CHAPTER FIVE
ONE OF ESAU'S FABLES
THE MOUSE SCRATCHES THE LION'S BACK; THE LION SCRATCHES THE MOUSE'S BACK
"NO, ELKAN," said Louis Stout, of Flugel & Stout. "When you are coming to compare Johnsonhurst mit Burgess Park it's already a molehill to a mountain."
"Burgess Park ain't such high ground neither," Elkan Lubliner retorted. "Max Kovner says he lives out there on Linden Boulevard three months only and he gets full up with malaria something terrible."
"Malaria we ain't got it in Burgess Park!" Louis declared. "I am living there now six years, Elkan, and I never bought so much as a two-grain quinine pill. Furthermore, Elkan, Kovner's malaria you could catch in Denver, Colorado, or on an ocean steamer, y'understand; because, with a lowlife bum like Max Kovner, which he sits up till all hours of the night – a drinker and a gambler, understand me – you don't got to be a professor exactly to diagonize his trouble. It ain't malaria, Elkan, it's Katzenjammer!"
"But my Yetta is stuck on Johnsonhurst," Elkan protested, "and she already makes up her mind we would move out there."
"That was just the way with my wife," Louis said. "For six months she is crying all the time Ogden Estates; and if I would listen to her, Elkan, and bought out there, y'understand, instead we would be turning down offers on our house at an advance of twenty per cent. on the price we paid for it, we would be considering letting the property go under foreclosure! You ought to see that place Ogden Estates nowadays, Elkan – nothing but a bunch of Italieners lives there."
"But – " Elkan began.
"Another thing," Louis Stout broke in: "Out in Johnsonhurst what kind of society do you got? Moe Rabiner lives there, and Marks Pasinsky lives there – and Gott weiss wer noch. My partner, Mr. Flugel, is approached the other day with an offer of some property in Johnsonhurst, and I was really in favour he should take it up; but he says to me, 'Louis,' he says, 'a place where such people lives like Pasinsky and Rabiner I wouldn't touch at all!' And he was right, Elkan. Salesmen and designers only lives in Johnsonhurst; while out in Burgess Park we got a nice class of people living, Elkan. You know J. Kamin, of the Lee Printemps, Pittsburgh?"
"Used to was one of our best customers," Philip Scheikowitz replied, "though he passed us up last year."
"His sister, Mrs. Benno Ortelsburg, lives one house by the other with me," Louis went on. "Her husband does a big real-estate business there. Might you also know Julius Tarnowitz, of the Tarnowitz-Wixman Department Store, Rochester?"
"Bought from us a couple years a small bill," Marcus Polatkin said. "I wish we could sell him more."
"Well, his brother, Sig Tarnowitz, lives across the street from us," Louis cried triumphantly. "Sig's got a fine business there on Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn."
"What for a business?"
"A furniture business," Louis replied. "And might you would know also Joel Ribnik, which he is running the McKinnon-Weldon Drygoods Company, of Cyprus, Pennsylvania?"
"That's the feller what you nearly sold that big bill to last month, Elkan," Scheikowitz commented.
"Well, his sister is married to a feller by the name Robitscher, of Robitscher, Smith & Company, the wallpaper house and interior decorators. They got an elegant place down the street from us."
"But – " Elkan began again.
"But nothing, Elkan!" Marcus Polatkin interrupted with a ferocious wink; for Louis Stout, as junior partner in the thriving Williamsburg store of Flugel & Stout, was viewing Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's line preparatory to buying his spring line of dresses. "But nothing, Elkan! Mr. Stout knows what he is talking about, Elkan; and if I would be you, instead I would argue with him, understand me, I would take Yetta out to Burgess Park on Sunday and give the place a look."
"That's the idea!" Louis cried. "And you should come and take dinner with us first. Mrs. Stout would be delighted."
"What time do you eat dinner?" Philip Scheikowitz asked, frowning significantly at Elkan.
"Two o'clock," Louis replied, and Polatkin and Scheikowitz nodded in unison.
"He'll be there," Polatkin declared.
