In runs a short but spunky secretary, bit of a chubbette here, and commences belting Roger in the shins with the excess-profits tax records from 1940 to ’44 of an English steel firm which happened to share a patent with Vereinigte Stahlwerke for an alloy used in the liquid-oxygen couplings for the line running aft to the S-Gerät in A4 number 00000. But Roger’s shins are not set up for this kind of information. The secretary’s glasses fall off. “Miss Müller-Hochleben,” reading her nametag, “you look beastly without your glasses. Put ssem back on, at vunce!” this comic Nazi routine being inspired by her surname.

“I can’t find them,” German accent all right, “I don’t see too well.” “Well, we’ll see if we can’t help you here—ah! what’s this? Miss Müller-Hochleben!”

“Ja….”

“What do they look like, these eyeglasses?”

“They are white—”

“With clever little rhinestones all around the rims, Fräulein? eh?”

“Ja, ja, und mit—”

“And running down all the earpieces too, a-and feathers?”

“Ostrich feathers….”

“Male ostrich feathers, dyed a stunning peacock blue, sprouting off the edges?”

“That is my eyeglasses, ja,” sez the groping secretary, “where are they, please?”

“Right here!” bringing his foot down CRUNCH, smashing them to bright arctic gatherings all over Pointsman’s rug.