She shivered. "Come on, Teddy. Let’s hurry."
They covered the remaining floors as quickly as possible and came out at last in the lobby. Cynthia felt warmed by the sight of faces and sunlight, even though they had not found the missing firm. Randall stopped on the steps and looked around. "Do you suppose we could have been in a different building?" he said doubtfully.
"Not a chance. See that cigar stand? I practically lived there. I know every flyspeck on the counter."
"Then what’s the answer?"
"Lunch is the answer. Come on."
"O.K. But I’m going to drink mine." She managed to persuade him to encompass a plate of corned-beef hash after the third whiskey sour. That and two cups of coffee left him entirely sober, but unhappy. "Cyn—"
"Yes, Teddy."
"What happened to me?"
She answered slowly. "I think you were made the victim of an amazing piece of hypnosis."
"So do I—now. Either that, or I’ve finally cracked up. So call it hypnosis. I want to know why."
She made doodles with her fork. "I’m not sure that I want to know. You know what I would like to do, Teddy?"
"What?"
"I would like to send Mr. Hoag’s five hundred dollars back to him with a message that we can’t help him, so we are returning his money."
He stared at her. "Send the money back? Good heavens!"
Her face looked as if she had been caught making an indecent suggestion, but she went on stubbornly. "I know. Just the same, that’s what I would like to do. We can make enough on divorce cases and skip-tracing to eat on. We don’t have to monkey with a thing like this."
"You talk like five hundred was something you’d use to tip a waiter."
"No, I don’t. I just don’t think it’s enough to risk your neck—or your sanity—for. Look, Teddy, somebody is trying to get us in the nine hole; before we go any further, I want to know why."
"And I want to know why, too. Which is why I’m not willing to drop the matter. Damn it, I don’t like having shenanigans put over on me."
"What are you going to tell Mr. Hoag?"
He ran a hand through his hair, which did not matter as it was already mussed. "I don’t know. Suppose you talk to him. Give him a stall."
"That’s a fine idea. That’s a swell idea. I’ll tell him you’ve broken your leg but you’ll be all right
tomorrow." "Don’t be like that, Cyn. You know you can handle him." "All right. But you’ve got to promise me this, Teddy." "Promise what?" "As long as we’re on this case we do everything together." "Don’t we always?" "I mean really together. I don’t want you out of my sight any of the time." "But see here, Cyn, that may not be practical." "Promise." "O.K., O.K. I promise." "That’s better." She relaxed and looked almost happy. "Hadn’t we better get back to the ffice?"
"The hell with it. Let’s go out and take in a triple feature."
"O.K., Brain." She gathered up her gloves and purse.
The movies failed to amuse him, although they had selected an all-Western bill, a fare of which he was inordinately fond. But the hero seemed as villainous as the foreman, and the mysterious masked riders, for once, appeared really sinister. And he kept seeing the thirteenth floor of the Acme Building, the long glass partition behind which the craftsmen labored, and the little dried-up manager of Detheridge & Co. Damn it—could a man be hypnotized into believing that he had seen anything as detailed as that?
Cynthia hardly noticed the pictures. She was preoccupied with the people around them. She found herself studying their faces guardedly whenever the lights went up. If they looked like this when they were amusing themselves, what were they like when they were unhappy? With rare exceptions the faces looked, at the best, stolidly uncomplaining. Discontent, the grim marks of physical pain, lonely unhappiness, frustration, and stupid meanness, she found in numbers, but rarely a merry face. Even Teddy, whose habitual debonair gaiety was one of his chief virtues, was looking dour—with reason, she conceded. She wondered what were the reasons for those other unhappy masks.
She recalled having seen a painting entitled "Subway." It showed a crowd pouring out the door of an underground train while another crowd attempted to force its way in. Getting on or getting off, they were plainly in a hurry, yet it seemed to give them no pleasure. The picture had no beauty in itself; it was plain that the artist’s single purpose had been to make a bitter criticism of a way of living.
She was glad when the show was over and they could escape to the comparative freedom of the street. Randall flagged a taxi and they started home.
"Teddy—"
"Uh?"
"Did you notice the faces of the people in the theater?"
"No, not especially. Why?"
"Not a one of them looked as if they got any fun out of life."
"Maybe they don’t."
"But why don’t they? Look—we have fun, don’t we?"
"You bet."
"We always have fun. Even when we were broke and trying to get the business started we had fun. We went to bed smiling and got up happy. We still do. What’s the answer?"
He smiled for the first time since the search for the thirteenth floor and pinched her. "It’s fun living with you, kid."
"Thanks. And right back at you. You know, when I was a little girl, I had a funny idea."
"Spill it."
"I was happy myself, but as I grew up I could see that my mother wasn’t. And my father wasn’t. My teachers weren’t—most of the adults around me weren’t happy. I got an idea in my head that when you grew up you found out something that kept you from ever being happy again. You know how a kid is treated: ‘You’re not old enough to understand, dear,’ and ‘Wait till you grow up, darling, and then you’ll understand.’ I used to wonder what the secret was they were keeping from me and I’d listen behind doors to try and see if I couldn’t find out."
"Born to be a detective!"
"Shush. But I could see that, whatever it was, it didn’t make the grown-ups happy; it made ‘em sad. Then I used to pray never to find out." She gave a little shrug. "I guess I never did."
He chuckled. "Me neither. A professional Peter Pan, that’s me. Just as happy as if I had good ense."
She placed a small gloved hand on his arm. "Don’t laugh, Teddy. That’s what scares me about this Hoag case. I’m afraid that if we go ahead with it we really will find out what it is the grown-ups know. And then we’ll never laugh again."
He started to laugh, then looked at her hard. "Why, you’re really serious, aren’t you?" He chucked her under the chin. "Be your age, kid. What you need is dinner—and a drink." V
After dinner, Cynthia was just composing in her mind what she would say to Mr. Hoag on telephoning him when the house buzzer rang. She went to the entrance of their apartment and took up the house phone. "Yes?"
Almost immediately she turned to her husband and voicelessly shaped the words, "It’s Mr. Hoag." He raised his brows, put a cautioning finger to his lips, and with an exaggerated tiptoe started for the bedroom. She nodded.
"Just a moment, please. There—that’s better. We seem to have had a bad connection. Now who is it, please?
"Oh ... Mr. Hoag. Come up, Mr. Hoag." She punched the button controlling the electrical outer lock.
He came in bobbing nervously. "I trust this is not an intrusion, but I have been so upset that I felt I couldn’t wait for a report."
She did not invite him to sit down. "I am sorry," she said sweetly, "to have to disappoint you. Mr. Randall has not yet come home."
"Oh." He seemed pathetically disappointed, so much so that she felt a sudden sympathy. Then she remembered what her husband had been put through that morning and froze up again.