"Say, Piddie," says I, "if I was you I'd have that printed on a card. Some day you're going to forget to rub that in."
Well, I hustles across the square, locates Old Hickory, and delivers the goods without droppin' 'em down a manhole or doin' any of the other awful things that Piddie would have warned me against if he'd had more time. I tucks the empty case under my arm and was for makin' a record trip back, just to surprise Piddie; but while I'm waitin' for that flossy lever juggler on the express elevator to answer my red-light signal I hears this riot break loose on the floor below.
And say, I wa'n't missin' any lively disturbance like that; for it listens like a mob scene from one of them French guillotine plays. Mostly it's female voices that floats up, and they was all tuned to the saw-filin' pitch. A pasty-faced young gent wearin' a green eye-shade and an office coat comes beatin' it up the marble steps, and I fires a question at him on the fly.
"Is it a gen'ral rough-house number," says I, "or have the suffragettes broke loose again?"
"You're welcome to find out for yourself," he pants, dashin' up another flight.
"Thanks for the invite," says I. "Guess I will."
And, say, talk about your mass plays around a shirtwaist bargain counter! Why, the corridor was full of 'em, all tryin' to rush the door of 1,323 at once. For a guess I should say that half the manicure artists, lady demonstrators, and cloak models between 14th and 34th was on the spot. Oh, they was a swell bunch, with more fur turbans and Marie Antoinette ringlets on view than you could see collected anywhere outside of Murray's!
They was sayin' things, too! I couldn't catch anything but odd words here and there; but the gen'ral drift of their remarks seems to be that someone has welshed on 'em. First off I thought it must be one of these skirt bucket-shops that has been closed out by the renting agent; but then I gets a look at the sign on the door and sees that it's the Peruvian Investment Company, which sounds like one of them common twenty per cent. a month games.
And it's a case of lockout, with the lady customers ragin' on the outside, and nobody knows what's takin' place behind the ground glass. That wa'n't excitin' enough to lure me from a steady job for long, though, unless some one was goin' to do more'n look desp'rate and talk spiteful.
"Ah, why not smash something?" I sings out. "Didn't any lady think to bring a brick in her vanity bag?"