Rick sank back and looked at Scotty. No wonder the barber had wanted to give a treatment to Hartson Brant. The elevator operator's wink had told him that the scientist had been on the fourth floor, where the project team was located.
"Didn't you ever have your hair cut in the arcade shop, Dr. Morrison?" Rick asked.
"No, Rick. I used a barber in a hotel nearby, one I've patronized for years."
"But the other two did use the shop in the building," Scotty finished, "and Dr. Marks had no need for a barber, so they had to get at him some other way!"
"It seems reasonable," Hartson Brant admitted. "The pieces fall into place nicely. But we must first accept Parnell's theory that some kind of pattern can be transmitted that will interfere with normal brain activity. If we believe it, we must also believe that the enemy is so far ahead of us in brain physiology that we are hopelessly outdistanced. I can't believe so much progress could have taken place without some word of it leaking out."
Parnell Winston shrugged. "It seems incredible, Hartson. But we haven't another theory, much less a better one."
"We had better make sure no one takes EEG's of the rest of us, in any case," Weiss suggested dryly.
Rick added, "And don't get any haircuts until this is all straightened out!"
When the meeting broke up, Rick and Scotty walked to the front porch where the girls were listening to the music of a Newark disk jockey on Barby's portable radio.
"Lot of puzzled people in this neighborhood," Rick said. "Including me."