fourteen. Highest card in the deck. Beats all the others!"

"You lousy snake!" I gasped. I'd learned better than to take a poke at him. Lefty had taught me my lesson on that one. Snead might turn out to be a TK as well as a hallucinator, and I wanted no more heart attacks.

He handed me a card. "There'll be somebody at this number all night, neighbor. Gamblers Anonymous."

He faded off down the dark street. The card merely said:

"Manhattan Chapter NO 5-5600"

Shari must have had a swell time at dinner with some guy who didn't gamble, because she didn't come home until nearly midnight. I know because I dialed her apartment every ten minutes until I got her face on the screen.

She was still dressed for dinner and had a sort of tiara over her thick tresses. "What is it?" she said.

"I'm not a psi?" I demanded.

"No!" she said. "Hasn't this gone—?"

"Well, then, am I crazy?" I cut in on her.

Her lips compressed. "It's a lot more likely," she decided. "Why?"

"Either I'm nuts," I told her. "Or those characters really are psis." She was reaching up to cut the image when I caught her interest. "Is there such a thing as a psi who can induce hallucinations?" I demanded.

"No." Flatly.

"They've got me sold that they can do it," I said. "What does Occam's razor say about that?"

"You idiot!" she exploded. "They don't believe you are a PC any more than I do!" She was sure sensitive about my having any precognition!

"O.K.," I said. "Then you make them eat it. Aren't you the one who knows all about exposing charlatans?"

That was the right button. "Certainly," Shari said.

"I'll pick you up in ten minutes," I said.

"Now? Midnight?"

"This is the pay-off," I said, and cut the image. I dialed the number Snead had given me.

"Manhattan Chapter," the Operator cartoon said.

"This is George Robertson," I said. "Mortimer Snead told me there'd be somebody there to talk to me. Maybe Lefty."

"Snead?" the cartoon said, frowning. "No one here by that—Oh! Wait a moment. Dr. Walter Bupp will talk to you," the cartoon said, and Wally's face appeared on the screen.

"It wasn't practical," I admitted.

"Six days early," he observed.

"Nuts," I said. "Look, you've got me convinced you are a psi. That Snead puts on a terrific show."

"Snead?" he frowned. "Oh!" He laughed. "Yeah," he agreed condescendingly. "He's red hot, every now and then."

"But you haven't sold me that I'm a PC," I growled. "I've been tested. I'm not. Now I want you to get off my back. You and the rest of them! Lay off!"

He shook his head. "The Lodge acts unilaterally on this," he said soberly. "You've got psi powers. You'll accept our direction in their use. Or else, Tex."

"All I ask is a fair test," I said desperately. "Under laboratory conditions."

He gave me an address. "Come any time," he said.

"That's me walking in," I told him.

Shari had to pay off the 'copter when we got there. It wasn't the brownstone I had seen the night before. This place was a medium-sized office building, say a hundred stories or so, quite new. There was no identification on its front other than the street number. The Directory in the silent and unpopulated lobby was names, all names. But Dr. Walter Bupp was one of them, in 7704. Shari and I rode the elevator to seventy-seven in chilly silence.

The corridor was dim, with its lights on night-time setting. Stronger light came from an open door quite a way down the hall. It had to be Bupp's office, and it was.

Wally certainly wasn't surprised to see Shari. He shook hands with her briefly, pushing his sharp chin out at her in his gamecock fashion. "Your mate?" he asked me.

"Certainly not," she told him. "We're ... uh ... colleagues at the University."

"That's not what Pheola says," he told her sourly, pointing to chairs we could take.

"Pheola?" Shari questioned.

"A powerful PC," Wally said. "She predicted you would accompany Tex tonight."

"Oh, really," Shari said scathingly.

"I was there," I told her. "She really did."

"Let's not be diverted by sideshows," Shari said. "We're here to measure the psi powers of Tex Robertson, not to talk over the reputed clairvoyance of some dim and misty character."

"Precognition," Wally corrected her. "Stick around, Dr. King. Pheola will be down a little later. She thinks Tex is something special."

That was not going to make a good interchange, so I cut in. "Dr. King is a professional in this field—" I started.

Wally waved a disgusted hand. "We know all about Dr. King and her field," he said. "Proving that psi powers don't exist, right, Dr. King?"

Shari bristled. It was hard to stay friendly in any talk with Bupp. "You know my field," she said, about twenty degrees below zero. "I accept any and all evidence, regardless what it proves! There's a lot of talk about psi powers, but precious little that can ever be detected under laboratory conditions!"

"Oh, well," Wally Bupp grinned. "That's not so strange. All members of the Lodge are cautioned to stay away from laboratories. You've been testing Normals. What do you expect for results?"

"Then you show me!" she stormed.

"Go on with you," he grinned. "I thought it was Tex's powers you wanted tested. Mine are irrelevant."

"I thought so," she said triumphantly. "Charlatan!"

For a moment the grin flickered off his face and I tensed to catch Shari if she should start to drop. But I guess he thought better of it.

"Some other time," he said. "Let's get this over with. Make it simple. You may have some statistical objections to my technique tonight, but I'm not looking for fringe effects. If this hot-eyed swain of yours is any good at all, he'll bat a thousand." He got a deck of cards out of his desk drawer and fanned it out face up so that he could pluck the two of spades and the two of hearts from the deck. The rest he put back in his desk.

He put his hands under the desk, with the two cards in them, produced the cards again, face down, and laid them in a thin stack on the desk before all of us.

"What's on top?" he said. "Red or black?"

"How will you score?" Shari insisted. He scowled at her and tossed a squeeze counter across the desk.

"You score," he said. "It really isn't necessary. Tex will either be right all the time or it won't matter."

But before I could call the top card, the office door opened behind us. I looked around, expecting Pheola. Instead it was Milly with the down, down hose. Only this time she was decently dressed in a dark two-piece suit and wore make-up. She certainly was no more talkative than before, nor did Wally introduce her. Shari was perfectly equal to the occasion and looked through Milly with composure. This takes about three generations of overbreeding.

"Try it," Wally insisted. "What's on top?"

I hit it. Then I missed it. Then I hit three in a row. It wasn't fast work, because Wally hid the cards under his desk after each guess, shuffled the two cards around and then laid them before me again. This went on for about twenty minutes. At that point Shari spoke.

"That makes exactly three hundred tries," she said, looking at the counter in her hand. "Have you been keeping score, Mr. Bupp?"

"I thought you were."

"So I was," she snapped, throwing up her tiaraed head. He sure brought out the worst in people. "Tex has been right exactly one hundred and fifty times. He's never been more than five tries to the good in the whole series."

"Interesting," Wally said.

I took my first decent breath in the day. "This ought to let me off the hook," I said to him. "Are you convinced?"

He shrugged. "How about it, Milly?" he asked.

"A random sample," she said. "He doesn't want to score. He didn't try."

Shari was ready for that one. She turned and spoke to Milly: "You have