That Sweet Little Old Lady
Usually, the toughest part of the job is stating the problem clearly, and the solution is then easy. This time the FBI could state the problem easily; solving it, though was not. How do you catch a telepathic spy?
Approx. 36,783 words.
afraid I should have said, Mr. Burris, that we did once have one," he admitted. "He was, unfortunately, an imbecile, with a mental age between five and six, as nearly as we were able to judge."
"An imbecile?" Burris said. "But how were you able to--"
"He could repeat a person's thoughts word for word," Dr. O'Connor said. "Of course, he was utterly incapable of understanding the meaning behind them. That didn't matter; he simply repeated whatever you were thinking. Rather disconcerting."
"I'm sure," Burris said. "But he was really an imbecile? There wasn't any chance of--"
"Of curing him?" Dr. O'Connor said. "None, I'm afraid. We did at one time feel that there had been a mental breakdown early in the boy's life, and, indeed, it's perfectly possible that he was normal for the first year or so. The records we did manage to get on that period, however, were very much confused, and there was never any way of telling anything at all, for certain. It's easy to see what caused the confusi
