During the process of establishment, Miss Graine proved indispensable—so much so that Pylos eventually relinquished all intention of dispensing with her, and even forgot that he had wished to. A man like Pylos, between whose abilities and whose position there lie certain gaps, needs a woman like Miss Sadie Graine. For Miss Graine made it her business to plug those gaps—with flattery of Pylos, with disparagement of his equals, with inequities to his underlings, with whatever unsightly wadding came to hand. It was her daily task to fortify the dikes of Pylos’s self-esteem. The excessive credence he put in her high opinion of himself soon naturally extended to her other views. He came to accept her judgments, and these judgments gradually took on a note of instruction.

For Miss Graine, too, the incident of Ashmole-Brown had been significant. After that she became steadily more vocal, more peremptory. Silence lends stature, and Miss Graine, growing talkative, revealed herself to her colleagues as petty and acrimonious. She condemned unthinkingly, and was open to no rational explanation. (She had a curious habit of saying “I’ll admit that,” “I grant that,” “I’ll say that much,” as if acknowledging that any reasonable admission must be forced out of her.) She quickly made her new power felt, letting it be known that she had instigated the fatal investigation of Ashmole-Brown, and becoming feared as a result. A few tried, with fleeting success, to ingratiate themselves with her; most merely sought to keep out of her way, saying they would not go against The Graine. Keeping out of her way was not easy. She set up in her office an intricate system of files covering the activities of the department, so that Pylos might have immediate access to them. These files were methodically kept: though it were method, however, there was madness in it—or at least obsession, for they duplicated, from various angles, other records kept elsewhere. No one dared to point this out. She also miraculously retained in her head, keeping it otherwise vacant for the purpose, all manner of statistics referring to the less technically oriented as well as to the DALTO personnel.

In assessing Miss Graine’s character, her single status was taken into account—inevitably, but perhaps excessively. For had Miss Graine ever been seriously contemplated as a life partner, had she even been asked—let alone taken—in marriage, her demands on the world might have been different.

Senior members of Pylos’s staff would compliment him on her efficiency, saying “What would you do without her?” As time wore on, a note of wistful speculation crept into this rhetorical inquiry, and it developed the ring of a real question. There was, indeed, no way of knowing what his stature at the Organization might have been, had he fallen under some other influence than that of Sadie Graine. As it was, he came to feel pleasantly important as he trod the Organization’s lobbies or rode its elevators. His dark, portly good looks were recognizable, and he was greeted wherever he went. He gradually formed a circle of acquaintances: not precisely intimates, these were more in the nature of cronies—their talk did not extend beyond shop, but this shop was sometimes talked in their living rooms as well as their offices. Although exalted in Organizational rank, they were not remarkable men. First-class minds, being interested in the truth, tend to select other first-class minds as companions. Second-class minds, on the other hand, being interested in themselves, will select third-class comrades in order to maintain an illusion of superiority; and it was this way with Pylos.