"This," said Germaine, "is Mrs. Rutherford. After Winnie didn't turn up for a couple of nights, we put our heads together and decided that two could worry as cheaply as one. So when I got your message, I just phoned Virginia and here we are. Hullo, Winnie, is this another of your homes away from home?"
Virginia Rutherford looked pretty much the way a roasting bear in a bee-tree might be expected to feel while waiting for the dynamite to explode: very sweet, red-hot and not giving a damn whether she hit the Governor of the Old North State.
"Hullo, Winnie," she remarked dangerously. "This another of your tousled blondes?"
"I resent that," Arthurjean said from the doorway. "This is my flat and I didn't invite you and I'll have you know that I'm a very respectable—well, rather respectable—working girl."
The effect of virtue was only slightly marred by the fact that, as she spoke, a pair of silk panties slowly but inexorably slid below the hem of her skirt and settled in a shimmer at her feet. Arthurjean looked down.
"Oh, hell, girls," she said, "What's the use? Have a drink!"
"Thank you, Miss Briggs," Germaine replied. "I will. Make mine straight Scotch and the same for Mrs. Rutherford. Are you, by any chance, employed in my husband's office?"
"I'm his secretary," Arthurjean admitted.
"Winnie," Jimmie turned on me with a snap like those doors in Penn Station which open by an electric eye, "and you swore that you had nothing to do with the office-girls. I was fool enough to believe you."
"At the time, dear," I explained guiltily, "I didn't know it myself."