"Meantime you've got the house," he said.

"Exactly," Aaron replied. "I get the house. All it cost me is seven hundred and fifty dollars cash, and I also get unloaded on me for the rest of his life the old man. And while I don't wish him any harm, y'understand, _Gott soll huten_ anything should happen to him Leon, it couldn't come too soon for me."

"I bet yer," Leon said fervently. "And now let's get him in here and we'll all go down to Henry D. Feldman's office and fix the matter up."

Two hours later Leon and Uncle Mosha had signed a contract for the sale of the Madison Street house, t.i.tle to be closed and deed to be delivered within thirty days. The purchase price was stated to be forty-three thousand dollars, payable as follows: thirty-four thousand two hundred and fifty dollars by the vendee taking the house subject to mortgages aggregating that amount, seven hundred and fifty dollars cash on signing the contract, and the balance of eight thousand dollars in cash or certified check at the closing of the t.i.tle.

Prior to leaving his office Leon had cashed Aaron Kronberg's check for seven hundred and fifty dollars, and the money, in bills of large denomination, was turned over to Mosha Kronberg, who tucked them carefully away in his breast pocket.

"Well, Aaron," he said after the operation was completed, "I guess I'll be going back to Madison Street."

"Wait; I'll go along with you," Aaron cried.

"Don't you trouble yourself," Uncle Mosha declared with a confidential wink at Leon Sammet and Henry D. Feldman; "I could take care of myself all right."

"What are you going to do with all that money, Mr. Kronberg?" Leon asked as Uncle Mosha turned to leave. The old man paused with his hand on the door, and once more he favoured his questioner with a significant wink.

"Leave that to me," he said.

The thirty days succeeding Morris Perlmutter's visit to Madison Street were busy ones for all the Kronbergs. Alex had accompanied Max Gershon to Bridgetown, where conditions more than fulfilled Abe's glowing account, and the formation of the Kronberg-Gershon Drygoods Company proceeded without delay. As for Aaron Kronberg, he found that the borrowing of eight thousand dollars, even for so short a period as would be necessary to consummate the Madison Street deal, was no easy task. At length he raised the sum by paying a large bonus to his bankers in Port Sullivan, and it was deposited to the credit of Sammet Brothers four days before the closing of t.i.tle.

Meantime Uncle Mosha had not neglected the opportunity afforded him during his last few days of liberty. With his seven hundred and fifty dollars he had sought the brokerage offices of Klinkberg & Company the morning after signing his contract with Leon Sammet. There he selected American Chocolate and Cocoa as the medium of his speculation and promptly went short of seven hundred on a one-point margin. The same afternoon he was within a sixteenth of being wiped out when the market turned, and nearly one month later he took his profit of twenty-one hundred dollars, which with the original investment, minus the brokerage amounted to twenty-eight hundred dollars.

"Never no more," he said to the brokerage firm's cashier as he drew his profit. "I am through oncet and for all. No one could get me to touch another share of stock so long as I live."

With this solemn declaration he pa.s.sed out of Klinkberg & Company's office just as a short stout man burst into the hall from a door marked "Customers."

"Wow!" the short stout man exclaimed.

"_Warum_ wow?" Uncle Mosha asked.

"Amalgamated Refineries goes up four points on six sales in half an hour," the short stout man replied, "and I win two thousand."

The short stout man started down the hall and executed a fantastic dancing step in front of the elevators, while Uncle Mosha entered the door marked "Customers."

"Mr. Klinkberg," he said, handing Klinkberg & Company's two thousand eight hundred dollar check to that firm's senior partner, "buy me one thousand shares Amalgamated Refineries at the market."

An hour later he walked leisurely along Madison Street, and as he approached his own doorway Aaron Kronberg swooped down upon him.

"Uncle Mosha," he almost screamed, "where was you?"

"Where was I?" Uncle Mosha replied. "Why, I was where I was. That's where I was. What difference does it make to you where I was?"

"What difference does it make to me?" Aaron cried. "Ain't I putting up the--er--don't you know you was due at Henry D. Feldman's office to close your t.i.tle at one o'clock?--and here it is half-past one already!"

