"Mr. Melroy!" the box on the desk in front of him said suddenly, in a feminine voice. "Mr. Melroy, Dr. Rives is here."
Melroy picked up the handphone, thumbing on the switch.
"The psychologist who's subbing for Dr. von Heydenreich," the box told him patiently.
"Right away, Mr. Melroy," the box replied.
Replacing the handphone, Melroy wondered, for a moment, why there had been a hint of suppressed amusement in his secretary's voice. Then the door opened and he stopped wondering. Dr. Rives wasn't a him; she was a her. Very attractive looking her, too--dark hair and eyes, rather long-oval features, clear, lightly tanned complexion, bright red lipstick put on with a micrometric exactitude that any engineer could appreciate. She was tall, within four inches of his own six-foot mark, and she wore a black tailored outfit, perfectly plain, which had probably cost around five hundred dollars and would have looked severe and mannish except that the figure under it curved and bulged in just the right places and to just the right degree.
Melroy rose, laying down knife and pencil and taking his pipe out of his mouth.
"Good afternoon," he greeted. "Dr. von Heydenreich gave me quite a favorable account of you--as far as it went. He might have included a few more data and made it more so.... Won't you sit down?"
The woman laid her handbag on the desk and took the visitor's chair, impish mirth sparking in her eyes.
"He probably omitted mentioning that the D. is for Doris," she suggested. "Suppose I'd been an Englishman with a name like Evelyn or Vivian?"
Melroy tried to visualize her as a male Englishman named Vivian, gave up, and grinned at her.
"Let this be a lesson," he said. "Inferences are to be drawn from objects, or descriptions of objects; never from verbal labels. Do you initial your first name just to see how people react when they meet you?"
"Well, no, though that's an amusing and sometimes instructive by-product. It started when I began contributing to some of the professional journals. There's still a little of what used to be called male sex-chauvinism among my colleagues, and some who would be favorably impressed with an article signed D. Warren Rives might snort in contempt at the same article signed Doris Rives."