"Is Glaubmann gone?" cried a voice from the interior of the car, and the next moment Kovner alighted.

Flugel looked up from the contract.

"h.e.l.lo, Kovner," he said, "are you in this deal too?"

"I ain't in any deal," Kovner replied. "I am looking for Barnett Glaubmann. They told me in his office he is coming over here and would be here all the morning."

"Well, he was here," Elkan replied, "but he went away again."

Kovner sat down without invitation.

"It ain't no more as I expected," he began in the dull, resigned tones of a man with a grievance. "That swindler has been dodging me for four months now, and I guess he will keep on dodging me for the rest of the year that he claims I got a lease on his house for."

"What house?" Flugel asked.

"The house which I am living in it," Max replied--"on Linden Boulevard, Burgess Park."

"On Linden Boulevard, Burgess Park!" Flugel repeated. "Why, then it's the same house--ain't it, Lubliner?"

Elkan nodded, and as he did so Flugel struck the desk a tremendous blow with his fist.

"Fine!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Fine!" Kovner repeated. "What the devil you are talking about, fine? Do you think it's fine I should got to live a whole year in a house which the least it must got to be spent on it is for plumbing a hundred dollars and for painting a couple hundred more?"

"That's all right," Flugel declared with enthusiasm. "It ain't so bad as it looks; because if you can show that you got a right to stay in that house for the rest of the year, understand me, I'll make a proposition to you."

"Show it?" Kovner exclaimed. "I don't got to show it, because I couldn't help myself, Mr. Flugel. Glaubmann claims that I made a verbal lease for one year, and he's right. I was fool enough to do so."

Flugel glanced inquiringly at Polatkin and Scheikowitz.

"How about that?" he asked. "The contract don't say nothing about a year's lease."

"I know it don't," Elkan replied, "because when our lawyer raises the question about the tenant Glaubmann says he could get him out at any time."

"And he can too," Kovner declared with emphasis, but Flugel shook his head.

"No, he can't, Kovner," he said; "or, anyway, he ain't going to, because you are going to stay in that house."

"With the rotten plumbing it's got?" Kovner cried. "Not by a whole lot I ain't."

"The plumbing could be fixed and the painting also," Flugel retorted.

"By Glaubmann?" Kovner asked.

"No, sir," Flugel replied; "by me, with a hundred dollars cash to boot.

I would even give you an order on my plumber he should fix up the plumbing and on my house painter he should fix up the painting, Kovner; _aber_ you got to stick it out that you are under lease for the rest of the year."

"And when do I get the work done?" Kovner demanded.

"To-day," Flugel announced--"this afternoon if you want it."

"But hold on there a minute!" Elkan protested. "If I am going to take that house I don't want no painting done there till I am good and ready."

Flugel smiled loftily at Elkan.

"You ain't going to take that house at all," he said, "because the contract says that it is to be conveyed free and clear, except the mortgage and a covenant against nuisances. So you reject the t.i.tle on the grounds that the house is leased for a year. Do you get the idee?"

Elkan nodded.

"And next Sunday," Flugel continued, "I wish you'd take a run down with me in my oitermobile to Johnsonhurst. It's an elegant, high-cla.s.s suburb."

Insomnia bears the same relation to the calling of real-estate operators that fossyjaw does to the worker in the match industry; and, during the twenty days that preceded the closing of his contract with Elkan, Barnett Glaubmann spent many a sleepless night in contemplation of disputed brokerage claims by Kamin, Stout and Ortelsburg. Moreover, the knowledge that Henry D. Feldman represented the purchaser was an influence far from sedative; and what little sleep Glaubmann secured was filled with nightmares of fence encroachments, defects in the legal proceedings for opening of Linden Boulevard as a public highway, and a score of other technical objections that Feldman might raise to free Elkan from his contract.

Not once, however, did Glaubmann consider the tenancy of Max Kovner as any objection to t.i.tle. Indeed, he was so certain of Kovner's willingness to move out that he even pondered the advisability of gouging Max for twenty-five or fifty dollars as a consideration for accepting a surrender of the verbal lease; and to that end he avoided the Linden Boulevard house until the morning before the date set for the closing of the t.i.tle.

Then, having observed Max board the eight-five train for Brooklyn Bridge, he sauntered off to interview Mrs. Kovner; and as he turned the corner of Linden Boulevard he sketched out a plan of action that had for its foundation the complete intimidation of Mrs. Kovner. This being secured, he would proceed to suggest the payment of fifty dollars as the alternative of strong measures against Max Kovner for allowing the Linden Boulevard premises to fall into such bad repair; and he was so full of his idea that he had begun to ascend the front stoop of the Kovner house before he noticed the odour of fresh paint.

Never in the history of the Kovner house had the electric bell been in working order. Hence Glaubmann knocked with his naked fist and left the imprint of his four knuckles on the wet varnish just as Mrs. Kovner flung wide the door. It was at this instant that Glaubmann's well-laid plans were swept away.

"Now see what you done, you dirty slob you!" she bellowed. "What's the matter with you? Couldn't you ring the bell?"

"Why, Mrs. Kovner," Glaubmann stammered, "the bell don't ring at all.

Ain't it?"

"The bell don't ring?" Mrs. Kovner exclaimed. "Who says it don't?"

She pressed the b.u.t.ton with her finger and a shrill response came from within.

"Who fixed it?" Glaubmann asked.

"Who fixed it?" Mrs. Kovner repeated. "Who do you suppose fixed it?

Do you think we got from charity to fix it? _Gott sei Dank_, we ain't exactly beggars, Mr. Glaubmann. Ourselves we fixed it, Mr.

Glaubmann--and the painting and the plumbing also; because if you would got in savings bank what I got it, Mr. Glaubmann, you wouldn't make us so much trouble about paying for a couple hundred dollars'

repairs."

"_Aber_," Glaubmann began, "you shouldn't of done it!"

"I know we shouldn't," Mrs. Kovner replied. "We should of stayed here the rest of the year with the place looking like a pigsty already!

_Aber_ don't kick till you got to, Mr. Glaubmann. It would be time enough to say something when we sue you by the court yet that you should pay for the repairs we are making here."

Glaubmann pushed his hat back from his forehead and wiped his streaming brow.

"_Nu_, Mrs. Kovner," he said at last, "it seems to me we got a misunderstanding all round here. I would like to talk the matter over with you."

With this conciliatory prelude he a.s.sumed an easy att.i.tude by crossing his legs and supporting himself with one hand on the freshly painted doorjamb, whereat Mrs. Kovner uttered a horrified shriek, and the rage which three weeks of housepainters' clutter had fomented in her bosom burst forth unchecked.