“Good.” He left at once.
Randall looked from the closing door back to the list in his hand. “Well, I’ll be a — Cyn, what do you suppose he wants us to get for him? — groceries!”
“Groceries? Let me see that list.”
X
They were driving north in the outskirts of the city, with Randall at the wheel. Somewhere up ahead lay the place where they were to meet Hoag; behind them in the trunk of the car were the purchases he had directed them to make.
“Teddy?”
“Yeah, kid.”
“Can you make a U-turn here?”
“Sure — if you don’t get caught. Why?”
“Because that’s just what I’d like to do. Let me finish,” she went on hurriedly. “We’ve got the car; we’ve got all the money we have in the world with us; there isn’t anything to stop us from heading south if we want to.”
“Still thinking of that vacation? But we’re going on it — just as soon as we deliver this stuff to Hoag.”
“I don’t mean a vacation. I mean go away and never come back — now!”
“With eighty dollars’ worth of fancy groceries that Hoag ordered and hasn’t paid for yet? No soap.
“We could eat them ourselves.”
“Humph! Caviar and humming-bird wings. We can’t afford it, kid. We’re the hamburger type. Anyhow, even if we could, I want to see Hoag again. Some plain talk — and explanations.”
She sighed. “That’s just what I thought, Teddy, and that’s why I want to cut and run. I don’t want explanations; I’m satisfied with the world the way it is. Just you and me — and no complications. I don’t want to know anything about Mr. Hoag’s profession — or the Sons of the Bird — or anything like that.”
He fumbled for a cigarette, then scratched a match under the instrument board, while looking at her quizzically out of the corner of his eye. Fortunately the traffic was light. “I think I feel the same way you do about it, kid, but I’ve got a different angle on it. If we drop it now, I’ll be jumpy about the Sons of the Bird the rest of my life, and scared to shave, for fear of looking in a mirror. But there is a rational explanation for the whole thing — bound to be — and I’m going to get it. Then we can sleep.”
She made herself small and did not answer.
“Look at it this way,” Randall went on, somewhat irritated. “Everything that has happened could have been done in the ordinary way, without recourse to supernatural agencies. As for supernatural agencies — well, out here in the sunlight and the traffic it’s a little too much to swallow. Sons of the Bird — rats!”
She did not answer. He went on. “The first significant point is that Hoag is a consummate actor. Instead of being a prissy little Milquetoast, he’s a dominant personality of the first water. Look at the way I shut up and said, ‘Yes, sir,’ when he pretended to throw off the drug and ordered us to buy all those groceries.”
“Pretended?”
“Sure. Somebody substituted colored water for my sleepy juice — probably done the same time the phony warning was stuck in the typewriter. But to get back to the point — he’s a naturally strong character and almost certainly a clever hypnotist. Pulling that illusion about the thirteenth floor and Detheridge & Co. shows how skillful he is — or somebody is. Probably used drugs on me as well, just as they did on you.”
“On me?”
“Sure. Remember that stuff you drank in Potbury’s office? Some sort of a delayed-action Mickey Finn.”
“But you drank it, too!”
“Not necessarily the same stuff. Potbury and Hoag were in cahoots, which is how they created the atmosphere that made the whole thing possible. Everything else was little stuff, insignificant when taken alone.”
Cynthia had her own ideas about that, but she kept them to herself. However, one point bothered her. “How did Potbury get out of the bathroom? You told me he was locked in.”
“I’ve thought about that. He picked the lock while I was phoning Hoag, hid in the closet and just waited his chance to walk out.”