CHAPTER XXIV
Trapped!
With Judy still at the wheel, the Beetle crawled down the last hill and into the valley that held the small city of Farringdon. They stopped at Dr. Bolton’s house on Grove Street only to find it deserted.
“Mother may have gone over to Dry Brook Hollow to get our house ready for us, but Dad should be here. He has office hours from six to eight in the evening,” Judy said in a worried voice, “and it’s almost six o’clock now.”
“We made good time. You must be tired. Let’s drive right home to Dry Brook Hollow,” Peter suggested. “Someone is sure to be there. Tomorrow I’ll report at the resident agency and get my assignment. Lawson knows me. The SAC may want someone else to do the footwork.”
The SAC, Judy knew, was the Supervising Agent in charge of the nearest field office. There were fifty or more such offices scattered throughout the country, and every one of them had been advised to be on the lookout for Clarence Lawson as well as for Clarissa. In the smaller cities surrounding the field offices the men worked out of resident agencies like the one recently set up in Farringdon, but they were still responsible to the SAC who, in turn, was responsible to the chief himself. It awed Judy when she thought of all the complicated machinery that had been set in motion to see that no harm came to one girl. It made her proud, too, that Peter was part of it.
“Would you mind?” she asked him as they drove on over the next hill and down into Dry Brook Hollow. “I mean, would you mind very much if David Trent or some other more experienced agent got the assignment?”
“A little,” Peter admitted. “I’d rather like to bring Lawson in myself. If only he hasn’t used Clarissa as bait for a trap—”
“Oh, Peter! That’s what I’ve been thinking. Could it be—mind control? There seem to be so many ways of doing it. There’s brain washing, and hypnotic suggestion, and high-pressure selling, and all the frightening new inventions for getting ideas into a person’s subconscious mind without his knowledge or consent. It scares me when I think of the possibilities—”
“There are possibilities for good as well as evil,” Peter told her. “Another type of mind control has been used to reform prisoners, and it seems to work. Their pillows talk to them—”