“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” Judy admitted. “I’ve heard of brain washing, of course. I wish someone would wash those golden-haired people out of my brain, so I could stop dreaming about them and think straight. Is that what you mean?”
“I mean they may have been deliberately put there by the enemies of our most precious possession. You know what it is, don’t you? It’s our freedom to think our own thoughts.”
“You mean—oh, Peter! I do see what you mean!” cried Judy. “I don’t know how it was done, but someone has been doing things to our subconscious minds—to frighten us—and make us dream. Clarissa was frightened, too. She couldn’t have done it. But who was it, Peter? How do we find out who did this horrible thing to us?”
“One way,” said Peter, “is to review the facts. Judy, I’m serious. I want you to go back over everything that happened Saturday.”
“But we’ve been doing that. We haven’t come up with very many answers, only more questions. You said what happened to Clarissa might tie in with what you found out. What did you mean?” asked Judy.
“I told you we overheard some plans,” Peter began. “Mind manipulation could have been part of them. If only we knew the name of the missing actress—”
“Is some actress missing? Maybe Irene knows her,” Judy suggested. “She could give you the names of all the people who appeared on her show. There was the witch. She could have cast some sort of hypnotic spell over us, I suppose. Hypnotism is one sort of mind manipulation, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but there are other sorts. There’s a machine, for instance, called the tachistoscope. It’s sort of a magic lantern with a high-speed shutter—”
“There were a lot of machines,” Judy interrupted. “The studio floor was filled up with them. I tried to remember their names when we were on the tour, but I couldn’t possibly remember them all.”
“What else happened on that tour?” asked Peter. “You haven’t told me everything.”