There was a good view of the elevators through the barbershop windows. Rick watched people coming and going, and speculated for his own amusement on who they might be, and their business in the building. Speculation was idle, of course. Take Tom Dodd. No one, without inside knowledge, would suspect that he was a federal agent engaged in guarding a hush-hush project on the fourth floor. Or Dr. Marks. Who would suspect that he carried a vital secret? Or, more accurately, that he was working on one? As the barber was brushing Rick off, the boy saw his father step out of the elevator, stop, and look around. He saw the elevator operator step from the car, look into the barbershop, and wink. Rick almost winked back, then he realized that the operator was winking at the barber and not at him. The scientist saw Rick at almost the same moment and walked into the barbershop. "Julius will be busy for another half hour," he said. "I think I'll follow your example, Rick." He climbed into the chair Rick had just vacated. Scotty was through, too. The boys took seats and busied themselves reading magazines. Hartson Brant's hair had needed only trimming, not complete cutting, so he was finished in a short time. The barber shook out his cloth, then put it back on for the finishing touches. Rick glanced up as the barber spoke. "Your hair's pretty dry, sir, and I have an excellent treatment here. I'd like to give you one. It would make your hair look better, and make it easier to handle." Tension swept through Rick as though someone had turned on an electric current. The tension had no focus. It was just that something deep within him had reacted. He stood up and dropped his magazine. "Dad," he said hastily, "I just saw Julius go through the lobby." "Where did he go?" Hartson Brant demanded. "I didn't see him." "I think he went through the front door," Rick said. "Better hurry. I'll try to catch him." Outside the barbershop he stopped, to let Scotty catch up with him. "Why should Weiss run out through the front door?" Scotty demanded. "He didn't. It was a stall, to get Dad out of there in a hurry." "But why?" "I don't know," Rick said slowly. "For some reason, I just didn't want him to have that dry-hair treatment!" CHAPTER V JANIG Runs a Security Check There wasn't much evidence on which to base his reaction, Rick admitted. But when he reacted, he just reacted and that's all there was to it. Call it a hunch, or call it nonsense. That's how it was, and he couldn't change it. The barber had practically refused him a dry-hair treatment--and his hair was rather dry. The same barber had tried to sell a treatment to Hartson Brant--whose hair was not dry at all. And the elevator boy who had carried the scientist down from the fourth floor had winked at the barber. Even admitting that it added up to no evidence of anything, it bothered him. He had asked Tom Dodd how much JANIG knew about the barber.