or looks with the Devil". His ancestors have left him, in book form, advice about how to pursue his ambitions. One chapter, "Murder", lays out some ideas, including using the Sardine game. At the same time, he is tormented by dreams of "The Man With No Face", which he initially believes is the face of Murder itself. Lincoln Powell is a Class 1 Esper in his thirties. He is Prefect of Police, which in this case means chief detective. He is handsome, intelligent, charming and well-liked. As the story opens, he is being considered for the Presidency of the Esper Guild, but since he is single and not married to another Esper, as Guild policy requires, he is disqualified. He lives alone in a house, since highly skilled Espers cannot live in apartment blocks where they are bombarded by the thoughts of others. He is said to have a dual personality; behind the correct role of model Esper and perfect cop hides Dishonest Abe, a compulsive liar. Often, Dishonest Abe takes the lead in conversation, with Powell finding himself lying in earnest to anybody, just for the sake of amusing himself. He invents absurd tales of heroic cops who do not exist, or accounts of how the stress of his job causes him to become left-handed temporarily. His most notorious lie gave rise to the question "Who stole the weather, Powell?" which other peepers use to embarrass him, even though few actually know the details. Barbara D'Courtney, a very pretty young blonde woman, daughter of Craye D'Courtney, whom Reich pursues to kill and with whom Powell falls in love despite the fact that, according to the Guild rules, he must marry an Esper. However she is revealed to be a latent Esper herself. Having witnessed her father's murder she becomes catatonic. She is given a treatment that regresses her to childhood mentally, expecting that she will come to terms with the tragedy as she returns to her adult self over a period of weeks. During this time Powell attempts to extract information from her subconscious, but is blocked by strange images including one of her and Reich as conjoined twins. This is one clue on the trail to discovering Reich's real motive for murder. Mary Noyes, an Esper 2 who is a close friend of Lincoln Powell. She is in fact in love with Powell, but he does not return