Belder pressed a button.
He waited for not more than two seconds, then the door from the reception office opened, and Imogene Dearborne said, with just the proper inflection of polite secretarial efficiency, “Yes, Mr. Belder?”
“Mrs. Cool wants to check over my personal correspondence. Please get the file.”
“Yes, Mr. Belder.”
Miss Dearborne left the door to the outer office open. Twenty seconds brought her back, a trimly efficient vision of neat lines and slender ankles. She placed a filing-jacket well filled with correspondence on Everett Belder’s desk with that exaggerated, impersonal efficiency with which some secretaries seek to impress visitors.
“Anything else?” she asked, making the words as close-clipped as the rattle of type-bars against the platen of a typewriter.
“I think that will be all, Miss Dearborne.”
“Yes, Mr. Belder.”
She walked, rigid-hipped, back across the office and closed the door behind her.
Bertha Cool watched her go meditatively. “Puts it on a little too thick,” she said.