Free Strange Sisters by Fletcher Flora Page A

precisely how to restore everything immediately to sanity and to reduce a dead body to a few cents' worth of chemicals that should disturb no one very much or for very long. She was sitting right now with a kind of cool omnipotence behind her blond desk, and probably she was saying something crisp and definitive into the ivory telephone, just as she had been the day Kathy had gone into the office to see her.
    She had been called into the office, as a matter of fact. She had just come on a week before from Burlington College for girls, and she had applied at the personnel section of the department store for a clerking job, more just to have something to do than because she was in immediate need of money. Stella had left her enough to preclude worry over money for a long time, but she had discovered that it was a little better somehow if one were occupied, and so she had applied for the job of clerking because it was the only kind of work she could think of that didn't require any particular training. The department store being progressive in its approach to personnel problems, she had been given some tests that were supposed to indicate whether it would be worthwhile hiring her. As it turned out, the tests indicated that she was not only worthwhile hiring but that she might profitably be hired to do something better than selling perfume or costume jewelry or ladies' lingerie. So she had been called into Jacqueline's office, and Jacqueline in the gray chalkstripe was talking into the ivory telephone, and after a minute she cradled the instrument and smiled at Kathy, and the understanding that was later verified was a thing immediately felt.
    "Miss Gait?" she said. "Sit down, please."
    Kathy sat down primly with her knees together and her hands folded on her knees. She pushed the recurrent and disturbing thought of Vera Telsa from her mind and returned Jacqueline's smile. Jacqueline picked up some papers from the surface of her desk and tapped them with the pointed nails of one hand. Kathy could see that the papers had long columns of little squares on them. Some of the squares had neat little checks in them, and she recognized the answer sheets to the tests she had taken.
    Jacqueline said, "You are trying for a position with us, I believe, Miss Gait."
    "Yes."
    "What, exactly, do you have in mind?
    "I don't know. Nothing in particular, I guess. I thought maybe a clerking job."
    Jacqueline's smile grew in an instant into a soft laugh, and she dropped the papers onto the desk. "My dear, I'm afraid you're underselling yourself. I believe we can do a little better for you and for ourselves by using you in a different capacity. Can you take shorthand?"
    "No."
    "Do you type?"
    "A little. I'm not very good."
    "Well, no matter. There are other ways of utilizing you. Before we make an assignment, however, it will be necessary to administer a few more tests. Just to be certain that we do the right thing, you understand. Would you object to that?"
    "No. Not at all."
    "Very well, then. Please report back to the gentleman who sent you here. He will know how to go ahead."
    She had reported back to the gentleman, and the gentleman had administered the additional tests, and one of the tests was something called a personality inventory. Kathy had taken a personality inventory once before, when she had entered Burlington College, and she understood that there was a mysterious sort of lie detector in the construction of it and that it was just as well in the end to tell the truth strictly, and so she had. It was this inventory that later verified for Jacqueline what was originally only felt. She told Kathy about it after quite a long time, after she had taken her to lunch several times, and to dinner, and to a kind of place that Kathy had never heard of, and eventually to the cold ivory room.
    Although she was placed in a job with a future and fairly attractive pay, Kathy didn't stay with the department store long. Just as she hadn't stayed long at