"You have?"
He assured me he had. That was when I blinked my eyes. It was a mistake. Because when I opened them, Mr. Xlptl had disappeared. He didn't walk out of the little office. He didn't jump from the window. The door and the window were both closed. Mr. Xlptl simply vanished.
I took another drink. It was some kind of trick. An optical illusion or something. I thought over what Mr. Xlptl wanted me to do. Six pretty new brides. Me. Jack Brody, their collective husbands. I whistled. Well, that was what a private eye dreamed about in all the shamus books—unlimited access to beautiful womens' boudoirs. I sighed. If only that Xlptl wasn't a nut, I thought. If only what he told me was possible. If only....
I sighed again. Better call up one of the dames from your little black book, Brody. No use sighing over what can never be. But automatically I looked down at the list. Study the first name, Xlptl had said. I smiled at my own amazing credulity. Well, chalk it up to wishful thinking.
The first name was Mrs. Hal Drummond (nee Janet Dawes). I thought of the Drummonds and their address, which was in San Francisco, almost three thousand miles from here.
Something buzzed in my ears.
Louder and louder.
The buzzing became a hissing sound. I couldn't place it at first. Then I realized it was the sound a shower makes in the next room. I looked around. A second ago I'd been in my office, in New York. Now I was sitting on a bed. There was a newspaper alongside me. I did a double-take. It was the San Francisco Chronicle.