Stan sat in a deep leather chair and inspected the room while he waited for David to see him. Five minutes, his secretary had said. Now she was tapping efficiently on her typewriter, occupied and withdrawn, and next to her, on the other side of the polished wooden fence, another girl, a blonde—Clem’s secretary, he supposed—sat at her machine. Neither of the girls had looked up, or spoken, or slackened pace for an instant since he had established his identity and picked up a copy of Punch. The smooth, shining heads remained slightly averted to the left, the hands raced. The clack of typewriter keys had a peaceful effect in the high, white-walled room. Dark wood, gleaming floor and furniture, fresh flowers, electric light and the snap of machines. Stan seldom found himself in such surroundings. He felt he was being sapped and subdued by them until he cleared his throat noisily—so noisily as to make the girls look up—to reassert his personality. Behind the glum façade he was jittery.
