B. Rashkin nodded. He had never been farther West than Jersey City Heights.

"Well, how is things in Seattle, Mister--er----"

"Rashkin," B. Rashkin supplied.

"Rashkin?" Abe went on, and then he paused, but not for an answer.

"Rashkin--why, I don't know no one from that name in Seattle."

"No?" Rashkin replied. "Well, the fact is, Mr. Potash, I ain't come to see you about Seattle. I come to see you about three lots up in Two Hundred and Sixty-fourth Street."

The urbane smile faded at once from Abe's face and gave place to a dark scowl.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, "a real estater. I ain't got no time to fool away with real estaters."

"This ain't fooling away your time, Mr. Potash," Rashkin said. "Let me explain the proposition to you."

Without waiting for permission he at once divulged the object of his visit, while Abe listened with the bored air of an unemployed leading man at a professional matinee.

"Yes, Mr. Potash," B. Rashkin concluded, after half an hour's conversation, "I seen it bargains in my time, but these here lots is the biggest bargains yet."

"Vacant lots ain't never bargains, Rashkin," Abe commented. "What's the use from vacant lots, anyway? A feller what's got vacant lots is like I would say I am in the cloak business if I only get it an empty store with nothing in it."

Abe glanced proudly around him at the well-stocked racks, where the new season's goods were neatly arranged for prospective buyers.

"But the real-estate business ain't like the cloak business, Mr.

Potash," B. Rashkin said.

"Real estate!" Abe interrupted. "Vacant lots ain't no real estate, Rashkin. Vacant lots is just imitation real estate. You couldn't say you got it real estate when you only got vacant lots, no more as a feller what buys a gold setting could say he's got it a diamond ring."

"Diamonds is something else again," said B. Rashkin. "I ain't no judge of diamonds, Mr. Potash, but about real estate, Mr. Potash, I ain't no fool neither, y'understand, and these here three lots what I talk to you about is the only three vacant lots in the neighborhood."

"Might you think that's a recommendation, maybe, Rashkin," Abe replied, "but I don't. You come around here to try to sell it me a couple of lots, and you got to admit yourself they're stickers."

"They ain't stickers, Mr. Potash," B. Rashkin protested.

"No?" Abe said. "What's the reason they ain't stickers, Rashkin? If they ain't stickers why ain't somebody built on 'em?"

"You don't understand," B. Rashkin explained. "Them lots is an estate that was in litigation, and it's only just been settled up; so that they couldn't sell 'em no matter who would want to buy 'em. Now I got 'em to entertain an offer of eighty-three thirty-three apiece, or twenty-five thousand for the three lots, all cash above a blanket mortgage of ten thousand dollars held by the Independent Order Mattai Aaron. I seen it also Milton M. Sugarman, the attorney for the I. O. M. A., and he tells me that they would probably be agreeable to make a building loan on them lots of twenty-five thousand on each thirty-seven six front."

"That don't interest me none neither," Abe replied, "because I ain't in the building business, Rashkin; I am in the cloak and suit business."

"Sure, I know," said Rashkin; "but this is an opportunity which it wouldn't occur again oncet in twenty years."

"Don't limit yourself, Rashkin," Abe retorted. "Make it fifty years.

It's all the same to me, because I wouldn't touch it, Rashkin."

"But, Mr. Potash," Rashkin broke in, "if your partner, Mr. Perlmutter, would be agreeable, wouldn' you consider it?"

"What's the use asking me hypocritical questions, Rashkin?" Abe replied.

"Mawruss would no more touch it as I would. You don't know what a crank I got it for a partner, Rashkin. If I would just hint that I wanted to buy real estate, y'understand, that feller would go all up in the air.

And even if he would buy it with me yet, and we should lose maybe a little money, I would never hear the end of it. That's the way it goes with a feller like Mawruss Perlmutter, Rashkin."

