out in the open.
“Pookie, I …”
“Heads up, Skeeve,” she murmured, not looking at me.
“I think we’ve got problems.”
I followed her gaze with my eyes. Two uniformed police-
men were bracketing the door to my hotel. At the sight of
me, they started forward with expressions of grim determi-
nation on their faces.
Chapter Nineteen:
”I am not a crook!”
—ANY CROOK
“ZAT EES HEEM! Ze third from ze right!”
Even with the floodlights full in my face, I had no diffi-
culty recognizing the voice which floated up to me from
the unseen area in the room beyond the lights. It was the
waiter I had clashed with the first night I was on Perv. The
one who claimed I had tried to avoid paying for my meal
by fainting.
I wasn’t surprised by his ability to identify me in the
lineup. First of all, I had no reason to suspect his powers
of observation and recall were lacking. More important, of
all the individuals in the line up, I was the only one who
wasn’t a Pervect. What’s more, all the others were uniformed
policemen! Nothing like a nice, impartial setup, and this
was just that . . . nothing like a nice, impartial setup.
What did surprise me was that I didn’t seem to be the
least bit upset by the situation. Usually, in a crisis like this,
I would either be extremely upset or too angry to care. This
time, however, I simply felt a bit bemused. In fact, I felt
182 Robert Asprin MYTH-NOMERS AND IM-PERVECTIONS 183
so relaxed and in control of myself and the situation, I
decided to have a bit of fun with it … just to break the
monotony.