Man with two Faces

by Jane Corrie

  Janus provided the answer to that one as he suddenly appeared at the door of the office. 'Have you brought the script back?' he demanded, before he saw that Rebecca was holding it to her side, with the

  book in her other hand. 'Good,' he grunted, and waited for Rebecca to follow him into the. office.

  Standing beside what was to be Rebecca's desk was a tall and very lovely woman with jet black hair swept up high from her smooth forehead, and wearing a dress of deep purple that came from the same house as the coat Rebecca had seen in the lounge, then as the woman looked at her, she found herself undergoing a critical examination from her black eyes that were far from warm as she took in Rebecca's pearl grey dress with white piping, then looked at Janus, her pencilled eyebrows arching in an unspoken query.

  `Miss Lindsey, my secretary,' Janus said smoothly, and turning to Rebecca, said, 'This is Isobel Archer. She keeps me up to date in the fashion line,' he added, with a lurk of amusement at the back of his blue eyes.

  Isobel Archer gave him a hard look at this introduction, and looked back at Rebecca again. 'On Sunday too, darling?' she purred softly, but her eyes shot daggers at him.

  `I should have said my private secretary,' said Janus. 'From now on, she'll be the one you'll contact.'

  `Are you giving me the runaround, darling?' Isobel Archer asked through clenched teeth.

  Rebecca fervently wished she could become invisible, but she was certain that should she walk out, Janus would demand that she stayed, so she busied herself by going to the desk and pretending she wasn't there.

  `You do want those models used in the film, don't you?' Janus said softly yet warningly.

  `Of course I do,' retorted the woman pettishly. `Why else would I get up at that unearthly hour to have breakfast with you before I fly out there?' She glanced at her watch. 'Damn,' she said crossly, `I shall have to rush now. When are you coming over?' she asked Janus, all fury gone, and a kind of pleading in her voice.

  Rebecca kept her head down, reading the rest of the script she hadn't been able to finish before breakfast, and felt a twinge of annoyance towards Janus, and a little sorry for Isobel Archer. It was one thing to be told you weren't wanted, but quite another to be told so in front of another woman, whatever the rights and wrongs were.

  `We should make it in about a fortnight,' Janus replied, obviously unmoved by the pleading in Isobel's voice, and then accompanied her to the door. A few seconds later Rebecca heard him say, `See you,' and knew she had left.

  As soon as he returned to the office giving what sounded to Rebecca like a sigh of relief, he asked abruptly, 'What did you think of the book?'

  She raised her fine brows at this. If he was hoping for kudos then he was going to be disappointed, she thought crossly. She had not liked him much before, but after what she had just witnessed, she liked him even less. 'It was interesting,' she replied, managing not to sound too enthusiastic 'about it.

  Janus stared at her through hooded lids. 'Just interesting?' he queried softly. 'I wasn't asking for bouquets,' he went on pithily. 'Just a straightforward comment, and that appears to be beyond you. Still, I suppose you were rather cut off at the

  College. I mustn't expect too much of you,' he added sarcastically.

  Rebecca threw him a look of dislike, but said nothing and waited to begin work.

  `Feeling sorry for Isobel, are you?' he asked in the soft voice that Rebecca disliked. 'If so, you've a lot to learn. Isobel's as hard as nails. She wouldn't waste time on me if it didn't suit her plans. She's left Hartnell's and is starting up on her own. I'm her ticket to success, you see,' he added dryly.

  Rebecca still said nothing, but sat staring down at her desk. If anyone was hard, it was Janus Leon, she thought scathingly.

  `You'll meet a lot of those in the future,' he went on. 'And I'm depending on you to keep them out of my private life.' At Rebecca's sudden look up at him, he added softly, 'I'll tell you which ones I'm interested in, not only from the business side.'

  She flushed as she caught his meaning. He was welcome to them all as far as she was concerned, she thought. 'Yes, sir,' she said calmly, and almost grinned as she caught the blaze in his eyes.

  For the rest of that morning Janus kept her busy on notes appertaining to the script, and a few changes he wanted to make. 'They suggested using Susanna Dean for the lead, but I talked them out of it,' he said. 'She's got a bit temperamental— knows she's a box office attraction, and plays on it. I hate temperamental women,' he added grimly. 'You might make a list of three who might be suitable. There's Dinah Casey, Shona Bredon, and Kay Phillips.'

  Duly making a note of the names, Rebecca mused that the part of the hero, Richard 'Denby,

  should have taken precedence over the heroine, unless Janus had already made up his mind who would play the part.

  As if reading her thoughts, he asked abruptly, `Seen Guy Tindall or Daniel Dupre in action?'

  Rebecca was not an avid filmgoer, and only made a point of going to see certain films that appealed to her, and had to shake her head.

  For this she received a sardonic look. 'Well, I'm pretty sure Guy Tindall is the man for the lead. The only thing against him is his age. He's coming up for forty, although that's something that's played down, of course, and he's shown an interest.' He paused for a moment, then added, 'The other parts are settled. It's only the leads we've yet to agree. Have you got your passport in order?' he asked abruptly. `A fortnight's not long to get it up to date.'

  Rebecca thought she had told him her passport was in order, but she mentioned it again, and was told to let him have it. She would rather have held on to it, but Janus Leon was the boss, and she decided not to argue.

  The following two weeks passed by quickly for Rebecca. By this time she was well acquainted with her new job. As the days passed she was not disappointed in her expectations as to the type of boss Janus Leon would be, and the kind of relationship they would share. He was the boss, and she was his secretary. Her dry observation to Barbara when she had first come to London as his secretary had proved a true one. In Janus Leon's eyes she was seen simply as a mechanism that kept his business going.

  At the start of their relationship, Rebecca had

  asked for nothing more, but as time went by she began to resent the fact that he treated her as a minion to do his bidding, rather than a human being with a life of her own, and views that did not always coincide with his, and the relationship being what it was, she did not express.

  As the perfect secretary, she knew her place, and refused to rise to whatever bait he threw out at her when her calm demeanour annoyed him. Either he wanted a secretary or a sparring partner. Rebecca was his secretary, so he would have to look elsewhere for the other.

  To say that Rebecca was entirely unmoved by her illustrious boss's machinations would not be the truth. For instance, when she had known that Isobel Archer had not spent the night with Janus on that first morning she had reported for duty, her feelings, that had at first registered a sense of disappointment and shock, had lifted unaccountably as she heard the truth.

  There were many other pointers that Rebecca was not quite so immune to his presence as she made out, but of these sentiments Janus was not aware, since she was well trained in masking her feelings.,

  If anyone had suggested to her that she was falling in love with her boss, she would have indignantly denied any such suggestion, and if the matter had caused her any heart-searching she would have instantly recoiled from the thought. Janus Leon was no different from other men, and if she had been fool enough to fall in love with him, then there was only sorrow ahead of her. He had shown her only too well what he thought of

  her. She was a snob who needed taking down a peg or two, and worse than that, a thief who had no hesitation in robbing her friends.

  He was also a playboy, according to Barbara, who usually knew what she was talking about where society gossip was concerned, although Rebecca had to admit that since she had started working for him, he h
ad shown no sign of such clandestine activities, and as she was sure that he had not turned over a new leaf for her benefit, she presumed he was concentrating on the coming film and had no time for amorous adventures.

  There was no shortage of invitations--some on embossed cards, and a few verbal calls from husky-voiced females, who received a shock on hearing their calls answered by Rebecca's cool refined voice, whereupon the caller's voice would get a few degrees colder as the message was given.

  All these calls were duly reported to Janus, and that as far as Rebecca was concerned the end of the matter for her, as they were obviously personal calls, and it was up to him to return the call personally. There had been one or two occasions when he had asked Rebecca to give his apologies when he was unable to attend a certain function, and one persistent caller, the Honourable Sylvia BarkingtonLeedway, after receiving two refusals in the space of a week, accused Rebecca of not passing on her message and demanded to speak to Janus.

  `The Honourable Sylvia Barkington-Leedway,' Rebecca said quietly, as she passed the receiver over to him during the middle of a dictating session, giving him no choice but to take the call, and he shot Rebecca

  a furious look as he took the receiver from her.

  While she bent her head to her notes, she heard Janus's smooth explanation as to why he hadn't been able to accept the invitations, and how he was caught up with work.

  When he had finished, he banged down the receiver and glared at Rebecca. 'I pay you to keep such women off my back,' he said harshly. 'In future you will handle all calls. If I want to speak to the caller I'll tell you.'

  Rebecca did not usually reply to this type of criticism, but in this case she felt she was in the right. `That was the third time she's rung,' she said coldly, `and each time I gave her your message. It seems she didn't believe I'd spoken to you and wasn't going to be put off again.'

  Janus studied her. 'She doesn't usually give her full name, how did you know who she was?' he asked, suddenly changing tack.

  Rebecca had not expected this question, and she had to think before she replied. 'Because I knew of her,' she said coldly. 'She's a distant cousin of the Bursar, and I recognised her voice.'

  Janus stared at her and Rebecca knew that look. `Been to any of her parties?' he asked softly.

  Rebecca's brows rose. 'Of course not!' she said quickly. 'I wouldn't have been asked, and I wouldn't have gone if I had been.'

  `Yet you expected me to go, did you?' he said softly. 'Well, I did go to one, not having the benefit of inside information, and I left halfway through. If there's anything more boring than a room full of half drunk idiots, I've yet to find it.' He gave

  Rebecca a hard look. 'I'm surprised you passed up the chance of an invitation, it should have been easy enough to have wangled one. You could have got away with a king's ransom, and none of them would have missed them before noon the next day.'

  `You could have accepted the invitation and taken me with you,' Rebecca replied, too furious to watch her words. `It could have been my last big coup before going straight,' she added sourly.

  `There'll be no more coups for you, my girl,' Janus said silkily. 'You're going straight from now on.'

  Rebecca wondered what it would take to convince him that she was innocent, and decided that only a sworn affidavit from Laura would do the trick and convince him of the truth.

  As if Rebecca's thoughts had reached Laura, she turned up the following day with a large box of chocolates for Rebecca, and handing them to her, said, 'I didn't have a chance to thank you properly before.'

  Accepting the chocolates, Rebecca, knowing what Laura was thanking her for, wished Janus also knew, but she could hardly bring the subject up in front of him, particularly as Laura appeared to have developed a crush on him and would not thank Rebecca for putting her in an embarrassing position. There was also the chance that Janus would apologise to Rebecca after hearing the truth, and worse than that, ask her if she still wanted to be his secretary, which would put Laura into the picture and make her feel even worse.

  Rebecca took the box of chocolates to her room expecting Laura to follow her, but Laura elected to

  stay and talk to Janus, hoping, Rebecca found out later, to wangle herself a job as assistant to Rebecca, who was, as she put it, going to be very busy, but after Janus's smooth but definite reply that he was sure Miss Lindsey could cope, she had to give it best. This she told Rebecca when she saw her off later.

  In no time at all, Rebecca found herself packing for the Madeira visit. She had never been farther than the Continent before, and was looking forward to the widening of her horizons. The only snag being the company she was forced to keep, but then one couldn't have everything, she told herself stoically.

  The four-hour trip was over too soon for Rebecca, who loved flying, and for the first time in her life had travelled first class, with all the attendant luxuries this entailed.

  Certain that Janus would spend the time briefing her on more details to cover their fortnight's stay, she was pleasantly surprised when he settled down in his seat and appeared to go to sleep, although she was sure that if she had asked him a question he would have replied to it, in spite of his assumed drowsiness.

