"The capital you shouldn't worry about at all," Elkan retorted. "Next week my Yetta gets falling due a second mortgage from old man Flixman for five thousand dollars, and----"

Polatkin made a flapping gesture with his right hand.

"Keep your money, Elkan," he said. "You could got lots of better ways to invest it for Yetta as fixing ourselves up to sell big _Machers_ like Joseph Kammerman."

"But it don't do no harm I should drop in and see them people. Ain't it?"

"Sure not," Scheikowitz continued as he swung round in his revolving chair and seized a pile of cutting clips. "They got an elegant store there on Fifth Avenue which it is a pleasure to go into even; and the worst that happens you, Elkan, is you are out a good cigar for that Mr.

Dalzell up there."

Elkan nodded gloomily, and as he left the office Polatkin's face relaxed in an indulgent smile.

"The boy is getting awful ambitious lately, Scheikowitz," he said.

"What d'ye mean, ambitious?" Philip Scheikowitz cried angrily. "If you would be only twenty-three years of age, Polatkin, and married to a rich girl, understand me--and also partner in a good concern, which the whole thing he done it himself, Polatkin--you would act a whole lot more ambitious as he does. Instead of knocking the boy, Polatkin, you should ought to give him credit for what he done."

"Who is knocking the boy?" Polatkin demanded. "All I says is the boy is ambitious, Scheikowitz--which, if you don't think it's ambitious a feller tries to sell goods to Joseph Kammerman, Scheikowitz, what is it then?"

"There's worser people to sell goods to as Joseph Kammerman, Polatkin, which he is a millionaire concern, understand me," Scheikowitz declared; "and you could take it from me, Polatkin, even if you would accuse him he is ambitious _oder_ not, that boy always got idees to do big things--and he works hard till he lands 'em. So if you want to call that ambitious, Polatkin, go ahead and do so. When a loafer knocks it's a boost every time."

With this ultimatum Scheikowitz followed his junior partner to the rear of the loft, where Elkan regarded with a critical eye the labors of his cutting-room staff.

"_Nu_, Elkan," Scheikowitz asked, "what's biting you now?"

Elkan winked significantly--and a moment later he tapped an a.s.sistant cutter on the shoulder.

"Max," he said, "do you got maybe a grudge against that piece of goods, the way you are slamming it round?"

The a.s.sistant cutter smiled in an embarra.s.sed fashion.

"The fact is," he said apologetically, "I wasn't thinking about them goods at all. When you are laying out goods for cutting, Mr. Lubliner, you don't got to think much--especially pastel shades."

"Pastel shades?" Elkan repeated.

"That's what I said," the cutter replied. "_Mit_ colors like reds and greens, which they are hitting you right in the face, so to speak, you couldn't get your mind off of 'em at all; but pastel shades, that's something else again. They quiet you like smoking a cigarette."

Elkan turned to his partner with a shrug.

"When I was working by B. Gans," the cutter went on, "I am laying out a piece of old gold crepe _mit_ a silver-thread border, and I a.s.sure you, Mr. Lubliner, it has an effect on me like some one would give me a gla.s.s of schnapps already."

"_Stiegen_, Max," said Elkan, moving away, "you got too much to say for yourself."

Max nodded resignedly and continued the spreading of the goods on the cutting table, while Elkan and Scheikowitz walked out of the room.

"That's the new feller I was telling you about," Elkan said.

"_Meshugganeh_ Max Merech they call him."

"_Meshugga_ he may be," Scheikowitz replied, "but just the same he's got a couple of good idees also, Elkan. Only this morning he makes Redman the designer pretty near crazy when he says that the blue soutache on that new style 2060 kills the blue in the yoke, y'understand; and he was right too, Elkan. Polatkin and me made Redman change it over."

Elkan shrugged again as he put on his hat and coat preparatory to going home.

"A lot our cla.s.s of trade worries about such things!" he exclaimed. "So far as they are concerned the soutache could be crimson and the yoke green, and if the price was right they'd buy it anyhow."

