“Yeah. What is it?”
“We could go up to the top floor, and work down.”
“Why bother? If they were here, the building office would know about it.”
“So they would, but they might not be telling. There is something fishy about this whole business. Come to think about it, you could hide a whole floor of an office building by making its door look like a blank wall.”
“No, that’s silly. I’m just losing my mind, that’s all. You better take me to a doctor.”
“It’s not silly and you’re not losing your grip. How do you count height in an elevator? By floors. If you didn’t see a floor, you would never realize an extra one was tucked in. We may be on the trail of something big.” She did not really believe her own arguments, but she knew that he needed something to do.
He started to agree, then checked himself. “How about the stairways? You’re bound to notice a floor from a staircase.”
“Maybe there is some hanky-panky with the staircases, too. If so, we’ll be looking for it. Come on.”
But there was not. There were exactly the same number of steps — eighteen — between floors twelve and fourteen as there were between any other pair of adjacent floors. They worked, down from the top floor and examined the lettering on each frosted-glass door. This took them rather long, as Cynthia would not listen to Randall’s suggestion that they split up and take half a floor apiece. She wanted him in her sight.
No thirteenth floor and nowhere a door which announced the tenancy of a firm of manufacturing jewelers, neither Detheridge & Co. nor any other name. There was no time to do more than read the firm names on the doors; to have entered each office, on one pretext or another, would have taken much more than a day.
Randall stared thoughtfully at a door labeled: “Pride, Greenway, Hamilton, Steinbolt, Carter & Greenway, Attorneys at Law.” “By this time,” he mused, “they could have changed the lettering on the door.”
“Not on that one,” she pointed out. “Anyhow, if it was a set-up, they could have cleaned out the whole joint, too. Changed it so you wouldn’t recognize it.” Nevertheless she stared at the innocent-seeming letters thoughtfully. An office building was a terribly remote and secret place. Soundproof walls, Venetian blinds — and a meaningless firm name. Anything could go in such a place — anything. Nobody would know. Nobody would care. No one would ever notice. No policeman on his beat, neighbors as remote as the moon, not even scrub service if the tenant did not wish it. As long as the rent was paid on time, the management would leave a tenant alone. Any crime you fancied and park the bodies in the closet.
She shivered. “Come on, Teddy. Let’s hurry.”
They covered the remaining floors as quickly as possible and came out at last in the lobby. Cynthia felt warmed by the sight of faces and sunlight, even though they had not found the missing firm. Randall stopped on the steps and looked around. “Do you suppose we could have been in a different building?” he said doubtfully.
“Not a chance. See that cigar stand? I practically lived there. I know every flyspeck on the counter.”
“Then what’s the answer?”
“Lunch is the answer. Come on.”
“O.K. But I’m going to drink mine.”
She managed to persuade him to encompass a plate of corned-beef hash after the third whiskey sour. That and two cups of coffee left him entirely sober, but unhappy. “Cyn — ”
“Yes, Teddy.”
“What happened to me?”
She answered slowly. “I think you were made the victim of an amazing piece of hypnosis.”
“So do I — now. Either that, or I’ve finally cracked up. So call it hypnosis. I want to know why.”
She made doodles with her fork. “I’m not sure that I want to know. You know what I would like to do, Teddy?”
“What?”
“I would like to send Mr. Hoag’s five hundred dollars back to him with a message that we can’t help him, so we are returning his money.”
He stared at her. “Send the money back? Good heavens!”