"I think you was telling me you got a couple idees about helping Dishkes out, Elkan," he said. "So, in the first place, Dishkes, you should please let us see a list of your creditors."
With this prelude Scheikowitz drew forward his chair and plunged into a discussion of Dishkes' affairs that lasted for more than two hours; and when Dishkes at length departed he took with him notices of a meeting addressed to his twenty creditors, prepared for immediate mailing by Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's stenographer.
"And that's what we let ourselves in for," Scheikowitz declared after the elevator door had closed behind Dishkes. "To-morrow morning at eleven o'clock the place here would look like the waiting room of a depot, and all our competitors would be rubbering at our stock already."
"Let 'em rubber!" Elkan said. "If I don't get an extension for that feller my name ain't Elkan Lubliner at all; because between now and then I am going round to see them twenty creditors, and I bet yer they will sign an extension agreement, with the figures I am going to put up to them!"
"Figures!" Scheikowitz jeered. "What good is figures to them fellers? Showing figures to a bankrupt's creditors is like taking to a restaurant a feller which is hungry and letting him look at the knives and forks and plates, understand me!"
Elkan nodded.
"Sure, I know," he said; "but the figures ain't all."
Surreptitiously he drew from his pocket a faded cabinet photograph.
"I sneaked this away from Dishkes when he wasn't noticing," Elkan declared; "and if this don't fix 'em nothing will!"
"Say, lookyhere, Lubliner," Leon Sammet cried after Elkan had broached the reason for his visit late that afternoon, "don't give me that tale of woe again. Every time we are asking Dishkes for money he pulls this here sick-wife story on us, understand me; and it don't go down with me no more."
"What d'ye mean don't go down with you?" Elkan demanded. "Do you claim his wife ain't sick?"
"I don't claim nothing," Sammet retorted. "I ain't no doctor, Lubliner. I am in the cloak-and-suit business, and I got to pay my creditors with United States money, Lubliner, if my wife would be dying yet."
"Which you ain't got no wife," Elkan added savagely.
"Gott sei Dank!" Sammet rejoined. "Aber if I did got one, y'understand, I would got Verstand enough to pick out a healthy woman, which Dishkes does everything the same. He picks out a store there on an avenue when it is a dead neighbourhood, understand me – and he wants us we should suffer for it."
"The neighbourhood wouldn't be dead after three months," Elkan said. "Round the corner on both sides of the street is building thirty-three-foot, seven-story elevator apartments yet; and when they are occupied, Dishkes would do a rushing business."
"That's all right," Sammet answered. "I ain't speculating in real-estate futures, Lubliner; so you might just so well go ahead and attend to your business, Lubliner, because me I am going to do the same."
"But lookyhere, Sammet," Elkan still pleaded. "I seen pretty near every one of Dishkes' creditors and they all agree the feller should have a three months' extension."
"Let 'em agree," Sammet shouted. "They are their own bosses and so am I, Lubliner; so if they want to give him an extension of their account I ain't got nothing to say. All I want is eight hundred dollars he owes me; and the rest of them suckers could agree till they are black in the face."
"Aber, anyhow, Sammet," Elkan said, "come to the meeting to-morrow morning and we would see what we could do."
"See what we could do!" Sammet bellowed. "You will see what I could do, Lubliner; and I will come to the meeting to-morrow and I'll do it too. So, if you don't mind, Lubliner, I could still do a little work before we close up here."
For a brief interval Elkan dug his nails into the palms of his hands, and his eyes unconsciously sought a target for a right swing on Sammet's bloated face; but at length he nodded and forced himself to smile.
"Schon gut, Mr. Sammet," he said; "then I will see you to-morrow."
A moment later he strode down lower Fifth Avenue toward the place of business of the last creditor on Dishkes' list. This was none other than Elkan's distinguished friend, B. Gans, the manufacturer of highgrade dresses; and it required less than ten minutes to procure his consent to the proposed extension.