"At a quarter before two," Scheikowitz added and Elkan smiled mechanically by way of assent.
"So come along, Mr. Stout," Polatkin said, "and look at them Ethel Barrymore dresses. I think you'll like 'em."
He led Stout from the office as he spoke while Scheikowitz remained behind with Elkan.
"Honest, Elkan," he said, "I'm surprised to see the way you are acting with Louis Stout!"
"What do you mean, the way I'm acting, Mr. Scheikowitz?" Elkan protested. "Do you think I am going to buy a house in a neighbourhood which I don't want to live in at all just to oblige a customer?"
"Schmooes, Elkan!" Scheikowitz exclaimed. "No one asks you you should buy a house there. Be a little reasonable, Elkan. What harm would it do you, supposing you and Yetta should go out to Burgess Park next Sunday? Because you know the way Louis Stout is, Elkan. He will look over our line for two weeks yet before he decides on his order – and meantime we shouldn't entegonize him."
"I don't want to antagonize him," Elkan said; "but me and Yetta made our arrangements to go out to Johnsonhurst next Sunday."
"Go out there the Sunday after," cried Scheikowitz. "Johnsonhurst would still be on the map, Elkan. It ain't going to run away exactly."
Thus persuaded, Elkan and Yetta on the following Sunday elbowed their way through the crowd at the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge, and after a delay of several minutes boarded a train for Burgess Park.
"Well, all I can say is," Yetta gasped, after they had seized on the only vacant seats in the car, "if it's this way on Sunday what would it be on weekdays?"
"There must have been a block," Elkan said meekly. Only by the exercise of the utmost marital diplomacy had he induced his wife to make the visit to Louis Stout's home, and one of his most telling arguments had been the advantage of the elevated railroad journey to Burgess Park over the subway ride to Johnsonhurst.
"Furthermore," Yetta insisted, referring to another of Elkan's plausible reasons for visiting Burgess Park, "I suppose all these Italieners and Bétzimmers are customers of yours which we was going to run across on our way down there. Ain't it?"
Elkan blushed guiltily as he looked about him at the carload of holiday-makers; but a moment later he exclaimed aloud as he recognized in a seat across the aisle no less a person than Joseph Kamin, of Le Printemps, Pittsburgh.
"Why, how do you do, Mr. Kamin?" he said.
"Not Elkan Lubliner, from Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company?" Mr. Kamin exclaimed. "Well, who would think to meet you here!"
He rose from his seat, whereat a bulky Italian immediately sank into it; and as livery of seizin he appropriated the comic section of Mr. Kamin's Sunday paper, which had fallen to the floor of the car, and spread it wide open in front of him.
"Now you lost your seat," Elkan said; "so you should take mine."
He jumped to his feet and Kamin sat down in his place, while a Neapolitan who hung on an adjacent strap viciously scowled his disappointment.
"You ain't acquainted with Mrs. Lubliner?" Elkan said.
"Pleased to meetcher," Kamin murmured.
Yetta bowed stiffly and Elkan hastened to make conversation by way of relieving Mr. Kamin's embarrassment.
"Looks like an early spring the way people is going to the country in such crowds," he said.
"I bet yer," Kamin rejoined emphatically. "I arrived in New York two weeks ahead of my schedule, because I simply got to do my buying now or lose a lot of early spring trade."
"Have you been in town long?" Elkan asked.
"Only this morning," Kamin answered; "and I am going down to eat dinner with my sister, Mrs. Ortelsburg. She lives in Burgess Park."
"Is that so?" Elkan exclaimed. "We ourselves are going to Burgess Park – to visit a friend."
"A customer," Yetta corrected.
"A customer could also be a friend," Kamin declared, "especially if he's a good customer."
"This is a very good customer," Elkan went on, "by the name Louis Stout."
"Louis Stout, from Flugel & Stout?" Kamin cried. "Why, him and Benno Ortelsburg is like brothers already! Well, then, I'll probably see you down in Burgess Park this afternoon, on account every Sunday afternoon Louis plays pinocle at my brother-in-law's house. Why don't he fetch you round to take a hand?"
