Headlines popped before his mind’s eye.
From what he was going to escape he wasn’t quite sure, but he felt that the details would be in the body of the news story. Headlines didn’t tell everything, did they?
Within a foot of the door he turned casually and took one last look at the little man who was staring so intently at him. Then, with a sudden slithering motion, he slipped through the door.
He collided heavily with a small figure.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
He turned and started away, but he had barely taken three strides when he jerked to a stop. An expression of dazed amazement stole over his face and his sleepy eyes opened wide.
Wheeling suddenly he stared back at the small figure he had collided with. The man was still standing in the corridor that led from the bar, regarding Reggie with a fixed, thoughtful expression.
And he was the same dark little man Reggie had left inside the bar room seconds before!
Reggie gulped audibly. His adam’s apple bobbed in his throat like a mouse in a sock.
How had the dark little man gotten out of the bar ahead of him?
Reggie didn’t know and he had no inclination to wait and ask questions. With one last incredulous look over his shoulder he wheeled and loped across the lobby, down the marble steps, through the club’s revolving doors and into the street.
He walked swiftly, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.
The experience had been an unnerving one. When he reached the end of the block he hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of another bar.
As the cab rolled across the Loop Reggie settled back and gnawed nervously at his finger nails. Thoughtful meditation and analysis were not his strongest suits; in fact any thinking at all was an annoying chore to him, but he felt now that he had better bend his brain to the problem of the dark little man whom he’d seen at the club.
The chap was obviously interested in him, but why? There was no reasonable answer to that question, and there was no explanation to the way the little fellow had popped up outside the bar, when Reggie had seen him, a split-second before, inside the bar.
Reggie was still stewing over these matters when the cab came to a stop before a swanky glitter joint which catered to afternoon revellers and jitterbugs of both sexes.
Inside the smoky, dimly lighted den of din and discord Reggie forgot his troubles long enough to order a drink, his fifth of the afternoon. He was conscious of a vague buzzing between his ears and there was a pleasant mellow glow in the region of his solar plexus.
Had it not been for his disturbing experience at the Midland club, he would have been feeling very, very fine.
When his drink arrived he sipped it appreciatively and glanced about the crowded bar, looking for a familiar face. In one corner of the room he saw a tall young man in tweeds lounging against the wall with a drink in his hand. With a glad cry Reggie scrambled from his bar stool and lurched across the crowded floor, weaving his way with drunken dexterity through the jitterbugging maniacs.
“Hi!” he cried, when he reached the tweed-clad young man’s side. “How’ve you been, Ricky? Have a drink?”
“Been fine,” the young man answered. “Got a drink. Name isn’t Ricky.”
“Not Ricky?” Reggie shook his head frowning. “Could’ve sworn you were good old Ricky Davis, chap I knew at school. Well, how’re things?”
“Good,” the young man answered. “Have a drink?”
“Got one,” Reggie said. “Got to go now. It’s been nice seeing you again, Ricky.”
He started to weave his way back to the bar. Suddenly he stopped, his eyes focusing in fascination on the figure of a man at the bar. A man who had appropriated the seat which Reggie had vacated.
The man was small and dark. His eyes were narrow and inscrutable. He was the same person Reggie had seen at the club.
The breath left Reggie’s lungs in a rush.
Obviously the man had followed him here!
As he stood, transfixed, in the middle of the floor, the man turned and looked straight at him, a peculiar thoughtful expression on his dark face. After studying Reggie for a long interval he turned slowly back to the bar.
Reggie swallowed what was left of his drink in one gulp, but the liquor had no effect on him. After the shock he’d received it would take liquid dynamite to bolster him up.
He reeled back to the tall young man who was leaning against the wall.
“Ricky!” he cried hoarsely. “I’m being followed. Axis agents are after me.”
“Name isn’t Ricky,” the tall young man said. “Why?”
“Why what?” Reggie said blankly. He seemed to have fumbled the conversational ball. He wished the young man would speak with more clarity and add a few articles and pronouns to his sentences.
“Why are they following you?” the young man said peevishly. “Nothing better to do?”
“That’s just it,” Reggie said. “I don’t know why I’m being followed. But everywhere I go this little man sticks to me like a postage stamp.”
“Where is he now?”
Reggie pointed dramatically at the dark little man.
“At the bar. He took the stool I left. He’s right between that fat old man and that young girl with the red hair.”
The tweed-clad young man stared in the direction of Reggie’s pointing finger, then he frowned and glanced down at Reggie.
“Any pink elephants, yet?”
“I’m not drunk,” Reggie said indignantly. “That man has been following me like a conga partner all afternoon.”
The tall young man patted Reggie patiently on the shoulder.
“Sleep and rest will make a new man of you,” he said. “Go home. Go to bed. You’ve got hallucinations.”
“Hallucinations!” Reggie cried over the din of the orchestra. “What do you mean? Don’t you see the man I mean? Right between the fat old man and the girl with the red hair?”
The tweedish young man shook his head.
“The stool between the fat old man and the red-haired girl is completely unoccupied,” he said in the patient voice of a man instructing a very young child.
Reggie shook his head bewilderedly. There was a sudden cold hollow in the pit of his stomach. He opened and closed his mouth several times without producing a sound.
“Are you serious?” he finally managed to gasp.
“Certainly,” the young man answered. “There’s no one on the bar stool you left. You’re just seeing things. Take my advice and go home. You’ve had too much giggle water.”
Reggie set his drink down hastily. For a long deliberate moment he studied the back of the dark little man at the bar. Then he shook his head dazedly. Maybe this was all some wild product of his imagination. Maybe he was having hallucinations...
He shook his head again and then he shook hands with the young man in the tweed suit.
“I’m going home, Ricky,” he said firmly. “Say hello to all the gang for me.”
“Name isn’t Ricky,” the young man said, sipping from his drink, “but I’ll tell the boys you were asking.”
“Good,” Reggie said.
He left the crowded bar by a back entrance. The warm sunshine was pleasant and reassuring. People hurried past him, traffic surged in the streets, and everything was quite normal. He breathed a deep sigh and hailed a cab. He gave the driver the address of his apartment and then settled back against the soft leather cushions.
Sleep was all he needed. That was all.
When he reached his apartment on the near North Side he had succeeded in convincing himself that his peculiar experiences of the afternoon were only products of his fevered imagination.