"And I hope," Elkan said, "that we could count on you to be at the meeting to-morrow."
"That's something I couldn't do," B. Gans replied; "but I'll write you a letter and give you full authority you should represent me there. Excuse me a minute and I'll dictate it to Miss Scheindler." When he returned, five minutes later, he sat down at his desk and, crossing his legs, prepared to beguile the tedium of waiting.
"Well, Elkan," he said, "what you been doing with yourself lately? Thee-aytres and restaurants, I suppose?"
"Thee-aytres I ain't so much interested in no more," Elkan said. "The fact is, I am going in now for antics."
"Antics!" B. Gans exclaimed.
"Sure," Elkan replied; and there was a certain pride in his tones. "Antics is what I said, Mr. Gans – Jacobson chairs and them – now – cat's furniture."
"Cat's furniture?" Gans repeated. "What d'ye mean cat's furniture?"
"Angry cats," Elkan explained; and then a great light broke upon B. Gans.
"Oh!" he exclaimed. "You mean Henri Quatre furniture?"
"Hungry cat oder angry cat," Elkan said. "All I know is we are refurnishing our flat, Mr. Gans, and we are taking an advice from Max Merech, our designer. It's a funny thing about that feller, Mr. Gans – with garments he is right up to the minute, aber mit furniture nothing suits him unless it would be anyhow a hundred years old."
"So you are buying some antique furniture for your flat?" B. Gans commented, and Elkan nodded.
"We made a start anyhow," he said. "We bought a couple Jacobson chairs – two hundred and fifty years old already."
"Good!" B. Gans exclaimed. "I want to tell you, Elkan, you couldn't go far wrong if you would buy any piece of furniture over a hundred years old. They didn't know how to make things ugly in them days – and Jacobean chairs especially. I am furnishing my whole dining room in that period and my library in Old French. It costs money, Elkan, but it's worth it."
Elkan nodded and steered the conversation into safer channels; so that by the time Miss Scheindler had brought in the letter they were discussing familiar business topics.
"Also," Gans said as he appended his neat signature to the letter, "I wish you and Dishkes luck, Elkan; and keep up the good work about the antique furniture. Even when you would get stuck with a reproduction instead of a genuine piece once in a while, if it looks just as good as the original and no one tells you differently, understand me, you feel just as happy."
Thus encouraged, Elkan went home that evening full of a determination to acquire all the antique furniture his apartment would hold; and he and Yetta sat up until past midnight conning the pages of a heavy volume on the subject, which Yetta had procured from the neighbouring public library. Accordingly Elkan rose late the following morning, and it was almost nine o'clock before he reached his office and observed on the very top of his morning mail a slip of paper containing a message in the handwriting of Sam, the office boy.
"A man called about Jacobowitz," it read, and Elkan immediately rang his deskbell.
"What Jacobowitz is this?" he demanded as Sam entered, and the office boy shrugged.
"I should know!" he said.
"What d'ye mean you should know?" Elkan cried. "Ain't I always told it you you should write down always the name when people call?"
"Ain't Jacobowitz a name?" Sam replied. "Furthermore, you couldn't expect me I should get the family history from everybody which is coming in the place, Mr. Lubliner – especially when the feller says he would come back."
"Why didn't you tell me he is coming back?" Elkan asked, and again Sam shrugged.
"When the feller is coming back, Mr. Lubliner," he said, "it don't make no difference if I tell you oder not. He would come back anyhow."
Having thus disposed of the matter to his entire satisfaction, Sam withdrew and banged the door triumphantly behind him, while Elkan fell to examining his mail. He had hardly cut the first envelope, however, when his door opened to admit Dishkes.
"Nu, Dishkes!" Elkan said. "You are pretty early, ain't it?"
Dishkes nodded.
"I'm a Schlemiel, Mr. Lubliner," he said, "and that's all there is to it. Yesterday I went to work and lost my wife's picture."