"I should be delighted," Elkan said; but Yetta sniffed audibly.
"I guess we would be going home right after dinner, before the crowd starts back," she said.
"Not on a fine day like this you wouldn't," Kamin protested; "because once you get out to Burgess Park you ain't in such a hurry to come back. I wish we would got such a place near Pittsburgh, Mrs. Lubliner. I bet yer I would quick move out there. The smoke gets worser and worser in Pittsburgh; in fact, it's so nowadays we couldn't sell a garment in pastel shades."
"Well, we got plenty blacks, navy blues, Copenhagen blues and brown in our spring line, Mr. Kamin," Elkan said; and therewith he commenced so graphically to catalogue Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's new stock that, by the time the train drew into Burgess Park, Kamin was making figures on the back of an envelope in an effort to convince Elkan that his prices were all wrong.
"But, anyhow," Kamin said, as they parted in front of the Ortelsburgs' colonial residence, "I will see you in the store to-morrow morning sure."
"You'll see me before then, because me and Yetta is coming round this afternoon sure – ain't we, Yetta?"
Mrs. Lubliner nodded, for her good humour had been restored by Elkan's splendid exhibition of salesmanship.
"This afternoon is something else again," Kamin said, "because a feller which tries to mix pinocle with business is apt to overplay his hand in both games."
"No, Joe; you're wrong," Benno Ortelsburg said to his brother-in-law, Joseph Kamin, as they sipped their after-dinner coffee in the Ortelsburg library that day. "It wouldn't be taking advantage of the feller at all. You say yourself he tries to sell goods to you on the car already. Why shouldn't we try to sell Glaubmann's house to him while he's down here? And we'll split the commission half and half."
Kamin hesitated before replying.
"In business, Joe – it's Esau's fable of the lion and the mouse every time!" Ortelsburg continued. "The mouse scratches the lion's back and the lion scratches the mouse's back! Ain't it?"
"But you know so well as I do, Benno, that Glaubmann's house on Linden Boulevard ain't worth no eighteen thousand dollars," Kamin said.
"Why ain't it?" Benno retorted. "Glaubmann's Linden Boulevard house is precisely the same house as this, built from the same plans and everything – and this house costs me thirteen thousand five hundred dollars. Suburban real estate is worth just so much as you can get some sucker to pay for it, Joe. So I guess I better get the cards and chips ready, because I see Glaubmann coming up the street now."
A moment later Glaubmann entered the library and greeted Kamin uproariously.
"Hello, Joe!" he cried. "How's the drygoods business in Pittsburgh?"
"Not so good as the real-estate business in Burgess Park, Barney," Kamin replied. "They tell me you are selling houses hand over fist."
"Yow– hand over fist!" Barnett cried. "If I carry a house six months and sell it at a couple thousand dollars' profit, what is it?"
"I got to get rid of a whole lot of garments to make a couple thousand dollars, Barney," Kamin said; "and, anyhow, if you sell a house for eighteen thousand dollars which it cost you thirteen-five you would be making a little more as four thousand dollars."
"Sure I would," Glaubmann replied; "aber the people which buys green-goods and gold bricks ain't investing in eighteen-thousand-dollar propositions! Such yokels you could only interest in hundred-dollar lots between high and low water on some of them Jersey sandbars."
"There is all kinds of come-ons, Barney," Joe said, "and the biggest one, understand me, is the business man who is willing to be played for a sucker, so as he can hold his customers' trade."
"You got the proper real-estate spirit, Joe," Benno declared, as he returned with the cards and chips. "You don't allow the ground to grow under your feet. Just at present, though, we are going to spiel a little pinocle and we would talk business afterward."
"Real estate ain't business," Kamin retorted. "It's a game like pinocle; and I got a little Jack of Diamonds and Queen of Spades coming round here in a few minutes which I would like to meld."
"Now you are talking poetry," Barnett said.
