Abe and Morris looked at each other with glances of mixed wonder and delight.

"I'll tell you another feller I'm intimate with, too," he said. "Do you know Charles I. Fichter, cloak buyer for Gardner, Baum & Miller, in Seattle?"

Abe nodded. He had been vainly trying to sell Fichter a bill of goods since 1898.

"Well, Charlie and me was delegates to the National Grand Lodge of the Independent Order Mattai Aaron, and I nominated Charlie for Grand Scribe. The way it come about was this, if you'd care to hear about it."

"That's all right," Morris interrupted. "We take your word for it. The point is, could you sell it him a big bill of goods, maybe?"

Marks Pasinsky leaned back in his chair and laughed uproariously.

"Why, Mr. Perlmutter," he said, all out of breath from his mirth, "that feller is actually putting his job in danger because he's holding off in his fall buying until I get to Seattle. Fichter wouldn't buy not a dollar's worth of goods from n.o.body else but me, not if you was to make him a present of them for nothing."

He gave many more instances of his friendship with cloak and suit buyers. For example, it appeared that he knew Rudolph Rosenwater, buyer for Feigenson & Schiffer, of San Francisco, to the extent of an anecdote containing a long, intimate dialogue wherein Rosenwater commenced all his speeches with: "Well, Markie."

"And so I says to him," Pasinsky concluded, "'Rudie, you are all right,'

I says, 'but you can't con me.'"

He looked from Abe to Morris and beamed with satisfaction. They were in a condition of partial hypnotism, which became complete after Pasinsky had concluded a ten-minutes' discourse on cloak and suit affairs. He spoke with a fluency and emphasis that left Abe and Morris literally gasping like landed fish, although, to be sure, the manner of his discourse far outshone the matter.

But his auditors were much too dazed to be critical. They were cognizant of only one circ.u.mstance: If this huge personage with his wonderful magnetism and address couldn't sell goods, n.o.body could.

Pasinsky rose to his feet. He was six feet in height, and weighed over two hundred pounds.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, towering over his proposed employers, "think it over and see if you want me. I'll be back at noon."

"Hold on a minute," Abe cried. "You ain't told us nothing about who you worked for last. What were all them references you was telling us about?"

Pasinsky regarded Abe with a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I'll tell you, Mr. Potash, it's like this," he explained. "Of course you want to know who I worked for and all about it."

Abe nodded.

"But the way I feel about it," Marks Pasinsky went on, "is that if you advance my expenses for two weeks, understand me, and I go out with your sample line, understand me, if you don't owe me a thousand dollars commissions at the end of that time, then I don't want to work for you at all."

Morris' jaw dropped and he wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead.

"But who did you sell goods for?" Abe insisted.

Marks Pasinsky bent down and placed his hand on Abe's shoulder.

"B. Gans," he whispered.

"Let me in on this, too, Abe," Morris exclaimed.

"He says he worked for B. Gans," Abe replied.

"That's an A Number One concern, Abe," Morris said.

"A _A_ Number One," Pasinsky corrected. "B. Gans ain't got a garment in his entire line that retails for less than a hundred dollars."

"Well, we ain't so tony as all that," Morris commented. "We got it one or two garments, Mr. Pasinsky--just one or two, y'understand--which retails for ninety-nine dollars and ninety-eight cents, y'understand.

So, naturally, you couldn't expect to sell the same cla.s.s of trade for us as you sold it for B. Gans."

"Naturally," Pasinsky agreed loftily, "but when a salesman is a salesman, Mr. Perlmutter, he ain't content to sell a line of goods which sells themselves, so to speak, like B. Gans' line. He wants to handle such a line like you got it, Mr. Perlmutter, which is got to be pushed and pushed good and plenty. If I wouldn't handle an inferior line oncet in a while, Mr. Perlmutter, I would quick get out of practice."

Morris snorted.

"If our line don't suit you, Mr. Pasinsky," he began, when Abe interrupted with a wave of his hand.

"Pasinsky is right, Mawruss," he said. "You always got it an idee you made up a line of goods what pratically sold themselves, and I always told you differencely. You wouldn't mind it if I went around to see B.

Gans, Mr. Pasinsky."

Pasinsky stared superciliously at Abe.

"Go as far as you like," he said. "Gans wouldn't tell you nothing but good of me. But if I would work for you one week, Mr. Potash, you would know that with me recommendations is nix and results everything."

He blew his nose like a challenge and clapped his silk hat on his flowing black curls. Then he bowed to Morris, and the next moment the elevator door clanged behind him.

B. Gans guided himself by the maxim: "In business you couldn't trust n.o.body to do nothing," and albeit he employed over a hundred workmen he gave practical demonstrations of their duties to all of them. Thus, on the last of the month he made out statements in the office, and when the shipping department was busy he helped tie up packages. Occasionally he would be found wielding a pressing iron, and when Abe Potash entered to inquire about Pasinsky's qualifications B. Gans had just smashed his thumb in the process of showing a shipping clerk precisely how a packing-case ought to be nailed.

"What's the matter, Gans?" Abe asked.

"Couldn't you afford it to hire shipping clerks no more?"

"I want to tell you something, Potash," Gans replied. "Jay Vanderbilt ain't got money enough to hire it a good shipping clerk, because for the simple reason there ain't no good shipping clerks. A shipping clerk ain't no good, otherwise he wouldn't be a shipping clerk."

"How about drummers?" Abe asked. "I ain't come to ask you about shipping clerks, Gans; I come to ask you about a drummer."

"What should you ask me about drummers for, Potash?" Gans replied. "You know as well as I do what drummers is, Potash. Drummers is bluffs. I wouldn't give a pinch of snuff for the best drummers living. The way drummers figure it out nowadays, Potash, there ain't no more money in commissions. All the money is in the expense account."

Abe laughed.

"I guess you got a tale of woe to tell about designers and models, too, Gans," he said; "but with me, Gans, so long as a salesman could sell goods I don't take it so particular when it comes right down to the expense account."

"Oh, if they sell goods, Potash," Gans agreed, "then that's something else again. But the way business is to-day, Potash, salesmen don't sell goods no more. Former times a salesman wasn't considered a salesman unless he could sell a customer goods what the customer didn't want; but nowadays it don't make no difference what kind of salesman you hire it, Potash, the goods is got to sell themselves, otherwise the salesman can't do no business. Ain't it?"

"But take a salesman like Marks Pasinsky, for instance," Abe said.

"There's a feller what can sell goods. Ain't it?"

B. Gans looked up sharply.

"Did Marks Pasinsky send you here?" he asked.

"Well, he give you as a reference," Abe replied.

"All right," B. Gans continued. "You tell Marks Pasinsky from me that I says he's a good salesman and that why he left me was by mutual consent."