Standing on his desk, a nonsense mirror, which reflected his long, angular frame as a fore-shortened gnome looking down a well, F. S. Hartley found himself distracted from the task in hand by the novel view of his office, which he now had. He could have been looking at it for the first time.
That was, in itself, something. He had been chained to the slab for ten years, five months, one week and two days and he had a close-grain picture of the set graven on his retina. In all that time, he could not recollect having stood where he now was and he thought perhaps he should do it more often,
Tall, green filing cabinet; two mahogany cupboards, one tall and thin, one long and low, with glass fronts, which did nothing to conceal as fair a collection of congealed codswallop as any similar containers of their shape and size on Earth planet. A low partition, over which he could now look directly, into the tidy alcove, where his secretary sat absently buffing the long emerald nails of her left hand. Facing his way, and leaning forward in concentration on this agreeable chore, she was giving maximum effect to what was always an interesting décolletage and raised her eyes to meet his at the precise moment when his own had registered this fact.
She said, "Why, Mr. Hartley, do you want me?"
It was a fair question; but did nothing to set him at ease. He said, and recognised that it sounded thin, "Oh, Mrs. Cox," as though her presence there had come as a big surprise, "I was bending a paper clip and it flicked out of my fingers and dropped in the light shade. I thought I ought to get it out before the light is used. It would look odd to see the pattern of a paper clip on the bottom."
"You'll need a chair as well." She got up, neat and brisk; square-necked check top, charcoal grey skirt, very straight seams running precisely down the middle of well developed calves. Then she was round the partition and holding up to him a straight-backed chair which normally stood by the filing cabinet.
Hartley reflected that looking directly down on people improved appearances from a symmetrical point of view, and that holding the chair up was doing nothing but good for the taut line of her figure. When he was finally standing on the top deck, she obligingly joined the expedition and held his ankles in a sympathetic grip.
In practice, this move made him feel wildly insecure. Ever given to analysis of even the simplest move from those around him, he wondered why she had not simply steadied the chair. As matters stood, if it tipped, she was merely ensuring that he could make no move to save himself. But to point this out might be offensive on more than one count: (a) That she was too stupid to think the thing through, (b) That he objected to her touch even through one thickness of sock.
By this time, he had, anyway, dug out the clip and was again aware of the singularity of his bird's eye view. On top of the tall cupboard, a fat, grey, paper-back volume had collected the dust of ages. It must have been there more than ten years for a start. What could it be then--a "scrofulous French novel, on grey paper with blunt type?" Hardly likely. He leaned forward to try to reach it; but he was half a metre short.
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