"Take it from me, Barney," Benno Ortelsburg interrupted, "this ain't no poetry. It's a fact; and if you could see your way clear to pay a thousand dollars' commission, y'understand, me and Joe is got a customer for your Linden Boulevard house at eighteen thousand dollars."
"Jokes you are making me!" Barnett cried. "You shouldn't drink so much schnapps after dinner, Benno, because I could as much get eighteen thousand for that Linden Boulevard house as I would pay you a thousand dollars commission if I got it."
"You ain't paying me the thousand dollars," Benno protested. "Don't you suppose Joe's got a look-in-here?"
"And furthermore," Joe said, "you also got Louis Stout to consider. If you think Louis Stout is going to sit by and see a commission walk past him, Benno, you are making a big mistake."
"I'm willing we should give Louis a hundred or so," Benno agreed. "We got to remember Louis is a customer of his also."
"A customer of who's?" Barnett asked, as the doorbell rang.
"Stiegen!" Benno hissed; and a moment later he ushered Elkan and Yetta into the library, while Mr. Stout brought up the rear.
Benno cleared his throat preparatory to introducing the newcomers, but Louis Stout brushed hastily past him.
"Mr. Glaubmann," Louis said, "this is my friend, Elkan Lubliner."
"And you forget Mrs. Lubliner," cried Mrs. Ortelsburg, who had hurried downstairs at the sound of voices in the hall. "I'm Mrs. Ortelsburg," she continued, turning to Yetta. "Won't you come upstairs and take your things off?"
"Elkan," Louis Stout continued, "you better go along with her. I want you to see what an elegant lot of clothes-closets they got upstairs. You know most houses is designed by archytecks which all they are trying to do is to save money for the builder. Aber this archyteck was an exception. The way he figures it he tries to build the house to please the women, mit lots of closet room, and – excuse me, ladies – to hell with the expenses! I'll go upstairs with you and show you what I mean."
Benno frowned angrily.
"'Tain't necessary, Louis," he said. "Mrs. Ortelsburg would show him."
He drew forward chairs; and, after Elkan and Yetta had followed Mrs. Ortelsburg upstairs, he closed the library door.
"Couldn't I introduce people in my own house, Stout?" he demanded.
Louis Stout shrugged his shoulders.
"If you mean as a matter of ettykit – yes," he retorted; "aber if it's a real-estate transaction – no. When I bring a customer to Mr. Glaubmann for his Linden Boulevard house, Ortelsburg, I do the introducing myself, which afterward I don't want no broker to claim he earned the commission by introducing the customer first – understand me?"
He seated himself and smiled calmly at Kamin, Glaubmann, and his host.
"I ain't living in the country for my health exactly," he declared, "and don't you forget it."
"Where's your written authorization from the owner?" Ortelsburg demanded, raising a familiar point of real-estate brokerage law; and Stout tapped his breast pocket.
"Six months ago already," Stout replied, "Mr. Glaubmann writes me if I hear of a customer for his house he would protect me, and I got the letter here in my pocket. Ain't that right, Mr. Glaubmann?"
Glaubmann had walked toward the window and was looking out upon the budding white poplars that spread their branches at a height of six feet above the sidewalks of Burgess Park. He nodded in confirmation of Louis' statement; and as he did so a short, stout person, who was proceeding hurriedly down the street in the direction of the station, paused in front of the Ortelsburg residence. A moment later he rang the bell and Ortelsburg himself opened the door.
"Nu, Mr. Kovner!" he said. "What could I do for you?"
"Mr. Glaubmann just nods to me out of your window," Max Kovner replied, "and I thought he wants to speak to me."
Benno returned to the library with Max at his heels.
"Do you want to speak to Mr. Kovner, Glaubmann?" he asked, and Glaubmann started perceptibly. During the months of Max Kovner's tenancy Glaubmann had not only refrained from visiting his Linden Boulevard house, but he had also performed feats of disappearance resembling Indian warfare in his efforts to avoid Max Kovner on the streets of Burgess Park. All this was the result of Max Kovner's taking possession of the Linden Boulevard house upon Glaubmann's agreement to make necessary plumbing repairs and to paint and repaper the living rooms; and Glaubmann's complete breach of this agreement was reflected in the truculency of Max Kovner's manner as he entered the Ortelsburg library.
