Charity Hoche appeared a minute later. She had three letter-size envelopes in her right hand and a Colt “Banker’s Special”.38 Special revolver in her left.
She was stunning. She exuded, David Bruce thought personally, a subtle sexuality, even a sort of refined lewdness that would make an archbishop tend to forget his vows. Professionally, David Bruce had wondered if all of his happy plans to have this young woman relieve Jamison of his administrative chores might be shot out of the water by her blatant sex appeal.
Bruce had been amused to learn that the Army had officially approved the policy of inserting slides of attractive and scantily attired or nude young women into slide trays containing other slides demonstrating the proper technique of waterproofing a truck or assembling a pontoon bridge. It caught the men’s attention, woke them up, got the blood flowing.
Bruce was genuinely concerned about the degree to which Charity Hoche’s simple presence among the men in training and awaiting assignment at Whithey House would catch the men’s attention. There were some women at Whithey House, and some local women, but not nearly enough of the opposite sex to go around.
Miss Charity Hoche, Bruce suspected, would wake them up and get their blood flowing to an undesirable degree.
“Mr. Bruce,” Charity said in a low and sexy voice, “I’m Charity Hoche.
Daddy said when I saw you to give you his best regards.”
She thrust the envelopes at him. They were of lightweight, airmail paper, double enveloped, the outer envelopes stamped top secret.
They were warm to the touch. After a moment, he figured that out. She had been carrying them on her person. In her girdle, specifically; there was no other place where they could have been carried unfolded. It made sense, of course, but there was still something unsettling about it.
Bruce forced his thoughts from Charity’s girdle to the pistol. The way she was holding it–upside down, her finger nowhere near the trigger, not waving it around, the muzzle pointed safely toward the floor–showed that she was quite at home with firearms. But one did not expect to see a snub-nosed revolver in the soft white hands of a long-haired blonde with a face that brought to mind candlelight dinners.
Charity Hoche saw the surprise in his eyes. She flashed Bruce a dazzling smile “I didn’t mean to startle you, Mr. Bruce,” she said.
“But I… I can’t tell you where I’ve had the damned thing for the last thirty-six hours.. just had to get it out of there I’m scarred for life.”
David Bruce had been a little chagrined at how eagerly his mind considered in glorious Technicolor the various places Miss Hoche might have had the pistol concealed on her person for the past thirty-six hours.
“Not at all,” David Bruce said, somewhat lamely.
Charity handed him next three Receipt for Classified Top Secret Documents forms, and watched as he compared the numbers of the forms with the numbers on the outer envelopes, then signed them. When he gave them back , to her, she folded them into a small wad and stuffed them inside her uniform blouse. He averted his eyes in a gentlemanly fashion as she did this.
“Let me take a quick look at these,” David Bruce said, furious with himself;
for acting like a high-school boy before this stunning young woman.
“And then we’ll have a little chat” “Yes, Sir,” said Charity Hoche.
“Helene,” Bruce heard himself say, “why don’t you get us some coffee?”
She went to get the coffee, but he saw the look on her face and reminded | himself again that although she was functioning as his secretary, she was a ‘ commissioned officer of the United States Army, and aware that captains are ] not sent to fetch coffee. | The first of the three Personal–Eyes Only messages from the Director of’| the Office of Strategic Services dealt with logistic matters He glanced at it, then opened the second. That dealt with the suspicions held by the FBI that a technical sergeant recruited for the OSS (and, he recalled from a remote portion of his memory, about to finish training at Whithey House) had uncomfortably close connections with the Communist Party, USA. As he replaced that one in its envelope, he thought he would have to read that one very carefully indeed. Then he opened the third Eyes Only. It dealt with Miss Charity] Hoche: