CHAPTER XXIV

Mr. Silas Moffit “Moves In—Bag and Baggage”

Elsa, at the moment her uncle returned, and stepped within the room, was talking on the phone to one Mr. Dudley Bandolph.

“But at least, Mr. Bandolph,” she was saying troubledly, “you will be in—at your place?—all evening? That is—up to 8 o’clock?”

“Yes indeed, Miss Colby,” was Mr. D. Bandolph’s reply. “That’s positive! I’ll be here steadily except, of course, for about one hour—commencing now!—during which I’ll be at one of the many cafés clustering around Wabash and Cermak Road. For this out-of-town chemist I speak of—yes, Dr. Runwead Rodgers—whom I’m taking over there for dinner, has to make a 7:15 train out tonight. After which, I’ll be all in readiness to go into your matter further.”

“That is fine, Mr. Bandolph—and I’ll not hold you another second since Dr. Rodgers is there now, and you’re both leaving. Will you ring me as soon as you return to your office?”

“I’ll ring you the very minute Dr. Rodgers goes on downtown, Miss Colby. Though from a café booth. For there’s something wrong with this phone—its receiver—and there has been all day—and it’s a most—most damnable nerve strain to try to get anything on it. Yes, I’ll ring you the moment we’re done dinner, and Dr. Rodgers has gone on—and then and there we’ll fix up the matter in question, and dependent of course, on how you come out—with the other party.”

And Mr. D. Bandolph was referring, as at least Elsa knew, to one Dr. Sun Chew Moy!

“I’ll wait your call,” Elsa said. And hung up. Only to swing about in her swivel chair, and to see her uncle once more inside the door.

“What—back again, Uncle?” she said in surprise. “Forget something? ’Tisn’t your umbrell—for you have it there under your arm. And ’tisn’t your valuable South Chicago deed—for you buckled it into your vest packet with not less than 2 tons of bulk wastepaper and assorted envelopes. And ’tisn’t your head—for it’s right there atop your shoulders. So—what?”

“I’ve come back,” he said urbanely—and, for some unaccountable reason, apparently not at all irritated because of her jibe about his head!—dropping down at the same time into her uncomfortable visitors’ chair, leaning his umbrella against the wall, and taking from his pocket a rolled-up newspaper, “to sort of camp on you, for a couple of hours, more or less, if you don’t mind. Though I know you won’t.” And, calmly, he opened his paper. Revealing it thereby to be a Weekly Real Estate News which was, Elsa knew, published tonight, and was available from any newsboy along Dearborn Street downstairs.

And Elsa, digesting his cool announcement, now found her tongue. Or part of it anyway!

“But—but I do mi—good heavens, Uncle, haven’t you any business around tow—”

“Yes, I have business—yes—but it happens to be right here.” He cleared his throat. “You see, I just talked on the phone downstairs to Manny, who’s been waiting an important long-distance call for me. From New York. A—a syndicate—there, which is to say yes or to say no, sometime between—between 4 and 8 this evening—to taking that 79th and Stoney Island Avenue triangular tip I foreclosed on six years ago. Anyway, Manny has to leave. Immediately. His—his second cousin, Meyer, was hur—ahem—was reported hurt in an auto accident. In—in Gary. So rather than wend my way across the Loop to Manny’s office—only perhaps to have the call come in whilst I was on the way—I immediately arranged with his operator to have it put on your number—when it comes. For I knew you wouldn’t object. And so here I am. And I promise to be as quiet as a mou—”

“But see here, Uncle, I’m—I’m working on a matter of an important trial and—”

“Of course you are, my dear,” he said soothingly. “And therefore, don’t forget, may need some wise suggestions—here and anon. Suggestions which an older person like myself may be able to render. Now—hrmph—this man Bandolph you were just talking to—that name sounds strangely familiar to me—but anyway, I note that already you’re beginning to run into complications of some sort. So why not ask my advice when you’re stuck, and—” He smiled expansively. “—and make me thus pay—for using your office—and wire!”

“Oh—yeah?” said Elsa, not in the least impressed by his smooth arguments. “And, after learning all I had in mind, you’d decide to forego your New York call—and off you’d trot to Lou Vann’s.”

