I enjoyed the satisfied feeling for a few seconds and then could have kicked myself. Thursday I had brought paraphernalia with me, but had taken it home again, not wanting to leave it around, and this morning I hadn’t brought it.
That cost me an extra forty minutes. I closed the drawer and locked it. Down on the street I had no trouble finding a taxi, since it was the time of day that the carriage trade gets to work in that part of town. At Wolfe’s house I popped in and right out again, with the cab waiting, and no encounter with Wolfe since his morning hours in the plant rooms are from nine to eleven, and headed back for William Street.
I would have liked to lock my door, since the custom there was to enter without knocking, but there was no key, so I barricaded it by shoving the desk against it. With the folders from the drawer carefully and lovingly transported to the desk, I opened my kit and started to work. It was like picking peaches off a tree with all the branches loaded. Any schoolboy could have harvested that crop.
Within twenty minutes I had three dozen beauts, some on the slick cardboard of the top folder, a few on the second, more on the third, and a whole flock on the coated stock of the two reports.
My feeling of satisfaction had tapered off a little. The total bulk of curiosity out in the arena, not to mention the two rows of offices, regarding me and my activities, would easily have filled a ten-ton truck, and common curiosity has led people into more complicated and perilous ventures than sneaking into a room and looking over the contents of a filing cabinet. But even at the biggest discount I was doing something, getting something you could see and show around, instead of hopping around bobbing the chin.
The next step, presumably, was to acquire additional equipment, preferably at wholesale, and proceed to take the prints of everyone on the floor. Granted that they would all be eager to co-operate, it would keep me busy for four or five eight-hour days, working alone. That had drawbacks. I went and stooped for the phone, having deposited it on the floor when I moved the desk, and told it I wished to speak to Mr. Pine.
It took a while to get him. When he was on I said, “I need an answer to a question I don’t like to ask anyone else. I know some of the big corporations have adopted the custom of getting fingerprints of all their employees, and I wonder if Naylor-Kerr is one of them. Is it?” “Yes,” he said, “we started that during the war. Why?” “I’d like to have permission to take a look at them. I mean go over them.” “What for?” “Someone has been monkeying around my room, nosing into my papers, and it would be fun to know who.” “That seems a little farfetched, doesn’t it? By the way, I got that report. It will be discussed at a meeting of some of the executives this afternoon. And Mr.
Hoff insisted on seeing me; he just left a few minutes ago. He says your presence is demoralizing the whole department. Damn it, I tell you frankly, I could run a car over Mr. Naylor myself. At least you have prodded him along a little. Perhaps you should have a talk with Mr. Hoff whether he likes it or not.” “I’d love to. What about the fingerprints?” “Certainly, if you think it’s worth the trouble. See Mr. Gushing and tell him I said so.” Mr. Gushing was the assistant vice-president who had introduced me around when I started to work. I got him on the phone. It might have been expected that he would show some curiosity as to what a personnel expert expected to accomplish by inspecting fingerprints, but he didn’t, so evidently the news of my real status had got beyond the stock department. He was anxious to please, even to the extent of sending me a boy with an empty carton and a supply of tissue paper for the safe transport of my specimens.
I wasn’t left alone with the prints, which were filed in a locked cabinet of their own in a room on the thirty-fifth floor. A middle-aged woman with dyed brown hair and a flat chest who had apparently eaten onions for breakfast never got more than ten feet from me. She had an uncertain moment when I sent for the boy and asked him to bring me sandwiches and milk, but she fielded it nicely by phoning a pal to come and relieve her for a lunch period.
I knew what I was doing, but was by no means an expert, and I had to go slow if I didn’t want to miss it and have to start all over again. I had the advantage of having an ample collection of good specimens, but even so it was a long uphill climb. A couple of times during the afternoon the onion eater offered to help, but I politely declined, with my eyes smarting and my neck developing a crick.
It was well past four o’clock when I rang the bell. Even before I put it under the magnifying glass I knew that was it, and five minutes with the glass, comparing it with a dozen of the best specimens on the folders and reports, settled it good enough for any jury. Either I had let out a grunt of triumph or my manner had betrayed me, for the onion eater came to my elbow and asked: “Found what you were after, didn’t you?” Not to waste a lie I told her yes, which was feasible since my hand was covering the name on the card. When she had backed off again I returned the card to the file, closed the drawer, repacked my stuff in the carton with the tissue paper, told her I was through for the day and was grateful for the pleasant hours I had spent with her, and went back to the thirty- fourth floor and my office with the carton under my arm. I put the carton on the floor between the window and the desk, which was back in place, got the head of the reserve pool on the phone, and asked him: “How about Miss Gwynne Ferris? Can I see her now?” “I’m afraid not.” He was apologetic. “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Truett, but she still has a lot-” “Excuse me,” I broke in. “I’m sorry too, but so have I got a lot. I have asked for her three times now, and of course if I have to go to Mr. Naylor or Mr.
Pine-” “Not at all! Certainly not! I didn’t know it was important!” “It may be.” “Then I’ll send her right in! She’ll be there right away!” I told him I appreciated it, hung up, arose to move the visitor’s chair to a better position at the end of the desk, and resumed my seat. The door was closed. I was idly considering getting up to open it, to save her the trouble, when it swung open itself and she entered, shut the door behind her, and approached.
I haven’t Wolfe’s stock excuse, over three hundred pounds to manipulate, for not rising to my feet when a caller enters the room, and besides, I am not a lout.
But that time I was glued to my chair at least three seconds beyond the courtesy limit, until after she had asked in a sweet musical voice: “Did you want me? I’m Gwynne Ferris.” It was the non-speller who had rested her lovely fingers on my knee before I had been in the place an hour.
CHAPTER Eighteen
The psychological moment had passed for rising on the entrance of a lady, so I skipped it and told her, “There’s a chair. C-H-A-I-R. Sit down. D-O-W-N.” She did so gracefully, with no flutter, got one knee over the other with the nylons nearly parallel, the twentieth-century classic pose, gave the ordained tug to the hem of her green woolen skirt, covering an additional sector of knee the width of a matchstick, and smiled at me both with her pretty red lips and her clear blue eyes.
