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[Illustration: MR. LOUIS MINTZ WHAT COMES TO WORK BY US.]

POTASH & PERLMUTTER

THEIR COPARTNERSHIP VENTURES AND ADVENTURES

BY MONTAGUE GLASS

ILLUSTRATED

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK

Copyright, 1909, by The Curtis Publishing Company
Copyright, 1910, by Howard E. Altemus
Copyrighted 1911, by Doubleday, Page & Company.

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

Potash & Perlmutter

CHAPTER I

"No, siree, sir," Abe Potash exclaimed as he drew a check to the order
of his attorney for a hundred and fifty dollars, "I would positively go
it alone from now on till I die, Noblestone. I got my stomach full with
Pincus Vesell already, and if Andrew Carnegie would come to me and tell
me he wants to go with me as partners together in the cloak and suit
business, I would say 'No,' so sick and tired of partners I am."

For the twentieth time he examined the dissolution agreement which had
ended the firm of Vesell & Potash, and then he sighed heavily and placed
the document in his breast pocket.

"Cost me enough, Noblestone, I could assure you," he said.

"A hundred and fifty ain't much, Potash, for a big lawyer like Feldman,"
Noblestone commented.

Abe flipped his fingers in a gesture of deprecation.

"That is the least, Noblestone," he rejoined. "First and last I bet you
I am out five thousand dollars on Vesell. That feller got an idee that
there ain't nothing to the cloak and suit business but auction pinochle
and taking out-of-town customers to the theayter. Hard work is something
which he don't know nothing about at all. He should of been in the
brokering business."

"The brokering business ain't such a cinch neither," Noblestone retorted
with some show of indignation. "A feller what's in the brokering
business has got his troubles, too, Potash. Here I've been trying to
find an opening for a bright young feller with five thousand dollars
cash, y'understand, and also there ain't a better designer in the
business, y'understand, and I couldn't do a thing with the proposition.
Always everybody turns me down. Either they got a partner already or
they're like yourself, Potash, they just got through with a partner
which done 'em up good."

"If you think Pincus Vesell done me up good, Noblestone," Potash said,
"you are mistaken. I got better judgment as to let a lowlife like him
get into me, Noblestone. I lost money by him, y'understand, but at the
same time he didn't make nothing neither. Vesell is one of them fellers
what you hear about which is nobody's enemy but his own."

"The way he talks to me, Potash," Noblestone replied, "he ain't such
friends to you neither."

"He hates me worser as poison," Abe declared fervently, "but that ain't
neither here nor there, Noblestone. I'm content he should be my enemy.
He's the kind of feller what if we would part friends, he would come
back every week and touch me for five dollars yet. The feller ain't got
no money and he ain't got no judgment neither."

"But here is a young feller which he got lots of common sense and five
thousand dollars cash," Noblestone went on. "Only one thing which he
ain't got."

Abe nodded.

"I seen lots of them fellers in my time, Noblestone," he said.
"Everything about 'em is all right excepting one thing and that's always
a killer."

"Well, this one thing ain't a killer at all," Noblestone rejoined, "he
knows the cloak and suit business from A to Z, and he's a first-class A
number one feller for the inside, Potash, but he ain't no salesman."

"So long as he's good on the inside, Noblestone," Abe said, "it don't do
no harm if he ain't a salesman, because there's lots of fellers in the
cloak and suit business which calls themselves drummers, y'understand
Every week regular they turn in an expense account as big as a doctor's
bill already, and not only they ain't salesmen, Noblestone, but they
don't know enough about the inside work to get a job as assistant
shipping clerk."

"Well, Harry Federmann ain't that kind, Potash," Noblestone went on.
"He's been a cutter and a designer and everything you could think of in
the cloak and suit business. Also the feller's got good backing. He's
married to old man Zudrowsky's daughter and certainly them people would
give him a whole lot of help."

"What people do you mean?" Abe asked.

"Zudrowsky & Cohen," Noblestone answered. "Do you know 'em, Potash?"

Abe laughed raucously.

"Do I know 'em?" he said. "A question! Them people got a reputation
among the trade which you wouldn't believe at all. Yes, Noblestone, if I
would take it another partner, y'understand, I would as lief get a
feller what's got the backing of a couple of them cut-throats up in Sing
Sing, so much do I think of Zudrowsky & Cohen."

"All I got to say to that, Potash, is that you don't know them people,
otherwise you wouldn't talk that way."

"Maybe I don't know 'em as good as some concerns know 'em, Noblestone,
but that's because I was pretty lucky. Leon Sammet tells me he wouldn't
trust 'em with the wrapping paper on a C. O. D. shipment of two
dollars."

Noblestone rose to his feet and assumed an attitude of what he believed
to be injured dignity.

"I hear enough from you, Potash," he said, "and some day you will be
sorry you talk that way about a concern like Zudrowsky & Cohen. If you
couldn't say nothing good about 'em, you should shut up your mouth."

"I could say one thing good about 'em, Noblestone," Abe retorted, as
the business broker opened the store door. "They ain't ashamed of a
couple of good old-time names like Zudrowsky & Cohen."

This was an allusion to the circumstance that Philip Noblestone had once
been Pesach Edelstein, and the resounding bang with which the broker
closed the door behind him, was gratifying evidence to Abe that his
parting shot had found its target.

"Well, Noblestone," Zudrowsky cried, as the broker entered the show-room
of Zudrowsky & Cohen, "what did he say?"

"He says he wouldn't consider it at all," Noblestone answered. "He ain't
in no condition to talk about it anyway, because he feels too sore about
his old partner, Pincus Vesell. That feller done him up to the tune of
ten thousand dollars."

In Noblestone's scheme of ethics, to multiply a fact by two was to speak
the truth unadorned.

"S'enough, Noblestone," Zudrowsky cried. "If Potash lost so much money
as all that, I wouldn't consider him at all. One thing you got to
remember, Noblestone. Me, I am putting up five thousand dollars for
Harry Federmann, and what that feller don't know about business,
Noblestone, you could take it from me, would make even _you_ a
millionaire, if you would only got it in your head."

Noblestone felt keenly the doubtfulness of Zudrowsky's compliment, but
for a lack of a suitable rejoinder he contented himself by nodding
gravely.

"So I wouldn't want him to tie up with a feller like Potash, what gets
done up so easy for ten thousand dollars," Zudrowsky went on. "What I
would like, Noblestone, is that Harry should go as partners together
with some decent, respectable feller which got it good experience in the
cloak business and wouldn't be careless with my five thousand dollars. I
needn't to tell you, Noblestone, if I would let Harry get his hands on
it, I might as well kiss myself good-by with that five thousand
dollars."

Noblestone waggled his head from side to side and made inarticulate
expressions of sympathy through his nose.

"How could you marry off your daughter to a _schafskopf_ like
Federmann?" he asked.

"It was a love match, Noblestone," Zudrowsky explained. "She falls in
love with him, and he falls in love with her. So naturally he ain't no
business man, y'understand, because you know as well as I do,
Noblestone, a business man ain't got no time to fool away on such
nonsense."

"Sure, I know," Noblestone agreed. "But what makes Federmann so dumb?
He's been in the cloak and suit business all his life, ain't he?"

"What's that got to do with it?" Zudrowsky exclaimed. "Cohen and me got
these here fixtures for fifteen years already, and you could more expect
them tables and racks they should know the cloak and suit business as
Harry Federmann. They ain't neither of 'em got no brains, Noblestone,
and that's what I want you to get for Harry,--some young feller with
brains, even though he ain't worth much money."

"Believe me, Mr. Zudrowsky," Noblestone replied. "It ain't such an easy
matter these times to find a young feller with brains what ain't got no
money, Mr. Zudrowsky, and such young fellers don't need no partners
neither. And, anyhow, Mr. Zudrowsky, what is five thousand dollars for
an inducement to a business man? When I would go around and tell my
clients I got a young feller with five thousand dollars what wants to go
in the cloak and suit business, they laugh at me. In the cloak and suit
business five thousand dollars goes no ways."

"Five thousand ain't much if you are going to open up as a new beginner,
Noblestone," Zudrowsky replied, "but if you got a going concern,
y'understand, five thousand dollars is always five thousand dollars.
There's lots of business men what is short of money all the time,
Noblestone. Couldn't you find it maybe a young feller which is already
established in business, y'understand, and what needs _doch_ a little
money?"

Noblestone slapped his thigh.

"I got it!" he said. "I'll go around and see Sam Feder of the Kosciusko
Bank."

Half an hour later Noblestone sat in the first vice-president's office
at the Kosciusko Bank, and requested that executive officer to favor him
with the names of a few good business men, who would appreciate a
partner with five thousand dollars.

"I'll tell you the truth, Noblestone," Mr. Feder said, "we turn down so
many people here every day, that it's a pretty hard thing for me to
remember any particular name. Most of 'em is good for nothing, either
for your purpose or for ours, Noblestone. The idee they got about
business is that they should sell goods at any price. In figuring the
cost of the output, they reckon labor, so much; material, so much; and
they don't take no account of rent, light, power, insurance and so
forth. The consequence is, they lose money all the time; and they put
their competitors in bad too, because they make 'em meet their fool
prices. The whole trade is cut up by them fellers and sooner as
recommend one for a partner for your client, I'd advise him to take his
money and play the ponies with it."

At this juncture a boy entered and handed Mr. Feder a card.

"Tell him to come right in," Feder said, and then he turned to
Noblestone. "You got to excuse me for a few minutes, Noblestone, and
I'll see you just as soon as I get through."

As Noblestone left the first vice-president's office, he encountered
Feder's visitor, who wore an air of furtive apprehension characteristic
of a man making his initial visit to a pawn shop. Noblestone waited on
the bench outside for perhaps ten minutes, when Mr. Feder's visitor
emerged, a trifle red in the face.

"That's my terms, Mr. Perlmutter," Feder said.

"Well, if I would got to accept such a proposition like that, Mr.
Feder," the visitor declared, "I would sooner bust up first. That's all
I got to say."

He jammed his hat down on his head and made for the door.

"Now, Mr. Noblestone, I am ready for you," Feder cried, but his summons
fell on deaf ears, for Noblestone was in quick pursuit of the vanishing
Perlmutter. Noblestone overtook him at the corner and touched his elbow.

"How do you do, Mr. Perlmutter!" he exclaimed.

Perlmutter stopped short and wheeled around.

"Huh?" he said.

"This is Mr. Sol Perlmutter, ain't it?" Noblestone asked.

"No, it ain't," Perlmutter replied. "My name is Morris Perlmutter, and
the pair of real gold eye-glasses which you just picked up and would let
me have as a bargain for fifty cents, ain't no use to me neither."

"I ain't picked up no eye-glasses," Noblestone said.

"No?" Morris Perlmutter rejoined. "Well, I don't want to buy no blue
white diamond ring neither, y'understand, so if it's all the same to you
I got business to attend to."

"So do I," Noblestone went on, "and this is what it is. Also my name is
there too."

He showed Morris a card, which read as follows:
      ______________________________________________________
     |                                                      |
     | TELEPHONE CONNECTION         REAL ESTATE & INSURANCE |
     |                               IN ALL ITS BRANCHES    |
     |                                                      |
     |                 PHILIP NOBLESTONE                    |
     |                  BUSINESS BROKER                     |
     |                                                      |
     |                      G E T  A                        |
     |                    P A R T N E R                     |
     |                                                      |
     | 594 EAST HOUSTON STREET                     NEW YORK |
     |______________________________________________________|

"Don't discount them good accounts, Mr. Perlmutter," he added, "it ain't
necessary."

"Who told you I want to discount some accounts?" Morris asked.

"If I see a feller in a dentist's chair," Noblestone answered, "I don't
need to be told he's got the toothache already."

After this Morris was easily persuaded to accept Noblestone's invitation
to drink a cup of coffee, and they retired immediately to a neighboring
bakery and lunch room.

"Yes, Mr. Noblestone," Morris said, consulting the card. "I give you
right about Feder. That feller is worser as a dentist. He's a
bloodsucker. Fifteen hundred dollars gilt-edged accounts I offer him as
security for twelve hundred, and when I get through with paying DeWitt
C. Feinholtz, his son-in-law, what is the bank's lawyer, there wouldn't
be enough left from that twelve hundred dollars to pay off my
operators."

"That's the way it is when a feller's short of money," Noblestone said.
"Now, if you would got it a partner with backing, y'understand, you
wouldn't never got to be short again."

With this introductory sentence, Noblestone launched out upon a series
of persuasive arguments, which only ended when Morris Perlmutter had
promised to lunch with Zudrowsky, Harry Federmann and Noblestone at
Wasserbauer's Café and Restaurant the following afternoon at one
o'clock.

For the remainder of the day, Philip Noblestone interviewed as much of
the cloak and suit trade as he could cover, with respect to Morris
Perlmutter's antecedents, and the result was entirely satisfactory. He
ascertained that Morris had worked his way up from shipping clerk,
through the various grades, until he had reached the comparative
eminence of head cutter, and his only failing was that he had embarked
in business with less capital than experience. At first he had met with
moderate success, but a dull season in the cloak trade had temporarily
embarrassed him, and the consensus of opinion among his competitors was
that he had a growing business but was over-extended.

Thus when Noblestone repaired to the office of Zudrowsky & Cohen at
closing time that afternoon, he fairly outdid himself extolling Morris
Perlmutter's merits, and he presented so high colored a picture that
Zudrowsky deprecated the business broker's enthusiasm.

"Say, looky here, Noblestone," he said, "enough's enough. All I want is
a partner for my son-in-law which would got common sense and a little
judgment. That's all. I don't expect no miracles, y'understand, and the
way I understand it from you, this feller Morris Perlmutter is got a
business head like Andrew Carnegie already and a shape like John Drew."

"I never mentioned his name because I don't know that feller at all,"
Noblestone protested. "But Perlmutter is a fine business man, Mr.
Zudrowsky, and he's a swell dresser, too."

"A feller what goes to a bank looking for accommodations," Zudrowsky
replied, "naturally don't put on his oldest clothes, y'understand, but
anyhow, Noblestone, if you would be around here at half past twelve
to-morrow, I will see that Harry gets here too, and we will go down to
Wasserbauer's and meet the feller."

It was precisely one o'clock the following day when Morris Perlmutter
seated himself at a table in the rear of Wasserbauer's Café and
Restaurant.

"Yes, sir, right away!" Louis, the waiter, cried, as he deposited a
plate of dill pickles on the adjoining table, at which sat a stout
middle-aged person with a napkin tucked in his neck.

"_Koenigsberger Klops_ is good to-day, Mr. Potash," Louis announced.

"Pushing the stickers, Louis, ain't it?" the man at the next table said.
"You couldn't get me to eat no chopped meat which customers left on
their plates last week already. I never believe in buying seconds,
Louis. Give me a piece of roast beef, well done, and a baked potato."

