"What do you mean?" Feldman asked. "Why wouldn't he know his own daughter was married?"
"Because she's living home yet," Philip replied, and "I can't persuade her to go housekeeping, neither."
Feldman frowned for a moment and then he struck the desk with his fist.
"By jiminy!" he shouted, "you've got the old man by the whiskers!"
It was now Philip's turn to ask what Feldman meant.
"Why," the latter explained, "your wife's inchoate right of dower is still outstanding."
"That's where you make a big mistake, Mr. Feldman," Philip corrected. "My Birdie is a neat dresser and never so much as a pin out of place."
"You don't understand," Feldman continued. "As soon as Birdie and you got married she took an interest in your property."
"Sure she took an interest in my property," Philip assented. "Why, if it wouldn't be for her I wouldn't know nothing about this here sale to-day."
"But I mean that as soon as she married you she became vested with the right to receive the rents of a third of that property during her lifetime as soon as you died," said Feldman.
"Well, we won't worry about that," Philip said with a deprecatory wave of his hand, "because, in the first place, that property is pretty near vacant and don't bring in enough rents to pay the taxes, and, in the second place, I'm still good and healthy and I wouldn't die for a long time yet."
"Oh, what's the use!" Feldman cried. "What I mean is that they can't foreclose those second mortgages unless they make Birdie a party to the suit and serve her with the summons; so, all you have to do to stop the sale is to go down to the salesroom and, when the auctioneer starts to ask for bids, get up and tell 'em all about it. Why, they'll have to begin their suit all over again."
"But," Philip protested, "if I tell 'em all about it the old man will throw Birdie out of the house."
"Hold on!" Feldman broke in. "You mustn't tell them you're married to Birdie. Just tell them you're married, and let them find out your wife's name for themselves. Although, to be sure, that won't take long, for the record of marriage licenses at the city hall will show it."
"License nothing!" Philip cried. "We didn't get no license at the city hall. We got married by a justice of the peace in Jersey City."
"Fine!" Feldman exclaimed, his professional ethics thrown to the winds. "That'll keep 'em guessing as long as you want."
"All I want is a month, and by that time I can raise the money and fix the whole thing up," Margolius replied.
Feldman looked at his watch.
"Chase yourself," he said; "it's a quarter of twelve, and the foreclosure sale begins at noon."
VI
On the rostrum of an auctioneer in the Vesey Street salesroom stood Eleazer Levy in weighty conversation with Miles M. Scully, the referee in foreclosure. Scully's brow was furrowed into a thousand earned wrinkles, and the little knot of real-estate brokers who regularly attend foreclosure sales gazed reverently on the two advocates.
"And here was this guy," Levy concluded, "with nothing but a pair of sixes all the time."
"But in a table-stakes game," Scully murmured, "you make a sight more if you don't butt into every pot. If you think you're topped lay 'em down. That's what I do, and it pays."
They were waiting for the auctioneer to appear, and Goldblatt hung around the edge of the crowd and gazed anxiously at them. He had heard that morning of the proposed street widening and wanted the sale to go t