“I don’t know, Teddy. I just feel as if we were tackling the kingpin of Cicero with a pea shooter.”
“I shouldn’t have talked business before breakfast. Have your coffee — you’ll feel better.”
“All right. No toast for me, Teddy. What’s your brilliant idea?”
“It’s this,” he explained, while crunching toast. “Yesterday we tried to keep out of his sight in order not to shake him back into his nighttime personality. Right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, today we don’t have to. We can stick to him like a leech, both of us, practically arm in arm. If it interferes with the daytime half of his personality, it doesn’t matter, because we can lead him to the Acme Building. Once there, habit will take him where he usually goes. Am I right?”
“I don’t know, Teddy. Maybe. Amnesia personalities are funny things. He might just drift into a confused state.”
“You don’t think it will work?”
“Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But as long as you plan for us to stay close together, I’m willing to try it — if you won’t give up the whole matter.”
He ignored the condition she placed on it. “Fine. I’ll give the old buzzard a ring and tell him to wait for us at his apartment.” He reached across the breakfast table and grabbed the phone, dialed it and talked with Hoag. “He’s certainly a June bug, that one,” he said as he put the phone down. “At first he couldn’t place me at all. Then all of a sudden he seemed to click and everything was all right. Ready to go, Cyn?”
“Half a sec.”
“O. K.” He got up and went into the living room, whistling softly.
The whistling broke off; he came quickly back into the kitchen. “Cyn — ”
“What’s the matter, Teddy?”
“Come into the living room — please!”
She hurried to do so, suddenly apprehensive at the sight of his face. He pointed to a straight chair which had been pulled over to a point directly under the mirror near the outer door. “Cyn — how did that get where it is?”
“That chair? Why, I pulled a chair over there to straighten the mirror just before I went to bed. I must have left it there.”
“Mm-m-m — I suppose you must have. Funny I didn’t notice it when I turned out the light.”
“Why does it worry you? Think somebody might have gotten into the apartment last night?”
“Yeah. Yeah, sure — that’s what I was thinking.” But his brow was still wrinkled.
Cynthia looked at him, then went back into the bedroom. There she gathered up her purse, went through it rapidly, then opened a small, concealed drawer in her dressing table. “If anyone did manage to get in, they didn’t get much. Got your wallet? Everything in it? How about your watch?”
He made a quick check and reported, “They’re all right. You must have left the chair there and I just didn’t notice it. Ready to go?”
“Be right with you.”
He said no more about it. Privately he was thinking what an involved mess a few subconscious memories and a club sandwich just before turning in could make. He must have noticed the chair just before turning out the light — hence its appearance in the nightmare. He dismissed the matter.
V
Hoag was waiting for them. “Come in,” he said. “Come in. Welcome, madame, to my little hide-away. Will you sit down? Have we time for a cup of tea? I’m afraid, he added apologetically, “that I haven’t coffee in the house.”
“I guess we have,” agreed Randall. “Yesterday you left the house at eight fifty-three and it’s only eight thirty-five now. I think we ought to leave at the same time.”
“Good.” Hoag bustled away, to return at once with a tea service on a tray, which he placed on a table at Cynthia’s knees. “Will you pour, Mrs. Randall? It’s Chinese tea,” he added. “My own blend.”
“I’d be pleased.” He did not look at all sinister this morning, she was forced to admit. He was just a fussy little bachelor with worry lines around his eyes — and a most exquisite apartment. His pictures were good, just how good she had not the training to tell, but they looked like originals. There were not too many of them, either, she noticed with approval. Arty little bachelors were usually worse than old maids for crowding a room full of too much.