CHAPTER XXVI

“Completion” of the “Zoo”!

But before taking the elevator downward, to go over to the Monroe Street shop, Elsa took the stairway that lay just to the side of the elevator shaft—and went one flight up! On a quite important errand! Since it devolved about the perfect and complete ousting of one Mr. Silas Moffit, from the offices of one Miss Elsa Colby, Attorney-at-Law!

That is to say, however, she went about 14/15ths of a flight up. For at this point her ascension by foot was arrested by the greeting of a blue-coated special-delivery boy with a leather sack under his arm, who was coming down and had already descended the top 15th of the flight.

“Just a minute, Miss Colby!” he said—and considerably to her surprise. “I’m on my way down to your office—with a special.” And he held out to her a small square envelope.

“Well, I’m ‘Miss Colby’ all right,” she agreed, taking the envelope and seeing, by even the light that came from the upper head of the stairs, that it was typewritten in very tiny type, with her name, room number, and building complete. “But you?—aren’t you on the wrong floor?”

“No’m,” he said. “I had an airmail-special for the Western Novelty Company up on the top fl—the 12th floor. And delivered that first, and walked down.”

“I see,” she nodded, as he riffled over some sheets on his receipt book. “But how—how did you know me?”

He grinned. “I—I can’t say, ma’am.”

She was signing for the special now. The metal-backed receipt book teetering on the palm of her hand.

“Come on,” she demanded. “You’d better say—or—”

“Well—I delivered you a special about three weeks ago and—and well, I never forgot you.”

“Such a ravishing beauty, hey? Come on, boy–come clean.”

He grinned.

“All right then, Miss Colby—since you invite me to. You see, I got a sister what I always thought had the reddest hair in 20 counties, and was the freckledest girl I ever—”

“I get it!” said Elsa dryly. “There’s your receipt.”

And the boy, still grinning, hastily fled up a part of the flight he’d already descended, and disappeared around the elevator shaft, while Elsa plodded on to the top, and paused under the light to read the missive—or whatever it was.

She heard the delivery boy, in fact, board the down-going elevator and go down as she tore the small envelope open.

“Little wretch!” she said grimly. “I’d like to wring his—”

The envelope contained a single large cheap card.

But a most weird and unusual card!

A card such as would have been printed up only by a weird and unusual being.

For the face of it, confronting Elsa under the light at the top of the stairway, read:

“Great—heavens!” was all Elsa said, realizing she was now viewing the identical card which she had nearly received from Saul Moffit’s hands that afternoon, hours before.

Bewilderedly, she turned it over. And found, typewritten on its back—and signed also, on the machine!—a message in the same tiny type that was on the envelope.

And even a date—or rather, hour heading—which showed that it had been typed off, and dropped into a mailbox—she glanced now at the envelope—its date stamp was but 10 minutes after that on the card—oh, what a postal system in Chicago proper!—almost 3 hours to get from Niggertown to the Loop!—well, anyway, she saw, it had been written but a few minutes after she had parted company with its owner that afternoon, eras, æons ago! For it read:

3:59 p.m.

Dear Elsa:

I’m just on my way home to my palatial apartment now to sleep till time to go on bookkeeping duty tonight—

“Duty my blooming eye!” Elsa commented shrewdly.

“To see that woman—who’s dressed him up like—like a plush horse!” And she went on.

—but I’ve darted into a Negro real-estate office near where we parted, to hammer off this brief warning to you and put it immediately into the mailbox. It is as follows, Elsa:

In case you meet up with that damn skunk whom we were discussing—

“And now,” Elsa sighed, shaking her head, “are the beasts of the field complete! ‘Viper’ he called his father—and ‘cockroach of hell’—and ‘old rat’—and ‘Grand Llama of whelpdom’—well—the zoo is now open to the public!”

And she went on:

—under no conditions tell him about my having thus far lost 4 different pairs of historic spectacles, much less my having been unable to figure out even where I’d left them. For I have profound reason to believe he has it in the back of his head—

“Poor alcoholic paranoiac!” Elsa said, shaking her head again. “Though at that, I wouldn’t put it beyond Uncle Silas to do anything to Sau—” She went on.

—to try and have me committed to an insane asylum, and that one fact—on which he MIGHT subpoena you—might give him the exact leverage to do so. WATCH THIS, Elsa!

S. Moffit.

Elsa gave an uneasy laugh. “At that,” she commented, “I darn near did spill it! Well—if ever Silas Moffit subpœnas me—on an insanity hearing against Saul—I’ll shoot the works on the whole Moffit family!”

With which she tore card and envelope into fine bits, threw them into a huge cuspidor which stood just off near the head of the stairs, and proceeded to do what she had come up to this floor to do!