VII
That office was no place for a stranger to poke around in. It was on the first floor of a dingy old building in the middle of the block, with part of the factory, so Joe said, in the rear, and the rest on the second floor. As soon as we were inside and had the lights turned on, Helen sat in a chair at a desk and looked disdainful, but as the search went on I noticed she kept her eyes open. Joe tossed his hat and coat on a chair, got a screwdriver from a drawer, went to the typewriter on the desk Helen was sitting at, used the screwdriver, lifted out the typewriter roller, unscrewed an end of it and turned it vertical, and about four dozen dice rolled out. He held the open end of the roller so the light would hit it right, peered in, put the dice back in and screwed the end on, and put the roller back on the machine. His fingers were as swift and accurate as any I had ever seen. Even if I had known about it, I would have needed at least ten minutes for the operation; he took about three.
“Trick dice?” I asked him.
“They’re just a stock item,” he said, and went over to a door in the rear wall, opened it, took it off its hinges, leaned it against a desk, knelt on the floor, removed a strip from the bottom edge of the door — and out came about ten dozen lead pencils.
“Trick pencils?”
“When you press, perfume comes out,” he said, and stretched out flat to look into the abditory.
I thought I might as well help with the doors and ambled over to open one in another wall that would probably be to a closet. I grabbed the knob and turned, and something darted out and banged me on the shin so that almost anyone but me would have screamed in pain. I uttered a word or two. The piece of wood that had hit me had gone back into place and was part of the door again.
“That shouldn’t have been left connected,” Helen said, trying not to look as if she wanted to giggle.
I saw no reason to reply. My shin feeling as it did, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to see if the skin was broken and started to lift my foot to a chair, but the light was dim because the ones in that part of the room hadn’t been turned on, so I stepped to the wall and flipped a switch. A stream of water, a thin stream but with plenty of pressure, came out of the wall and hit me just below the right eye. I leaped to one side and used more and better words.
“That’s interesting,” Helen said. “Some customers say that the person won’t be standing in the right place, but you were, exactly. A person not as tall as you would get it right in the eye.”