“You are,” I told her grimly.
“I am what?”
“Not as tall as me.”
“Oh, I have better sense.”
Only a female idiot would have put it on a basis of sense. Joe, who had put the door back up and was lying on the floor again with his head stuck under a desk, called to me, “Maybe you hadn’t better touch things.”
“Thanks for the suggestion.” I went to a chair at the end of the desk he was under and asked, “What happens if I sit on this?”
“Nothing. That one’s okay.”
I sat and became strictly a spectator, after wiping my face and neck and inspecting my shin. Joe continued his tour of the abditories, which were practically everywhere, in desk lamps, chair legs, water cooler, ash trays, even one in the metal base of a desk calendar that was on a big desk in the corner. It was while he had that one open, jiggling things out of it, that I heard him mutter, “This is a new one on me.” He walked over and put something on the desk in front of Helen and asked her, “What is that thing, do you know?”
She picked it up, inspected it, and shook her head. “Haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Let me see.” I got up and went over, and Helen handed it to me. The second I saw it I stopped being casual inside, but I tried to keep the outside as before. It was a thin metal capsule, about three-quarters of an inch long and not over an eighth of an inch in diameter, smooth all over, with no seam or opening, except at one end where a thread came through, a dark brown medium-sized thread as long as my index finger.