“Here!� exclaimed the girl, shaking the dazed Madeline roughly by the shoulder. “I’m going to get you out of this. I don’t know why, but I am. Maybe I’ve a bill of my own to pay, as well as you have. We’ve all done some learning to-day, I guess. And learning isn’t on the free-list.�
“But—â€�
“Go to the phone right away,â€� commanded Daisy, “and call up the super. Tell him you’ve got to see him, up here, in a hurry. Act scared. Tell him it can’t wait a single minute. Get him up here. That’s the main thing. Then—then tell him you want new faucets in the bathroom. Or tell him anything at all. Do as I say. Jump! There isn’t much time to waste. Hubby’s sure to be hotfooting it home. And when hubby comes, deny everything. Deny! And keep on denying. He wont have any proof, remember that. He’ll have no proof. Pay for the lie by being a whole lot decenter to him, forever-after-amen.â€�
Moving away from the dumfounded woman, Daisy bolted out of the flat and was lucky enough to catch a down-going elevator. She reached the ground floor just as the building’s perplexed superintendent came to the shaft on his way to answer Madeline’s urgent summons.
Into the superintendent’s deserted office sped Daisy. Going directly to his unlocked desk, she rummaged feverishly amid its drawers until she found what she wanted.
Crumpling and pocketing the telephone-sheets for the past two months, she crossed to the file cabinet, hunted through a stack of dusty papers and drew forth the sheaf of penciled telephone-slips for the preceding year.
Selecting from these the slips for the two corresponding months, she put back the rest of the Sheaf. Then, changing with eraser and pencil the date of the year on the two slips she had abstracted from the cabinet, she put them in the drawer. After which, feeling oddly weak about the knees, she started out of the office.
At the door she almost collided with the returning superintendent. Vexed at having been called upstairs in such haste on an utterly trivial errand, he very naturally wreaked his ill-temper on the first subordinate he chanced to meet—which was Daisy.
“What are you doing away from your switchboard?� he snarled. “I won’t stand for any loafing. Get that into your mind, once and for all. What did you want in here, anyhow?�
“I came in to see you, sir,� was the girl’s demure reply.