Her heel struck something behind her; she knew that she had backed to the very end of the passage-dead end.
His hands came closer. “Teddy!” she screamed. “Oh, Teddy!”
Teddy was bending over her, slapping her face. “Stop that,” she said indignantly. “It hurts!”
He gave a sigh of relief. “Gee, honey,” he said tenderly. “You sure gave me a turn. You’ve been out for minutes.”
“Unnnh!”
“Do you know where I found you? There!” He pointed to the spot just under the open window. “If you hadn’t fallen just right, you would have been hamburger by now. What happened? Lean out and get dizzy?”
“Didn’t you catch him?”
He looked at her admiringly. “Always the professional! No, but I damn near did. I saw him, from down the corridor. I watched a moment to see what he was up to. If you hadn’t screamed, I would have had him.”
“If I hadn’t screamed?”
“Sure. He was in front of our office door, apparently trying to pick the lock, when-”
“Who was?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Why, Hoag, of course-Baby! Snap out of it! You aren’t going to faint again, are you?”
She took a deep breath. “I’m all right,” she said grimly, “-now. Just as long as you’re here. Take me to the office.”
“Shall I carry you?”
“No, just give me your hand.” He helped her up and brushed at her dress. “Never mind that now.” But she did stop to moisten, ineffectively, a long run in what had been until that moment brand-new stockings.
He let them into the office and sat her carefully in an armchair, then fetched a wet towel with which he bathed her face. “Feel better?”
“I’m all right-physically. But I want to get something straight. You say you saw Hoag trying to get into this office?”
“Yeah. Damned good thing we’ve special locks.”
“This was going on when I screamed?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She drummed on the arms of the chair.
” ‘S matter, Cyn?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all-only this: The reason I screamed was because Hoag was trying to choke me!”
It took him some time even to say, “Hunh?”
She replied, “Yes, I know, darling. That’s how it is and it’s nuts. Somehow or other, he’s done it to us again. But I swear to you that he was about to choke me. Or I thought he was.” She rehearsed her experience, in detail. “What does it add up to?”
“I wish I knew,” he told her, rubbing his face. “I wish I did. If it hadn’t been for that business in the Acme Building, I would say that you were sick and had fainted and when you came to you were still kinda lightheaded. But now I don’t know which one of us is batty. I surely thought I saw him.”
“Maybe we’re both crazy. It might be a good idea if we both went to see a good psychiatrist.”
“Both of us? Can two people go crazy the same way? Wouldn’t it be one or the other of us?”
“Not necessarily. It’s rare, but it does happen. Folie à deux.”
“Folee adooh?”
“Contagious insanity. Their weak points match up and they make each other crazier.” She thought of the cases she had studied and recalled that usually one was dominant and the other subordinate, but she decided not to bring it up, as she had her own opinion as to who was dominant in their family, an opinion kept private for reasons of policy.
“Maybe,” Randall said thoughtfully, “what we need is a nice, long rest. Down on the Gulf, maybe, where we could lie around in the sunshine.”
“That,” she said, “is a good idea in any case. Why in the world anyone chooses to live in a dismal, dirty, ugly spot like Chicago is beyond me.”
“How much money have we?”
“About eight hundred dollars, after the bills and taxes are paid. And there’s the five hundred from Hoag, if you want to count that.”
“I think we’ve earned it,” he said grimly. “Say! Do we have that money? Maybe that was a hoax, too.”
“You mean maybe there never was any Mr. Hoag and pretty soon the nurse will be in to bring us our nice supper.”