She smiled. "You didn't seem concerned about my modesty. I don't see why your own should bother you. Get dressed!" I obeyed, my mind anxiously chasing one possibility after another, all of them ending up with my death. I got into the other things and felt even more uncomfortable. They were all only an approximate fit: the shoes a little too tight and pointed, the collar of the shirt too stiffly starched and too high under my chin, the gray suit too narrow at the shoulders and the ankles. I wished I had a mirror to see myself in. I felt like an ultra-conservative Wall Street broker and I was sure I resembled one. "All right," she said. "Put the envelopes in your inside pocket. You'll find instructions on each. Follow them carefully." "I don't get it!" I protested. "You will. Now step into the mesh cage. Use the envelopes in the order they're arranged in." "But what's this all about?" "I can tell you just one thing, Mr. Weldon--don't try to escape. It can't be done. Your other questions will answer themselves if you follow the instructions on the envelopes." She had the gun in her hand. I went into the mesh cage, not knowing what to expect and yet too afraid of her to refuse. I didn't want to wind up dead of starvation, no matter how much money she might have given me--but I didn't want to get shot, either. She closed the mesh gate and pushed the switch as far as it would go. The motors screamed as they picked up speed; the mesh cage vibrated more swiftly; I could see her through it as if there were nothing between us. And then I couldn't see her at all. I was outside a bank on a sunny day in spring. * * * * * My fear evaporated instantly--I'd escaped somehow! But then a couple of realizations slapped me from each side. It was day instead of night. I was out on the street and not in her brownstone house. Even the season had changed! Dazed, I stared at the people passing by. They looked like characters in a TV movie, the women wearing long dresses and flowerpot hats, their faces made up with petulant rosebud mouths and bright blotches of rouge; the men in hard straw hats, suits with narrow shoulders, plain black or brown shoes--the same kind of clothes I was wearing. The rumble of traffic in the street caught me next. Cars with square bodies, tubular radiators.... For a moment, I let terror soak through me. Then I remembered the mesh cage and the motors. May Roberts could have given me electro-shock, kept me under long enough for the season to change, or taken me South and left me on a street in daylight. But this was a street in New York. I recognized it, though some of the buildings seemed changed, the people dressed more shabbily. Shrewd stagesetting? Hypnosis? That was it, of course! She'd hypnotized me.... Except that a subject under hypnosis doesn't know he's been hypnotized.