Jack and Susan in 1913 by Michael McDowell

Beaumont, and Susan scuttled out of the room as quickly and as unobtrusively as a thirty-pound cast and acute embarrassment would allow her.
    The door was slammed shut behind her.
    â€œSuss?” inquired the voice on the other end of the line.
    â€œIda?”
    â€œMr. Fane don’t like us to have calls.”
    â€œI’m sorry, but I had to thank you.”
    Ida made no reply to this. Susan understood that Ida was following Mr. Austin’s instructions not to acknowledge her part in delivering the money.
    â€œYou were very kind to assist Mr. Austin,” Susan went on hesitantly, “but of course I could never accept his money.”
    â€œDid something heavy fall on your chapeau?” asked Ida after a moment.
    â€œYou know what I’m talking about?”
    â€œSure,” Ida said.
    â€œWhat’s his address then?”
    â€œWhose?”
    â€œMr. Austin’s. I want to find him.”
    â€œHave you tried an insane asylum?” Ida asked, in a tone which suggested that Susan might well be acquainted with such a place.
    Susan realized there was no help to be got from Ida on this point. “All right, Ida, I know you must have made your promises. And I thank you, but I don’t thank him. You understand that, don’t you?”
    â€œOh, perfectly,” Ida concurred. “Clear as mud.”
    â€œAnd thank you again. I know you meant well.”
    â€œAlways do,” said Ida imperturbably. “Have to scat, Suss, they’re calling me.” Abruptly, she broke the connection.
    Susan returned to her room and, despite the fact that Mr. Austin’s note had said the account was closed, she penned a letter to the bank in Wall Street, and dispatched it by messenger—a dirty little boy who played hookey from school every day, and loitered about on West Sixtieth Street in hope of obtaining a dime and carfare for just such random errands as this. She got back an immediate reply, with the expected news that Mr. Austin no longer had an account there, and the disappointing addendum that there was no forwarding address.
    She momentarily considered putting the bills into an envelope addressed, “Mr. Jay Austin, General Delivery, Chicago, Illinois,” but then realized how foolhardy a move that would be. Instead, she simply wrote out a receipt:
    Received of Mr. Jay Austin, the sum of $500 (five hundred dollars), on February 10th, 1913, which sum is payable on demand, with added interest of three and one-half percent per annum.
    (Signed) Susan Bright
    Susan wasn’t quite sure that the form was regular, having had no experience whatever in taking out loans, but it seemed quite proper to her.
    The next morning, Susan hobbled downstairs with Tripod on a leash and walked around the corner to a branch office of the Bank of New York. She opened a savings account with four hundred and fifty dollars, hoping that she would never be forced to touch another penny of Jay Austin’s money and further, that someday she’d be able to replace the missing fifty dollars. On the way home she dropped the envelope containing the one-sided loan agreement into a postal box. Even if she didn’t consider it really hers, Susan felt better knowing that she had such a comfortable sum in an interest-bearing account.

    That evening, about seven o’clock, Hosmer Collamore stopped by Susan’s room to bring Tripod some scraps of meat he’d picked up at the butcher’s, and to tell Susan about Ida’s triumphs before the camera.
    â€œWe’re doing this splendid drawing-room drama,” said Hosmer, “and Ida is a secretary who stays up all night in order to help her sister finish a ball gown. The next day at work she falls asleep at her desk after everyone else has gone home and when she wakes up she overhears a group of ruffians planning a bank robbery. She calls her boss, but before he can inform the police the ruffians capture him and so it’s up to