Cecily Perrine proved to be innately brilliant at handling all the organizational details in running a business, a fact that surprised her as much as it pleased Barnett. She was calm and even-tempered, and much better at handling people than Barnett. And she was also lovely to look at.
Barnett observed her silently for a moment as she studied the page of copy in her typewriter, noting how the single shaft of sunlight, twisted by some prismatic effect of the ancient glass panes in the small window, highlighted the light-brown curls piled in artful disarray atop Cecily's attractive oval face. She was beauty in repose, a model of graceful elegance, even with her face screwed up in the awful concentration of creativity. Or so Barnett thought as he looked at her.
"Good morning, Miss Perrine," he said as she became aware of his presence behind her. "Busy little beehive we have out there."
"Good afternoon, Mr. Barnett," Cecily Perrine said pointedly, her clear blue eyes meeting his. "As you are the owner of this establishment, I shall not attempt to regulate your comings and goings, but I am bound to point out that when the employer arrives at the office at one-thirty in the afternoon, it is not conducive to creating a good work attitude among the employees."
"Ah, Miss Perrine," Barnett said, "let the staff believe that you are a hard-hearted harridan, capable of vilifying even your employer for an imagined tardiness. But to me, in private with the door closed" — he closed the door—"admit that you're tired of supervising others while they write the stories and get the acclaim and the bylines. Tell me that you desire to get out into the great city yourself and have doors slammed in your face, and suffer insults that a lady should never hear and epithets that a lady should not even understand."
"Why, Mr. Barnett," Cecily said, "you make it sound so attractive that I blush to admit that such might indeed be the case, for fear that people will think me nothing more than a dilettante!"
"Never, Cecily. You are too fine a woman for that!" Barnett said, going over to his desk and settling into his chair. "I may call you Cecily, may I not?"
"You may," Cecily said. "And I shall call you Benjamin, for that is your given name, is it not?"
"It is, and I should be proud to hear it from your lips," Barnett told her with a grandiloquent gesture that swept half of his morning mail from the desk to the floor.
Benjamin Barnett had an inordinate fondness for the theater. In his youth, in New York City, he had acted in many an amateur theatrical production of The Drunkard, or His American Cousin. Cecily Perrine had grown up in the theater. Her mother, Laura Croft, had been one of the great leading ladies of the melodramatic '60s. Her father had been a noted villain until, some ten years before, her mother had died and her father had quit the stage, devoting himself to his linguistic studies.
Barnett and Cecily frequently went to the theater together, usually chaperoned by Elton Perrine, Cecily's father. For their own amusement, they occasionally assumed the attitudes of the melodramatic stage in private conversation.
Barnett found the pastime satisfying for another reason. For roughly the past year he had been deeply in love with his office manager, the intelligent, perceptive, beautiful, talented, altogether wonderful Cecily Perrine. Not that love was a new emotion for him; indeed, he had been in love many times before. But his past loves had been light-hearted and evanescent, never deep, or serious, or meaningful, full of pleasant emotion and devoid of either thought or pain.
But this time it was real, and intense, and serious, and damnedly, irritatingly painful. And daily it grew worse and more intense instead of better. Barnett was in the unbearable position of being unable to declare his love to Cecily Perrine, and the need to do so was becoming overwhelming. Love is not normally a silent emotion. And the closest he could come to stating his feelings out loud was in the melodramatic banter that they exchanged. It gave him slight solace, but it was better than complete silence.
Barnett's reticence to speak to Cecily of his feelings lay in his contract with Professor Moriarty. As long as he was obliged to do the professor's bidding, and might at any time be required to perform a criminal act, how could he ask any girl, much less one as fine as Cecily Perrine, to marry him and share his life?
And so, except for the occasional histrionic outburst artfully disguised as melodrama, he kept his silence. He had never explained to Miss Perrine the exact nature of his relationship with Professor Moriarty, or the professor's strange attitude toward the law. How much of it she had deduced or assumed from the circumstances and events of the past two years he did not know. It was a subject that, by tacit agreement, they did not discuss. Nor did he know what Miss Perrine made of his strange ambivalent attitude toward her, and, being but a man, could not begin to guess.
"I've had a hard morning, but useful," Barnett told Cecily, leaning over to pick up his scattered mail. "And you, at least, should be pleased by the results."
"I am all ears, Benjamin; and my heart is aflutter with excitement!"
"John Pummery has been fired from the Express."
"The managing editor? When?"
"This morning. It was brewing for some time, he tells me. A political dispute with the new management. So, as of this afternoon, he is working for us!"
"Really?" Cecily said, her voice strangely flat. "That is nice."
Barnett caught the tone in her voice. "You are displeased," he said. "I thought the news would please you. Now tell me what the trouble is. Do you dislike the man? Are you peeved because I didn't consult you first? I felt that I had to act quickly, or I might lose the chance, and thus the man."
"I am not, as you put it, peeved!" Cecily said, tossing her head. "I am rather hurt. I thought I was doing a good job here."
"But you are, Cecily. An excellent job."
"If I am doing such a good job, why am I being replaced? Surely that is what Mr. Pummery will be doing here — my job!"
Barnett sighed. Why was it that he no longer seemed able to say the right thing to Cecily? She seemed to find some source of hurt or anger in everything he said and everything he did for the past few months. He didn't understand what had changed. He knew that he was so blinded by the strength of his feelings toward Cecily that he couldn't be sure whether it was his behavior or her attitude that was now different. But whatever it was, it created, not exactly friction, but more a sense of confusion in his dealings with her.
"I am sorry, Cecily," Barnett said. "I thought you understood. For the past year you have been berating me for keeping you behind a desk. This, you have observed, is not journalism. In hiring Mr. Pummery I was only attempting to free you from what you now do as office manager so that you can become one of the principal correspondents of the American News Service. You will be doing the same job I am myself — covering those stories that are most important to us, or that require a special understanding of the American market."
Cecily looked at him skeptically. "I am not, I trust, expected to devote myself to such 'important' stories as the charity bazaar of the Duchess of Malfi, or the favorite dinners of Our Dear Queen. Or am I?"
"Not at all," Barnett assured her. "Miss Burnside does those stories very well, and would feel quite put out if you were to take them over. 'From each according to her ability,' as Professor Moriarty is so fond of repeating."