"Right away, Mr. Potash," Louis said, as he passed on to Perlmutter's
table. "Now, sir, what could I do for you?"

"Me, I am waiting here for somebody," Morris replied. "Bring me a glass
of water and we will give our order later."

"Right away!" said Louis, and hustled off to fill Abe Potash's order,
whereat Abe selected a dill pickle to beguile the tedium of waiting. He
grasped it firmly between his thumb and finger, and neatly bisected it
with his teeth. Simultaneously the pickle squirted, and about a quarter
of a pint of the acid juice struck Morris Perlmutter in the right eye.

"Excuse _me_," Abe cried. "Excuse me."

"S'all right," Morris replied. "I seen what you was doing and I should
of ordered an umbrella instead of a glass of water already."

Abe laughed uproariously.

"Dill pickles is uncertain like Paris fashions," he commented. "You
could never tell what they would do next."

"I bet yer," Morris replied. "Last year people was buying silks like
they was crazy, y'understand, and this year you would think silks was
poison. A buyer wouldn't touch 'em at all, and that's the way it goes."

Abe rose with the napkin tucked in his neck, and carrying the dish of
dill pickles with him, he sat down at Morris' table, to which Louis
brought the roast beef a moment later.

"I seen you was in the cloak and suit business as soon as I looked at
you," Abe said. "I guess I'll eat here till your friends come."

"Go ahead," Morris replied. "It's already quarter past one, and if them
fellers don't come soon, I'm going to eat, too."

"What's the use waiting?" Abe said. "Eat anyhow. This roast beef is
fine. Try some of it on me."

"Why should I stick you for my lunch?" Morris rejoined. "I see them
suckers ain't going to show up at all, so I guess I'll take a sandwich
and a cup of coffee."

He motioned to Louis.

"Right away!" Louis cried. "Yes, sir, we got some nice _Koenigsberger
Klops_ to-day _mit Kartoffel Kloes_."

"What d'ye take this gentleman for, anyway, Louis?" Abe asked. "A
garbage can? Give him a nice slice of roast beef well done and a baked
potato. Also bring two cups of coffee and give it the checks to me."

By a quarter to two Abe and Morris had passed from business matters to
family affairs, and after they had exchanged cigars and the conversation
had reached a stage where Morris had just accepted an invitation to dine
at Abe's house, Noblestone and Zudrowsky entered, with Harry Federmann
bringing up in the rear. Harry was evidently in disfavor, and his weak,
blond face wore the crestfallen look of a whipped child, for he had been
so occupied with his billing and cooing up town, that he had forgotten
his business engagement.

"Hallo, Mr. Perlmutter," Noblestone cried, and then he caught sight of
Morris' companion and the remains of their generous meal. "I thought you
was going to take lunch with us."

"Do I got to starve, Mr. Who's-this--I lost your card--just because I
was fool enough to take up your proposition yesterday? I should of known
better in the first place."

"But this here young feller, Mr. Federmann, got detained uptown,"
Zudrowsky explained. "His wife got took suddenly sick."

"Why, she may have to have an operation," Noblestone said in a sudden
burst of imaginative enthusiasm.

"You should tell your troubles to a doctor," Abe said, rising from the
table. "And besides, Noblestone, Mr. Perlmutter don't want no partner
just now."

"But," Perlmutter began, "but, Mr. Potash----"

"That is to say," Abe interrupted, "he don't want a partner with no
business experience. Me, I got business experience, as you know, Mr.
Noblestone, and so we fixed it up we would go as partners together,
provided after we look each other up everything is all right."

He looked inquiringly at Perlmutter, who nodded in reply.

"And if everything _is_ all right," Perlmutter said, "we will start up
next week."

"Under the firm name," Abe added, "of Potash & Perlmutter."

CHAPTER II

In less than ten days the new firm of Potash & Perlmutter were doing
business in Abe Potash's old quarters on White Street with the addition
of the loft on the second floor. Abe had occupied the grade floor of an
old-fashioned building, and agreeable to Morris' suggestion the
manufacturing and cutting departments were transferred to the second
floor, leaving Abe's old quarters for show-room, office and shipping
purposes. It was further arranged that Abe's share of the copartnership
work should be the selling end and that Morris should take charge of the
manufacturing. Both partners supervised the accounting and credit
department with the competent assistance of Miss R. Cohen, who had
served the firm of Vesell & Potash in the same capacity.

For more than a year Morris acted as designer, and with one or two
unfortunate exceptions, the styles he originated had been entirely
satisfactory to Potash & Perlmutter's growing trade.

The one or two unfortunate exceptions, however, had been a source of
some loss to the firm. First, there were the tourists' coats which cost
Potash & Perlmutter one thousand dollars; then came the purple
directoires; total, two thousand dollars charged off to profit and loss
on the firm's books.

"No, Mawruss," Abe said, when his partner spoke of a new model, which he
termed the Long Branch Coatee, "I don't like that name. Anyhow, Mawruss,
I got it in my mind we should hire a designer. While I figure it that
you don't cost us nothing extra, Mawruss, a couple of stickers like them
tourists and that directoire model puts us in the hole two thousand
dollars. On the other hand, Mawruss, if we get a good designer, Mawruss,
all we pay him is two thousand a year and we're through."

"I know, Abe," Morris replied, "but designers can turn out stickers,
too."

"Sure, they can, Mawruss," Abe went on, "but they got a job to look out
for, Mawruss, while you are one of the bosses here, whether you turn out
stickers or not. No, Mawruss, I got enough of stickers already. I'm
going to look out for a good, live designer, a smart young feller like
Louis Grossman, what works for Sammet Brothers. I bet you they done an
increased business of twenty per cent. with that young feller's designs.
I met Ike Gotthelf, buyer for Horowitz & Finkelbein, and he tells me he
gave Sammet Brothers a two-thousand-dollar order a couple of weeks ago,
including a hundred and twenty-two garments of that new-style they got
out, which they call the Arverne Sacque, one of Louis Grossman's new
models."

"Is that so?" said Morris. "Well, you know what I would do if I was you,
Abe? I'd see Louis Grossman and offer him ten dollars a week more than
Sammet Brothers pays him, and the first thing you know he'd be working
for us and not for Sammet Brothers."

"You got a great head, Mawruss," Abe rejoined ironically. "You got the
same idee all of a sudden what I think about a week ago already. I seen
Louis Grossman yesterday, and offered him fifteen, not ten."

"And what did he say?"

"He says he's working by Sammet Brothers under a contract, Mawruss, what
don't expire for a year yet, and they're holding up a quarter of his
wages under the contract, which he is to forfeit if he don't work it
out."

"Don't you believe it, Abe," Morris broke in. "He's standing out for
more money."

"Is he?" said Abe with some heat. "Well, I seen the contract, Mawruss,
so either I'm a liar or not, Mawruss, ain't it?"

Here they were interrupted by the entrance of a customer, Ike Herzog, of
the Bon Ton Credit Outfitting Company.

"Ah, Mr. Herzog!" Abe cried, rising to his feet and extending both hands
in greeting. "Glad to see you. Ain't it a fine weather?"

Mr. Herzog grunted in reply.

"Potash," he said, "when I give you that order last week, I don't know
whether I didn't buy a big lot of your style fifty-nine-ten, ain't it?"

"Yes, you did," said Abe.

"Well," said Herzog, "I want to cancel that part of the order."

"Cancel it!" Abe cried. "Why, what's the matter with them garments?
Ain't the samples made up right?"

"Sure, they're made up right," said Herzog, "only I seen something what
I like better. It's about the same style, only more attractive. I mean
Sammet Brothers' style forty-one-fifty--their new Arverne Sacque."

"Mr. Herzog!" Abe cried.

Herzog raised a protesting palm.

"Now, Potash," he said, "you know whatever I buy in staples you get the
preference; but when anybody's got a specialty like that Arverne Sacque,
what's the use of talking?"

He shook hands cordially.

"I'll be around to see you in about a week," he said, and the next
moment the door closed behind him.

"Well, Mawruss, that settles it," said Abe, putting on his hat. "When we
lose a good customer like Ike Herzog, I gets busy right away."

"Where are you going, Abe?" Morris asked.

Abe struggled into his overcoat and seized his umbrella.

"Round to Sammet Brothers," he replied. "I'm going to get that young
feller away from them if I got to pay 'em a thousand dollars to boot."

Leon Sammet, head of the copartnership of Sammet Brothers, sat in the
firm's sample room and puffed gloomily at a Wheeling stogy. His brother,
Barney Sammet, stood beside him reading aloud from a letter which he
held in his hand.

"'Gents,'" he said, "'your shipment of the fourteenth instant to hand,
and in reply will say we ain't satisfied with nothing but style
forty-one-fifty. Our Miss Kenny is a perfect thirty-six, and she can't
breathe in them Empires style 3022, in sizes 36, 38 or 40. What is the
matter with you, anyway? We are returning them via Eagle Dispatch. We
are yours truly, The Boston Store, Horowitz & Finkelbein, Proprietors.'"

"Yes, Barney," Leon commented, "that's a designer for you, that Louis
Grossman. His Arverne Sacques is all right, Barney, but the rest is nix.
He's a one garment man. Tell Miss Aaronstamm to bring in her book. I
want to send them Boston Store people a letter."

A moment later Miss Aaronstamm entered, and sat down at a sample table.

"Write to the Boston Store," Leon Sammet said. "'Horowitz & Finkelbein,
Proprietors, Gents'--got that? 'We received your favor of the eighteenth
instant, and in reply would say we don't accept no styles what you
return.' Got that? 'If your Miss Kenny can't breathe in them garments
that ain't our fault. They wasn't made to breathe in; they was made to
sell. You say she is a perfect thirty-six. How do we know that? We ain't
never measured her, and we don't believe you have, neither. Anyway, we
ain't taking back no goods what we sold once. Yours truly.' That's all,
Miss Aaronstamm. I guess that'll fix 'em. What, Barney?"

Barney nodded gloomily.

"I tell you, Barney," Leon went on, "I wish I never seen that Louis
Grossman. He certainly got into us good and proper."

"I don't know, Leon," said Barney. "That Arverne Sacque was a record
seller."

"Arverne Sacque!" Leon cried. "That's all everybody says. We can't make
a million dollars out of one garment alone, Barney. We can't even make
expenses. I'm afraid we'll go in the hole over ten thousand dollars if
we don't get rid of him."

"But we can't get rid of him," said Barney. "We got a contract with
him."

"Don't I know it?" said Leon, sadly. "Ain't I paid Henry D. Feldman a
hundred dollars for drawing it up? He's got us, Barney. Louis Grossman's
got us and no mistake. Well, I got to go up to the cutting-room and see
what he's doing now, Barney. He can spoil more piece-goods in an hour
than I can buy in a week."

He rose wearily to his feet and was half-way to the stairs in the rear
of the store when Abe Potash entered.

"Hallo, Leon!" Abe called. "Don't be in a rush. I want to talk to you."

Leon returned to the show-room and shook hands limply with Abe. It was a
competitor's, not a customer's, shake.

"Well, Abe," he said, "how's business?"

"If we got a good designer like you got, Leon," Abe replied, "we
would----"

"A good designer!" Barney broke in. "Why----"

His involuntary disclaimer ended almost where it began with a furtive,
though painful, kick from his elder brother.

"A good designer, Abe," Leon went on hastily, "is a big asset, and Louis
Grossman is a first-class A Number One designer. We done a tremendous
spring business through Louis. I suppose you heard about our style
forty-one-fifty?"

Abe nodded.

"Them Arverne Sacques," he said. "Yes, I heard about it from everybody I
meet. He must be a gold-mine, that Louis Grossman."

"He is," Leon continued. "Our other styles, too, he turns out wonderful.
Our Empire models what he designs for us, Abe, I assure you is also
making a tremendous sensation. You ought to see the letter we got this
morning from Horowitz & Finkelbein."

Barney blew his nose with a loud snort.

"I guess I'll go upstairs, and see what the boys is doing in the
cutting-room, Leon," he said, and made a hasty exit.

"Not that Louis Grossman ain't a good cutting-room foreman, too, Abe,"
said Leon, "but we're just getting in some new piece-goods and Barney
wants to check 'em off. But I ain't asked you yet what we can do for
you? A recommendation, maybe? Our credit files is open to you, Abe."

Abe pushed his hat back from his forehead and mopped his brow. Then he
sat down and lit a cigar.

"Leon," he commenced, "what's the use of making a lot of talk about it.
I'm going to talk to you man to man, Leon, and no monkey-business about
it nor nothing. I'm going to be plain and straightforward, Leon, and
tell it to you right from the start what I want. I don't believe in no
beating bushes around, Leon, and when I say a thing I mean it. I got to
talk right out, Leon. That's the kind of man I am."

"All right, Abe," Leon said. "Don't spring it on me too sudden, though."

"Well," Abe continued, "it's this way."

He gave one last puff at his cigar.

"Leon," he said, "how much will you take for Louis Grossman?"

"Take!" Leon shouted. "Take! Why, Abe----"

He stopped suddenly, and, recovering his composure just in the nick of
time, remained silent.

"I know, Leon, he's a valuable man," Abe said earnestly, "but I'm
willing to be fair, Leon. Of course I ain't a hog, and I don't think you
are."

"No, I ain't," Leon replied quite calmly; "I ain't a hog, and so I say I
wouldn't take nothing for him, Abe, because, Abe, if I told you what I
_would_ take for him, Abe, then, maybe, you might have reason for
calling me a hog."

"Oh, no, I wouldn't, Leon," Abe protested. "I told you I know he's a
valuable man, so I want you should name a price."

"_I_ should name a price!" Leon cried. "Why, Abe, I'm surprised at you.
If I go to a man to sell something what I like to get rid of it, and he
don't want, then I name the price. But if a man comes to me to buy
something what I want to keep, and what he's got to have, Abe, then _he_
names the price. Ain't it?"

Abe looked critically at the end of his smoldering cigar.

"Well, Leon," he said at length, "if I must name a price, I suppose I
must. Now I know you will think me crazy, Leon, but I want to get a good
designer bad, Leon, and so I say"--here he paused to note the
effect--"_five hundred dollars_."

Leon held out his hand.

"I guess you got to excuse me, Abe," he said. "I'd like it first rate to
stay here and visit with you all morning but I got work to do, and so I
hope you'll excuse me."

"Seven hundred and fifty," Abe said.

"Fifteen hundred dollars," Leon replied quite firmly.

For twenty minutes Abe's figure rose and Leon's fell until they finally
met at ten hundred thirty-three, thirty-three.

"He's worth it, Abe, believe me," said Leon, as they shook hands on the
bargain. "And now let's fix it up right away."

Half an hour later, Abe, Louis Grossman and Leon Sammet entered the
spacious law offices of Henry D. Feldman, who bears the same advisory
relation to the cloak and suit trade as Judge Gary did to the steel and
iron business.

