Elsie's fears had come true. Her nerves were in such a state that her health had begun to suffer. For weeks now, she had barely eaten and only slept fitfully. She dreaded having to face her problem but it wasn't going away.
For nearly a year, she had been happily married to an understanding gentleman, one who was willing to leave her past be. But her past refused to stay hidden. She had been receiving messages for weeks now and her previously blithely unaware husband was sure to uncover the truth soon.
Before she and her husband wed, Elsie had been engaged to a man from Chicago. When he proved to be a fiend and a criminal, she broke off the engagement and fled the city for fear of reprisal. His infatuation with her, however, withstood both time and distance. A month ago, she received a note inscribed with the message:
She immediately threw the message in the fireplace but the initial shock didn't go unnoticed by her husband. The markings then began to appear around their home: in the garden, on the windowsill, or written in chalk on a door. Though her husband took note of the strange inscriptions and their effect on his wife, she refused to divulge their meaning or to even acknowledge they had a meaning.
She was startled one morning to find that he had left for the city, though his note indicated that he'd return in the afternoon. Without her knowledge, he had made arrangements to meet with a private detective of some repute regarding the markings. The detective looked over the figures while enjoying a pipe. They were pleasantly puzzling for a few short minutes but their meaning soon yielded to his mental prowess. The detective's findings were alarming to such a degree that Elsie's husband rushed home fearing for her safety. Indeed, the most recent message threatened her life:
Upon his return, he found the safe open and its contents, their savings, in a pile on the table. Elsie was discovered at the bedroom's open window, a strange man was standing in the flower bed, staring inside. Fearing the worst, her husband drew and fired his pistol, narrowly missing the stranger. Elsie screamed something unintelligible, another shot rang out and her husband fell to his knees. The assailant ran, cursing the husband's rash behavior. Elsie ran to her husband and identified the stranger as her former fiancé, come to woo her back. She had been attempting to bribe the man when her husband burst in. She was willing to part with their savings if it meant she and her husband would be left in peace.
Elsie was overcome by grief of her husband's passing and she sought to follow him into death. The instrument was unwieldy, though, and she was not killed but gravely injured.
Soon, the detective, followed by the local authorities, discovered the apparent murder-attempted-suicide. As the police tried to make sense of the scene, the detective sought out a local messenger boy and sent with him a note written in the strange script.
The fiancé appeared as instructed, flowers in hand, and was promptly arrested. He couldn't have known of Elsie's injury and was crestfallen when he learned of her condition. The man was later tried but acquitted due to mitigating circumstances. Elsie recovered from her injury and spent her life helping the poor.