Scotty was through, too. The boys took seats and busied themselves reading magazines.
Hartson Brant's hair had needed only trimming, not complete cutting, so he was finished in a short time. The barber shook out his cloth, then put it back on for the finishing touches. Rick glanced up as the barber spoke.
"Your hair's pretty dry, sir, and I have an excellent treatment here. I'd like to give you one. It would make your hair look better, and make it easier to handle."
Tension swept through Rick as though someone had turned on an electric current. The tension had no focus. It was just that something deep within him had reacted. He stood up and dropped his magazine.
"Dad," he said hastily, "I just saw Julius go through the lobby."
"Where did he go?" Hartson Brant demanded. "I didn't see him."
"I think he went through the front door," Rick said. "Better hurry. I'll try to catch him."
Outside the barbershop he stopped, to let Scotty catch up with him. "Why should Weiss run out through the front door?" Scotty demanded.
"He didn't. It was a stall, to get Dad out of there in a hurry."
"I don't know," Rick said slowly. "For some reason, I just didn't want him to have that dry-hair treatment!"
There wasn't much evidence on which to base his reaction, Rick admitted. But when he reacted, he just reacted and that's all there was to it. Call it a hunch, or call it nonsense. That's how it was, and he couldn't change it.
The barber had practically refused him a dry-hair treatment--and his hair was rather dry. The same barber had tried to sell a treatment to Hartson Brant--whose hair was not dry at all. And the elevator boy who had carried the scientist down from the fourth floor had winked at the barber.
Even admitting that it added up to no evidence of anything, it bothered him. He had asked Tom Dodd how much JANIG knew about the barber.
Tom admitted that JANIG didn't know much. After all, he pointed out, it was impossible to check everyone in an office building of that size, or at least impractical. Furthermore, it was a cover operation, and any kind of a careful check on people in the building would warn them that something was going on. Tom agreed, however, that it was better to be safe than sorry. JANIG would run a check on the barber, even though Rick's evidence was no evidence at all.