The drawing of the necessary papers occupied the better part of the day
and it was not until three o'clock in the afternoon that the transaction
was complete. By its terms Sammet Brothers in consideration of $1,033.33
paid by Potash & Perlmutter, released Louis Grossman from his contract,
and Louis entered into a new agreement with Potash & Perlmutter at an
advance of a thousand a year over the compensation paid him by Sammet
Brothers. In addition he was to receive from Potash & Perlmutter five
per cent. of the profits of their business, payable weekly, the
arrangement to be in force for one year, during which time neither
employer nor employee could be rid one of the other save by mutual
consent.

"It comes high, Mawruss," Abe said to his partner, after he had returned
to the store, "but I guess Louis's worth it."

"I hope so," Morris replied. "Now we can make up some of them Arverne
Sacques."

"No, Mawruss," Abe replied, "I'm sorry to say we can't, because, by the
agreement what Henry D. Feldman drew up, Sammet Brothers has the sole
right to make up and sell the Arverne Sacques; but I seen to it,
Mawruss, that we got the right to make up and sell every other garment
what Louis Grossman originated for them this season."

He smiled triumphantly at his partner.

"And," he concluded, "he's coming to work Monday morning."

At the end of three disillusionizing weeks Abe Potash and Morris
Perlmutter sat in the show-room of their place of business. Abe's hat
was tilted over his eyes and he whistled a tuneless air. Morris was
biting his nails.

"Well, Mawruss," Abe said at length, "when we're stuck we're stuck;
ain't it? What's the use of sitting here like a couple of mummies; ain't
it?"

Morris ceased biting his nails.

"Yes, Abe," he said, "ten hundred and thirty-three, thirty-three for a
designer what couldn't design paper-bags for a delicatessen store. I
believe he must have took lessons in designing from a correspondence
school."

"Believe me, Mawruss, he learned it by telephone," Abe replied. "But
cussing him out won't do no good, Mawruss. The thing to do now is to get
busy and turn out some garments what we can sell. Them masquerade
costumes what he gets up you couldn't sell to a five-and-ten-cent
store."

"All right," Morris said. "Let's have another designer and leave Louis
to do the cutting."

"_Another_ designer!" Abe exclaimed. "No, Mawruss, you're a good enough
designer for me. I always said it, Mawruss, you're a first-class A
Number One designer."

Thus encouraged, Morris once more took up the work of the firm's
designing, and he labored with the energy of despair, for the season was
far spent. At length he evolved four models that made Abe's eyes fairly
bulge.

"That's snappy stuff, Mawruss," he said, as he examined the completed
samples one morning. "I bet yer they sell like hot cakes."

Abe's prophecy more than justified itself, and in ten days they were
completely swamped with orders. Abe and Morris went around wearing
smiles that only relaxed when they remembered Louis Grossman and his
hide-bound agreement, under which he drew five per cent. of the firm's
profits and sixty dollars a week.

"Anyhow, Mawruss, we'll get some return from Louis Grossman," Abe said.
"I advertised in the Daily Cloak and Suit Record yesterday them four
styles of yours as the four best sellers of the season, originated by
the creator of the Arverne Sacque. Ike Herzog was in the first thing
this morning and bought two big lots of each one of the models. Ike's a
great admirer of Louis Grossman, Mawruss. I bet yer when Sammet Brothers
saw that ad they went crazy; ain't it?"

"But," Morris protested, "why should Louis Grossman get the credit for
my work?"

"Because, Mawruss, you know them Arverne Sacques is the best sellers put
out in the cloak and suit business this year," Abe replied. "And
besides, Mawruss, we may be suckers, but that ain't no reason why Sammet
Brothers should know it."

"Don't worry, Abe," said Morris; "they know they stuck us good and
plenty when they released Louis Grossman."

"Do they?" Abe rejoined. "Well, they don't know it unless you told 'em.
Louis Grossman won't tell 'em and I didn't tell 'em when I met Leon and
Barney at lunch to-day."

"What did you tell 'em!" Morris asked, somewhat alarmed.

"I told 'em, Mawruss, that the season is comparatively young yet, but we
already made from ten to twenty per cent. more sales by our new
designer. I told Leon them new styles what Louis Grossman got up for us
is selling so big we can't put 'em out fast enough."

"And what did Leon say?" Morris asked.

"He didn't say nothing," Abe replied, "but he looked like his best
customer had busted up on him. Then I showed him the order what we got
from Ike Herzog, and he started in right away to call Barney down for
going home early the day before. I tell you, Mawruss, he was all broke
up."

"I know, Abe," Morris commented, "that's all right, too, but, all the
same, we ain't got much of a laugh on them two boys, so long as Louis
Grossman loafs away upstairs drawing sixty dollars a week and five per
cent. of the profits."

"Well," Abe replied, "what are you going to do about it? Henry D.
Feldman drew up the contract, and you know, Mawruss, contracts what
Henry D. Feldman makes nobody can break."

"Can't they?" Morris cried. "Well, if Henry D. Feldman made it can't
Henry D. Feldman break it? What good is the lawyer, anyhow, what can't
get us out of the contract what he fixed up himself?"

Abe pondered over the situation for five minutes.

"You're right, Mawruss," he said at length; "I'll go and see Henry D.
Feldman the first thing to-morrow morning."

The next morning Leon Sammet sat at his roll-top desk in his private
office, while Barney went over the morning mail.

"Hallo," Barney cried, "here's a check from Horowitz & Finkelbein for
the full amount of their bill, Leon. I guess they thought better of that
return shipment they made of them bum garments that Louis Grossman
designed. They ain't made no deduction on account of it."

"Bum garments, nothing," Leon commented. "Them garments was all right,
Barney. I guess we didn't know how to treat Louis Grossman when he
worked by us. Look at the big success he's making by Potash &
Perlmutter. I bet yer they're five thousand ahead on the season's sales
already. We thought they was suckers when they paid us ten thirty-three,
thirty-three for him, but I guess the shoe pinches on the other foot,
Barney. I wish we had him back, that's all. Them four new designs what
he made for Potash & Perlmutter is tremendous successes. What did he
done for us, Barney? One garment, the Arverne Sacque, and I bet yer them
four styles will put the Arverne Sacque clean out of business."

"Well, Leon," said Barney, "you traded him off so smart, why don't you
get him back? Why don't you see him, Leon?"

"I _did_ see him," said Leon. "I called at his house last night."

"And what did he say?" Barney asked.

"He said he's under contract, as you know, with Potash & Perlmutter, and
that if we can get him out of it he's only too glad to come back to us.
But Henry D. Feldman drew up that contract, Barney, and you know as well
as I do, Barney, that what Henry D. Feldman draws up is drawn up for
keeps, ain't it?"

"There's loopholes in every contract, Leon," said Barney, "and a smart
lawyer like Henry D. Feldman can find 'em out quick enough. Why don't
you go right round and see Henry D. Feldman? Maybe he can fix it so as
to get Louis back here."

Leon shut down his roll-top desk and seized his hat.

"That's a good idea, Barney," he said. "I guess I'll take your advice."

It is not so much to know the law, ran Henry D. Feldman's motto,
paraphrasing a famous dictum of Judge Sharswood, as to look, act and
talk as though you knew it. To this end Mr. Feldman seldom employed a
word of one syllable, if it had a synonym of three or four syllables,
and such phrases as _res gestæ_, _scienter_, and _lex fori delicti_ were
the very life of his conversation with clients.

"The information which you now disclose, Mr. Sammet," he said, after
Leon had made known his predicament, "is all _obiter dicta_."

Leon blushed. He imagined this to be somewhat harsh criticism of the
innocent statement that he thought Potash & Perlmutter could be bluffed
into releasing Louis Grossman.

"_Imprimis_," Mr. Feldman went on, "I have not been consulted by Mr.
Grossman about what he desires done in the matter, but, speaking _ex
cathedra_, I am of the opinion that some method might be devised for
rescinding the contract."

"You mean we can get Potash & Perlmutter to release him?"

"Precisely," said Mr. Feldman, "and in a very elementary and efficacious
fashion."

"Well, I ain't prepared to pay so much money at once," said Leon.

Now, when it came to money matters, Henry D. Feldman's language could be
colloquial to the point of slang.

"What's biting you now?" he said. "I ain't going to charge you too much.
Leave it to me, and if I deliver the goods it will cost you two hundred
and fifty dollars."

Leon sighed heavily, but he intended getting Louis back at all costs,
not, however, to exceed ten thirty-three, thirty-three.

"Well, I ain't kicking none if you can manage it," he replied. "Tell us
how to go about it."

Straightway Mr. Feldman unfolded a scheme which, stripped of its
technical phraseology, was simplicity itself. He rightly conjectured
that the most burdensome feature of the contract, so far as Potash &
Perlmutter were concerned, was the five per cent. share of the profits
that fell to Louis Grossman each week. He therefore suggested that Louis
approach Abe Potash and request that, instead of five per cent. of the
profits, he be paid a definite sum each week, for the cloak and suit
business has its dull spells between seasons, when profits occasionally
turn to losses. Thus Louis could advance as a reason that he would feel
safer if he be paid, say, twenty dollars a week the year round in lieu
of his uncertain share of the profits.

"Abe Potash will jump at that," Leon commented.

"I anticipate that he will," Mr. Feldman went on, "and then, after he
has paid Mr. Grossman the first week's installment it will constitute a
rescission of the old contract and a substitution of a new one, which
will be a contract of hiring from week to week. At the conclusion of the
first week their contractual relations can be severed at the option of
either party."

"But I don't want them to do nothing like that," Leon said. "I just want
Louis to quit his job with Potash & Perlmutter and come and work by us."

"Look a-here, Sammet," Feldman broke in impatiently. "I can't waste a
whole morning talking to a boob that don't understand the English
language. You're wise to the part about Louis Grossman asking for twenty
dollars a week steady, instead of his share of the proceeds, ain't you?"

Leon nodded.

"Then if Potash falls for it," Feldman concluded, "as soon as Grossman
gets the first twenty out of him he can throw up his job on the spot.
See?"

Leon nodded again.

"Then clear out of this," said Feldman and pushed a button on his desk
to inform the office-boy that he was ready for the next client.

As Leon passed through the outer office he encountered Ike Herzog of the
Bon Ton Credit Outfitting Company, who was solacing himself with the
Daily Cloak and Suit Record in the interval of his waiting.

"Good morning, Mr. Herzog," Leon exclaimed. "So you got your troubles,
too."

"I ain't got no troubles, Leon," Ike Herzog said, "but I got to use a
lawyer in my business once in awhile. Just now I'm enlarging my place,
and I got contracts to make and new people to hire. I hope _you_ ain't
got no law suits nor nothing."

"Law suits ain't in my line, Mr. Herzog," Leon said. "Once in awhile I
change my working people, too. That's why I come here."

"Sometimes you change 'em for the worse, Leon," Herzog commented,
indicating Abe Potash's effective ad with a stubby forefinger. "You
certainly made a mistake when you got rid of Louis Grossman. He's
turning out some elegant stuff for Potash & Perlmutter."

Leon nodded gloomily.

"Well, we all make mistakes, Mr. Herzog," he said, "and that's why we
got to come here."

"That's so," Herzog agreed, as Leon opened the door. "I hope I ain't
making no mistake in what _I'm_ going to do."

"I hope not," Leon said as he passed out. "Good morning."

Ike Herzog's interview with Henry D. Feldman was short and very much to
his satisfaction, for when he emerged from Feldman's sanctum, to find
Abe Potash waiting without, he could not forbear a broad smile. Abe
nodded perfunctorily and a moment later was closeted with the oracle.

"Mr. Feldman," he said, "I come to ask you an advice, and as I'm pretty
busy this morning, do me the favor and leave out all them _caveat
emptors_."

"Sure thing," Feldman replied. "Tell me all about it."

"Well, then, Mr. Feldman," said Abe, "I want to get rid of Louis
Grossman."

Mr. Feldman almost jumped out of his chair.

"I want to fire Louis Grossman," Abe repeated. "You remember that you
drew me up a burglar-proof contract between him and us a few weeks ago,
and now I want you to be the burglar and bust it up for me."

Feldman touched the button on his desk.

"Bring me the draft of the contract between Potash & Perlmutter and
Louis Grossman that I dictated last month," he said to the boy who
answered.

In a few minutes the boy returned with a large envelope. He was
instructed never to come back empty-handed when asked to bring anything,
and, in this instance the envelope held six sheets of folded legal cap,
some of which contained the score of a pinochle game, played after
office hours on Saturday afternoon between the managing clerk and the
process-server.

Feldman put the envelope in his pocket and retired to a remote corner of
the room. There he examined the contents of the envelope and, knitting
his brows into an impressive frown, he took from the well-stocked
shelves that lined the walls book after book of digests and reports.
Occasionally he made notes on the back of the envelope, and after the
space of half an hour he returned to his chair and prepared to deliver
himself of a weighty opinion.

"In the first place," he said, "this man Grossman ain't incompetent in
his work, is he?"

"Incompetent!" Abe exclaimed. "Oh, no, he ain't incompetent. He's
competent enough to sue us for five thousand dollars after we fire him,
if that's what you mean."

"Then I take it that you don't want to discharge him for incompetence
and risk a law suit," Mr. Feldman went on. "Now, before we go on, how
much does his share of your profits amount to each week?"

"About thirty dollars in the busy season," Abe replied.

"Then here's your scheme," said Feldman. "You go to Grossman and say:
'Look a-here, Grossman, this business of figuring out profits each week
is a troublesome piece of bookkeeping. Suppose we call your share of the
profits forty dollars a week and let it go at that.' D'ye suppose
Grossman would take it?"

"Would a cat eat liver?" said Abe.

"Well, then," Feldman now concluded, "after Grossman accepts the offer,
and you pay him the first installment of forty dollars you're
substituting a new weekly contract in place of the old yearly one, and
you can fire Grossman just as soon as you have a mind to."

"But suppose he sues me, anyhow?" said Abe.

"If he does," Feldman replied. "I won't charge you a cent; otherwise
it'll be two hundred and fifty dollars."

He touched the bell in token of dismissal.

"This fellow, Grossman, is certainly a big money-maker," he said to
himself, after Abe had gone, "_for me_."

The following Saturday Abe sat in the show-room making up the weekly
payroll, and with his own hand he drew a check to the order of Louis
Grossman for forty dollars.

"Mawruss," he said, "do me the favor and go upstairs to Louis Grossman.
You know what to say to him."

"Why should _I_ go, Abe?" Morris said. "You know the whole plan. You saw
Feldman."

"But it don't look well for me," Abe rejoined. "Do me the favor and go
yourself."