“Why—Elsa?” he said reprovingly. “You should be ashamed—to talk like that. If I were to get tired of waiting—to forego my call—I most certainly would not go to Mr. Vann with anything I learned in this off—but—ahem—are your dealings with this Mr. Bandolph something—something which Mr. Vann would very much like to know?”

“Oh no, no, no, no, no,” Elsa said hurriedly. And nervously. “He’s—he’s just a man—who—but see here, Uncle, since this New York Syndicate is only to say yes or to say no—wouldn’t their letter, or their wire, to you be just as illuminat—”

“I happen to wish,” he put in coldly, “to know the outcome tonight.”

“But confound it, Uncle, this office is so—so darned small, you know—”

“Of course. But I shall remain quite out of your elbow reach, my dear. So—”

“But damn it, Uncle,” Elsa exploded desperately—and quite frankly, “I don’t think you—or even anybody else in the entire city—should be camping in my office at a time when I’m dealing with a man’s life—holding phone consultations with various pers—”

“Why—Elsa?” His face was pursed up as though he were going to cry. But he didn’t convince Elsa in the least. “You—you don’t trust me, do you?” he said plaintively.

“Don’t cry,” she returned sarcastically. “I do trust you. Almost as far as I can see you! But the fact is—”

“The fact is,” he said harshly, “that when a blood uncle—or practically that, anyway—can’t sit unobtrusively in his own niece’s office—to get an important telephone call—it’s a sad state of affairs. And I frankly—” And now he commenced to get a little choleric—and Elsa could see that this, at any rate, was genuine. “In fact, Elsa, if you want to take that attitude—and demand that I leave—and leave I shall, if you demand it!—then I see no reason whatsoever why I shouldn’t be just as cold-blooded. In short, to take full and unmitigated and immediate advantage of your technical quitclaim after you’ve lost your case tonight. As—ahumph—you most certainly will. And—”

“Hold it,” she said wearily. “I’m—I’m not ordering you out. It’s just that—”

And to herself only did she finish that sentence.

“—this is one fine kettle of fish!”

Which was what it was! For Elsa expected no less than three calls to come in tonight, roughly around and about 7 o’clock, all connected in a sense with each other, and two of which she could not even intercept. All of those calls would involve hurried yet detailed instructions, and arrangements. Open discussion, in fact, of certain things she wanted done. And she had very few doubts that when those conversations were over, Silas Moffit would immediately lose interest in his “New York call” and lumber forth.

Only to call up Lou Vann on some outside wire. Whereas, if she ordered him out now—he had a supreme, and beautiful, and perfect, and final excuse to do the unavuncular thing of taking advantage of her quitclaim.

“—just that,” she finished audibly, for his benefit, “that—that I’m always a—a bit flustered—when I have an audience around me.”

“Don’t be, my dear—with me,” he said soothingly. “For we’re uncle and nie—well, well, well, well,” he broke in suddenly, as he opened out his paper to, apparently, its page 3, “if they’re not going to widen and put through Congress Street at last! Well what do you think of that, Elsa?” And contentedly he loosened the buttons on his black coat.

“All this gal can think about,” said Elsa to herself only, “is you planking yourself in my office at the high spot of my whole career—my first court case—and with a hundred thousand dollars hanging on it to boot. Quite all this gal can think about. Quite!”

The phone rang sharply. She hesitated—then answered it because it must be answered. But it was a wrong number. She hung up. And it brought forcibly to her the untenable situation in which she sat, literally compressed.

“Of all the—the lousy complications!” she said to herself. “My God! Bandolph going to call up here—Sun Chew Moy the same—and Cohenstein to be talked with—when Cohenstein calls up—around 7! And—and Uncle Silas Wolf Moffit there! Reading real estate news with his eyes. And listening with ears a mile deep. And a dirty doublecrosser, say I, if ever God made one. Certainly yes—with a hundred-thousand-dollar reason to double-cross. Well, of all the—”

And she stopped dead in her ruminations.

For a brilliant idea—one that was ten times more brilliant than the red of her hair!—had surged into the small neat head which supported that hair.

And quickly, she spoke.

“Okay, Uncle,” she said quietly. “Yes—about your staying here. On second thought, I’m happy to have you. For after all, you know, you are my uncle. So make yourself at home. Take off your hat. Lay up your umbrella. And stay—till we start for court!”