"Maybe Glaubmann don't want to speak to me," he cried, "but I want to speak to him, and in the presence of you gentlemen here also."
He banged Ortelsburg's library table with his clenched fist.
"Once and for all, Mr. Glaubmann," he said, "either you would fix that plumbing and do that painting, understand me, or I would move out of your Linden Boulevard house the first of next month sure!"
Glaubmann received this ultimatum with a defiant grin.
"Schmooes, Kovner," he said, "you wouldn't do nothing of the kind! You got mit me a verbal lease for one year in the presence of my wife, your wife and a couple of other people which the names I forget."
"And how about the repairs?" Kovner demanded.
"If you seen the house needs repairs and you go into possession anyhow," Glaubmann retorted, "you waive the repairs, because the agreement to repair merges in the lease. That's what Kent J. Goldstein, my lawyer, says, Kovner; and ask any other lawyer, Kovner, and he could tell you the same."
"So," Kovner exclaimed, "I am stuck with that rotten house for a year! Is that the idee?"
Glaubmann nodded.
"All right, Mr. Glaubmann," Kovner concluded. "You are here in a strange house to me and I couldn't do nothing; but I am coming over to your office to-morrow, and if I got to sit there all day, understand me, we would settle this thing up."
"That's all right," Ortelsburg interrupted. "When you got real-estate business with Glaubmann, Mr. Kovner, his office is the right place to see him. Aber here is a private house and Sunday, Mr. Kovner, and we ain't doing no real-estate business here. So, if you got a pressing engagement somewheres else, Mr. Kovner, don't let me hurry you."
He opened the library door, and with a final glare at his landlord Max passed slowly out.
"That's a dangerous feller," Glaubmann said as his tenant banged the street door behind him. "He goes into possession for one year without a written lease containing a covenant for repairs by the landlord, y'understand, and now he wants to blame me for it! Honestly, the way some people acts so unreasonable, Kamin, it's enough to sicken me with the real-estate business!"
Kamin nodded sympathetically, but Louis Stout made an impatient gesture by way of bringing the conversation back to its original theme.
"That ain't here or there," he declared. "The point is I am fetching you a customer for your Linden Boulevard house, Glaubmann, and I want this here matter of the commission settled right away."
Ortelsburg rose to his feet as a shuffling on the stairs announced the descent of his guests.
"Commissions we would talk about afterward," he said. "First let us sell the house."
In Benno Ortelsburg's ripe experience there were as many methods of selling suburban residences as there were residences for sale; and, like the born salesman he was, he realized that each transaction possessed its individual obstacles, to be overcome by no hard-and-fast rules of salesmanship. Thus he quickly divined that whoever sought to sell Elkan a residence in Burgess Park must first convince Yetta, and he proceeded immediately to apportion the chips for a five-handed game of auction pinocle, leaving Yetta to be entertained by his wife. Mrs. Ortelsburg's powers of persuasion in the matter of suburban property were second only to her husband's, and the game had not proceeded very far when Benno looked into the adjoining room and observed with satisfaction that Yetta was listening open-mouthed to Mrs. Ortelsburg's fascinating narrative of life in Burgess Park.
"Forty hens we got it," she declared; "and this month alone they are laying on us every day a dozen eggs – some days ten, or nine at the least. Then, of course, if we want a little fricassee once in a while we could do that also."
"How do you do when you are getting all of a sudden company?" Yetta asked. "I didn't see no delicatessen store round here."
"You didn't?" Mrs. Ortelsburg exclaimed. "Why, right behind the depot is Mrs. J. Kaplan's a delicatessen store, which I am only saying to her yesterday, 'Mrs. Kaplan,' I says, 'how do you got all the time such fresh, nice smoke-tongue here?' And she says, 'It's the country air,' she says, 'which any one could see; not alone smoke-tongue keeps fresh, aber my daughter also, when she comes down here,' she says, 'she is pale like anything – and look at her now!' And it's a fact, Mrs. Lubliner, the daughter did look sick, and to-day yet she's got a complexion fresh like a tomato already. That's what Burgess Park done for her!"
