In the center of the room the chief stenographer stood, putting her formidable array of pencils through the sharpener. She glanced up at Starratt with a complacent smile.
"Oh, good morning, Mr. Starratt!" she purred, archly. "What's new with you?"
"Not a thing in the world," he answered, ironically, and he began to arrange some memoranda in one of the wire baskets on his desk… At nine thirty the boy brought him his share of the mail from the back office, and in ten minutes he was deeply absorbed in sorting the "daily reports" from the various agencies. He worked steadily, interrupted by an occasional phone call, an order from the chief clerk, the arrival and departure of business associates and clients. Above the hum of subdued office conversation the click of typewriting machines and the incessant buzzing of the desk telephones, he was conscious of hearing the same question repeated with monotonous fidelity:
"Hello! What's new with you?"
And as surely, either through his own lips or the lips of another, the identical reply always came:
"Not a thing in the world!"
At half past eleven he stopped deliberately and stood for a moment, nervously fingering his tie. He was thinking about the course of action that he had decided upon in that long, unusual vigil of the night before. His uncertainty lasted until the remembrance of his wife's scornful question swept over him:
"Why aren't you doing something?… Everybody else is!"
But it was the answer he had made that committed him irrevocably to his future course:
"Perhaps I am. You don't know everything."