Victoria returned to her office shaking her head. Men. Their subterfuges were as subtle as a broadsword in the hand of a ham-fisted amateur and no match for a woman. She’d known exactly what Beaumont Fournier was after the second she’d glimpsed him staring gaga-eyed at her through the open door of the reference room. She’d checked her watch and allowed ten minutes before she was summoned to the chief’s office for introductions. Victoria had done her own homework on Beaumont Fournier before a glance from the corridor had inspired in him a sudden need to investigate Victoria Grayson. She’d learned that he was a scoundrel where women were concerned. Poor Willard Mason. The author had placed him in quite a predicament. Victoria guessed the editor now shared her question of how a writer led around by his gonads could produce a brilliant book of conception like Cathédrale de Silence.

But to Victoria’s surprise, she had not been bidden to the editor in chief’s office until after the author’s departure. At her desk she waited a call from Ralph. He was to telephone her at the publishing house the minute he landed at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. That would be midafternoon, and then she would tell him of her “flight plan,” as he would call it, for their short time together.

The unexpected turn of circumstances had not thrown her plans for the evening off course. Rather than meet her at the Warwick Hotel, where she’d made reservations for the night, Victoria would have Ralph stroll into the Champagne Bar of the Plaza lugging his flight bag to rescue her from the clutches of Beaumont Fournier. After a quick hello, introduction, and good-bye, they’d be off to the Warwick, which was within easy walking distance of the Plaza, saving them from wasting precious time hailing a taxi to thread through the city’s congested Friday traffic. Even her attire fell in line with the evening ahead. That morning she had dressed in something that could go from office to a reserved table for dinner at Sardi’s, Ralph’s favorite restaurant in the city, so she was suitable for cocktails in the Champagne Bar.