Before Midnight

Outside could have meant right there, but eavesdropping is vulgar if you can't distinguish words, and I soon found that I couldn't, so I moseyed down the wide carpeted hall and on through into the reception room. A couple of the upholstered chairs had customers, but not the same ones as when I had arrived. When I lingered instead of pushing the elevator button the aristocratic brunette at the desk gave me a look, and, not wanting her to worry, I went and told her the evidence was all in and I was waiting for the verdict. She had a notion to give me a smile--I was wearing a dark brown pin-stripe that was a good fit, with a solid tan shirt and a soft wool medium-brown tie--but decided it would be better to wait until we heard the verdict. I decided she was too cagey for one of my temperament, and crossed the rugs over to a battery of large cabinets with glass fronts that covered all of a wall and part of two others. They were filled with an assortment of objects of all sizes, shapes, colors, and materials.

Being a detective, I soon detected what they were: samples of the products of LBA clients, past and present. I thought it was very democratic to have them here in the executive reception room instead of down on a lower floor with the riffraff. Altogether there must have been several thousand different items, from spark plugs to ocean liners to paper drinking cups to pharmaceuticals-though in the case of the liners and trucks and refrigerators, and other bulky items, they had settled for photographs instead of the real thing. There was an elegant little model of a completely equipped super-modern kitchen, about eighteen inches long, that I would have taken home for a doll's house, if I had had a wife and we had had a child and the child had been a girl and the girl had liked dolls. I was having a second look at the Heery Products section, which alone had over a hundred specimens, and was trying to decide what I thought of yellow for packaging, when the brunette called my name and I turned.

"You may go in," she said, and darned if the smile didn't nearly break through. Of course she had had plenty of time to inspect me from behind, and I never had a suit that fitted better. I repaid her with a friendly glance that spoke volumes as I stepped to the door to the inner hall.