"Not ordinarily, Mr. Hoag, but this seemed like an exceptional case. We felt that you would not enjoy having your private affairs looked into by the ordinary run of hired operator, so Mr. Randall has undertaken to attend to your case personally, with my help when necessary."
"Oh, I say, that’s awfully kind of you!"
"Not at all."
"But it is—it is. But, uh, in that case—I wonder if I have paid you enough. Do not the services of the head of the firm come a little higher?"
Hoag was looking at Cynthia; Randall signaled to her an emphatic "Yes"—which she chose to ignore. "What you have already paid, Mr. Hoag, seems sufficient. If additional involvements come up later, we can discuss them then."
"I suppose so." He paused and pulled at his lower lip. "I do appreciate your thoughtfulness in keeping my affairs to yourselves. I shouldn’t like—" He turned suddenly to Randall. "Tell me—what would your attitude be if it should develop that my daytime life is—scandalous?" The word seemed to hurt him.
"I can keep scandal to myself."
"Suppose it were worse than that. Suppose it were—criminal. Beastly."
Randall stopped to choose his words. "I am licensed by the State of Illinois. Under that license I am obliged to regard myself as a special police officer in a limited sense. I certainly could not cover up any major felony. But it’s not my business to turn clients in for any ordinary peccadillo. I can assure you that it would have to be something pretty serious for me to be willing to turn over a client to the police."
"But you can’t assure me that you would not do so?"
"No," he said flatly.
Hoag sighed. "I suppose I’ll just have to trust to your good judgment." He held up his right hand and looked at his nails. "No. No, I can’t risk it. Mr. Randall, suppose you did find something you did not approve of—couldn’t you just call me up and tell me that you were dropping the case?"
"No."
He covered his eyes and did not answer at once. When he did his voice was barely audible. "You’ve found nothing—yet?" Randall shook his head. "Then perhaps it is wiser to drop the matter now. Some things are better never known."
His evident distress and helplessness, combined with the favorable impression his apartment had made on her, aroused in Cynthia a sympathy which she would have thought impossible the evening before. She leaned toward him. "Why should you be so distressed, Mr. Hoag? You have no reason to think that you have done anything to be afraid of—have you?"
"No. No, nothing really. Nothing but an overpowering apprehension."
"But why?"
"Mrs. Randall, have you ever heard a noise behind you and been afraid to look around? Have you ever awakened in the night and kept your eyes tightly shut rather than find out what it was that had startled you? Some evils reach their full effect only when acknowledged and faced.
"I don’t dare face this one," he added. "I thought that I did, but I was mistaken."
"Come now," she said kindly, "facts are never as bad as our fears—"
"Why do you say so? Why shouldn’t they be much worse?"
"Why, because they just aren’t." She stopped, suddenly conscious that her Pollyanna saying had no truth in it, that it was the sort of thing adults use to pacify children. She thought of her own mother, who had gone to the hospital, fearing an appendectomy—which her friends and loving family privately diagnosed as hypochondria—there to die, of cancer.
No, the facts were frequently worse than our most nervous fears.
Still, she could not agree with him. "Suppose we look at it in the worst possible light," she suggested. "Suppose you have been doing something criminal, while in your memory lapses. No ourt in the State would hold you legally responsible for your actions."
He looked at her wildly. "No. No, perhaps they would not. But you know what they would do? You do, don’t you? Have you any idea what they do with the criminally insane?"
"I certainly do," she answered positively. "They receive the same treatment as any other psycho patient. They aren’t discriminated against. I know; I’ve done field work at the State Hospital."
"Suppose you have—you looked at it from the outside. Have you any idea what it feels like from the inside? Have you ever been placed in a wet pack? Have you ever had a guard put you to bed? Or force you to eat? Do you know what it’s like to have a key turned in a lock every time you make a move? Never to have any privacy no matter how much you need it?"
He got up and began to pace. "But that isn’t the worst of it. It’s the other patients. Do you imagine that a man, simply because his own mind is playing him tricks, doesn’t recognize insanity in others? Some of them drool and some of them have habits too beastly to tell of. And they talk, they talk, they talk. Can you imagine lying in a bed, with the sheet bound down, and a thing in the next bed that keeps repeating, ‘The little bird flew up and then flew away; the little bird flew up and then flew away; the little bird flew up, and then flew away—’ "
"Mr. Hoag!" Randall stood up and took him by the arm. "Mr. Hoag—control yourself! That’s no way to behave."
Hoag stopped, looking bewildered. He looked from one face to the other and an expression of shame came over him. "I ... I’m sorry, Mrs. Randall," he said. "I quite forgot myself. I’m not myself today. All this worry—"
"It’s all right, Mr. Hoag," she said stiffly. But her earlier revulsion had returned.
"It’s not entirely all right," Randall amended. "I think the time has come to get a number of things cleared up. There has been entirely too much going on that I don’t understand and I think it is up to you, Mr. Hoag, to give me a few plain answers."
The little man seemed honestly at a loss. "I surely will, Mr. Randall, if there is anything I can answer. Do you feel that I have not been frank with you?"
"I certainly do. First—when were you in a hospital for the criminally insane?"
"Why, I never was. At least, I don’t think I ever was. I don’t remember being in one."
"Then why all this hysterical balderdash you have been spouting the past five minutes? Were you just making it up?"
"Oh, no! That ... that was ... that referred to St. George Rest Home. It had nothing to do with
a ... with such a hospital." "St. George Rest Home, eh? We’ll come back to that. Mr. Hoag, tell me what happened yesterday." "Yesterday? During the day? But Mr. Randall, you know I can’t tell you what happened during the day." "I think you can. There has been some damnable skullduggery going on and you’re the center of it. When you stopped me in front of the Acme Building—what did you say to me?"
"The Acme Building? I know nothing of the Acme Building. Was I there?"
"You’re damned right you were there and you pulled some sort of a shenanigan on me, drugged me or doped me, or something. Why?"
Hoag looked from Randall’s implacable face to that of his wife. But her face was impassive; she was having none of it. He turned hopelessly back to Randall. "Mr. Randall, believe me—I don’t know what you are talking about. I may have been at the Acme Building. If I were and if I did anything to you, I know nothing of it."
His words were so grave, so solemnly sincere in their sound that Randall was unsettled in his own onviction. And yet—damn it, somebody had led him up an alley. He shifted his approach. "Mr. Hoag, if you have been as sincere with me as you claim to be, you won’t mind what I’m going to do next." He drew from the inner pocket of his coat a silver cigarette case, opened it, and polished the mirrorlike inner surface of the cover with his handkerchief. "Now, Mr. Hoag, if you please."
"What do you want?"
"I want your fingerprints."
Hoag looked startled, swallowed a couple of times, and said in a low voice, "Why should you want my fingerprints?"