Morris shrugged his shoulders and departed, while Abe turned to the
pages of the Daily Cloak and Suit Record to bridge over the anxious
period of Morris' absence. The first item that struck his eye appeared
under the heading, "Alterations and Improvements."

"The Bon Ton Credit Outfitting Company, Isaac Herzog, Proprietor," it
read, "is about to open a manufacturing department, and will, on and
after June 1, do all its own manufacturing and alterations in the
enlarged store premises, Nos. 5940, 5942 and 5946 Second Avenue."

Abe laid down the paper with a sigh.

"There's where we lose another good customer," he said as Morris
returned. A wide grin was spread over Morris' face.

"Well, Mawruss?" Abe asked.

"Yes, Abe," Morris replied. "Ten hundred and thirty-three, thirty-three
you paid for him. And now you must pay him forty dollars a week. _I_
ain't so generous, Abe, believe me. I settled with him for
twenty-seven-fifty."

"Well, Mawruss, it's only for one week," Abe protested.

"I know," said Morris, "but why should _he_ get the benefit of it?"

"Did you have much of a time getting him to take it?" Abe asked.

"It was like this," Morris explained. "I told him what you said about a
lump sum in place of profits and asked him to name his price, and the
first thing he says was twenty-seven-fifty."

"And you let him have it for that?" Abe cried. "You're a business man,
Mawruss, I must say. I bet yer he would have took twenty-five."

He tore up the check for forty dollars and drew a new one for
twenty-seven-fifty.

"Here, Mawruss," he said, "take it up to him like a good feller."

It was precisely noon when Morris delivered the check to Louis Grossman,
and it was one o'clock when Louis went out to lunch.

Three o'clock struck before Abe first noted his absence.

"Ain't that feller come back from his dinner yet, Mawruss?" he asked.

"No," Morris replied. "I wonder what can be keeping him. He generally
takes half an hour for his dinner."

At this juncture the telephone bell rang in the rear of the store and
Abe answered it.

"Hello," he said; "yes, this is Potash & Perlmutter. Oh, hello, Leon,
what can we do for you?"

"I want to speak to Louis Grossman. Can you call him to the 'phone?"
Leon said.

"Louis ain't in," Abe said. "Do you want to leave a message for him?"

"Well," Leon hesitated, "the fact is--we had an appointment with him
for two o'clock over here, and he ain't showed up yet."

"Appointment with Louis!" Abe said. "Why, what should you have an
appointment with Louis for, Leon?"

"Well," Leon stammered, "I--now--got to see him--now--about them Arverne
Sacques."

"Oh!" Abe said. "I understand. Well, he went to lunch about twelve
o'clock, and he ain't come back yet. Is there anything what we can do
for you, Leon?"

But Sammet had hung up the receiver without waiting for further
conversation.

At four o'clock the telephone rang again, and once more Abe answered it.

"Hello," he said. "Yes, this is Potash & Perlmutter. Oh! hello, Leon!
What can we do for you _now_?"

"Abe," Leon said, "Louis ain't showed up yet. Has he showed up at your
place yet?"

"No, he ain't, Leon," Abe replied. "You seem mighty anxious to see him.
Why, what for should I try to prevent him speaking to you? He ain't
here, I tell you. All right, Leon; then I'm a liar."

He hung up the receiver with a bang, and an hour later when Morris and
he locked up the place, Louis' absence remained a complete mystery to
his employers.

On Monday morning Abe and Morris opened the store at seven-thirty, and
while Morris examined the mail, Abe took up the Daily Cloak and Suit
Record and scanned the business-trouble column. There were no failures
of personal or firm interest to Abe, so he passed on to the new-business
column. The first item caused him to gasp, and he almost swallowed the
butt of his cigar. It read:

     A partnership has this day been formed between Isaac Herzog and
     Louis Grossman, to carry on the business of the Bon Ton Credit
     Outfitting Company, under the same firm name. It is understood
     that Mr. Grossman will have charge of the designing and
     manufacturing end of the concern.

He handed the paper over to Morris and lit a fresh cigar.

"Another sucker for Louis Grossman," he said, "and I bet yer Henry D.
Feldman drew up the copartnership papers."

When Mr. Siegmund Lowenstein, proprietor of the O'Gorman-Henderson
Dry-Goods Company of Galveston, Texas, entered Potash & Perlmutter's
show-room, he expected to give only a small order. Mr. Lowenstein
usually transacted his business with Abe Potash, who was rather
conservative in matters of credit extension, more especially since Mr.
Lowenstein was reputed to play auction pinochle with poor judgment and
for high stakes.

Therefore, Mr. Lowenstein intended to buy a few staples, specialties of
Potash & Perlmutter, and to reserve the balance of his spring orders for
other dealers who entertained more liberal credit notions than did Abe
Potash. Much to his gratification, however, he was greeted by Morris
Perlmutter.

"Ah, Mr. Perlmutter," he said; "glad to see you. Is Mr. Potash in?"

"He's home, sick, to-day," Morris replied.

Mr. Lowenstein clucked sympathetically.

"You don't say so," he murmured. "That's too bad. What seems to be the
trouble?"

"He's been feeling mean all the winter," Morris replied. "The doctor
says he needs a rest."

"That's always the way with them hard-working fellers," Mr. Lowenstein
went on. "I'm feeling pretty sick myself, I assure you, Mr. Perlmutter.
I've been working early and late in my store. We never put in such a
season before, and we done a phenomenal holiday business. We took stock
last week and we're quite cleaned out. I bet you we ain't got stuck a
single garment in any line--cloaks, suits, clothing or furs."

"I'm glad to hear it," Morris said.

"And we expect this season will be a crackerjack, too," he continued. "I
had to give a few emergency orders to jobbers down South before I left
Galveston, we had such an early rush of spring trade."

"Is that so?" Morris commented. "I wish we could say the same in New
York."

"You don't tell me!" Mr. Lowenstein rejoined. "Why, I was over by
Garfunkel and Levy just now, and Mr. Levy says he is almost too busy. I
looked over their line and I may place an order with them, although they
ain't got too good an assortment, Mr. Perlmutter."

"Far be it from me to knock a competitor's line, Mr. Lowenstein," Morris
commented, "but I honestly think they get their designers off of Ellis
Island."

"Well," Mr. Lowenstein conceded, "of course I don't say they got so good
an assortment what you have, Mr. Perlmutter, but they got a liberal
credit policy."

"Why, what's the matter with _our_ credit policy?" Morris asked.

"Nothing," Mr. Lowenstein replied. "Only a merchant like me, what wants
to enlarge his business, needs a little better terms than thirty days.
Ain't it? I'm improving my departments all the time, and I got to buy
more fixtures, lay in a better stock and even build a new wing to my
store building. All this costs money, Mr. Perlmutter, as you know, and
contractors must be paid strictly for cash. Under the circumstances, I
need ready money, and, naturally, the house what gives me the most
generous credit gets my biggest order."

"Excuse me for a moment," Morris broke in, "I think I hear the
telephone."

He walked to the rear of the store, where the telephone bell had been
trilling impatiently.

"Hello," he said, taking the receiver off the hook.

"Hello," said a voice from the other end of the line. "Is this Potash &
Perlmutter?"

"It is," said Morris.

"Well, this is Garfunkel & Levy," the voice went on. "We understand Mr.
Lowenstein, of Galveston, is in your store. Will you please and call him
to the 'phone for a minute?"

"This ain't no public pay station," Morris cried. "And besides, Mr.
Lowenstein just left here."

He banged the receiver onto the hook and returned at once to the front
of the store.

"Now, Mr. Lowenstein," he said, "what can I do for you?"

And two hours later Mr. Lowenstein left the store with the duplicate of
a twenty-four-hundred-dollar order in his pocket, deliveries to commence
within five days; terms, ninety days net.

"Well, Abe," Morris said the next day as his partner, Abe Potash,
entered the show-room, "how are you feeling to-day?"

"Mean, Mawruss," Abe replied. "I feel mean. The doctor says I need a
rest. He says I got to go away to the country or I will maybe break
down."

"Is _that_ so?" said Morris, deeply concerned. "Well, then, you'd better
go right away, before you get real serious sick. Why not fix it so you
can go away to-morrow yet?"

"To-morrow!" Abe exclaimed. "It don't go so quick as all that, Mawruss.
You can't believe everything the doctors tell you. I ain't exactly dead
yet, Mawruss. I'm like the feller what everybody says is going to fail,
Mawruss. They give him till after Christmas to bust up, and then he does
a fine holiday trade, and the first thing you know, Mawruss, he's buying
real estate. No, Mawruss, I feel pretty mean, I admit, but I think a
good two-thousand-dollar order would put me all right again, and so long
as we wouldn't have no more trouble with designers, Mawruss, I guess I
would _stay_ right too."

"Well, if that's the case," said Morris, beaming all over, "I guess I
can fix you up. Siegmund Lowenstein, of Galveston, was in here
yesterday, and I sold him a twenty-four-hundred-dollar order, including
them forty-twenty-two's, and you know as well as I do, Abe, them
forty-twenty-two's is stickers. We got 'em in stock now over two months,
ever since Abe Magnus, of Nashville, turned 'em back on us."

Abe's reception of the news was somewhat disappointing to Morris. He
showed no elation, but selected a slightly-damaged cigar from the K. to
O. first and second credit customers' box, and lit it deliberately
before replying.

"How much was that last order he give us, Mawruss?" he asked.

"Four hundred dollars," Morris replied.

"And what terms?" Abe continued.

"Five off, thirty days."

"And what terms did _you_ quote him yesterday?" asked Abe inexorably.

"Ninety days, net," Morris murmured.

Abe puffed vigorously at his cigar, and there was a long and significant
silence.

"I should think, Abe," Morris said at length, "the doctor wouldn't let
you smoke cigars if you was nearly breaking down."

"So long as you sell twenty-four hundred dollars at ninety days to a
crook and a gambler like Siegmund Lowenstein, Mawruss," Abe replied,
"one cigar more or less won't hurt me. If I can stand a piece of news
like that, Mawruss, I guess I can stand anything. Why didn't you give
him thirty days' dating, too, Mawruss?"

At once Morris plunged into a long account of the circumstances
attending the giving of Mr. Lowenstein's order, including the telephone
message from Garfunkel & Levy, and at its conclusion Abe grew somewhat
mollified.

"Well, Mawruss," he said, "we took the order and I suppose we got to
ship it. When you deal with a gambler like Lowenstein you got to take a
gambler's chance. Anyhow, I ain't going to worry about it, Mawruss. Next
week I'm going away for a fortnight."

"Where are you going, Abe?" Morris asked.

"To Dotyville, Pennsylvania," Abe replied. "We leave next Saturday. In
the meantime I ain't going to worry, Mawruss."

"That's right, Abe," said Morris.

"Sure it's right," Abe rejoined. "I'm going to leave _you_ to do the
worrying, and in the meantime I guess I'll look after getting out them
forty-twenty-two's. Them forty-twenty-two's--them plum-color Empires was
_your_ idee, Mawruss. You said they'd make a hit with the Southern
trade, Mawruss, and I hope they do, Mawruss, for, if they don't, there
ain't much chance of our getting paid for them."

A week later Abe Potash and his wife left for Dotyville, Pennsylvania,
and two days afterward Morris received the following letter:

                                DOTY'S UNION HOUSE,
                                       Dotyville, Pennsylvania.

     _Dear Morris:_

     How is things in the store? We got here the day before yesterday
     and I have got enough already. It is a dead town. The food what
     they give us reminds me when Pincus Vesell & me was partners
     together as new beginners and I was making southern trips by
     dollar and a half a day houses American plan. The man Doty what
     keeps the hotel also runs the general store also. He says a
     fellow by the name of Levy used to run it but he couldnt make it
     go; he made a failure of it. I tried to sell him a few garments
     but he claims to be overstocked at present and I believe him. I
     seen some styles what he tries to get rid of it what me & Pincus
     Vesell made up in small lots way before the Spanish war already.
     It is a dead town. Me and Rosie leave tonight for Pittsburg and
     we are going to stay with Rosies brother in law Hyman Margolius.
     Write us how things is going in the store to the Outlet Auction
     House Hyman Margolius prop 2132 4 & 6 North Potter Ave Pittsburg
     Pa. You should see that Miss Cohen billed them 4022s on date we
     packed them as Goldman the shipping clerk forgot to give them
     to Arrow Dispatch when they called. That ain't our fault Morris.
     Write and tell me how things is going in the store and dont
     forget to tell Miss Cohen about the bill to S. Lowenstein
     as above
                                               Yours Truly
                                                         A. POTASH.

     P. S. How is things in the store?

During the first three days of Abe Potash's vacation he had traveled by
local train one hundred and twenty miles to Dotyville, and unpacked and
packed two trunks under the shrill and captious supervision of Mrs.
Potash. Then followed a tiresome journey to Pittsburgh with two changes
of cars, and finally, on the morning of the fourth day, at seven-thirty
sharp, he accompanied Hyman Margolius to the latter's place of business.

There he took off his coat and helped Hyman and his staff of assistants
to pile up and mark for auction a large consignment of clothing. After
this, he called off the lot numbers while Hyman checked them in a first
draft of a printed catalogue, and at one o'clock, with hands and face
all grimy from contact with the ill-dyed satinets of which the clothing
was manufactured, he partook of a substantial luncheon at Bleistift's
Restaurant and Lunch-Room.

"Well, Abe," Hyman said, "how do you like the auction business so far as
you gone yet?"

"It's a good, live business, Hymie," Abe replied; "but, the way it works
out, it ain't always on the square. A fellow what wants to do his
creditors buys goods in New York, we'll say, for his business
in--Galveston, we'll say, and then when he gets the goods he don't even
bother to unpack 'em, Hymie, but ships 'em right away to you. And you
examine 'em, and if they're all O. K., why, you send him a check for
about half what it costs to manufacture 'em. Then he pockets the check,
Hymie, and ten days later busts up on the poor sucker what sold him the
goods in New York at ninety days. Ain't that right, Hymie?"

"Why, that's the funniest thing you ever seen!" Hyman exclaimed.

"What's the funniest thing I ever seen, Hymie?"

"You talking about Galveston, for instance."

Abe turned pale and choked on a piece of _rosbraten_.

"What d'ye mean?" he gasped.

"Why," said Hyman, "I just received a consignment of garments from a
feller called Lowenstein in Galveston. He wrote me he was overstocked."

"Overstocked?" Abe cried. "Overstocked? What color was them garments?"

"Why, they was a kind of plum color," said Hyman.

Abe put his hand to his throat and eased his collar.

"And did you send him a check for 'em yet?" he croaked.

"Not yet," said Hyman.

Abe grabbed him by the collar.

"Come!" he said. "Come quick by a lawyer!"

"What for?" Hyman asked. "You're pulling that coat all out of shape
yet."

"I'll buy you another one," Abe cried. "Them plum-color garments is
mine, and I want to get 'em back."

