"Your meeting was not a success." She spoke with a soft burr, impossible to reproduce, a thick, throaty tone with an odor of foreignness in it.
"No," Roger answered shortly. "It wasn't."
She seemed to be going to say something else, changed her mind and clumped off alone.
The elevator man had come back to his post. In a few moments the room was empty of all save Roger and Anne.
"I suppose you have to wait," Anne began, when a long, pale face, apparently disconnected from any body, appeared at the door of Hilary's private office.
"No need, Williams; they're gone."
"Gone, sir!"
"Gone. Slipped. Vamoosed," Roger added in an urge to shock the frozen composure of that face. "Sandwiches all wasted unless—you eat them yourself."
The face retreated in shocked but respectful silence. Roger laughed and Hilary Wainwright entered. There was a short, awkward silence, and then Hilary said hurriedly, as if, in the interval of his absence, he had accumulated unforeseen but important duties:
"Would you mind locking up, Barton?" He took some papers from his desk, his raincoat and umbrella, and, with a gracious smile to Anne, moved to the door. "See you in the morning, Roger," he threw back and was gone.