She led the way through the outer office where a pale blonde with a face like a happy rabbit pecked at a typewriter and gave a coy little smile as she passed.
‘If Mr. Manners calls, Mary, tell him I’m on my way down,’ Martha said, and breezed into her cream-and-green office.
I followed her in and closed the door.
‘Turn the key, ‘Martha said, lowering her voice. It probably could still be heard at the far end of the corridor, but she im-agined she was speaking in a conspirator’s whisper. ‘I’ve a bottle of Vat 69 that wants breaking open, but I wouldn’t like Mary to think I drink in office hours.’ She hoisted a bottle into sight as I sank into an armchair. ‘I wouldn’t like her to think I drink at all, for that matter.’
‘What makes you so positive she doesn’t know?’
‘What makes you so damn positive she does?’ Martha said and grinned. She slapped a threeinch snifter down on the desk in front of me. ‘Rinse your phlegm out with that.’
‘There are times, Martha, when I don’t believe you’re even civilized, to hear you talk,’I said, collecting the glass. ‘Well, bung-ho.’
‘Fungus on your adenoids,’ she boomed, and downed her drink at a gulp. ‘Not bad, huh? Want another?’
I shook my head, and accepted the three coffee-beans she dropped on the blotter before me.
‘Well now, what’s your trouble?’ she asked, sitting down and getting to work on the beans herself. ‘What do you want to know this time?’