But then a couple of realizations slapped me from each side. It was day instead of night. I was out on the street and not in her brownstone house.
Even the season had changed!
Dazed, I stared at the people passing by. They looked like characters in a TV movie, the women wearing long dresses and flowerpot hats, their faces made up with petulant rosebud mouths and bright blotches of rouge; the men in hard straw hats, suits with narrow shoulders, plain black or brown shoes—the same kind of clothes I was wearing.
The rumble of traffic in the street caught me next. Cars with square bodies, tubular radiators....
For a moment, I let terror soak through me. Then I remembered the mesh cage and the motors. May Roberts could have given me electro-shock, kept me under long enough for the season to change, or taken me South and left me on a street in daylight.
But this was a street in New York. I recognized it, though some of the buildings seemed changed, the people dressed more shabbily.
Shrewd stagesetting? Hypnosis?
That was it, of course! She'd hypnotized me....
Except that a subject under hypnosis doesn't know he's been hypnotized.
Completely confused, I took out the stack of envelopes I'd put in my pocket. I was supposed to have both cash and a bank account, and I was outside a bank. She obviously wanted me to go in, so I did. I handed the top envelope to the teller.