"My wife!" Dishkes murmured hoa.r.s.ely. "She ain't so strong, and I am sending her up to the country a couple months ago. I've been meaning I should go up and see her ever since, but----"

Here he gulped dismally; and there was an embarra.s.sed silence, broken only by the faint noise occasioned by Philip Scheikowitz scratching his chin.

"That's a _Rosher_--that feller Sammet," Polatkin said at length.

"Honestly, the way some business men ain't got no mercy at all for the other feller, you would think, Scheikowitz, they was living back in the old country yet!"

Scheikowitz nodded and glanced nervously from the photograph to Elkan.

"I think you was telling me you got a couple idees about helping Dishkes out, Elkan," he said. "So, in the first place, Dishkes, you should please let us see a list of your creditors."

With this prelude Scheikowitz drew forward his chair and plunged into a discussion of Dishkes' affairs that lasted for more than two hours; and when Dishkes at length departed he took with him notices of a meeting addressed to his twenty creditors, prepared for immediate mailing by Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's stenographer.

"And that's what we let ourselves in for," Scheikowitz declared after the elevator door had closed behind Dishkes. "To-morrow morning at eleven o'clock the place here would look like the waiting room of a depot, and all our compet.i.tors would be rubbering at our stock already."

"Let 'em rubber!" Elkan said. "If I don't get an extension for that feller my name ain't Elkan Lubliner at all; because between now and then I am going round to see them twenty creditors, and I bet yer they will sign an extension agreement, with the figures I am going to put up to them!"

"Figures!" Scheikowitz jeered. "What good is figures to them fellers?

Showing figures to a bankrupt's creditors is like taking to a restaurant a feller which is hungry and letting him look at the knives and forks and plates, understand me!"

Elkan nodded.

"Sure, I know," he said; "but the figures ain't all."

Surrept.i.tiously he drew from his pocket a faded cabinet photograph.

"I sneaked this away from Dishkes when he wasn't noticing," Elkan declared; "and if this don't fix 'em nothing will!"

"Say, lookyhere, Lubliner," Leon Sammet cried after Elkan had broached the reason for his visit late that afternoon, "don't give me that tale of woe again. Every time we are asking Dishkes for money he pulls this here sick-wife story on us, understand me; and it don't go down with me no more."

"What d'ye mean don't go down with you?" Elkan demanded. "Do you claim his wife ain't sick?"

"I don't claim nothing," Sammet retorted. "I ain't no doctor, Lubliner.

I am in the cloak-and-suit business, and I got to pay my creditors with United States money, Lubliner, if my wife would be dying yet."

"Which you ain't got no wife," Elkan added savagely.

"_Gott sei Dank!_" Sammet rejoined. "_Aber_ if I did got one, y'understand, I would got _Verstand_ enough to pick out a healthy woman, which Dishkes does everything the same. He picks out a store there on an avenue when it is a dead neighbourhood, understand me--and he wants us we should suffer for it."

"The neighbourhood wouldn't be dead after three months," Elkan said. "Round the corner on both sides of the street is building thirty-three-foot, seven-story elevator apartments yet; and when they are occupied, Dishkes would do a rushing business."

"That's all right," Sammet answered. "I ain't speculating in real-estate futures, Lubliner; so you might just so well go ahead and attend to your business, Lubliner, because me I am going to do the same."

"But lookyhere, Sammet," Elkan still pleaded. "I seen pretty near every one of Dishkes' creditors and they all agree the feller should have a three months' extension."

"Let 'em agree," Sammet shouted. "They are their own bosses and so am I, Lubliner; so if they want to give him an extension of their account I ain't got nothing to say. All I want is eight hundred dollars he owes me; and the rest of them suckers could agree till they are black in the face."

"_Aber_, anyhow, Sammet," Elkan said, "come to the meeting to-morrow morning and we would see what we could do."

"See what we could do!" Sammet bellowed. "You will see what I could do, Lubliner; and I will come to the meeting to-morrow and I'll do it too.

So, if you don't mind, Lubliner, I could still do a little work before we close up here."

For a brief interval Elkan dug his nails into the palms of his hands, and his eyes unconsciously sought a target for a right swing on Sammet's bloated face; but at length he nodded and forced himself to smile.

"_Schon gut_, Mr. Sammet," he said; "then I will see you to-morrow."

A moment later he strode down lower Fifth Avenue toward the place of business of the last creditor on Dishkes' list. This was none other than Elkan's distinguished friend, B. Gans, the manufacturer of high-grade dresses; and it required less than ten minutes to procure his consent to the proposed extension.

"And I hope," Elkan said, "that we could count on you to be at the meeting to-morrow."

"That's something I couldn't do," B. Gans replied; "but I'll write you a letter and give you full authority you should represent me there. Excuse me a minute and I'll dictate it to Miss Scheindler." When he returned, five minutes later, he sat down at his desk and, crossing his legs, prepared to beguile the tedium of waiting.

"Well, Elkan," he said, "what you been doing with yourself lately?

Thee-aytres and restaurants, I suppose?"

"Thee-aytres I ain't so much interested in no more," Elkan said. "The fact is, I am going in now for antics."

"Antics!" B. Gans exclaimed.

"Sure," Elkan replied; and there was a certain pride in his tones.

"Antics is what I said, Mr. Gans--Jacobson chairs and them--now--cat's furniture."

"Cat's furniture?" Gans repeated. "What d'ye mean cat's furniture?"

"Angry cats," Elkan explained; and then a great light broke upon B.

Gans.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "You mean Henri Quatre furniture?"

"Hungry cat _oder_ angry cat," Elkan said. "All I know is we are refurnishing our flat, Mr. Gans, and we are taking an advice from Max Merech, our designer. It's a funny thing about that feller, Mr.

Gans--with garments he is right up to the minute, _aber mit_ furniture nothing suits him unless it would be anyhow a hundred years old."

"So you are buying some antique furniture for your flat?" B. Gans commented, and Elkan nodded.

"We made a start anyhow," he said. "We bought a couple Jacobson chairs--two hundred and fifty years old already."

"Good!" B. Gans exclaimed. "I want to tell you, Elkan, you couldn't go far wrong if you would buy any piece of furniture over a hundred years old. They didn't know how to make things ugly in them days--and Jacobean chairs especially. I am furnishing my whole dining room in that period and my library in Old French. It costs money, Elkan, but it's worth it."

Elkan nodded and steered the conversation into safer channels; so that by the time Miss Scheindler had brought in the letter they were discussing familiar business topics.

"Also," Gans said as he appended his neat signature to the letter, "I wish you and Dishkes luck, Elkan; and keep up the good work about the antique furniture. Even when you would get stuck with a reproduction instead of a genuine piece once in a while, if it looks just as good as the original and no one tells you differently, understand me, you feel just as happy."

Thus encouraged, Elkan went home that evening full of a determination to acquire all the antique furniture his apartment would hold; and he and Yetta sat up until past midnight conning the pages of a heavy volume on the subject, which Yetta had procured from the neighbouring public library. Accordingly Elkan rose late the following morning, and it was almost nine o'clock before he reached his office and observed on the very top of his morning mail a slip of paper containing a message in the handwriting of Sam, the office boy.

"A man called about Jacobowitz," it read, and Elkan immediately rang his deskbell.

"What Jacobowitz is this?" he demanded as Sam entered, and the office boy shrugged.