"Seemingly, Mr. Polatkin," he said, "you are a millionaire concern, the way your partner talks! Might you don't need our business, neither, maybe?"

Polatkin was busy checking the ravages made upon his linen by the perspiration that literally streamed down his face and neck; but Scheikowitz, who had listened open-mouthed to Elkan's p.r.o.nunciamento, straightened up in his chair and his face grew set with determination.

"We ain't millionaires, Mr. Ribnik," he said--"far from it; and we ain't never going to be, understand me, if we got to buy eighteen-thousand dollar houses for every bill of goods we sell to _Schnorrers_ and deadbeats!"

"Scheikowitz!" Polatkin pleaded.

"Never mind, Polatkin," Scheikowitz declared. "The boy is right, Polatkin; and if we are making our living in America we got to act like Americans--not peasants. So, go ahead, Stout. Telephone Flugel and tell him from me that if he wants to take it that way he should do so; and you, too, Stout--and that's all there is to it!"

"Then I apprehend, gentlemen, that we had better proceed to close,"

Feldman said; and Elkan nodded, for as Scheikowitz finished speaking a ball had risen in Elkan's throat which, blink as he might, he could not down for some minutes.

"All right, Goldstein," Feldman continued. "Let's fix up the statement of closing."

"One moment, gentlemen," Max Kovner said. "Do I understand that, if Elkan Lubliner buys the house to-day, we've got to move out?"

Feldman raised his eyebrows.

"I think Mr. Goldstein will agree with me, Kovner, when I say you haven't a leg to stand on," he declared. "You're completely out of court on your own testimony."

"You mean we ain't got a lease for a year?" Mrs. Kovner asked.

"That's right," Goldstein replied.

"And I am working my fingers to the bone getting rid of them _verfluchte_ painters and all!" she wailed. "What do you think I am anyway?"

"Well, if you don't want to move right away," Elkan began, "when would it be convenient for you to get out, Mrs. Kovner?"

"I don't want to get out at all," she whimpered. "Why should I want to get out? The house is an elegant house, which I just planted yesterday string beans and tomatoes; and the parlor looks elegant now we got the old paper off."

"Supposing we say the first of May," Elkan suggested--"not that I am so crazy to move out to Burgess Park, y'understand; but I don't see what is the sense buying a house in the country and then not living in it."

There was a brief silence, broken only by the soft weeping of Mrs.

Kovner; and at length Max Kovner shrugged his shoulders.

"_Nu_, Elkan," he said, "what is the use beating bushes round? Mrs.

Kovner is stuck on the house and so am I. So long as you don't want the house, and there's been so much trouble about it and all, I tell you what I'll do: Take back two thousand dollars a second mortgage on the house, payable in one year at six per cent., which it is so good as gold, understand me, and I'll relieve you of your contract and give you two hundred dollars to boot."

A smile spread slowly over Elkan's face as he looked significantly at Louis Stout.

"I don't want your two hundred dollars, Max," he said. "You can have the house and welcome; and you should use the two hundred to pay your painting and plumbing bills."

"That's all right," Louis Stout said; "there is people which will see to it that he does. Also, gentlemen, I want everybody to understand that I claim full commission here from Glaubmann as the only broker in the transaction!"

"_Nu_, gentlemen," Glaubmann said; "I'll leave this to the lawyers if it ain't so: From one transaction I can only be liable for one commission--ain't it?"

Feldman and Goldstein nodded in unison.

"Then all I could say is that yous brokers and drygoods merchants should fight it out between yourselves," he declared; "because I'm going to pay the money for the commission into court--and them which is ent.i.tled to it can have it."

"But ain't you going to protect me, Glaubmann?" Ortelsburg demanded.

Glaubmann raised his hand for silence.

"One moment, Ortelsburg," he said. "I think it was you and Kamin told me that real estate is a game the same like auction pinocle?"

Ortelsburg nodded sulkily.

"Then you fellers should go ahead and play it," Glaubmann concluded.

"And might the best man win!"[B]

[Footnote B: In the face of numerous decisions to the contrary, the author holds for the purposes of this story that a verbal lease for one year, to commence in the future, is void.]

CHAPTER SIX

A TALE OF TWO JACOBEAN CHAIRS

NOT A DETECTIVE STORY

"Yes, Mr. Lubliner," said Max Merech as he sat in the front parlour of Elkan's flat one April Sunday; "if you are going to work to buy furniture, understand me, it's just so easy to select good-looking chairs as bad-looking chairs."

"_Aber_ sometimes it's a whole lot harder to sit on 'em comfortably,"

Elkan retorted sourly. On the eve of moving to a larger apartment he and Yetta had invited Max to suggest a plan for furnishing and decorating their new dwelling; and it seemed to Elkan that Max had taken undue advantage of the privilege thus accorded him. Indeed, Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's aesthetic designer held such p.r.o.nounced views on interior decoration, and had expressed them so freely to Elkan and Yetta, that after the first half-hour of his visit the esteem which they had always felt toward their plush furniture and Wilton rugs had changed--first to indifference and then, in the case of Yetta, at least, to loathing.

"I always told you that the couch over there was hideous, Elkan," Yetta said.

"Hideous it ain't," Max interrupted; "_aber_ it ain't so beautiful."

"Well, stick the couch in the bedroom, then," Elkan said. "It makes no difference to me."

"Sure, I know," Yetta exclaimed: "but what would we put in its place?"

Elkan shrugged his shoulders.

"What d'ye ask me for?" Elkan cried. "Like as not I'd say another couch."

"There is couches and couches," Max said with an apologetic smile, "but if you would ask my advice I would say why not a couple nice chairs there--something in monhogany, like Shippendaler _oder_ Sheratin."

Suddenly he slapped his thigh in an access of inspiration.

"I came pretty near forgetting!" he cried. "I got the very thing you want--and a big bargain too! Do you know Louis Dishkes, which runs the Villy dee Paris Store in Amsterdam Avenue?"

"I think I know him," Elkan said with ironic emphasis. "He owes us four hundred dollars for two months already."

"Well, Dishkes is got a brother-in-law by the name Ringentaub, on Allen Street, which he is a dealer in antics."