Hyman paid the bill, and on their way down the street they passed a
telegraph office.

"Wait," Abe cried, "I must send Mawruss a wire."

He entered and seized a telegraph form, which he addressed to Potash &
Perlmutter.

"Don't ship no more goods to Lowenstein, Morris. Will explain by letter
to-night," he wrote.

"Now, Hymie," he said after he had paid for the dispatch, "we go by your
lawyer."

Five minutes later they were closeted with Max Marcus, senior member of
the firm of Marcus, Weinschenck & Grab, and a lodge brother of Hymie
Margolius. Max made a specialty of amputation cases. He was accustomed
to cashing missing arms and legs at a thousand dollars apiece for the
victims of rolling-mill and railway accidents, and when the sympathetic
jury brought in their generous verdict Max paid the expert witnesses and
pocketed the net proceeds. These rarely fell below five thousand
dollars.

"Sit down, Hymie. Glad to see you, Mr. Potash," Max said, stroking a
small gray mustache with a five-carat diamond ring. "What can I do for
_you_?"

"I got some goods belonging to Mr. Potash what a fellow called
Lowenstein in Galveston, Texas, shipped me," said Hymie, "and Mr.
Potash wants to get 'em back."

"Replevin, hey?" Max said. "That's a little out of my line, but I guess
I can fix you up." He rang for a stenographer. "Take this down," he said
to her, and turned to Abe Potash. "Now, tell us the facts."

Abe recounted the tale Mr. Lowenstein had related to Morris Perlmutter,
by which Lowenstein made it appear that he was completely out of stock.
Next, Hyman Margolius produced Siegmund Lowenstein's letter which
declared that Lowenstein was disposing of the Empire cloaks because he
was overstocked.

"S'enough," Max declared. "Tell, Mr. Weinschenck to work it up into an
affidavit," he continued to the stenographer, "and bring us in a jurat."

A moment later she returned with a sheet of legal cap, on the top of
which was typewritten: "Sworn to before me this first day of April,
1904."

"Sign opposite the brace," said Max, pushing the paper at Abe, and Abe
scrawled his name where indicated.

"Now, hold up your right hand," said Max, and Abe obeyed.

"Do you solemnly swear that the affidavit subscribed by you is true?"
Max went on.

"What affidavit?" Abe asked.

"Why, the one Weinschenck is going to draw when he comes back from
lunch, of course," Max replied.

"Sure it's true," said Abe.

"All right," Max concluded briskly.

"Now give me a check for fifty dollars for my fees, five dollars for a
surety company bond, and five dollars sheriff's fees, and I'll get out a
replevin order on the strength of that affidavit in half an hour, and
have a deputy around to the store at three o'clock to transfer the goods
from Hymie to you."

"Sixty dollars is pretty high for a little thing like that, ain't it,
Max?" said Hymie.

"High?" Max cried indignantly. "High? Why, if you wasn't a lodge brother
of mine, Hymie, I wouldn't have stirred a hand for less than a hundred."

Thus rebuked, Abe paid over the sixty dollars, and Hymie and he went
back to the store. Precisely at three a deputy sheriff entered the front
door and flashed a gold badge as big as a dinner-plate. His stay was
brief, and in five minutes he had relieved Abe of all his spare cigars
and departed, leaving only a certified copy of the replevin order and a
strong smell of whisky to signalize the transfer of the Empire gowns
from Hymie to Abe.

Hardly had he banged the door behind him when a messenger boy entered
and handed a telegram to Abe.

"Ain't shipped no goods but the 4022's," it read. "Have wired Lowenstein
to return the 4022s. MORRIS."

"Fine! Fine!" Abe exclaimed. He tipped the boy a dime and was about to
acquaint Hyman with the good news, when another messenger boy entered
and delivered a second telegram to Abe. It read as follows:

"Lowenstein wires he insists on delivery entire order complete,
otherwise he will sue. What shall I wire him? MORRIS."

Abe seized his hat and dashed down the street to the telegraph office.

"Gimme a blank," he said to the operator, who handed him a whole padful.
For the next twenty minutes Abe scribbled and tore up by turns until he
finally evolved a satisfactory missive. This he handed to the operator,
who read it with a broad grin and passed it back at once.

"Wot d'ye take me for?" he said. "A bum? Dere's ladies in de main
office."

Abe glared at the operator and began again.

"Here," he said to the operator after another quarter of an hour of
scribbling and tearing up, "send this."

It was in the following form:

    _Don't send no more goods to Lowenstein
        "    "   "  "   wires  " nobody_

"Fourteen words," the operator said. "Fifty-four cents."

"What's that?" Abe cried. "What yer trying to do? Make money on me? That
ain't no fourteen words. That's _nine_ words."

"It is, hey?" the operator rejoined. "Quit yer kiddin'. Dat's fourteen
words. Ditto marks don't go, see?"

"You're a fresh young feller," said Abe, paying over fifty-four cents,
"and I got a good mind to report you to the head office."

The operator laughed raucously.

"G'wan!" he said. "Beat it, or I'll sick de cops onter yer. It's agin
the law to cuss in Pittsburgh, even by telegraft."

When Abe returned to the Outlet Auction House's store Hyman was busy
stacking up the plum-color gowns in piles convenient for shipping.

"Well, Abe," he said, "I thought you was here for a vacation. You're
doing some pretty tall hustling for a sick man, I must say."

"I'll tell you the truth, Hymie," Abe replied, "I ain't got no time to
be sick. It ain't half-past three yet, and I guess I'll take a couple of
them garments and see what I can do with the jobbing and retail trade in
this here town."

"Don't you think you'd better take it easy for a while, Abe?" Hyman
suggested.

"I am taking it easy," said Abe. "So long as I ain't working I'm
resting, ain't it, Hymie? And you know as well as I do, Hymie, selling
goods never was work to me. It's a pleasure, Hymie, I assure you."

He placed two of the plum-colored Empire gowns under his arm, and
thrusting his hat firmly on the back of his head made straight for the
dry-goods district. Two hours later he returned, wearing a broad smile
that threatened to engulf his stubby black mustache between his nose and
his chin.

"Hymie," he said, "I'm sorry I got to disturb that nice pile you made of
them garments. I'll get right to work myself and assort the sizes."

"Why, what's the trouble now, Abe?" Hyman asked.

"I disposed of 'em, Hymie," Abe replied. "Two hundred to Hamburg and
Weiss. Three hundred to the Capitol Credit Outfitting Company, and five
hundred to Feinroth and Pearl."

"Hold on there, Abe!" Hymie exclaimed. "You only got six hundred, and
you sold a thousand garments."

"I know, Hymie," said Abe, "but I'm going home to-morrow, and I got a
month in which to ship the balance."

"Going home?" Hyman cried.

"Sure," said Abe. "I had a good long vacation, and now I got to get down
to business."

One morning, two weeks later, Abe sat with his feet cocked up on his
desk in the show-room of Potash & Perlmutter's spacious cloak and suit
establishment. Between his teeth he held a fine Pittsburgh cheroot at an
angle of about ninety-five degrees to his protruding under-lip, and he
perused with relish the business-trouble column of the Daily Cloak and
Suit Record.

"Now, what do you think of that?" he exclaimed.

"What do I think of what, Abe?" Morris inquired.

For answer Abe thrust the paper toward his partner with one hand, and
indicated a scare headline with the other.

"Fraudulent Bankruptcy in Galveston," it read. "A petition in bankruptcy
was filed yesterday against Siegmund Lowenstein, doing business as the
O'Gorman-Henderson Dry-Goods Company, in Galveston, Texas. When the
Federal receiver took charge of the bankrupt's premises they were
apparently swept clean of stock and fixtures. It is understood that
Lowenstein has fled to Matamoros, Mexico, where his wife preceded him
some two weeks ago. The liabilities are estimated at fifty thousand
dollars, and the only asset is the store building, which is valued at
ten thousand dollars and is subject to mortgages aggregating about the
same amount. The majority of the creditors are in New York City and
Boston."

Morris returned the paper to his partner without comment.

"You see, Mawruss," said Abe, as he lit a fresh cheroot. "Sometimes it
pays to be sick. Ain't it?"

CHAPTER IV

"Never no more, Mawruss," said Abe Potash to his partner as they sat in
the show-room of their spacious cloak and suit establishment one week
after Abe's return from Pittsburgh. "Never no more, Mawruss, because it
ain't good policy. This is strictly a wholesale business, and if once we
sell a friend _one_ garment that friend brings a friend, and that friend
brings also a friend, and the first thing you know, Mawruss, we are
doing a big retail business at a net loss of fifty cents a garment."

"But this ain't a friend, Abe," Morris protested. "It's my wife's
servant-girl. She seen one of them samples, style forty-twenty-two, them
plum-color Empires what I took it home to show M. Garfunkel on my way
down yesterday, and now she's crazy to have one. If she don't get one my
Minnie is afraid she'll leave."

"All right," Abe said, "let her leave. If my Rosie can cook herself and
wash herself, Mawruss, I guess it won't hurt your Minnie. Let her try
doing her own work for a while, Mawruss. I guess it'll do her good."

"But, anyhow, Abe, I told the girl to come down this morning and I'd
give her one for two dollars, and I guess she'll be here most any time
now."

"Well, Mawruss," said Abe, "this once is all right, but never no more.
We ain't doing a cloak and suit business for the servant-girl trade."

Further discussion was prevented by the entrance of the retail customer
herself. Morris jumped quickly to his feet and conducted her to the rear
of the store, while Abe silently sought refuge in the cutting-room
upstairs.

"What size do you think you wear, Lina?" Morris asked.

"Big," Lina replied. "Fat."

"Yes, I know," Morris said, "but what size?"

"Very fat," Lina replied. She was a Lithuanian and her generous figure
had never known the refining influence of a corset until she had landed
at Ellis Island two years before.

"That's the biggest I got, Lina," Morris said, producing the
largest-size garment in stock. "Maybe if you try it on over your dress
you'll get some idea of whether it's big enough."

Lina struggled feet first into the gown, which buttoned down the back,
and for five minutes Morris labored with clenched teeth to fasten it for
her.

"That's a fine fit," he said, as he concluded his task. He led her
toward the mirror in the front of the show-room just as M. Garfunkel
entered the store door.

"Hallo, Mawruss," he cried. "What's this? A new cloak model you got?"

[Illustration: WHAT'S THIS? A NEW CLOAK MODEL YOU GOT?]

Morris blushed, while Lina and M. Garfunkel both made a critical
examination of the garment's eccentric fit.

"Why, that's one of them forty-twenty-two's what I ordered a lot of this
morning, Mawruss. Ain't it?"

Morris gazed ruefully at the plum-color gown and nodded.

"Then don't ship that order till you hear from me," M. Garfunkel said.
"I guess I got to hustle right along."

"Don't be in a hurry, Mr. Garfunkel," Morris cried. "You ain't come in
the store just to tell me that, have you?"

"Yes, I have," said Garfunkel, his eye still glued to Lina's bulging
figure. "That's all what I come for. I'll write you this afternoon."

He slammed the door behind him and Morris turned to the unbuttoning of
the half-smothered Lina.

"That'll be two dollars for _you_, Lina," he said, "and I guess it'll be
about four hundred for us."

At seven the next morning, when Abe came down the street from the
subway, a bareheaded girl sat on the short flight of steps leading to
Potash & Perlmutter's store door. As Abe approached, the girl rose and
nodded, whereat Abe scowled.

"If a job you want it," he said, "you should go round to the back door
and wait till the foreman comes."

"Me no want job," she said. "Me _coosin_."

"Cousin!" Abe cried. "Whose cousin?"

"Lina's coosin," said the girl. She held out her hand and, opening it,
disclosed a two-dollar bill all damp and wrinkled. "Me want dress like
Lina."

"What!" Abe cried. "So soon already!"

"Lina got nice red dress. She show it me last night," the girl said. "Me
got one, too."

She smiled affably, and for the first time Abe noticed the smooth, fair
hair, the oval face and the slender, girlish figure that seemed made for
an Empire gown. Then, of course, there was the two-dollar bill and its
promise of a cash sale, which always makes a strong appeal to a
credit-harried mind like Abe's. "Oh, well," he said with a sigh, leading
the way to the rack of Empire gowns in the rear of the store, "if I must
I suppose I must."

He selected the smallest gown in stock and handed it to her.

"If you can get into that by your own self you can have it for two
dollars," he said, pocketing the crumpled bill. "I don't button up
nothing for nobody."

He gathered up the mail from the letter-box and carried it to the
show-room. There was a generous pile of correspondence, and the very
first letter that came to his hand bore the legend, "The Paris. Cloaks,
Suits and Millinery. M. Garfunkel, Prop." Abe mumbled to himself as he
tore it open.

"I bet yer he claims a shortage in delivery, when we ain't even shipped
him the goods yet," he said, and commenced to read the letter; "I bet
yer he----"

He froze into horrified silence as his protruding eyes took in the
import of M. Garfunkel's note. Then he jumped from his chair and ran
into the store, where the new retail customer was primping in front of
the mirror.

"Out," he yelled, "out of my store."

She turned from the fascinating picture in the looking-glass to behold
the enraged Abe brandishing the letter like a missile, and with one
terrified shriek she made for the door and dashed wildly toward the
corner.

Morris was smoking an after-breakfast cigar as he strolled leisurely
from the subway, and when he turned into White Street Abe was still
standing on the doorstep.

"What's the matter?" Morris asked.

"Matter!" Abe cried. "Matter! _Nothing's_ the matter. Everything's fine
and dandy. Just look at that letter, Mawruss. That's all."

Morris took the proffered note and opened it at once.

"Gents," it read. "Your Mr. Perlmutter sold us them plum-color Empires
this morning, and he said they was all the thing on Fifth Avenue. Now,
gents, we sell to the First Avenue trade, like what was in your store
this afternoon when our Mr. Garfunkel called, and our Mr. Garfunkel seen
enough already. Please cancel the order. Your Mr. Perlmutter will
understand. Truly yours, The Paris. M. Garfunkel, Prop."

M. Garfunkel lived in a stylish apartment on One Hundred and
Eighteenth Street. His family consisted of himself, Mrs. Garfunkel,
three children and a Lithuanian maid named Anna, and it was a source of
wonder to the neighbors that a girl so slight in frame could perform the
menial duties of so large a household. She cooked, washed and sewed for
the entire family with such cheerfulness and application that Mrs.
Garfunkel deemed her a treasure and left to her discretion almost every
domestic detail. Thus Anna always rose at six and immediately awakened
Mr. Garfunkel, for M. Garfunkel's breakfast was an immovable feast,
scheduled for half-past six.

But on the morning after he had purchased the plum-color gowns from
Potash & Perlmutter it was nearly eight before he awoke, and when he
entered the dining-room, instead of the two fried eggs, the sausage and
the coffee which usually greeted him, there were spread on the table
only the evening papers, a brimming ash-tray and a torn envelope bearing
the score of last night's pinochle game.