  When they reached Funchal and had collected their luggage from the small airport's carousel, Janus led the way out of the airport lounge to the car park which was only a few steps outside the reception area and towards a uniformed driver standing beside a gleaming Ferrari, who took their luggage and stowed it away in the boot, after asking Janus if they had had a good trip.

  As not a word, apart from the initial query about the flight, was said, it was obvious to Rebecca that this was not Janus's first visit to Madeira; the chauf-

  feur had known him and obviously knew where they

  were heading, and probably wore the livery of the

  hotel, although there had been no badge on his coat.

  Thirty minutes later they arrived at the hotel, which was situated high up on a hillside that overlooked Funchal.

  The entrance to the hotel, along a long sweeping drive bordered with bright pink hydrangea bushes, gave Rebecca an idea of the sort of prices charged from what must be one of the luxury hotels of the island, and her first sight of the hotel with its sweeping lawns and fountains did nothing to dispel these thoughts.

  The City View Hotel was a large white structure with blue shutters to each window, and balconies festooned with huge bronze vases that held delicate ferns that trailed down the white walls.

  Rebecca took all this in with a' deep breath of contentment. Her first impression of Madeira had been a disappointing one. She had expected to find an island of flowers and greenery, but the drive from the airport had shown hilly slopes with patchy sandy ridges that gave an impression of drabness and aridity, much more like a desert island than a floral gala. Nearer to Funchal, however, the flowers were more evident. Bright coloured oleanders hung from fences and trailed over any suitable hold.

  As they drew up in front of the hotel, Rebecca's thoughts were on exploring the town as soon as possible. It was one or two miles from the hotel, nearer two than one, she thought, but as she loved walking, the distance did not worry her, and in spite of the fact that it would be all downhill going, and all uphill returning, she would not have enter-

  tained the idea of using a taxi.

  On arrival at reception, Janus was given a warm welcome by an august personage who must have been the manager, if not the owner of the establishment, who told Janus that they had given him the same suite he had used before, and bestowed a look at Rebecca of perhaps more than the usual interest, when Janus introduced her as his secretary.

  It was not until they entered the lift that Rebecca realised that she would be sharing the suite with Janus, but she decided not to complain until she had seen the size of the suite, and was glad that she had not aired her views on the matter, for it was of ample size, and could almost be called a flat, for its spaciousness. There were two bedrooms, with
a study in between that would allow Rebecca some privacy, likewise a separate shower and toilet facilities to each bedroom. The lounge was large and well furnished, and there was a television set in the far corner of the room.

  When Rebecca had unpacked in the larger of the two bedrooms, that Janus had magnanimously allotted her, she had to smile at the incongruity of the situation, and what Laura would have thought, or Barbara come to that, of her sharing rooms with her boss, but such was the relationship between them that she had no qualms whatsoever, in spite of that knowing look the manager had given her!

  On the first morning of their stay, Rebecca had arrived in the lounge to find Janus wandering around in his dressing gown and ringing down for breakfast, and she had elected to take hers in the dining room; he might look on her as, a paid minion, but she did feel

  there was a limit, and if he expected her to take breakfast with him, then he should have been suitably dressed, she thought scathingly.

  By now she was used to those mocking looks of his that told her she had nothing to worry about well, she knew that, she thought, otherwise she would not be sharing a suite with him, but if he overstepped the mark just once, then she would be on her way. If he didn't know that now, then he would find out soon enough!

  By the time she returned from breakfast, Janus was dressed and had apparently had his own breakfast, for she found him in the study reading the paper and waiting for her appearance.

  As there was still five minutes to go before the time when he had said they would start work, Rebecca did not hurry, and took her time in getting out her notebook and pen, noticing that a typewriter had been put on the desk, that suggested that this was a business visit only and she was not going to be allowed to slack.