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confidential assistance was included in their monthly stipend so I always slipped him a pourboire for extra services rendered. My father would be furious if he ever learned of it.
    Before I returned to the Forsythe manse I went up to my digs and loaded a Mark Cross attaché case with yellow legal pads, file cards, a small magnifying glass, and a roll of gummed labels. Since I was going to be on stage I figured a few props would help authenticate my role as an earnest cataloger of libraries. I also took along my reading glasses, although I hate to wear them in public. They make me look like a demented owl.
    The Forsythes’ front door seemed stout enough to withstand a battering ram but was fitted with a rather prissy brass knob in an acanthus design. I pulled it and heard chimes sound within. A moment later the heavy portal was swung open and I was greeted by Sheila, the pretty and nongiggling maid.
    “Me again,” I said, giving her my 100-watt Supercharmer smile. (I decided to hold the 150-watt Jumbocharmer for a more propitious time.)
    “Oh sure,” she said, stepping back to allow entrance. “You know your way to the library?”
    “If I get lost I’ll scream for help,” I said. “What’s your last name, Sheila?”
    “Hayworth,” she said. “And no, I’m not related to Rita.”
    Saucy, this one.
    “You could have fooled me,” I said. “The resemblance is striking.”
    We both laughed because she was a shortish blonde on the zoftig side and looked more like Klondike Annie than The Lady from Shanghai. She waggled fingers at me and sashayed away. She was, I noted, wearing high heels, which I thought rather odd for the maidservant of a genteel and apparently hidebound family.
    After two wrong turnings in those lugubrious corridors I finally located the library. The door was ajar and I blithely strolled into my designated “combat center.” Then I stopped, entranced. A woman, perched high on the wheeled ladder, was reaching up to select a volume from the top shelf. She was wearing an extremely short denim skirt.
    Her position in that literary setting forced me to recall Browning’s apt observation: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

4
    S HE HEARD ME ENTER and turned to look down at me coolly. “You must be Archibald McNally,” she stated.
    I confessed I was.
    “I am Geraldine Forsythe. I understand you are to compile a catalog of father’s books.”
    “That is correct, Miss Forsythe, but please don’t let me disturb you. I intend to work as quietly as possible with no interruption of the family’s daily routine. Your father suggested I make this room my headquarters, but whenever my presence is inconvenient for you, do let me know.”
    “No,” she said, “it’ll be no problem.”
    She began to step down from the ladder and I hastened forward to assist her.
    “I can manage,” she snapped at me. “I’ve been doing it for years and haven’t fallen yet.”
    So I stood aside and waited until she was standing on the parquet floor facing me. And we were almost eye-to-eye, for she was quite tall, rangy, with wide shoulders and a proud posture. I guessed her age at forty-plus. She had a coffin-shaped face with remarkable eyes, as astringent as an iced dry martini.
    I noted the novel she had selected: Mansfield Park.
    “You admire Jane Austen?” I asked.
    “Not particularly,” she said curtly. “But I no longer read books written by men. They don’t address my concerns.”
    That seemed to me an uncommonly harsh judgment. “Have you tried the Bible?” I asked as pleasantly as I could, but she glared at me.
    “Are you a trained librarian?” she demanded.
    “Unfortunately I am not,” I replied, “but I don’t believe this project requires philological expertise. It’s really just a matter of taking inventory, isn’t it?”
    “Like a grocery clerk,” she said, and there was no mistaking the sneer in her voice.
    “Exactly,” I said equably.