Judd felt cold anger rising in him. “What are you implying?”
“I’ll spell it out for you, Doctor. I don’t think anyone was here and I don’t believe anyone tried to kill you.”
“You don’t have to take my word for it,” Judd said angrily. “What about the lights? What about the night watchman, Bigelow?”
“He’s in the lobby.”
Judd’s heart missed a beat. “Dead?”
“He wasn’t when he let us in. There was a faulty wire in the main power switch. Bigelow was down in the basement trying to fix it. He got it working just as I arrived.”
Judd looked at him numbly. “Oh,” he said finally.
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, Dr. Stevens,” McGreavy said, “but from now on, count me out.” He moved toward the door. “And do me a favor. Don’t call me again—I’ll call you.”
The sergeant snapped his notebook shut and followed McGreavy out.
The effects of the whiskey had evaporated. The euphoria had gone, and he was left with a deep depression. He had no idea what his next move should be. He was on the inside of a puzzle that had no key. He felt like the boy who cried “wolf,” except that the wolves were deadly, unseen phantoms, and every time McGreavy came, they seemed to vanish. Phantoms or…There was one other possibility. It was so horrifying that he couldn’t bring himself to even acknowledge it. But he had to.
He had to face the possibility that he was a paranoiac.
A mind that was overstressed could give birth to delusions that seemed totally real. He had been working too hard. He had not had a vacation in years. It was conceivable that the deaths of Hanson and Carol could have been the catalyst that had sent his mind over some emotional precipice so that events became enormously magnified and out of joint. People suffering from paranoia lived in a land where everyday, commonplace things represented nameless terrors. Take the car accident. If it had been a deliberate attempt to kill him, surely the driver would have gotten out and made sure that the job was finished. And the two men who had come here tonight. He did not know that they had guns. Would a paranoiac not assume that they were there to kill him? It was more logical to believe that they were sneak thieves. When they had heard the voices in his inner office, they had fled. Surely, if they were assassins, they would have opened the unlocked door and killed him. How could he find out the truth? He knew it would be useless to appeal to the police again. There was no one to whom he could turn.
An idea began to form. It was born of desperation, but the more he examined it, the more sense it made. He picked up the telephone directory and began to riffle through the yellow pages.
Chapter Nine
AT FOUR O’CLOCK the following afternoon Judd left his office and drove to an address on the lower West Side. It was an ancient, run-down brownstone apartment house. As he pulled up in front of the dilapidated building, Judd began to have misgivings. Perhaps he had the wrong address. Then a sign in a window of a first-floor apartment caught his eye:
NORMAN Z. MOODY
Private Investigator
Satisfaction Guaranteed
Judd alighted from the car. It was a raw, windy day with a forecast of late snow. He moved gingerly across the icy sidewalk and walked into the vestibule of the building.
The vestibule smelled of mingled odors of stale cooking and urine. He pressed the button marked “Norman Z. Moody—1,” and a moment later a buzzer sounded. He stepped inside and found Apartment 1. A sign on the door read:
NORMAN Z. MOODY
Private Investigator
RING BELL AND ENTER
He rang the bell and entered.
Moody was obviously not a man given to throwing his money away on luxuries. The office looked as though it had been furnished by a blind, hyperthyroid pack rat. Odds and ends crammed every spare inch of the room. In one corner stood a tattered Japanese screen. Next to it was an East Indian lamp, and in front of the lamp a scarred Danish-modern table. Newspapers and old magazines were piled everywhere.