The thing melted shut. Weber sighed his relief at it and decided to go to bed.
He regretted while undressing that he hadn’t thought to ask the messenger the name of his firm. Knowing the delivery service involved would be useful in tracing the origin of this gruesome gift.
“But then,” he repeated as he fell asleep, “it’s not the gift—it’s the principle! Merry Christmas, me.”
The next morning when Lew Knight breezed in with his “Good morning, counselor,” Sam waited for the first sly ribbing to start. Lew wasn’t the man to hide the light of his humor under a bushel. But Lew buried his nose in The New York State Supplement and kept it there all morning. The other five young lawyers in the communal office appeared either too bored or too busy to have Bild-A-Man sets on their conscience. There were no sly grins, no covert glances, no leading questions.
Tina walked in at ten o’clock, looking like a pinup girl caught with her clothes on.
“Good morning, counselors,” she said.
Each in his own way, according to the peculiar gland secretions he was enjoying at the moment, beamed, drooled or nodded a reply. Lew Knight drooled. Sam Weber beamed.
Tina took it all in and analyzed the situation while she fluffed her hair about. Her conclusions evidently involved leaning markedly against Lew Knight’s desk and asking what he had for her to do this morning.
Sam bit savagely into Hackleworth On Torts. Theoretically, Tina was employed by all seven of them as secretary, switchboard operator and receptionist. Actually, the most faithful performance of her duties entailed nothing more daily than the typing and addressing of two envelopes with an occasional letter to be sealed inside. Once a week there might be a wistful little brief which was never to attain judicial scrutiny. Tina therefore had a fair library of fashion magazines in the first drawer of her desk and a complete cosmetics laboratory in the other two; she spent one third of her working day in the ladies’ room swapping stocking prices and sources with other secretaries; she devoted the other two thirds religiously to that one of her employers who as of her arrival seemed to be in the most masculine mood. Her pay was small but her life was full.
Just before lunch, she approached casually with the morning’s mail. “Didn’t think we’d be too busy this morning, counselor—” she began.