” Waverley asked politely. “I have some brochures—”
“Have you got a man named Eskin here?” one of the men asked.
“Why?” Waverley countered.
“Have you?”
“Why?”
“All right, we’ll play it that way,” one of the men sighed. They showed their credentials. “Eskin was confined in Blackstone Sanitarium. We have reason to believe he came here, and we want him back.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Waverley asked.
“Have you seen him?”
“Gentlemen, we’re getting nowhere. Suppose I had seen him—and mind you, I’m not admitting it—suppose I had a means of rehabilitating him, making a decent, worthy citizen out of him. Would you still insist on having him back?”
“You can’t rehabilitate Eskin,” one of the men told him. “He’s found a perfectly satisfactory adjustment. Unfortunately, it’s one that the public cannot countenance.”
“What is it?” Waverley asked.
“Have you seen him?”
“No, but if I do, I’ll get in touch with you,” Waverley said pleasantly.
“Mr. Waverley. This attitude—”
“Is he dangerous?” Waverley asked.
“Not especially. But—”
“Has he any supernormal powers?”
“Probably,” one of the men said unhappily. “But his method of using them—”
“Can’t say I’ve ever seen the chap,” Waverley said coolly.
The men glanced at each other. “All right,” one of them said. “If you’ll admit to having him, we’ll sign him over to your custody.”
“Now you’re talking,” Waverley said. The release was quickly signed, and Waverley ushered the two men out. As they reached the door, Waverley saw what he thought was a wink pass between them. He must have imagined it, he decided.
“Was I right?” Doris asked him.
“Perfectly,” Waverley said. “You’ve still got powder in your hair.”
Doris located a mirror in her cavernous shoulder bag, and started dusting.
“Forget it,” Waverley said, leaning over and kissing the tip of her nose. “Marry me tomorrow.”
Doris considered for a moment. “Hairdresser tomorrow.”
“Day after, then.”
“I’m swimming the English Channel that day. Would next week be all right—”
Waverley kissed her. “Next week is not only all right, it’s obligatory,” he said. “And I’m not fooling.”
“All right,” Doris said, a little breathlessly. “But is this really it, Sam?”