He was about to return to the bedroom and report Anna's disappearance
when a key rattled in the hall door and Anna herself entered. Her cheeks
were flushed and her hair was blown about her face in unbecoming
disorder. Nevertheless, she smiled the triumphant smile of the
well-dressed.

"Me late," she said, but Garfunkel forgot all about his lost breakfast
hour when he beheld the plum-color Empire.

"Why," he gasped, "that's one of them forty-twenty-two's I ordered
yesterday."

Anna lifted both her arms the better to display the gown's perfection,
and Garfunkel examined it with the eye of an expert.

"Let's see the back," he said. "That looks great on you, Anna."

He spun her round and round in his anxiety to view the gown from all
angles.

"I must have been crazy to cancel that order," he went on. "Where did
you get it, Anna?"

"Me buy from Potash & Perlmutter," she said. "My coosin Lina works by
Mr. Perlmutter. She gets one yesterday for two dollar. Me see it last
night and like it. So me get up five o'clock this morning and go
downtown and buy one for two dollar, too."

M. Garfunkel made a rapid mental calculation, while Anna left to prepare
the belated breakfast.

He estimated that Anna had paid a little less for her retail purchase
than the price Potash & Perlmutter had quoted to him for hundred lots.

"They're worth it, too," he said to himself. "Potash & Perlmutter is a
couple of pretty soft suckers, to be selling goods below cost to
servant-girls. I always thought Abe Potash was a pretty hard nut, but I
guess I'll be able to do business with 'em, after all."

At half-past ten M. Garfunkel entered the store of Potash & Perlmutter
and greeted Abe with a smile that blended apology, friendliness and
ingratiation in what M. Garfunkel deemed to be just the right
proportions. Abe glared in response.

"Well, Abe," M. Garfunkel cried, "ain't it a fine weather?"

"Is it?" Abe replied. "I don't worry about the kind of weather it is
when I gets cancelations, Mr. Garfunkel. What for you cancel that order,
Mr. Garfunkel?"

M. Garfunkel raised a protesting palm.

"Now, Abe," he said, "if you was to go into a house what you bought
goods off of and seen a garment you just hear is all the rage on Fifth
Avenue being tried on by a cow----"

"A cow!" Abe said. "I want to tell you something, Mr. Garfunkel. That
lady what you see trying on them Empires was Mawruss' girl what works by
his wife, and while she ain't no Lillian Russell nor nothing like that,
y'understand, if you think you should get out of taking them goods by
calling her a cow you are mistaken."

The qualities of ingratiation and friendliness departed from M.
Garfunkel's smile, leaving it wholly apologetic.

"Well, Abe, as a matter of fact," he said, "I ain't canceled that order
altogether _absolutely_, y'understand. Maybe if you make inducements I
might reconsider it."

"Inducements!" Abe cried. "Inducements is nix. Them gowns costs us
three dollars apiece, and we give 'em to you for three-ten. If we make
any inducements we land in the poorhouse. Ain't it?"

"Oh, the price is all right," M. Garfunkel protested, "but the terms is
too strict. I can't buy _all_ my goods at ten days. Sammet Brothers
gives me a line at sixty and ninety days, and so I do most of my
business with them. Now if I could get the same terms by _you_, Abe, I
should consider your line ahead of Sammet Brothers'."

"Excuse _me_," Abe interrupted. "I think I hear the telephone ringing."

He walked to the rear of the store, where the telephone bell was
jingling.

"Miss Cohen," he said to the bookkeeper as he passed the office, "answer
the 'phone. I'm going upstairs to speak to Mr. Perlmutter."

He proceeded to the cutting-room, where Morris was superintending the
unpacking of piece-goods.

"Mawruss," he said, "M. Garfunkel is downstairs, and he says he will
reconsider the cancelation and give it us a big order if we let him have
better terms. What d'ye say, Mawruss?"

Morris remained silent for a minute.

"Take a chance, Abe," he said at length. "He can't bust up on us by the
first bill. Can he?"

"No," Abe agreed hesitatingly, "but he _might_, Mawruss?"

"Sure he might," said Morris, "but if we don't take no chances, Abe, we
might as well go out of the cloak and suit business. Sell him all he
wants, Abe."

"I'll sell him all he can pay for, Mawruss," said Abe, "and I guess that
ain't over a thousand dollars."

He returned to the first floor, where M. Garfunkel eagerly awaited him,
and produced a box of the firm's K. to M. first and second credit
customers' cigars.

"Have a smoke, Mr. Garfunkel," he said.

M. Garfunkel selected a cigar with care and sat down.

"Well, Abe," he said, "that was a long talk you had over the telephone."

"Sure it was," Abe replied. "The cashier of the Kosciusko Bank on Grand
Street rang me up. He discounts some of our accounts what we sell
responsible people, and he asks me that in future I get regular
statements from all my customers--those that I want to discount their
accounts in particular."

M. Garfunkel nodded slowly.

"Statements--you shall have it, Abe," he said, "but I may as well tell
you that it's foolish to discount bills what you sell _me_. I sometimes
discount them myself. I'll send you a statement, anyhow. Now let's look
at your line, Abe. I wasted enough time already."

For the next hour M. Garfunkel pawed over Potash & Perlmutter's stock,
and when he finally took leave of Abe he had negotiated an order of a
thousand dollars; terms, sixty days net.

The statement of M. Garfunkel's financial condition, which arrived the
following day, more than satisfied Morris Perlmutter and, had it not
been quite so glowing in character, it might even have satisfied Abe
Potash.

"I don't know, Mawruss," he said; "some things looks too good to be
true, Mawruss, and I guess this is one of them."

"Always you must worry, Abe," Morris rejoined. "If Vanderbilt and Astor
was partners together in the cloak and suit business, and you sold 'em a
couple of hundred dollars' goods, Abe, you'd worry yourself sick till
you got a check. I bet yer Garfunkel discounts his bill already."

Morris' prophecy proved to be true, for at the end of four weeks M.
Garfunkel called at Potash & Perlmutter's store and paid his sixty-day
account with the usual discount of ten per cent. Moreover, he gave them
another order for two thousand dollars' worth of goods at the same
terms.

In this instance, however, full fifty-nine days elapsed without word
from M. Garfunkel, and on the morning of the sixtieth day Abe entered
the store bearing every appearance of anxiety.

"Well, Abe," Morris cried, "what's the matter now? You look like you was
worried."

"I bet yer I'm worried, Mawruss," Abe replied.

"Well, what's the use of worrying?" he rejoined. "M. Garfunkel's account
ain't due till to-day."

"Always M. Garfunkel!" Abe cried. "M. Garfunkel don't worry me much,
Mawruss. I'd like to see a check from him, too, Mawruss, but I ain't
wasting no time on him. My Rosie is sick."

"Sick!" Morris exclaimed. "That's too bad, Abe. What seems to be the
trouble?"

"She got the rheumatism in her shoulder," Abe replied, "and she tries to
get a girl by intelligent offices to help her out, but it ain't no use.
It breaks her all up to get a girl, Mawruss. Fifteen years already she
cooks herself and washes herself, and now she's got to get a girl,
Mawruss, but she can't get one."

Morris clucked sympathetically.

"Maybe that girl of yours, Mawruss," Abe went on as though making an
innocent suggestion, "what we sell the forty-twenty-two to, maybe she
got a sister or a cousin maybe, what wants a job, Mawruss."

"I'll telephone my Minnie right away," Morris said, and as he turned to
do so M. Garfunkel entered. Abe and Morris rushed forward to greet him.
Each seized a hand and, patting him on the back, escorted him to the
show-room.

"First thing," M. Garfunkel said, "here is a check for the current bill."

"No hurry," Abe and Morris exclaimed, with what the musical critics call
splendid attack.

"Now that that's out of the way," M. Garfunkel went on, "I want to give
you another order. Only thing is, Mawruss, you know as well as I do that
in the installment cloak and suit business a feller needs a lot of
capital. Ain't it?"

Morris nodded.

"And if he buys goods only for cash or thirty or sixty days, Abe," M.
Garfunkel continued, "he sometimes gets pretty cramped for money,
because his own customers takes a long time to pay up. Ain't it?"

Abe nodded, too.

"Well, then," M. Garfunkel concluded, "I'll give you boys a fine order,
but this time it's got to be ninety days."

Abe puffed hard on his cigar, and Morris loosened his collar, which had
become suddenly tight.

"I always paid prompt my bills. Ain't it?" M. Garfunkel asked.

"Sure, Mr. Garfunkel," Abe replied. "_That_ you did do it. But ninety
days is three months, and ourselves we got to pay our bills in thirty
days."

"However," Morris broke in, "that is neither there nor here. A good
customer is a good customer, Abe, and so _I'm_ agreeable."

This put the proposition squarely up to Abe, and he found it a difficult
matter to refuse credit to a customer whose check for two thousand
dollars was even then reposing in Abe's waistcoat pocket.

"All right," Abe said. "Go ahead and pick out your goods."

For two solid hours M. Garfunkel went over Potash & Perlmutter's line
and, selecting hundred lots of their choicest styles, bought a
three-thousand-dollar order.

"We ain't got but half of them styles in stock," said Morris, "but we
can make 'em up right away."

"Then, them goods what you got in stock, Mawruss," said Garfunkel, "I
must have prompt by to-morrow, and the others in ten days."

"That's all right," Morris replied, and when M. Garfunkel left the store
Abe and Morris immediately set about the assorting of the ordered stock.

"Look a-here, Mawruss," Abe said, "I thought you was going to see about
that girl for my Rosie."

"Why, so I was, Abe," Morris replied; "I'll attend to it right away."

He went to the telephone and rang up his wife, and five minutes later
returned to the front of the store.

"Ain't that the funniest thing, Abe," he said. "My Minnie speaks to the
girl, and the girl says she got a cousin what's just going to quit her
job, Abe. She'll be the very girl for your Rosie."

"I don't know, Mawruss," Abe replied. "My Rosie is a particular woman.
She don't want no girl what's got fired for being dirty or something
like that, Mawruss. We first want to get a report on her and find out
what she gets fired for."

"You're right, Abe," Morris said. "I'll find out from Lina to-night."

Once more they fell to their task of assorting and packing the major
part of Garfunkel's order, and by six o'clock over fifteen hundred
dollars' worth of goods was ready for delivery.

"We'll ship them to-morrow," Abe said, as they commenced to lock up for
the night, "and don't forget about that girl, Mawruss."

On his way downtown the next morning Abe met Leon Sammet, senior member
of the firm of Sammet Brothers. Between Abe and Leon existed the nominal
truce of competition, which in the cloak and suit trade implies that
while they cheerfully exchanged credit information from their office
files they maintained a constant guerilla warfare for the capture of
each other's customers.

Now, M. Garfunkel had been a particularly strong customer of Sammet
Brothers, and since Abe assumed that M. Garfunkel had dropped Sammet
Brothers in favor of Potash & Perlmutter his manner toward Leon was
bland and apologetic.

"Well, Leon," he said, "how's business?"

Leon's face wrinkled into a smile.

"It could be better, of course, Abe," he said, "but we done a tremendous
spring trade, anyhow, even though we ain't got no more that sucker Louis
Grossman working for us. We shipped a couple of three-thousand-dollar
orders last week. One of 'em to Strauss, Kahn & Baum, of Fresno."

These were old customers of Potash & Perlmutter, and Abe winced.

"They was old customers of ours, Leon," he said, "but they done such a
cheap class of trade we couldn't cut our line enough to please 'em."

"Is that so?" Leon rejoined. "Maybe M. Garfunkel was an old customer of
yours, too, Abe."

"M. Garfunkel?" Abe cried. "Was M. Garfunkel the other?"

"He certainly was," Leon boasted. "We shipped him three thousand
dollars. One of our best customers, Abe. Always pays to the day."

For the remainder of the subway journey Abe was quite unresponsive to
Leon's jibes, a condition which Leon attributed to chagrin, and as they
parted at Canal Street Leon could not forbear a final gloat.

"I suppose, Abe, M. Garfunkel does too cheap a class of trade to suit
you, also. Ain't it?" he said.

Abe made no reply, and as he walked south toward White Street Max
Lapidus, of Lapidus & Elenbogen, another and a smaller competitor,
bumped into him.

"Hallo, Abe," Max said. "What's that Leon Sammet was saying just now
about M. Garfunkel?"

"Oh, M. Garfunkel is a good customer of his," Abe replied cautiously;
"so he claims."

"Don't you believe it," said Max. "M. Garfunkel told me himself he used
to do some business with Sammet Brothers, but he don't do it no more. We
done a big business with M. Garfunkel ourselves."

"So?" Abe commented.

"We sold him a couple of thousand dollars at ninety days last week,"
Lapidus went on. "He's elegant pay, Abe. We sold him a good-size order
every couple of months this season, and he pays prompt to the day. Once
he discounted his bill."

"Is that so?" Abe said, as they reached the front of Potash &
Perlmutter's store. "Glad to hear M. Garfunkel is so busy. Good-morning,
Max."

Morris Perlmutter met him at the door.

"Hallo, Abe," he cried. "What's the matter? You look pale. Is Rosie
worse?"

Abe shook his head.

"Mawruss," he said, "did you ship them goods to M. Garfunkel yet?"

"They'll be out in ten minutes," Morris replied.

"Hold 'em for a while till I telephone over to Klinger & Klein," Abe
said.

"What you looking for, Abe?" Morris asked. "More information? You know
as well as I do, Abe, that Klinger & Klein is so conservative they
wouldn't sell Andrew Carnegie unless they got a certified check in
advance."

"That's all right, Mawruss," Abe rejoined. "Maybe they wouldn't sell
Andrew Carnegie, but if I ain't mistaken they _did_ sell M. Garfunkel.
Everybody sold him, even Lapidus & Elenbogen. So I guess I'll telephone
'em."

"Well, wait a bit, Abe," Morris cried. "My Minnie's girl Lina is here
with her cousin. I brought 'em down this morning so you could talk to
her yourself."

"All right," Abe replied. "Tell 'em to come into the show-room."

A moment later Lina and her cousin Anna entered the show-room. Both
were arrayed in Potash & Perlmutter's style forty-twenty-two, but while
Lina wore a green hat approximating the hue of early spring foliage,
Anna's head-covering was yellow with just a few crimson-lake
roses--about eight large ones--on the side.

"Close the window, Mawruss," said Abe. "There's so much noise coming
from outside I can't hear myself think."

"The window is closed, Abe," Morris replied. "It's your imagination."

"Well, then, which one is which, Mawruss?" Abe asked.

"The roses is Anna," Morris said. "Anna, you want to work by Mr.
Potash's lady?"

