He decided to go downstairs and have his hair cut before he left the Marine. He was to remember that haircut.
As he put out his hand to push the swing door open, he heard Champneis's voice in his mind, drawling a sentence.
So that was what he had been talking about!
Yes. Yes. Pictures ran together in Grant's mind to make a sequence that made sense. He turned from the saloon door to the telephone and called the Special Branch. He asked them half a dozen questions, and then went to have his hair cut, smiling fatuously. He knew now what he was going to say to Edward Champneis.
It was the busy time of the morning and all the chairs were full.
"Won't be a minute, sir," an anxious supervisor said. "Not a minute if you will wait."
Grant sat down by the wall and reached for a magazine from the pile on a shelf. The pile fell over; a well-thumbed collection, most of them far from new. Because it had a frontispiece of Christine Clay, he picked up a copy of the Silver Sheet, an American cinema magazine, and idly turned over the pages. It was the usual bouquet. The "real truth" was told about someone for the fifty-second time, being a completely different real truth from all the other fifty-one real truths. A nitwit blonde explained how she read new meaning into Shakespeare. Another told how she kept her figure. An actress who didn't know one end of a frying pan from the other was photographed in her kitchen making griddle cakes. A he-man star said how grand he thought all the other he-man stars. Grant turned the pages more impatiently. He was on the point of exchanging the magazine for another when his attention was suddenly caught. He read through an article with growing interest. At the last paragraph he got to his feet, still holding the paper and staring at the page.
"Your turn now, sir," the barber said. "This chair, please."
But Grant took no notice.
"We're quite ready for you now, sir. Sorry you've been kept waiting."