"But don't you got difficulty keeping a girl, Mrs. Ortelsburg?" Yetta inquired.
"Difficulty?" Mrs. Ortelsburg cried. "Why, just let me show you my kitchen. The girls love it here. In the first place, we are only twenty minutes from Coney Island; and, in the second place, with all the eggs which we got it, they could always entertain their fellers here in such a fine, big kitchen, which I am telling my girl, Lena: 'So long as you give 'em omelets or fried eggs mit fat, Lena, I don't care how many eggs you use —aber butter is butter in Burgess Park oder Harlem.'"
In this vein Mrs. Ortelsburg continued for more than an hour, while she conducted Yetta to the kitchen and cellar and back again to the bedrooms above stairs, until she decided that sufficient interest had been aroused to justify the more robust method of her husband. She therefore returned to the library, and therewith began for Benno Ortelsburg the real business of the afternoon.
"Well, boys," he said, "I guess we would quit pinocle for a while and join the ladies."
He chose for this announcement a moment when Elkan's chips showed a profit of five dollars; and as, in his capacity of banker, he adjusted the losses of the other players, he kept up a merry conversation directed at Mrs. Lubliner.
"Here in Burgess Park," he said, "we play pinocle and we leave it alone; while in the city when a couple business men play pinocle they spend a day at it – and why? Because they only get a chance to play pinocle once in a while occasionally. Every night they are going to theatre oder a lodge affair, understand me; whereas here, the train service at night not being so extra elegant, y'understand, we got good houses and we stay in 'em; which in Burgess Park after half-past seven in the evening any one could find a dozen pinocle games to play in – and all of 'em breaks up by half-past ten already."
With this tribute to the transit facilities and domesticity of Burgess Park, he concluded stacking up the chips and turned to Mrs. Lubliner.
"Yes, Mrs. Lubliner," he continued with an amiable smile, "if you wouldn't persuade your husband to move out to Burgess Park, understand me, I shall consider it you don't like our house here at all."
"But I do like your house!" Yetta protested.
"I should hope so," Benno continued, "on account it would be a poor compliment to a lot of people which could easy be good customers of your husband. For instance, this house was decorated by Robitscher, Smith & Company, which Robitscher lives across the street already; and his wife is Joel Ribnik's – the McKinnon-Weldon Drygoods Company's – a sister already."
"You don't tell me?" Yetta murmured.
"And Joel is staying with 'em right now," Benno went on. "Furthermore, we got our furniture and carpets by Sig Tarnowitz, which he lives a couple of doors down from here – also got relatives in the retail drygoods business by the name Tarnowitz-Wixman Drygoods Company. The brother, Julius Tarnowitz, is eating dinner with 'em to-day."
"It's a regular buyers' colony here, so to speak," Louis Stout said, and Joseph Kamin nodded.
"Tell you what you do, Benno," Joseph suggested. "Get Tarnowitz and Ribnik to come over here. I think Elkan would like to meet them."
Benno slapped his thigh with a resounding blow.
"That's a great idee!" he cried; and half an hour later the Ortelsburg library was thronged with visitors, for not only Joel Ribnik and Julius Tarnowitz had joined Benno's party, but seated in easy chairs were Robitscher, the decorator, and Tarnowitz, the furniture dealer.
"Yes, siree, sir!" Robitscher cried. "Given the same decorative treatment to that Linden Boulevard house, Mr. Lubliner, and it would got Ortelsburg's house here skinned to pieces, on account over there it is more open and catches the sun afternoon and morning both."
During this pronouncement Elkan's face wore a ghastly smile and he underwent the sensations of the man in the tonneau of a touring car which is beginning to skid toward a telegraph pole.