"Sure she does," Abe broke in. "Only I want to ask you a few questions
before I hire you. Who did you work by before, Anna?"

Anna hung her head and simpered.

"Mister M. Garfunkel," she murmured.

"Is that so?" Morris exclaimed. "Why, he's a good customer of ours."

"Don't butt in, Mawruss," Abe said. "And what did you leave him for,
Anna?"

"Me don't leave _them_," Anna replied. "Mrs. Garfunkel is fine lady.
Mister Garfunkel, too. They leave _me_. They goin' away next month, out
to the country."

"Moving out to the country, hey?" said Abe. He was outwardly calm, but
his eyes glittered. "What country?"

Anna turned to her cousin Lina and spoke a few words of Lithuanian.

"She say she don't remember," Lina explained, "but she say is something
sounds like '_canned_ goods'."

"_Canned_ goods?" Morris murmured.

Abe bit the ends of his mustache for a moment, and then he leaped to his
feet.

"_Canada!_" he yelled, and Lina nodded vigorously.

He darted out of the show-room and ran to the telephone. In ten minutes
he returned, his face bathed in perspiration.

"Anna," he croaked, "you come to work by me. Yes? How much you get by
that--that M. Garfunkel?"

"Twenty dollars a month," Anna replied.

"All right, we'll pay you twenty-two," he said. "You're cheap at the
price. So I expect you this evening."

He turned to his partner after the girls had gone.

"Mawruss," he said, "put them goods for M. Garfunkel back in stock. I
rung up Klinger & Klein and they sold him four thousand. I also rung up
the Perfection Cloak and Suit Company--also four thousand; Margolius &
Fried--two thousand; Levy, Martin & Co.--three thousand, and so on. The
way I figure it, he must of bought a hundred thousand dollars' worth of
goods, all in the last few days, and all at ninety days net. He couldn't
get a quarter of the goods in that First Avenue building of his,
Mawruss, so where is the rest? Auction houses, Mawruss, north, south,
east and west, and I bet yer he got the advance checks for each
consignment deposited in Montreal right now. I bet yer he didn't even
unpack the cases before he reshipped. Tell Miss Cohen to come in and
bring her book."

When Miss Cohen took her seat Abe rose and cleared his throat for an
epistle worthy of the occasion.

"The Paris. M. Garfunkel, Proprietor," he said. "Gents: Owing to
circumstances which has arose----No. Wait a bit."

He cleared his throat more vigorously.

"The Paris. M. Garfunkel, Proprietor," he said. "Gents: Owing to the
fact that the _U_-nited States bankruptcy laws don't go nowheres except
in the _U_-nited States, we are obliged to cancel the order what you
give us. Thanking you for past favors and hoping to do a strictly-cash
business with you in the future, we are truly yours, Potash &
Perlmutter."

Miss Cohen shut her book and arose.

"Wait a bit, Miss Cohen. I ain't through yet," Abe said. He tilted
backward and forward on his toes for a moment.

"P. S.," he concluded. "We hope you'll like it in Canada."

CHAPTER V

"Things goes pretty smooth for us lately, Mawruss," Abe Potash remarked,
shortly after M. Garfunkel's failure. "I guess we are due for a _schlag_
somewheres, ain't it?"

"Always you got to kick," Morris cried. "If you would only listen to
what _I_ got to say oncet in a while, Abe, things would always go
smooth."

Abe emitted a raucous laugh.

"Sure, I know," he said, "like this here tenement house proposition you
was talking to me about, Mawruss. You ain't content we should have our
troubles in the cloak and suit business, Mawruss, you got to go outside
yet and find 'em. You got to go into the real estate business too."

"Real-estaters ain't got no such trouble like _we_ got it, Abe," Morris
retorted. "There ain't no seasons in real estate, Abe. A tenement house
this year is like a tenement house last year, Abe, also the year before.
They ain't wearing stripes in tenement houses one year, Abe, and solid
colors the next. All you do when you got a tenement house, Abe, is to go
round and collect the rents, and when you got a customer for it you
don't have to draw no report on him. Spot cash, he pays it, Abe, or else
you get a mortgage as security."

"You talk like Scheuer Blumenkrohn, Mawruss, when he comes round here
last year and wants to swap it two lots in Ozone Grove, Long Island, for
a couple of hundred misses' reefers," Abe replied. "When I speculate,
Mawruss, I take a hand at auction pinochle."

"This ain't no speculation, Abe," said Morris. "This is an investment. I
seen the house, Abe, six stories and basement stores, and you couldn't
get another tenant into it with a shoehorn. It brings in a fine income,
Abe."

"Well, if that's the case, Mawruss," Abe rejoined, "why does Harris
Rabin want to sell it? Houses ain't like cloaks and suits, Mawruss, you
admit it yourself. We sell goods because we don't get no income by
keepin' 'em. If we have our store full with cloaks, Mawruss, and they
brought in a good income while they was in here, Mawruss, I wouldn't
want to sell 'em, Mawruss; I'd want to keep 'em."

"Sure," Morris replied. "But if the income was only four hundred and
fifty dollars a month, and next month you got a daughter what was
getting married to Alec Goldwasser, drummer for Klinger & Klein, and you
got to give Alec a couple of thousand dollars with her, but you don't
have no ready cash, _then_, Abe, you'd sell them cloaks, and so that's
why Harris Rabin wants to sell the house."

"I want to tell you something, Mawruss," Abe replied. "Harris Rabin
could sell a phonograft to a deef-and-dummy. He could sell moving
pictures to a home for the blind, Mawruss. He could also sell anything
he wanted to anybody, Mawruss, for you know as well as I do, Mawruss,
Harris Rabin is a first-class, A-number-one salesman. And so, if he
wants to sell his house so cheap there's lots of real-estaters what know
a bargain in houses when they see it. We don't, Mawruss. We ain't
real-estaters. We're in the cloak and suit business, and why should
Harris Rabin be looking for us to buy his house?"

"He ain't looking for us, Abe," Morris went on. "That's just the point.
I was by Harris Rabin's house last night, and I seen no less than three
real-estaters there. They all want that house, Abe, and if they want it,
why shouldn't we? Ike Magnus makes Harris an offer of forty-eight
thousand five hundred while I was sitting there already, but Harris
wants forty-nine for it. I bet yer, Abe, we could get it for forty-eight
seven-fifty--three thousand cash above the mortgages."

"I suppose, Mawruss, you got three thousand lying loose around your
pants' pocket. What?"

"Three thousand to a firm like us is nothing, Abe. I bet yer I could go
in and see Feder of the Kosciusko Bank and get it for the asking. We
ain't so poor, Abe, but what we can buy a bargain when we see it."

Abe shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, Mawruss, if I got to hear about Harris Rabin's house for the
rest of my life, all right. I'm agreeable, Mawruss; only, don't ask me
to go to no lawyers' offices nor nothing, Mawruss. There's enough to do
in the store, Mawruss, without both of us loafing around lawyers'
offices."

A more grudging acquiescence than this would have satisfied Morris, and,
without pausing for a cigar, he put on his hat and made straight for
Harris Rabin's place of business. The Equinox Clothing Company of which
Harris Rabin was president, board of directors and sole stockholder,
occupied the third loft of a building on Walker Street. There was no
elevator, and as Morris walked upstairs he encountered Ike Magnus at the
first landing.

"Hallo, Mawruss!" Ike cried. "Are you buying clothing now? I thought you
was in the cloak and suit business."

"Whatever business I'm in, Ike," Morris replied, "I'm in my own
business, Ike; and what is somebody else's business ain't my business,
Ike. That's the way I feel about it."

He plodded slowly up the next flight, and there stood Samuel Michaelson,
another real-estate operator.

"Ah, Mr. Perlmutter!" Samuel exclaimed. "You get around to see the
clothing trade once in a while, too. Ain't it?"

"I get around to see all sorts of trade, Mr. Michaelson," Morris
rejoined. "I got to get around and hustle to make a living, Mr.
Michaelson, because, Mr. Michaelson, I can't make no living by loafing
around street corners and buildings, Mr. Michaelson."

"Don't mention it," said Mr. Michaelson as Morris started up the last
flight. When he entered the Equinox Clothing Company's office the clang
of the bell drowned out the last words of Marks Henochstein's sentence.
Mr. Henochstein, another member of the real-estate fraternity, was in
intimate conference with Harris Rabin.

"I think we got him going," he was saying. "My wife seen Mrs. Perlmutter
at a _Kaffeeklatsch_ yesterday, and she told her I made you an offer of
forty-eight four-fifty for the house. Last night when he came around to
your place I told him the house ain't no bargain for any one what ain't
a real-estater, y'understand, and he gets quite mad about it. Also, I
watched him when Ike Magnus tells you he would give forty-eight five for
it, and he turned pale. If he----"

At this juncture the doorbell rang and Morris entered.

"No, sir_ee_, sir," Harris Rabin bawled. "Forty-nine thousand is my
figure, and that ain't forty-eight nine ninety-nine neither."

Here he recognized Morris Perlmutter with an elaborate start and
extended his hand in greeting.

"Hallo, Mawruss," he said. "Them real-estaters pester the life out of a
feller. 'Tain't no use your hanging around here, Henochstein," he called
in sterner tones. "When I make up my mind I make up my mind, and that's
all there is to it."

Henochstein turned in crestfallen silence and passed slowly out of the
room.

"Them sharks ain't satisfied that you're giving away a house, Mawruss,"
Harris went on. "They want it you should let 'em have coupons and
trading stamps with it."

"How much did he offer you?" Morris asked.

"Forty-eight five-fifty," Harris Rabin replied. "That feller's got a
nerve like a horse."

"Oh, I don't know," Morris murmured. "Forty-eight five-fifty is a good
price for the house, Harris."

"Is it?" Harris cried. "Well, maybe you think so, but you ain't such a
_gri_terion."

Morris was visibly offended at so harsh a rejoinder.

"I know I ain't, Harris," he said. "If I was I wouldn't be here, Harris.
I come here like a friend, not like one of them--them--fellers what you
talk about. If it wasn't that my Minnie is such a friend to your
daughter Miriam I shouldn't bother myself; but, knowing Alec Goldwasser
as I do, and being a friend of yours always up to now, Harris, I come to
you and say I will give you forty-eight six hundred for the house, and
that is my last word."

Harris Rabin laughed aloud.

"Jokes you are making it, Mawruss," he said. "A joke is a joke, but when
a feller got all the trouble what I got it, as you know, Mawruss, he got
a hard time seeing a joke, Mawruss."

"That ain't no joke, Harris," Morris replied. "That's an offer, and I
can sit right down now and make a memorandum if you want it, and pay you
fifty dollars as a binder."

"I'll tell you what I'll do, Mawruss," Harris said. "You raised
Henochstein fifty dollars, so I'll come down fifty dollars, and that'll
be forty-eight thousand nine hundred and fifty."

He grew suddenly excited and grabbed Morris by the arm.

"Don't let's waste no time about it," he cried. "What's the use of
memorandums? We go right away by Henry D. Feldman and fix up the
contract."

"Hold on." Morris said with a stare that blended frigidity and surprise
in just the right proportions. "I ain't said nothing about forty-eight
nine-fifty. What I said was forty-eight six."

"You don't mean that, Mawruss," Harris replied. "You mean forty-eight
_nine_."

Morris saw that the psychological moment had arrived.

"Look-y here, now, Harris," he said. "Forty-eight six from forty-eight
nine is three hundred. Ain't it?"

Harris nodded.

"Then," Morris announced, "we'll split the difference and make it
forty-eight seven-fifty."

For one thoughtful moment Harris remained silent, and then he clapped
his hand into that of Morris.

"Done!" he cried.

Twenty days elapsed, during which Potash & Perlmutter took title to
Harris Rabin's house and paid the balance of the purchase price,
moieties of which found their way into the pockets of Magnus, Michaelson
and Henochstein. At length, the first of the month arrived and Abe and
Morris left the store early so that they might collect the rents of
their real property.

"_I_ seen the house, Abe, and _you_ seen the house," Morris said as they
turned the corner of the crowded East Side street on which their
property fronted, "but you can't tell nothing from looking at a
property, Abe. When you get the rents, Abe, _that's_ when you find it
out that you got a fine property, Abe."

He led the way up the front stoop of the tenement and knocked at the
first door on the left-hand side. There was no response.

"They must be out. Ain't it?" Abe suggested.

Morris faced about and knocked on the opposite door, with a similar lack
of response.

"I guess they go out to work and lock up their rooms," Morris explained.
"We should have came here after seven o'clock."

They walked to the end of the hall and knocked on the door of one of the
two rear apartments.

"Come!" said a female voice.

Morris opened the door and they entered.

"We've come for the rent," he said. "Him and me is the new landlords."

The tenant excused herself while she retired to one of the inner rooms
and explored her person for the money. Then she handed Morris ten greasy
one-dollar bills.

"What's this?" Morris cried. "I thought the rear rooms were fourteen
dollars a month. I saw the receipts made out last month."

The tenant grinned fiendishly.

"Sure you did," she replied. "We've been getting all kinds of receipts.
Oncet we got a receipt for eighteen dollars, when dere was some
vacancies in de house, but one of de syndicate says he'd get some more
of dem 'professional' tenants, because it didn't look so good to a
feller what comes snooping around for to _buy_ the house, to see such
high rents."

"Syndicate?" Abe murmured. "Professional tenants?"

"Sure," the tenant replied. "Dere was four to de syndicate. Magnus was
one. Sumpin about a hen was de other, and den dere was dis here Rabin
and a guy called Michaelson."

"And what is this about professional tenants?" Morris croaked.

"Oh, dere was twenty-four families in de house, includin' de
housekeeper," the tenant replied. "Eighteen of 'em was professionals,
and when de syndicate sold youse de house de professionals moved up to a
house on Fourt' Street what de syndicate owns."

Abe pulled his hat over his eyes and thrust his hands into his trousers'
pockets.

"S'enough, lady," he said; "I heard enough already."

He turned to Morris.

"Yes, Mawruss," he said bitterly. "You're right. There ain't no seasons
in real estate nor in suckers neither, Mawruss. You can catch 'em every
day in the year, Mawruss. I'm going home, but if you need an express
wagon to carry away them rents, Mawruss, there's a livery stable around
the corner."

It was at least a week before Abe could bring himself to address his
partner, save in the gruffest monosyllables; but an unusual rush of
spring customers brought about a reconciliation, and Abe and Morris
forgot their real-estate venture in the reception of out-of-town trade.
In the conduct of their business Morris devoted himself to manufacturing
and shipping the goods, while Abe attended to the selling end. Twice a
year Abe made a long trip to the West or South, with shorter trips down
East between times, and he never tired of reminding his partner how
overworked he, Abe, was.

