At the sight of Marc, the girl came to a sudden, jerking halt, as though she had run full-tilt against the face of a brick wall. More than that, she looked just as stunned. Going tensely rigid, like a cardboard cut-out of her self, she drew her arms stiffly to her sides, closed her eyes and screamed till it seemed that her vocal chords would snap under the strain. True and strong, her voice shrilled through the office ripping the silence to shreds. Finally completing this awful recital with a flourish right out of the Lucia mad scene, she opened her eyes and pointed a commanding finger at Marc.
"Stay where you are, Mr. Pillsworth!" she bleated. "One step and I'll scream!"
"You've already screamed," Marc reminded her thickly. "And you really mustn't do it any more."
"If you move," the girl replied vehemently, "I'll not only do it some more, but louder!"
Marc's blood ran cold at the thought. "Oh, don't," he pleaded, "Please. Whatever the trouble is, I'm sure we can...." Holding out a placating hand, he swayed toward her.
"Get away!" the girl yelped with honest terror. "Get away, you ... you wolf!" And grasping her handbag firmly by its straps, she took hasty aim at Marc's head and arranged a resounding introduction of the two.
Under the impact of the bag, which seemed to be harboring at least a couple of flat irons, Marc sat down heavily on the floor, like a sack of soggy meal. In the blurred starlit confusion that followed, he was vaguely aware of tapping heels and the thunderous slam of a door.
After a moment, in which the spinning universe settled down to a more reasonable pace, Marc prodded his head with a cautious finger and, finding it still where he'd remembered it, looked up. "What happened?" he asked.
He waited for a reply that was not forthcoming. The agency employees, still rigid at their desks, merely stared back at him with what appeared to be only faintly disguised contempt. Then a door slammed somewhere at the far end of the office and Memphis McGuire, Marc's current secretary, big as the city for which she was named and twice as colorful, swung heavily into view. Just barely avoiding a collision with a desk, she started down the aisle.