"Darn thing's rim-cut, anyway," she said under her breath. "I'll have to get a new one." She dug her note-book and wallet from the mass of dusty literature in the tonneau and walked into the building.
Hutchinson was telephoning when she entered their office on the fourth floor. A curl of smoke rose from his cigar-end on the flat-topped desk and drifted through the big open window. There were dusty footprints on the ingrain rug, and the helter-skelter position of the chairs showed that prospects had come in during her absence. Hutchinson chuckled when he hung up the receiver.
"Ted's going to catch it when he gets home!" he remarked, picking up the cigar.
"Stalling his wife again?" Helen was running through her mail. "I suppose there isn't a man on earth who won't joyfully lie to another man's wife for him," she added, ripping an envelope.
"Well, Holy Mike! What would you tell her?"
Helen looked up quickly from the letter.
"I'd tell her the—" she began hotly, and stopped. "Oh, I don't know. I suppose he's got that red-headed girl out in the machine again? He makes me tired. If you ask me, I think we'd better get rid of him. That sort of thing doesn't make us any sales."
There was silence while she ripped open the other letters and glanced through them. Her momentary anger subsided. She reflected that there were men on whom one could rely. Her thoughts returned to Paul as to a point of security. His appearance in San José a few months earlier had been like the sight of a cool spring in a desert. She had not realized the scorn for all men that had grown in her until she met him again and could not feel it for him.
She glanced from the window at the clock in the tower of the Bank of San José building. Half-past four. He would still be at the ice-plant. This thought, popping unexpectedly into her mind, startled her with the realization that all day she had been subconsciously dwelling on the fact that it was the day on which he usually came to San José since his firm had acquired its interests there.
The clock suggested simultaneously another thought, and she snatched the telephone-receiver from its hook. "Am I too late for the afternoon delivery?" she anxiously asked the groceryman who answered the call. "Oh, thank you. Two heads of lettuce, a dozen eggs, half a pound of butter. How much are tomatoes? Well, send me a pound. Yes, H. D. Kennedy, 560 South Green Street. Thank you!" As the receiver clicked into place, she asked, "Any live ones to-day?"