B. Rashkin put on his hat and rose sadly.

"Well, Mr. Potash," he concluded, "all I can say is you lost a splendid opportunity. Why, if I could only get it a feller to take over one of them thirty-seven six parcels, I would buy the other one myself and put up a fine building there?"

"I'm sure I ain't stopping you, Rashkin," Abe said. "Go ahead and build, and I wish you all the luck you could want; and if you should get somebody else to take the other one and a half lots, I wish him the same and many of 'em. Also, Rashkin, if I was a real estater I would be glad to fool away my time with you, Rashkin, but being as I am in the cloak business I--you ain't going, Rashkin, are you?"

Rashkin answered by banging the door behind him and Abe repaired to the cutting-room, where Morris Perlmutter was superintending the reception and disposal of piece goods.

"Who was that salesman you was talking to a while ago, Abe?" he asked innocently.

"That wasn't no salesman, Mawruss; that was a loafer," Abe replied.

"A loafer!" Morris said. "He didn't look like a loafer, Abe. He looked like a real estater."

"Well, Mawruss," said Abe, "to me a real estater looks like a loafer, especially, Mawruss, when he comes around with a b.u.m proposition like he got it."

"What for a proposition was it, Abe?" Morris asked.

"Ask me!" Abe exclaimed. "That real estater gives me a long story about some vacant lots, and an estate, and the Independent Order Mattai Aaron, and a lot more stuff what I don't believe the feller understands about himself."

"But there you was talking to that real estater pretty near an hour, Abe, and you couldn't even tell it me what he wants at all," Morris protested.

"To tell you the truth, Mawruss," Abe replied, "I ain't interested in what real estaters says. Real estaters, insurance canva.s.sers and book agents, Mawruss, is all the same to me. They go in by one ear and come out by the other."

"Why, for all you know, Abe, the feller would have maybe some big bargains."

"If you are looking for bargains like that feller got it, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "you could find plenty of 'em by green-goods men. If you give me my choice between gold bricks and vacant lots, Mawruss, I would say gold bricks."

Morris turned away impatiently.

"What do you know about real estate, Abe?" he cried.

"Not much, Mawruss," Abe admitted, "but I know one thing about gold bricks, Mawruss: you don't got to pay no taxes on 'em."

That evening B. Rashkin again presented himself at the One Hundred and Eighteenth Street residence of Morris Perlmutter, and with him came Isaac Pinsky, of the firm of Pinsky & Gubin, architects. Mr. Pinsky had a roll of blue-prints under his arm and a strong line of convincing argument at the tip of his tongue, and the combination proved too much for Morris. Before Rashkin and Pinsky left that evening, Morris had undertaken to purchase a plot thirty-seven feet six inches by one hundred feet, adjacent to a similar plot to be purchased by Rashkin.

Moreover, he and Rashkin engaged themselves to erect two houses, one on each lot, from the plans and specifications that Pinsky held under his arm. Each house was to be identical with the other in design, construction and material, and an appointment was then and there made for noon the next day at the office of Henry D. Feldman, attorney at law, for the purpose of more formally consummating the deal.

Thus, when Morris entered the show-room the next morning it became his duty to break the news to his partner, and he approached Abe with a now-for-it air. "Well, Abe," he said, "you was wrong."

"Sure, I was, Mawruss," Abe replied amiably. "With you I am always wrong. What's the matter now?"

"You was wrong about that feller Rashkin," Morris explained. "He was up to my house last night, and put the same proposition up to me what he told it you yesterday, and the way I figure it, Abe, we would make money on the deal."

"I ain't so good on figures what you are, Mawruss," Abe replied. "All I can figure is I got enough to do to attend to my own business, Mawruss, without going into the building business."

"But we wouldn't got to go into the building business, Abe," Morris protested. "All we got to do is to put down eight thousand dollars for the lot. Then the I. O. M. A. makes us a building loan of twenty-five thousand dollars. Rashkin's got plans and specifications drawn by Pinsky & Gubin, a first-cla.s.s, A Number One archy-teck concern, for which he wouldn't charge us nothing, and then, Abe----"