For a minute Uncle Mosha's face fell. In the excitement of following the profitable course of his speculation he had completely forgotten his real estate transaction, but he quickly recovered his composure.

"Oh, well," he said, "let 'em wait! The house won't run away, Aaron.

Let's go and get a cup coffee somewheres."

"Coffee, nothing!" Aaron growled; "you're coming right along with me. I got a carriage waiting for you."

He hustled the old man into a decrepit conveyance that was drawn up to the curb and they started immediately for Henry D. Feldman's office.

"Honest, Aaron," Uncle Mosha sighed, "I feel like I was riding to my own funeral."

"Don't worry, Uncle Mosha," Aaron said; "with the _tzuris_ which I got it lately you would quicker ride to mine."

"Well, Aaron," Uncle Mosha rejoined, "as old man Baum used to say, we all got to die sooner or later, Aaron; and all we could take with us is our good name."

"You wouldn't got to pay no excess baggage rates on that," Aaron said as the carriage came to a stop in front of Feldman's office building.

Two minutes later they entered the offices of Henry D. Feldman and were ushered immediately into the presence of that distinguished advocate himself. As they pa.s.sed through the doorway Feldman rose from his seat.

He was not alone, for at one side of a long library table sat Leon Sammet, while opposite to him a tall, sandy-haired person methodically arranged various bundles of papers which he drew out of capacious pasteboard envelopes.

"Ah, gentlemen, you're here at last," Feldman cried. "Mr. Jones, this is Mr. Kronberg and his nephew, Mr. Aaron Kronberg. Mr. Jones is a representative of the Land Insurance & t.i.tle Guarantee Company, who at my request has examined the t.i.tle to your house, Mr. Kronberg."

"All right," Uncle Mosha said; "I ain't scared of 'em. I owned the house since 1890 already--that's pretty near twenty years, and I ain't paid no Confederate money for it neither."

Mr. Jones cleared his throat noisily, and as he did so a round white object leaped from beneath his collar and b.u.mped against his chin. It was his Adam's apple.

"Did you say you owned the house twenty years?" he inquired in tones of such profundity that Feldman was obliged to ask him to repeat his question. At the second repet.i.tion Uncle Mosha said that it might be a month less than twenty years.

"The record shows that you bought the house a little more than nineteen years ago," Mr. Jones continued--his manner suggested a hanging judge in the act of a.s.suming the black cap--"and therefore you could claim no adverse possession, even a.s.suming there were no disabilities."

"What d'ye mean, claim?" Uncle Mosha asked with asperity. "I don't claim nothing. I already got seven hundred and fifty dollars and there is coming to me eight thousand dollars more."

"I think, Mr. Jones," Feldman interrupted, "I ought to explain to Mr.

Kronberg the _locus in quo_."

Aaron Kronberg turned pale and wiped a few drops of perspiration from his forehead.

"What is there to explain, Mr. Feldman?" he broke in. "Go ahead and close the t.i.tle to the property. I couldn't sit here all day."

"There's a great deal to be explained," Feldman continued. "He is unable to convey good t.i.tle to the property _non constat_ he received a deed of it in 1890."

"I never heard tell of the feller at all," Uncle Mosha exclaimed. "I am the only one which received a deed of the property."

Feldman gazed at Uncle Mosha for one dazed moment and then proceeded.

"The last owner in Mr. Kronberg's claim of t.i.tle--I mean his immediate vendor--was the only surviving collateral of an intestate," he said.

"That's where you make a big mistake," Uncle Mosha interrupted. "The feller which I bought the house from was a salesman for a shirt concern."

Feldman glared at Uncle Mosha and was about to crush him with a flood of law Latin when the door opened.

"You got to excuse me for b.u.t.ting in, Mr. Feldman," said a harsh voice which presently was seen to issue from the person of Morris Perlmutter, "but me and my partner is got to get back to the store and Max and his partner is also busy to-day."

"I'll be with you in just one moment, Mr. Perlmutter," Feldman replied.