Elkan slapped his thigh with his hand.
"Well, ain't I a peach?" he said. "I am getting so mixed up with these here antics I completely forgot to tell Yetta anything about it. I didn't even show it to her, Dishkes; so you must leave me have it for a day longer, Dishkes."
As he spoke he drew the cabinet photograph from his breast pocket and handed it to Dishkes, who gazed earnestly at it for a minute. Then, resting his elbows on his knees, he buried his face in his hands and burst into a fit of hysterical sobbing, whereat Elkan jumped from his seat and passed hurriedly out of the room. As he walked toward the showroom the strains of a popular song came from behind a rack.
"Sam," he bellowed, "who asks you you should whistle round here?"
The whistling ceased and Sam emerged from his hiding-place with a feather brush.
"I could whistle without being asked," Sam replied; "and furthermore, Mr. Lubliner, when I am dusting the samples I must got to whistle; otherwise the dust gets in my lungs, which I value my lungs the same like you do, Mr. Lubliner, even if I would be here only a boy working on stock!"
With this decisive rejoinder he resumed dusting the samples, while Elkan returned to his office, where he found that Dishkes had regained his composure.
Despite the fact that all of Dishkes' creditors save one had signed an extension agreement, the meeting in Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's showroom was well attended; and when Leon Sammet came in, at quarter-past eleven, the assemblage had already elected Charles Finkman, of Maisener & Finkman, as chairman. He had just taken his seat in Philip Scheikowitz's new revolving chair and was in the act of noisily clearing his throat in lieu of pounding the table with a gavel.
"Gentlemen," he said, "first, I want to thank you for the signal honour you are doing me in appointing me your chairman. For sixteen years now my labours in the Independent Order Mattai Aaron ain't unknown to most of you here. Ten years ago, at the national convention held in Sarahcuse, gentlemen, I was unanimously elected by the delegates from sixty lodges to be your National Grand Master; and – "
At this juncture Leon Sammet rose ponderously to his feet.
"Say, Finkman!" retorted Sammet. "What has all this Stuss about the I. O. M. A. got to do mit Dishkes here?"
Again Finkman cleared his throat, and this time he produced a note of challenge that caused the members of the I. O. M. A. there present to lean forward in their seats. They expected a crushing rejoinder and they were not disappointed.
"What is the motto of the I. O. M. A., Sammet?" Finkman thundered. "'Justice, Fraternity and Charity!' And I say to you now that, as chairman of this meeting, as well as Past National Grand Master of that noble order to which you and I both belong, verstehst du, I will see that justice be done, fraternity be encouraged and charity dispensed on each and every occasion.
"Now, my brothers, here is a fellow member of our organization in distress, y'understand; and I ask you one and all this question" – he raised his voice to a pitch that made the filaments tremble in the electric-light bulbs – "Who," he roared, "who will come to his assistance?"
He paused dramatically just as Sam, the office boy, stuck his head in the showroom doorway and rent the silence with his high, piping voice.
"Mr. Lubliner," he said, "the man is here about Jacobowitz."
Elkan flapped his hand wildly, but it was too late to prevent the entrance of no less a person than Jacob Paul – the connoisseur of antiques and fine arts.
"Hello, Finkman!" he said; "what's the trouble here?"
Elkan started from his seat to interrupt his visitor, but there was something in Finkman's manner that made him sit down again.
"Why, how do you do, Mr. Paul?" Finkman exclaimed; and the clarion note had deserted his voice, leaving only a slight hoarseness to mark its passing. "What brings you here?"
"I might ask the same of you, Finkman," Jacob Paul replied; and as his keen eyes scanned the assembled company they rested for a minute on Leon Sammet, who forthwith began to perspire.
"The fact is," Finkman began, "this here is a meeting of creditors of Louis Dishkes, of the Villy dee Paris Store on Amsterdam Avenue."