"In that case I should recommend you don't buy a Kermanshah rug for the front room," Sigmund Tarnowitz interrupted. "I got in my place right now an antique Beloochistan, which I would let go at only four hundred dollars."
"Aber four hundred dollars is an awful lot of money to pay for a rug," Elkan protested. He had avoided looking at Yetta for the past half-hour; but now he glanced fearfully at her, and in doing so received a distinct shock, for Yetta sat with shining eyes and flushed cheeks, inoculated beyond remedy with the virus of the artistic-home fever.
"Four hundred ain't so much for a rug," she declared.
"Not for an antique Beloochistan," Sig Tarnowitz said, "because every year it would increase in value on you."
"Just the same like that Linden Boulevard house," Ortelsburg added, "which you could take it from me, Mrs. Lubliner, if you don't get right away an offer of five hundred dollars advance on your purchase price I would eat the house, plumbing and all."
At the word "plumbing" Glaubmann started visibly.
"The plumbing would be fixed so good as new," he said; "and I tell you what I would do also, Mr. Lubliner – I would pay fifty per cent. of the decorations if Mr. Ortelsburg would make me an allowance of a hundred dollars on the commission!"
"Could anything be fairer than this?" Ortelsburg exclaimed; and he grinned maliciously as Louis Stout succumbed to a fit of coughing.
"But we ain't even seen the house!" Elkan cried.
"Never mind we ain't seen it," Yetta said; "if the house is the same like this that's all I care about."
"Sure, I know," Elkan replied; "but I want to see the house first before I would even commence to think of buying it."
"Schon gut!" Glaubmann said. "I ain't got no objection to show you the house from the outside; aber there is at present people living in the house, understand me, which for the present we couldn't go inside."
"Mr. Lubliner don't want to see the inside, Glaubmann!" Ortelsburg cried, in tones implying that he deprecated Glaubmann's suggestion as impugning Elkan's good faith in the matter. "The inside would be repaired and decorated to suit, Mr. Glaubmann, but the outside he's got a right to see; so we would all go round there and give a look."
Ten minutes afterward a procession of nine persons passed through the streets of Burgess Park and lingered on the sidewalk opposite Glaubmann's house. There Ortelsburg descanted on the comparatively high elevation of Linden Boulevard and Mrs. Ortelsburg pointed out the chicken-raising possibilities of the back lot; and, after gazing at the shrubbery and incipient shade trees that were planted in the front yard, the line of march was resumed in the direction of Burgess Park's business neighbourhood. Another pause was made at Mrs. J. Kaplin's delicatessen store; and, laden with packages of smoked tongue, Swiss cheese and dill pickles, the procession returned to the Ortelsburg residence marshalled by Benno Ortelsburg, who wielded as a baton a ten-cent loaf of rye bread.
Thus the remainder of the evening was spent in feasting and more pinocle until nearly midnight, when Elkan and Yetta returned to town on the last train. Hence, with his late homecoming and the Ortelsburgs' delicatessen supper, Elkan slept ill that night, so that it was past nine o'clock before he arrived at his office the following morning. Instead of the satirical greeting which he anticipated from his senior partner, however, he was received with unusual cordiality by Polatkin, whose face was spread in a grin.
"Well, Elkan," he said, "you done a good job when you decided to buy that house."
"When I decided to buy the house? Who says I decided to buy the house?" Elkan cried.
"J. Kamin did," Polatkin explained. "He was here by a quarter to eight already; and not alone J. Kamin was here, but Joel Ribnik and Julius Tarnowitz comes in also. Scheikowitz and me has been on the jump, I bet yer; in fact, Scheikowitz is in there now with J. Kamin and Tarnowitz. Between 'em, those fellers has picked out four thousand dollars' goods."
Elkan looked at his partner in unfeigned astonishment.
"So soon?" he said.
"Ribnik too," Polatkin continued. "He makes a selection of nine hundred dollars' goods – among 'em a couple stickers like them styles 2040 and 2041. He says he is coming back in half an hour, on account he's got an appointment with a brother-in-law of his."