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 had opened the door to them: “Gilda, will you dump some of those things. This is Mrs. Storm, Mr. De Jong—Gilda Hanan.” Her secretary, Dirk later learned.

The place was disorderly, comfortable, shabby. A battered grand piano stood in one corner. A great skylight formed half the ceiling and sloped down at the north end of the room. A man and a girl sat talking earnestly on the couch in another corner. A swarthy foreign-looking chap, vaguely familiar to Dirk, was playing softly at the piano. The telephone rang. Miss Hanan took the message, transmitted it to Dallas O’Mara, received the answer, repeated it. Perched atop the stool, one slippered foot screwed in a rung, Dallas worked on concentratedly, calmly, earnestly. A lock of hair straggled over her eyes. She pushed it back with her wrist and left another dark splotch on her forehead. There was something splendid, something impressive, something magnificent about her absorption, her indifference to appearance, her unawareness of outsiders, her concentration on the work before her. Her nose was shiny. Dirk hadn’t seen a girl with a shiny nose in years. They were always taking out those little boxes and things and plastering themselves with the stuff in ’em.

“How can you work with all this crowd around?”

“Oh,” said Dallas in that deep restful leisurely voice of hers, “there are always between twenty and thirty”—she slapped a quick scarlet line on the board, rubbed it out at once—“thousand people in