Paul turned to Louis Dishkes, proprietor of the Ville de Paris Store, who sat at the side of the room behind Scheikowitz's desk in an improvised prisoner's dock.
"What's the matter, Dishkes?" Paul asked. "Couldn't you make it go up there?"
Dishkes shrugged hopelessly.
"Next month, when them houses round the corner is rented," he said, "I could do a good business there."
"You ought to," Paul agreed. "You ain't got no competitors, so far as I could see."
"That's what we all think!" Elkan broke in – "that is to say, all of us except Mr. Sammet; and he ain't willing to wait for his money."
Leon Sammet moved uneasily in his chair as Jacob Paul faced about in his direction.
"Why ain't you willing to wait, Sammet?" he asked; and Leon mopped his face with his handkerchief.
"Well, it's like this, Mr. Paul – " he began, but the connoisseur of antiques raised his hand.
"One moment, Sammet," he said. "You know as well as anybody else, and better even, that a millionaire concern like the Hamsuckett Mills must got to wait once in a while." He paused significantly. "If we didn't," he continued, "there's plenty of solvent concerns would be forced to the wall – ain't it? Furthermore, if the Hamsuckett Mills did business the way you want to, Sammet, I wouldn't keep my job as credit man and treasurer very long."
Sammet nodded weakly and plied his handkerchief with more vigour, while Elkan sat and stared at his acquaintance of Sunday night in unfeigned astonishment.
"Then what is the use of talking, Sammet?" Paul said. "So long as you are the only one standing out, why don't you make an end of it? How long an extension does Dishkes want?"
"Two months," Finkman answered.
"And where is the agreement you fellows all signed?" Paul continued.
Elkan took a paper from the desk in front of Dishkes and passed it to Paul, who drew from his waistcoat pocket an opulent gold-mounted fountain pen. Then he walked over to Leon Sammet and handed him the pen and the agreement.
"Schreib, Sammet," he said, "and don't make no more fuss about it."
A moment later Sammet appended a shaky signature to the agreement and returned it, with the pen, to Paul.
A quarter of an hour later Jacob Paul sat in Elkan's office and smoked one of Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's best cigars.
"Now I put it up to you, Lubliner," he said: "them Jacobean chairs are pretty high at fifty dollars, but I want 'em, and I'm willing to give you sixty for 'em."
Elkan smiled and made a wide gesture with both hands.
"My dear Mr. Paul," he said, "after what you done to-day for Dishkes I'll make you a present of 'em – free for nothing."
"No, you won't do no such thing," Paul declared; "because I'm going to sell 'em again and at a profit, as I may as well tell you."
"My worries what you are going to do with 'em!" Elkan declared. "But one thing I ain't going to do, Mr. Paul – I ain't going to make no profit on you; so go ahead and take the chairs at what I paid for 'em – and that's the best I could do for you."
It required no further persuasion for Jacob Paul to draw a fifty-dollar check to Elkan's order; and as he rose to leave Elkan pressed his hand warmly.
"Come up and see me, Mr. Paul, when we get through refurnishing," he said. "I promise you you would see a flat furnished to your taste – no crayon portraits nor nothing."
It was late in the afternoon when Elkan's office door opened to admit Sam, the office boy.
"Mr. Lubliner," he said, "another feller is here about this here – now – Jacobowitz."
Elkan glanced through the half-open door and recognized the figure of Ringentaub, the antiquarian.
"Tell him to come in," he said; and a moment later Ringentaub was wringing Elkan's hand and babbling his gratitude for his brother-in-law's deliverance from bankruptcy.
"God will bless you for it, Mr. Lubliner," he said; "and I am ashamed of myself when I think of it. I am a dawg, Mr. Lubliner – and that's all there is to it."
Here he drew a greasy wallet from his breast pocket and extracted three ten-dollar bills.
"Take 'em, Mr. Lubliner," he said, "and forgive me."
He pressed the bills into Elkan's hand.
