"Oh, don't worry," Malone said. "I won't slam the door." He vanished.
It was eight-fifty. Hurriedly, he rinsed himself off, shaved and put on his evening clothes. But he was still late--it was two minutes after nine when he showed up at the door that led off the lobby to the Universal Joint. Luba was, surprisingly, waiting for him there.
"Ready for a vast feast?" she asked pleasantly.
"In about a minute and a half," Malone said. "Do you mind waiting that long?"
"Frankly," Luba said, "in five minutes I will be gnawing holes in the gold paneling around here. And I do want to catch the first floor show, too. I understand they've got a girl who has--"
"That," Malone said sternly, "should interest me more than it does you."
"I'm always interested in what the competition is doing," Luba said.
"Nevertheless," Malone began, and stopped. After a second he started again: "Anyhow, this is important."
"All right," she said instantly. "What is it?"
He led her away from the door to an alcove in the lobby where they could talk without being overheard. "Can you get hold of Sir Lewis at this time of night?" he asked.
"Sir Lewis?" she said. "If ... if it's urgent, I suppose I could."
"It's urgent," Malone said. "I need all the data on telepathic projection I can get. The scientists have given me some of it--maybe Psychical Research has some more. I imagine it's all mixed up with ghosts and ectoplasm, but--"
"Telepathic projection," Luba said. "Is that where a person projects a thought into somebody else's mind?"
"That's it," Malone said. "Can Sir Lewis get me all the data on that tonight?"
"Tonight?" Luba said. "It's pretty late and what with sending them from New York to Nevada--"
"Don't bother about that," Malone said. "Just send 'em to the FBI Offices in New York. I'll have the boys there make copies and send the copies on." Instead, he thought, he would teleport to New York himself. But Luba definitely didn't have to know that.
"He'd have to send the originals," Luba said.
"I'll guarantee their safety," Malone said. "But I need the data right now."
"Tell him to bill the FBI," Malone said. "Call him collect and he can bill the phone call, too."
"All right, Ken," Luba said at last. "I'll try."
She went off to make the call, and came back in a few minutes.