"I got my hands full, Mawruss," he said, after he had greeted half a
dozen Western customers; "I got enough to do here, Mawruss, without
running around the country. We ought to do what other houses does,
Mawruss. We ought to get a good salesman. We got three thousand dollars
to throw away on real estate, Mawruss; why don't we make an investment
like Sammet Brothers made it? Why don't we invest in a crackerjack,
A-number-one salesman?"

"I ain't stopping you, Abe," Morris replied. "Why don't we? Klinger &
Klein has a good boy, Alec Goldwasser. He done a big trade for 'em, Abe,
and they don't pay him much, neither."

"Alec Goldwasser!" Abe cried. "I'm surprised to hear you, Mawruss, you
should talk that way. We paid Alec Goldwasser enough already, Mawruss.
We paid him that two thousand dollars what he got with Miriam Rabin."

Morris looked guilty.

"Ain't I told you yet, Abe?" he said. "I thought I told you."

"You ain't told me nothing," said Abe.

"Why, Alec Goldwasser and Miriam Rabin ain't engaged no longer. The way
my Minnie tells me, Rabin says he don't want his daughter should marry a
man without a business of his own, so the match is off."

"Well, Mawruss," Abe commented, "you can't make me feel bad by telling
me _that_. But anyhow, I don't see no medals on Alec Goldwasser as a
salesman, neither. He ain't such a salesman what we want it, Mawruss."

"All right," Morris replied. "It's you what goes on the road, not me,
and you meet all the drummers. Suggest somebody yourself."

Abe pondered for a moment.

"There's Louis Mintz," he said finally. "He works by Sammet Brothers.
He's a high-priced man, Mawruss, but he's worth it."

"Sure he's worth it," Morris rejoined, "and he knows it, too. I bet yer
he's making five thousand a year by Sammet Brothers."

"I know it," said Abe, "but his contract expires in a month from now,
and it ain't no cinch to work for Sammet Brothers, neither, Mawruss. I
bet yer Louis' got throat trouble, talking into a customer them garments
what Leon Sammet makes up, and Louis' pretty well liked in the trade,
too, Mawruss."

"Well, why don't you see him, Abe?"

"I'll tell you the truth, Mawruss," Abe replied. "I _did_ see him. I
offered him all what Sammet Brothers gives him, and I told him we make a
better line for the price, but it ain't no use. Louis says a salesman's
got to work hard anyhow, so he may as well work a little harder, and he
says, too, it spoils a man's trade when he makes changes."

Here a customer entered the store and Abe was busy for more than half an
hour. At the end of that time the customer departed and Morris returned
to the show-room.

"Abe," he said, "I got an idea."

Abe looked up.

"More real estate?" he asked.

"Not more real estate, Abe," Morris corrected, "but the _same_ real
estate. When we're stuck we're stuck, Abe, ain't it?"

Abe nodded.

"So I got an idea," Morris went on, "that we go to Louis and tell him we
give him the same money what Sammet Brothers give him, only we give him
a bonus."

"A bonus!" Abe cried. "How much of a bonus?"

"A _big_ bonus, Abe," Morris replied. "We'll give him the house."

Abe remained silent.

"It'll look big, anyhow," Morris continued.

"Look big!" Abe exclaimed. "It is big. It's three thousand dollars."

"Well, you can't reckon stickers by what they cost," Morris explained.
"It's what they'll sell for."

"You're right, Mawruss," Abe commented bitterly. "And that house
wouldn't sell for Confederate money. I'll see Louis Mintz to-night."

Abe saw Louis that very evening, and they met by appointment at the
store ten days later. In the meantime Louis had inspected the house, and
when he entered Potash & Perlmutter's show-room his face wore none too
cheerful an expression.

"Well, Louis," Abe cried, "you come to tell us it's all right. Ain't
it?"

Louis shook his head.

"Abe," he said, "the old saying is you should never look at a horse's
teeth what somebody gives you, but that house is pretty near vacant."

"What of it?" Abe asked. "It's a fine house, ain't it?"

"Sure, it's a fine house," Louis agreed. "But what good is a fine house
if you can't rent it? You can't eat it, can you?"

"No," Morris replied, "but you can sell it."

"Well," Louis admitted, "selling houses ain't in my line? Maybe if I
knew enough about it I could sell it."

"But there's real-estaters what knows all about selling a house," Morris
began.

"You bet there is," Abe interrupted savagely.

"And you could get a real-estater to sell it for you," Morris concluded
with malevolent glance at his partner.

Louis consulted a list of the tenants which he had made.

"I'll think it over," he said, "and let you know to-morrow."

The next day he greeted Abe and Morris more cordially.

"I thought it over, Abe," he said, "and I guess it'll be all right."

"Fine!" Abe cried. "Let's go down and see Henry D. Feldman right away."

Just as a congenital dislocation of the hipbone suggests the name of
Doctor Lorenz, so the slightest dislocation of the cloak and suit
business immediately calls for Henry D. Feldman. No cloak and suit
bankruptcy would be complete without his name as attorney, either for
the petitioning creditors or the bankrupt, and no action for breach of
contract of employment on the part of a designer or a salesman could
successfully go to the jury unless Henry D. Feldman wept crocodile tears
over the summing up of the plaintiff's case.

In the art of drawing agreements relative to the cloak and suit trade
in all its phases of buying, selling, employing or renting, he was a
virtuoso, and his income was that of six Supreme Court judges rolled
into one. For the rest, he was of impressive, clean-shaven appearance,
and he was of the opinion that a liberal sprinkling of Latin phrases
rendered his conversation more pleasing to his clients.

Louis and Abe were ushered into his office only after half an hour's
waiting at the end of a line of six clients, and they wasted no time in
stating their business.

"Mr. Feldman," Abe murmured, "this is Mr. Louis Mintz what comes to work
by us as a salesman."

"Mr. Mintz," Mr. Feldman said, "you are to be congratulated. Potash &
Perlmutter have a reputation in the trade _nulli secundum_, and it is
generally admitted that the goods they produce are _summa cum laude_."

"We make fall and winter goods, too," Abe explained. "All kinds of
garments, Mr. Feldman. I don't want to give Louis no wrong impression.
He's got to handle lightweights as well as heavyweights, too."

Mr. Feldman stared blankly at Abe and then continued: "No doubt you have
quite settled on the terms."

"We've talked it all over," said Louis, "and this is what it is."

He then specified the salary and commission to be paid, and engaged Mr.
Feldman to draw the deed for the tenement house.

"And how long is this contract to last?" Feldman asked.

"For five years," Abe replied.

"Five years nothing," said Louis. "I wouldn't work for no one on a five
years' contract. One year is what I want it."

"One year!" Abe cried. "Why, Louis, that ain't no way to talk. In one
year you'd just about get well enough acquainted with our trade--of
course, I'm only _talking_, y'understand--to cop it out for some other
house what would pay you a couple of hundred more. No, Louis, I think it
ought to be for five years."

"Of course, if you think I'm the kind what takes a job to cop out the
firm's trade, Abe," Louis commenced, "why----"

"I'm only saying for the sake of argument," Abe hastened to explain.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Louis: I'll make it two years, and at the
end of that time if you want to quit you can do it; only, you should
agree not to work as salesman for no other house for the space of one
year afterward or you can go on working for us for one year afterward.
How's that?"

"I think that's eminently fair," Mr. Feldman broke in hurriedly. "You
can't refuse those terms, Mr. Mintz. Mr. Potash will sign for his
partner, I apprehend, and then Mr. Perlmutter will be bound under the
principle of _qui fecit per alium fecit per se_."

No one could stand up against such a flood of Latin, and Louis nodded.

"All right," he said. "Let her go that way."

Mr. Feldman immediately rang for a stenographer.

"Come back to-morrow at four o'clock," he said. "I shall send a clerk
with the deed to be signed by Mrs. Potash and Mrs. Perlmutter to-night."

The next afternoon, at half an hour after the appointed time, the
contract was executed and the deed delivered to Louis Mintz, and on the
first of the following month Louis entered upon his new employment.

Louis' first season with his new employers was fraught with good results
for Potash & Perlmutter, who reaped large profits from Louis'
salesmanship; but for Louis it had been somewhat disappointing.

"I never see nothing like it," he complained to Abe. "That tenement
house is like a summer hotel--people coming and going all the time; and
every time a tenant moves yet I got to pay for painting and repapering
the rooms. You certainly stuck me good on that house."

"Stuck you!" Abe cried. "We didn't stuck you, Louis. We just give you
the house as a bonus. If it don't rent well, Louis, you ought to sell
it."

"Don't I know I ought to sell it?" Louis cried; "but who's going to buy
it? Real-estater after real-estater comes to look at it, and it all
amounts to nix. They wouldn't take the house for the mortgages."

For nearly a year and a half Louis and Abe repeated this conversation
every time Louis came back from the road, and on the days when Louis
paid interest on mortgages and premiums on fire insurance he grew
positively tearful.

"Why don't you pay me what I am short from paying carrying charges on
that property?" Louis asked one day. "And I'll give you the house back."

Abe laughed.

"You should make that proposition to the feller what sold us the house,"
Abe said jocularly.

"Any one what sold that house once, Abe," Louis rejoined, "don't want it
back again."

At length, when Louis was absent on a business trip some three months
before the expiration of his contract, Abe approached Morris in the
show-room and mooted the subject of taking back the house.

"That house is a sticker, Mawruss," he said, "and we certainly shouldn't
let Louis suffer by it. The boy done well by us, and we don't want to
lose him."

"Well, Abe," Morris replied, "the way I look at it, we should wait till
his time is pretty near up. Maybe he will renew the contract without our
taking back the house, Abe; but if the worst comes to the worst, Abe, we
give him what he spent on the house and take it back, _providing_ he
renews the contract for a couple of years. Ain't it?"

Abe nodded doubtfully.

"Maybe you're right, Mawruss," he said; "but the boy done good for us,
Mawruss. We made it a big profit by him this year already, and I don't
want him to think that we ain't doing the right thing by him."

"Since when was you so soft-hearted, Abe?" Morris asked satirically; and
when Louis came back from the road, a week later, no mention was made of
the house until Louis himself broached the topic.

"Look'y here, Abe," Louis said, "what are you going to do for me about
that house? Counting the rent I collected and the money I laid out for
carrying charges, I'm in the hole eight hundred and fifty dollars
already."

"Do for you, Louis!" Morris replied. "Why, what can we do for you? Why
don't you fix it up like this, Louis? Why don't you make one last
campaign among the real-estaters, and then if you don't succeed maybe we
can do something."

"That's right, Louis," Abe said. "Just try it and see what comes of it."

Then Abe handed Louis a cigar and dismissed the subject, which never
again arose until Louis was on his final trip.

"Ain't it funny, Mawruss," Abe said, the morning of Louis' expected
return--"ain't it funny he ain't mentioned that house to us since we
spoke to him the last time he was home?"

"I know it," Morris replied, "but you needn't worry, Abe. It says in
the contract that Louis can't take a job as salesman with any other
house till one year is up, and the boy can't afford to stay loafing
around for a whole year."

Abe nodded, and as he turned to look up the contract in the safe the
store door opened and Louis himself entered.

"Hallo, Louis," Abe cried. "Glad to see you, Louis. Another good trip?"

Louis nodded, and they all passed into the show-room.

"Well, you're going to make many more of them for us before you're
through, Louis," Abe said.

Louis grunted, and Abe and Morris exchanged disquieting glances.

"You know, Louis," Morris said in the dulcet accents of the sucking
dove, "your contract is up next week, and Abe and me was talking about
it the other day, Louis, and about the house, too, and we says we should
do something about that house, Louis, and so we'll make another contract
for about, say, three years, and we'll fix it up about the house when we
all sign the contract, Louis. We meant to take back the house all the
time, Louis. We was only kidding you along, Louis," he continued.

"So you was only kidding me along when you told me to see them
real-estaters, hey?" Louis demanded.

"Sure," Abe and Morris replied.

"Then you was the ones what got kidded," Louis said, "for the last time
I was in town I took your advice. Do you know a feller called
Michaelson? And two other fellers by the name of Henochstein and
Magnus?"

Abe nodded.

"Well, them three fellers took that house off of my hands and paid me
six hundred dollars to boot, over and above the seven hundred and fifty
I sunk in it."

Abe and Morris puffed vigorously at their cigars.

"And what's more," Louis went on, "they introduced me to Harris Rabin,
of the Equinox Clothing Company. I guess you know him, too, don't you?"

Morris admitted sullenly that he did.

"He's got a daughter, Miss Miriam Rabin," Louis concluded. "Her and me
is going to announce our engagement in next Sunday's Herald."

He paused and watched Morris and Abe, to see the news sink in.

"And as soon as we're married," he said, "back to the road for mine, but
not with Potash & Perlmutter."

"I guess you're mistaken, Louis," Abe cried. "I guess you got a contract
with us what will stop you going on the road for another year yet."

"Back up, Abe," Louis said. "That there contract says I can't work as a
_salesman_ for any other house for a year. But Rabin and me is going as
partners together in the cloak and suit business, and if there's
anything in that contract about me not selling cloaks as my own boss
I'll eat it."

Abe went to the safe for the contract. At last he found it, and after
reading it over he handed it to Morris.

"_You_ eat it, Mawruss," he said. "Louis is right."

CHAPTER VI

"After all, Mawruss," Abe declared as he glanced over the columns of the
Daily Cloak and Suit Record, "after all a feller feels more satisfied
when he could see the customers himself and find out just exactly how
they do business, y'understand. Maybe the way we lost Louis Mintz wasn't
such a bad thing anyhow, Mawruss. I bet yer if Louis would of been
selling goods for us, Mawruss, we would of been in that Cohen &
Schondorf business too. Me, I am different, Mawruss. So soon as I went
in that store, Mawruss, I could see that them fellers was in bad. I'm
very funny that way, Mawruss."

"You shouldn't throw no bouquets at yourself because you got a little
luck, Abe," Morris commented.

"Some people calls it luck, Mawruss, but I call it judgment,
y'understand."

"Sure, I know," Morris continued, "but how about Hymie Kotzen, Abe?
Always you said it that feller got lots of judgment, Abe."

"A feller could got so much judgment as Andrew Carnegie," Abe retorted,
"and oncet in a while he could play in hard luck too. Yes, Mawruss,
Hymie Kotzen is certainly playing in hard luck."

"Is he?" Morris Perlmutter replied. "Well, he don't look it when I seen
him in the Harlem Winter Garden last night, Abe. Him and Mrs. Kotzen was
eating a family porterhouse between 'em with tchampanyer wine yet."

"Well, Mawruss," Abe said, "he needs it tchampanyer wine, Mawruss. Last
month I seen it he gets stung two thousand by Cohen & Schondorf, and
to-day he's chief mourner by the Ready Pay Store, Barnet Fischman
proprietor. Barney stuck him for fifteen hundred, Mawruss, so I guess he
needs it tchampanyer wine to cheer him up."