"Don't you fool yourself, Elkan," Scheikowitz said while Elkan rang for the elevator. "The price is never right if the workmanship ain't good."

That Elkan Lubliner's progress in business had not kept pace with his social achievements was a source of much disappointment to both Mrs.

Lubliner and himself; for though the firm of Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company was still rated seventy-five thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars--credit good--Elkan and Mrs. Lubliner moved in the social orbit of no less a personage than of Max Koblin, the Raincoat King, whose credit soared triumphantly among the A's and B's of old-established commission houses.

Indeed it was a party at Max Koblin's house that evening which caused Elkan to leave his place of business at half-past five; and when Mrs.

Lubliner and he sallied forth from the gilt and porphyry hallway of their apartment dwelling they were fittingly arrayed to meet Max's guests, none of whom catered to the popular-price trade of Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company.

"Why didn't you told him we are getting next week paid off for five thousand dollars a second mortgage?" Yetta said, continuing a conversation begun at dinner that evening.

"I did told him," Elkan insisted; "but what is the use talking to a couple of old-timers like them?"

Yetta sniffed contemptuously with the impatience of youth at the foibles of senility, as exemplified by the doddering Philip Scheikowitz, aged forty-five, and the valetudinarian Marcus Polatkin, whose hair, albeit unfrosted, had been blighted and in part swept away by the vicissitudes of forty-two winters.

"You can't learn an old dawg young tricks," Elkan declared, "and we might just as well make up our minds to it, Yetta, we would never compete with such highgrade concerns like B. Gans _oder_ Schwefel & Zucker."

They walked over two blocks in silence and then Elkan broke out anew.

"I tell you," he said, "I am sick and tired of it. B. Gans talks all the time about selling this big _Macher_ and that big _Macher_, and him and Mr. Schwefel gets telling about what a millionaire like Kammerman says to him the other day, or what he says to Mandelberger, of Chicago, y'understand--and I couldn't say nothing! If I would commence to tell 'em what I says to such customers of ours like One-Eye Feigenbaum _oder_ H. Margonin, of Bridgetown, understand me, they would laugh me in my face yet."

Yetta pressed his arm consolingly as they ascended the stoop of Max Koblin's house on Mount Morris Park West, and two minutes later they entered the front parlour of that luxurious residence.

"And do you know what he says to me?" a penetrating barytone voice announced as they came in. "He says to me, 'Benson,' he says, 'I've been putting on musical shows now for fifteen years, and an idee like that comes from a genius already. There's a fortune in it!'"

At this juncture Mrs. Koblin noted the arrival of the last of her guests.

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Yetta!" she cried, rising to her feet. "Ain't you fashionable getting here so late?"

She kissed Yetta and held out a hand to Elkan as she spoke.

"Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Elkan, keeping Yetta's dinner waiting because you claim you're so busy downtown?" she went on. "I guess you know everybody here except Mr. Benson."

She nodded toward the promulgator of Heaven-born ideas, who bowed solemnly.

"Pleased to meet you, Mister----"

"Lubliner," Elkan said.

"Mister Lubliner," Benson repeated, pa.s.sing his begemmed fingers through a shock of black, curly hair. "And the long and short of it is," he continued, addressing the company, "to-morrow I'm getting a scenario along them lines I just indicated to you from one of the highest-grade fellers that's writing."

Here ensued a pause, during which B. Gans searched his mind for an anecdote concerning some retailer of sufficiently good financial standing, while Joseph Schwefel, of Schwefel & Zucker, cleared his throat preparatory to launching a verbatim report of a conversation between himself and a buyer for one of the most exclusive costume houses on Fifth Avenue; but even as Schwefel rounded his lips to enunciate an introductory "Er," Benson obtained a fresh start.

"Now you remember 'The Diners Out,' Ryan & Bernbaum's production last season?" he said, addressing Elkan. "In that show they had an idee like this: Eight ponies is let down from the flies--see?--and George DeFrees makes his entrance in a practical airyoplane--I think it was George DeFrees was working for Ryan & Bernbaum last year, or was it Sammy Potter?"