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His companion laughed. “Eat your breakfast. You belong on a horror program!”

A police psychologist for the Federated States of The Americas was running through reports from the Bureau of Social Statistics. Suddenly he grunted, then a moment later said, “Uh-huh!”

“Uh-huh what?” asked his superior, who was reading a newspaper with his feet up on the desk.

“Remember the myth, of Syndrome Johnny?”

“Ghost of Syndrome Plague. Si, what of it?”

“Titaquahapahel, Peru, population nine hundred, sent in a claim that he turned up there and they almost caught him. Crime Statistics rerouted the report to Mass Phenomena, of course. Mass Phenomena blew a tube and sent their folder on Syndrome Johnny over here. Every report they ever had on him for ninety years back! A memo came with it.” He handed the memo over.

The man behind the desk looked at it. It was a small graph and some mathematical symbols. “What is it?”

“It means,” said the psychologist, smiling dryly, “that every crazy report about our ghost has points of similarity to every other crazy report. The whole business of Syndrome Johnny has been in their ‘funny coincidence’ file for twenty years. This time the suspect hits the averaged description of Johnny too closely: A solid-looking man, unusual number of visible minor scars, and a disturbing habit of bending his fingers at the first-joint knuckles when he is thinking. The coincidence has gotten too damn funny. There’s a chance we’ve been passing up a crime.”