"What's this?" Elkan demanded.
"That's the change from your fifty dollars," Ringentaub replied; "because, so help me, Mr. Lubliner, there is first-class material in them chairs and the feller that makes 'em for me is a highgrade cabinetmaker. Then you got to reckon it stands me in a couple of dollars also to get 'em fixed up antique, y'understand; so, if you get them chairs for twenty dollars you are buying a bargain, Mr. Lubliner."
"Why, what d'ye mean?" Elkan cried. "Ain't them chairs gen-wine Jacobean chairs?"
"Not by a whole lot they ain't," Ringentaub declared fervently.
"But Mr. Paul thinks they are!" Elkan exclaimed.
"Sure, I know," Ringentaub answered; "and that shows what a lot a collector knows about such things. Paul is a credit man for the Hamsuckett Mills, Mr. Lubliner; but he collects old furniture on the side."
For a moment Elkan gazed open-mouthed at the antiquarian and a great light began to break in on him.
"So-o-o!" he cried. "That's what you mean by a collector!"
Ringentaub nodded.
"And furthermore, Mr. Lubliner, when collectors knows more about antiques as dealers does, Mr. Lubliner," he said with his hand on the doorknob, "I'll go into the woollen piece-goods business too – which you could take it from me, Mr. Lubliner, it wouldn't be soon, by a hundred years even."
When Elkan emerged from the One-Hundred-and-Sixteenth Street station of the subway that evening a familiar voice hailed him from the rear.
"Nu, Elkan!" cried B. Gans, for it was none other than he. "You made out fine at the meeting this morning – ain't it?"
"Who told you?" Elkan asked as he linked arms with the highgrade manufacturer.
"Never mind who told me," B. Gans said jokingly; "but all I could say is you made a tremendous hit with Jacob Paul, Elkan – and if that ain't no compliment, understand me, I don't know what is. Why, there ain't a better judge of men oder antique furniture in this here city than Paul, Elkan. He's an A-Number-One credit man, too, and I bet yer he gets a big salary from them Hamsuckett Mills people, which the least his income could be – considering what he picks up selling antiques – is fifteen thousand a year."
"Does Paul sell all the antiques he collects?" Elkan asked.
"Does he?" B. Gans rejoined. "Well, I should say he does! Myself I bought from him in the past two weeks half a dozen chairs, understand me – four last week and two to-day – which I am paying him five hundred dollars for the lot. They're worth it, too, Elkan. I never seen finer examples of the period."
"But are you sure they're gen-wine?" Elkan asked as they reached the entrance to his apartment house.
"Paul says they are," B. Gans answered, slapping Elkan's shoulder in farewell; "and if he's mistaken, Elkan, then I'm content that I should be."
Two hours later, however, after Elkan had recounted to Yetta all the incidents of Dishkes' meeting and the resulting sale of the chairs, his conscience smote him.
"What d'ye think, Yetta?" he asked. "Should I tell Paul and Gans the chairs ain't gen-wine, oder not?"
For more than ten minutes Yetta wrinkled her forehead over this knotty ethical point; then she delivered her opinion.
"Mr. Gans tells you he is just as happy if they ain't gen-wine – ain't it?" she said.
Elkan nodded.
"And Mr. Paul acted honest, because he didn't know they wasn't gen-wine neither, ain't it?" she continued.
Again Elkan nodded.
"Then," Yetta declared, "if you are taking it so particular as all that, Elkan, there's only one thing for you to do – give me the thirty dollars!"
"Is that so!" Elkan exclaimed ironically. "And what will you do with the money?"
"The only thing I can do with it, Schlemiel," she said. "Ten dollars I will give Louis Dishkes he should take a trip up to the country over Sunday and visit his wife."
"And what will we do with the other twenty?" Elkan asked.
"We'll send a present with him to Mrs. Dishkes," Yetta concluded with a smile, "and it wouldn't be no antics neither!"