* * * * * *
The most surprised person at the institution of Milly as Bland’s personal secretary was Anton Drew. The formidable Miss Hawkins had not been so much surprised as vitriolic, but had departed with the assurance that she could easily find a post with a rival concern.
For Milly, Drew’s frozen contempt for her was something she could not tolerate, and one morning she said so to the great man himself.
“I want that creature fired!” she told Bland flatly, striding into his enormous office.
“Who? Oh, you mean the man who has just left? Drew?”
“Yes, Drew! That—that thing in the dirty overall who looks at me as though I’d crawled out of a drain.”
“He can’t be fired,” Bland said calmly. “He’s the backbone of the organisation.”
“I know he’s the chief scientist; he hasn’t forgotten to tell me so—but any more looks like the one he gave me just mow when he left and I’ll blow up the place to get rid of him, if I have to!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, be reasonable!’” Bland protested. “I know he looks at everybody as if they don’t count, but it’s only his way. Don’t antagonise him.”
Milly reflected, then her blurred eyes gleamed.
“All right, maybe I can teach him manners.…”
Ignoring Bland’s protests as he struggled clumsily to rise from his swivel-chair, she hurried from the office, through her own secretarial sanctum, and out into the immaculate corridor which led to the major laboratory. When she had entered it, she stood looking about her.
The gathered assistants, busy at their various tasks, looked long enough to wonder; then their eyes followed her lithe movements towards Drew’s desk at the far end of the laboratory where he sat brooding over the latest spectro-heliograph plates.
“Listen, you!” Milly hanged her fist on the desk.
Drew looked up, removing his pipe from his teeth,
“Well, Miss Morton?”
The cold level of his voice took her off balance.
“I think you and I should come to an understanding,” she continued. “I don’t like the way you behave towards me.”
“No?” Drew surveyed her, and remarked she was an unusually lovely girl using an unusually lovely perfume.
“Next time,” Milly added, “treat me as though I’m a human being and not one of those things that run up and down a jar.”
“You mean a culture? Cultures are interesting, Miss Morton.”
“Meaning I’m not?” Milly blazed. “You confounded—”
“You are supposed to be a secretary,” Drew cut in. “As such you are a supreme blunderer. You have beauty, Miss Morton, and everything that goes to make a young woman attractive—only I don’t happen to be the type that can be attracted. I look only for efficiency in this organization, and I never get it from you. That is why I regard you as a confounded nuisance! In your own sphere I don’t doubt that you are a great success: I’d be delighted if you’d return to it.”
Milly’s highly rouged cheeks coloured more deeply—then in sudden uncontrollable rage she whipped up the spectro-plates from the desk and slammed them with all her force to the floor. They splintered immediately on the hard rubberoid, shards of glass scattering in all directions.
Drew jumped to his feet, the whiteness of his face sufficient indication of his fury.
“You vicious, selfish little idiot!” he shouted. “Do you realise what you’ve done? You’ve destroyed the very evidence upon which the saving of a world might depend—”
“World?” Milly repeated, half-frightened, half-stupid.
Drew came round the desk and clutched her arm fiercely.
In spite of all her protests, he whirled down the corridor and into Mortimer Bland’s office. Astounded, the big fellow sat staring.
“What the devil’s all this about?” he demanded.
“You’ve an ultimatum on your hands, Mr. Bland,” Drew snapped. “Either get rid of this playtime baby of yours, or I quit.”
“But what’s happened?” Bland’s prominent eyes popped.
Drew released the girl savagely and told of the laboratory incident.
“Those plates were beyond price,” he finished heatedly. “Solar photographs which I’ll need as proof of the—”
Drew stopped suddenly. Bland seized on the silence.
“Proof of what?” he demanded. “And what the hell do you want spectro-plates for? They’ve nothing to do with this organisation, have they?”
“Only on the astronomical side, for the observatories.”
“No observatory has asked for spectro-plates, Drew. I see everything which goes out of this organisation. So what’s the explanation?”
Drew pulled out his pipe and bit into it. “Experimental work and very essential. Concerning the present rash of sunspots.”
Milly folded her rounded arms and gave Bland a glance.
“A man who can spend his time studying sunspots doesn’t seem so indispensable to me,” she remarked sourly. “What have they got to do with the stuff this place turns out?”
“I could explain the whole thing, but the time isn’t ripe for me to do so,” Drew retorted. “All I can say now is that the destruction of those plates has ruined the work of months.”
Bland’s eyes became hard. “Listen to me, Drew. I engaged Miss Morton, and I stand by it; and I’m getting the impression that I’ve been mistaken in you, too. Your job is to supervise the science of this organisation, not study sunspots. I know we check astronomical findings with our observatory apparatus, but that doesn’t mean you can make experiments on your own.”
“If it were not for the fact I’d start a panic, I’d tell you what it’s all about!” Drew snapped.
“Nice of you! All I can see is that you have been using my time and instruments to your own advantage, besides insulting Miss Morton. There’s only one answer to that.”
The shock-haired scientist hesitated, his cold eyes turning to consider Milly’s triumphant face; then without a word he strode from the office and slammed the door behind him. Bland relaxed in his swivel chair with a sigh of relief.
“I wonder if we did right,” Milly mused.
“What?” Bland sat up again.
“I’m wondering about something he said,” Milly continued. “Something about my destroying plates upon which the saving of a world depends. There was something rather frightening
