That something was the figure of that popular novelist and well-known after-dinner speaker, Miss Julia Ukridge. “Good-morning,” she said.
It is curious how often the gods who make sport of us poor humans defeat their own ends by overdoing the thing. Any contretemps less awful than this, however slightly less awful, would undoubtedly have left me as limp as a sheet of carbon paper, rattled and stammering, in prime condition to be made sport of. But as it was I found myself strangely cool. I had a subconscious feeling that there would be a reaction later, and that the next time I looked in a mirror I should find my hair strangely whitened, but for the moment I was unnaturally composed, and my brain buzzed like a circular-saw in an ice-box.
“How do you do?” I heard myself say. My voice seemed to come from a long distance, but it was steady and even pleasing in timbre.
“You wished to see me, Mr. Corcoran?”
“Yes.”
“Then why,” enquired Miss Ukridge, softly, “did you ask for my secretary?”
There was that same acid sub-tinkle in her voice which had been there at our previous battle in the same ring. But that odd alertness stood by me well.
“I understood that you were out of town,” I said.
“Who told you that?”
“They were saying so at the Savage Club the other night.” This seemed to hold her.