Robert Heinlein: The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag And Other Stories

"Just a minute, Mr. Hoag." Cynthia Craig Randall spoke for the first time. "I think perhaps you two have misunderstood each other. You mean, do you not, that you really and literally do not know what you do in the daytime?"

"Yes," he said gratefully. "Yes, that is exactly it."

"And you want us to find out what you do? Shadow you, find out where you go, and tell you what you have been doing?"

Hoag nodded emphatically. "That is what I have been trying to say."

Randall glanced from Hoag to his wife and back to Hoag. "Let’s get this straight," he said slowly. "You really don’t know what you do in the daytime and you want me to find out. How long has this been going on?"

"I ... I don’t know." "Well— what do you know?" Hoag managed to tell his story, with prompting. His recollection of any sort ran back about five years, to the St. George Rest Home in Dubuque. Incurable amnesia—it no longer worried him and he had regarded himself as completely rehabilitated. They—the hospital authorities—had found a job for him when he was discharged.

"What sort of a job?"

He did not know that. Presumably it was the same job he now held, his present occupation. He had been strongly advised, when he left the rest home, never to worry about his work, never to take his work home with him, even in his thoughts. "You see," Hoag explained, "they work on the theory that amnesia is brought on by overwork and worry. I remember Dr. Rennault telling me emphatically that I must never talk shop, never let my mind dwell on the day’s work. When I got home at night I was to forget such things and occupy myself with pleasant subjects. So I tried to do that."

"Hm-m-m. You certainly seem to have been successful, almost too successful for belief. See here—did they use hypnosis on you in treating you?"

"Why, I really don’t know."

"Must have. How about it, Cyn? Does it fit?"

His wife nodded, "It fits. Posthypnosis. After five years of it he couldn’t possibly think about his work after hours no matter how he tried. Seems like a very odd therapy, however."

Randall was satisfied. She handled matters psychological. Whether she got her answers from her rather extensive formal study, or straight out of her subconscious, he neither knew nor gave a hang. They seemed to work. "Something still bothers me," he added. "You go along for five years, apparently never knowing where or how you work. Why this sudden yearning to know?"

He told them the story of the dinner-table discussion, the strange substance under his nails, and the non-co-operative doctor. "I’m frightened," he said miserably. "I thought it was blood. And now

I know it’s something—worse."

Randall looked at him. "Why?"

Hoag moistened his lips. "Because—" He paused and looked helpless. "You’ll help me, won’t you?"

Randall straightened up. "This isn’t in my line," he said. "You need help all right, but you need help from a psychiatrist. Amnesia isn’t in my line. I’m a detective."

"But I want a detective. I want you to watch me and find out what I do."

Randall started to refuse; his wife interrupted. "I’m sure we can help you, Mr. Hoag. Perhaps you should see a psychiatrist—"

"Oh, no!"

"—but if you wish to be shadowed, it will be done."

"I don’t like it," said Randall. "He doesn’t need us."

Hoag laid his gloves on the side table and reached into his breast pocket. "I’ll make it worth your while." He started counting out bills. "I brought only five hundred," he said anxiously. "Is it enough?"

"It will do," she told him.

"As a retainer," Randall added. He accepted the money and stuffed it into his side pocket. "By the way," he added, "if you don’t know what you do during business hours and you have no more background than a hospital, where do you get the money?" He made his voice casual.

"Oh, I get paid every Sunday. Two hundred dollars, in bills."

When he had gone Randall handed the cash over to his wife. "Pretty little tickets," she said, smoothing them out and folding them neatly. "Teddy, why did you try to queer the pitch?"

"Me? I didn’t—I was just running up the price. The old ‘get-away-closer.’ "

"That’s what I thought. But you almost overdid it."

"Not at all. I knew I could depend on you. You wouldn’t let him out of the house with a nickel left on him."

She smiled happily. "You’re a nice man, Teddy. And we have so much in common. We both like money. How much of his story did you believe?"

"Not a damned word of it."

"Neither did I. He’s rather a horrid little beast— I wonder what he’s up to."

"I don’t know, but I mean to find out."

"You aren’t going to shadow him yourself, are you?"

"Why not? Why pay ten dollars a day to some ex-flattie to muff it?"

"Teddy, I don’t like the set-up. Why should he be willing to pay this much"—she gestured with the bills—"to lead you around by the nose?"

"That is what I’m going to find out."

"You be careful. You remember ‘The Red-headed League.’ "

"The ‘Red-headed—’ Oh, Sherlock Holmes again. Be your age, Cyn."

"I am. You be yours. That little man is evil."

She left the room and cached the money. When she returned he was down on his knees by the chair in which Hoag had sat, busy with an insufflator. He looked around as she came in.

"Cyn—"

"Yes, Brain."

"You haven’t touched this chair?"

"Of course not. I polished the arms as usual before he showed up."

"That’s not what I mean. I meant since he left. Did he ever take off his gloves?"

"Wait a minute. Yes, I’m sure he did. I looked at his nails when he told his yarn about them."

"So did I, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t nuts. Take a look at that surface."

She examined the polished chair arms, now covered with a thin film of gray dust. The surface was unbroken—no fingerprints. "He must never have touched them— But he did. I saw him. When he said, ‘I’m frightened,’ he gripped both arms. I remember noticing how blue his knuckles looked."

"Collodion, maybe?"

"Don’t be silly. There isn’t even a smear. You shook hands with him. Did he have collodion on his hands?"

"I don’t think so. I think I would have noticed it. The Man with No Fingerprints. Let’s call him a ghost and forget it."

"Ghosts don’t pay out hard cash to be watched."

"No, they don’t. Not that I ever heard of." He stood up and marched out into the breakfast nook, grabbed the phone and dialed long distance. "I want the Medical Exchange in Dubuque, uh— " He cupped the phone and called to his wife. "Say, honey, what the hell state is Dubuque in?"

Forty-five minutes and several calls later he slammed the instrument back into its cradle. "That tears it," he announced. "There is no St. George Rest Home in Dubuque. There never was and probably never will be. And no Dr. Rennault."

III

"There he is!" Cynthia Craig Randall nudged her husband.

He continued to hold the Tribune in front of his face as if reading it. "I see him," he said quietly. "Control yourself. Yuh’d think you had never tailed a man before. Easy does it."

"Teddy, do be careful."

"I will be." He glanced over the top of the paper and watched Jonathan Hoag come down the steps of the swank Gotham Apartments in which he made his home. When he left the shelter of the canopy he turned to the left. The time was exactly seven minutes before nine in the morning.

Randall stood up, folded his paper with care, and laid it down on the bus-station bench on which he had been waiting. He then turned toward the drugstore behind him, dropped a penny in the slot of a gum-vending machine in the shop’s recessed doorway. In the mirror on the face of the machine he watched Hoag’s unhurried progress down the far side of the street. With equal lack of rush he started after him, without crossing the street.