"How nice!" The secretary switched to English immediately. There was only the slightest suggestion of an accent to her English, and over the faint Spanish intonations she tried to impose the broad a's of something resembling the Oxford drawl. "It is quite a relief to speak English during office hours, really." She pronounced it as "re-ahl-y."
"Yours is a very good English, Miss ..."
"Vardieno," she said.
"Pick it up in school in San Hermano?"
Miss Vardieno made a mouth of disdain. "Heavens, no!" she said. "Dad sent me to finishing school in the States. Stuffy old place, but charming in its own Adirondack way. Besides, I could always sneak down to town for a week-end when it became too boring."
"Of course," Hall smiled. "Nothing like good old New York to work off a bore."
"And how! What brings you to this forsaken village?"
"Pan American Airways," he laughed. "There's a flight out of Miami every two days they tell me."
The girl laughed with him. "O.K.," she said. "I asked for it. I'll find out if Mr. Valenti can see you now." She pushed her chair back and got up, pausing mid-way long enough to give Hall a fleeting look at her breasts with a casualness she had never learned in the Adirondacks. But Hall had eyes only for the pendant which dangled at the end of a thin platinum chain. When she sat at her desk or stood erect, Miss Vardieno's Cross and Sword emblem sank neatly below the neck line of her blue New York dress.
"There are so many lovely sights in San Hermano," Hall sighed as the girl walked into the private office.