"Huh?"
"I’ve known it ever since our last conversation; I thought about it all day yesterday, but I did not have the courage. I had hoped that I was through with my ... my other personality, but today it happened again. The whole day is a blank and I just came to myself this evening, on getting home. Then I knew that I had to do something about it, so I called you to ask you to resume your investigations. But I never suspected that I could possibly have done anything to Mrs. Randall." He eemed most convincingly overcome by shock at the idea. "When did ... did this happen, Mr. Randall?"
Randall found himself in a most bewildered state of mind. He was torn between the desire to climb through the phone and wring the neck of the man he held responsible for his wife’s desperate condition and the necessity for remaining where he was to care for her. In addition to that he was bothered by the fact that Hoag refused to talk like a villain. While speaking with him, listening to his mild answers and his worried tones, it was difficult to maintain the conception of him as a horrid monster of the Jack-the-Ripper type—although he knew consciously that villains were often mild in manner.
Therefore his answer was merely factual. "Nine thirty in the morning, about."
"Where was I at nine thirty this morning?"
"Not this morning, you so-and-so; yesterday morning."
"Yesterday morning? But that’s not possible. Don’t you remember? I was at home yesterday morning."
"Of course I remember, and I saw you leave. Maybe you didn’t know that." He was not being very logical; the other events of the previous morning had convinced him that Hoag knew that they were shadowing him—but he was in no state of mind to be logical.
"But you couldn’t have seen me. Yesterday morning was the only morning, aside from my usual Wednesdays, on which I can be sure where I was. I was at home, in my apartment. I didn’t leave it until nearly one o’clock when I went to my club."
"Why, that’s a—"
"Wait a minute, Mr. Randall, please! I’m just as confused and upset about this as you are, but you’ve got to listen to me. You broke my routine—remember? And my other personality did not assert itself. After you left I remained my ... my proper self. That’s why I had had hopes that I was free at last."
"The hell you did. What makes you think you did?"
"I know my own testimony doesn’t count for much," Hoag said meekly, "but I wasn’t alone. The cleaning woman arrived just after you left and was here all morning."
"Damned funny I didn’t see her go up."
"She works in the building," Hoag explained. "She’s the wife of the janitor—her name is Mrs. Jenkins. Would you like to talk with her? I can probably locate her and get her on the line."
"But—" Randall was getting more and more confused and was beginning to realize that he was at a disadvantage. He should never have discussed matters with Hoag at all; he should have simply saved him up until there was opportunity to take a crack at him. Potbury was right; Hoag was a slick and insidious character. Alibi indeed!
Furthermore he was becoming increasingly nervous and fretful over having stayed away from the bedroom as long as he had. Hoag must have had him on the phone at least ten minutes; it was not possible to see into the bedroom from where he sat at the breakfast table. "No, I don’t want to talk to her," he said roughly. "You lie in circles!" He slammed the phone back into its cradle and hurried into the bedroom.
Cynthia was just as he had left her, looking merely asleep and heartbreakingly lovely. She was breathing, he quickly determined; her respiration was light but regular. His homemade stethoscope rewarded him with the sweet sound of her heartbeat.
He sat and watched her for a while, letting the misery of his situation soak into him like a warm and bitter wine. He did not want to forget his pain; he hugged it to him, learning what countless others had learned before him, that even the deepest pain concerning a beloved one is preferable to ny surcease.
Later he stirred himself, realizing that he was indulging himself in a fashion that might work to her detriment. It was necessary to have food in the house for one thing, and to manage to eat some and keep it down. Tomorrow, he told himself, he would have to get busy on the telephone and see what he could do about keeping the business intact while he was away from it. The Night Watch Agency might do as a place to farm out any business that could not be put off; they were fairly reliable and he had done favors for them—but that could wait until tomorrow.
Just now—He called up the delicatessen on the street below and did some very desultory telephone shopping. He authorized the proprietor to throw in anything else that looked good and that would serve to keep a man going for a day or two. He then instructed him to find someone who would like to earn four bits by delivering the stuff to his apartment.
That done, he betook himself to the bathroom and shaved carefully, having a keen appreciation of the connection between a neat toilet and morale. He left the door open and kept one eye on the bed. He then took a rag, dampened it, and wiped up the stain under the radiator. The bloody pajama jacket he stuffed into the dirty-clothes hamper in the closet.
He sat down and waited for the order from the delicatessen to arrive. All the while he had been thinking over his conversation with Hoag. There was only one thing about Hoag that was clear, he concluded, and that was that everything about him was confusing. His original story had been wacky enough—imagine coming in and offering a high fee to have himself shadowed! But the events since made that incident seem downright reasonable. There was the matter of the thirteenth floor—damn it! He had seen that thirteenth floor, been on it, watched Hoag at work with a jeweler’s glass screwed in his eye.
Yet he could not possibly have done so.
What did it add up to? Hypnotism, maybe? Randall was not naive about such things; he knew that hypnotism existed, but he knew also that it was not nearly as potent as the Sunday-supplement feature writers would have one believe. As for hypnotizing a man in a split second on a crowded street so that he believed in and could recall clearly a sequence of events that had never taken place—well, he just didn’t believe in it. If a thing like that were true, then the whole world might be just a fraud and an illusion.
Maybe it was.
Maybe the whole world held together only when you kept your attention centered on it and believed in it. If you let discrepancies creep in, you began to doubt and it began to go to pieces. Maybe this had happened to Cynthia because he had doubted her reality. If he just closed his eyes and believed in her alive and well, then she would be—
He tried it. He shut out the rest of the world and concentrated on Cynthia—Cynthia alive and well, with that little quirk to her mouth she had when she was laughing at something he had said— Cynthia, waking up in the morning, sleepy-eyed and beautiful—Cynthia in a tailored suit and a pert little hat, ready to start out with him anywhere. Cynthia—
He opened his eyes and looked at the bed. There she still lay, unchanged and deathly. He let himself go for a while, then blew his nose and went in to put some water on his face. III
The house buzzer sounded. Randall went to the hall door and jiggled the street-door release without using the apartment phone—he did not want to speak to anyone just then, certainly not to whoever it was that Joe had found to deliver the groceries.
After a reasonable interval there was a soft knock at the door. He opened it, saying, "Bring ’em in," then stopped suddenly.
Hoag stood just outside the door.
Neither of them spoke at first. Randall was astounded; Hoag seemed diffident and waiting for Randall to commence matters. At last he said shyly, "I had to come, Mr. Randall. May I ... come in?"
Randall stared at him, really at a loss for words. The brass of the man—the sheer gall!