"At that," Abe said, "I think they'd know more about the price of garments than Bernstorff did about the price of Congressmen. I always give that feller credit for more sense than that he should try to explain an item in his expense account by claiming that

April 3, 1917, To sundries $50,000

was what he paid for bribing the United States Congress."

"Well, say!" Morris exclaimed. "The poor feller had to tell 'em something, didn't he? Here he is coming back from his trip after losing his whole territory to his firm's compet.i.tors, and naturally he tries to make a good showing with his expense account, which, believe me, Abe, if I was a rotten salesman like that, before I would face my employer--and _such_ an employer, because that _Rosher_ 'ain't got them spike-end mustaches for nothing, Abe--I would first jump in the river, even if my expense account showed that I had been staying in a-dollar-and-a-half-a-day American-plan hotels and had sat up nights in the smoker for big jumps like from Terre Haute to Paducah."

"Can you imagine the way the Kaiser feels?" Abe said. "I suppose at the start he was keeping so calm that he bit the end off his fountain pen and started to light the cap, and probably took one or two puffs before he noticed anything strange about the flavor, because you could easy make a mistake like that with a German cigar.

"'_Nu_, Bernstorff,' he says, at last, as he looks at the expense account, 'before we take up the matter of this here eight-foot shelf of the world's greatest fiction I would like to hear what you got to say for yourself, so go ahead mit your lies and make it short.'

"'I suppose you got my letters,' Bernstorff begins, 'the ones I sent you through the Swede.'

"'What Swede?' the Kaiser says.

"'Yon Yonson, the second a.s.sistant amba.s.sador,' Bernstorff answers. 'I told him if he got them letters through for me that you would give him an order on the Chancellor for a first-cla.s.s red eagle, but I guess he'd be satisfied with one of them old-rose eagles, Cla.s.s Four B, that we used to have piled up there in the corner of the shipping-room.'

"'I wouldn't even give him an order on Mike, the Popular Berlin Hatter, for a two-dollar derby, even,' the Kaiser says. '_Chutzpah!_ Writes me letter after letter with nothing but weather reports in 'em, and he wants me I should give this here Yonson a red eagle yet which costs me thirty-two fifty a dozen wholesale. Seemingly to you, Bernstorff, money is nothing.'

"Here the old man grabs ahold of the expense account again.

"'Honestly, Bernstorff,' he says, 'I don't see how you had the heart to spend all that money when you know how things are here in Berlin. If me and my Gussie sits down once a week to such a piece of meat as _gedampfte Brustdeckel mit Kartoffelpfannkuchen_, y'understand, that's already a feast for us, and as for chicken, I a.s.sure you we 'ain't had so much as a soup fowl in the house since my birthday a year ago, and you got the nerve to send me in an expense account like this. Aint it a shame and a disgrace?

1916, May 1. Bolo $4.00 5. Bolo 6.00 9. Bolo 3.25

and every other day for week after week you spent on Bolo anywheres from one to fifteen dollars. Tell me, Bernstorff, how could a man make such a G.o.d out of his stomach?'

"'Why, what do you think Bolo is?' Bernstorff asks.

"'I don't _think_ what Bolo is; I _know_ what Bolo is,' the Kaiser tells him, and a dreamy look comes into his eyes. 'Many a time I seen my poor _Gross.m.u.tter olav hasholom_ make it. She used to chop up ten onions, five cents' worth parsley, and a big piece _k.n.o.blauch_, add six eggs and a half a pound melted b.u.t.ter, and let simmer slowly. Now take your chicken and--'

"'All right, Boss, I wouldn't argue with you,' Bernstorff says, 'because them amounts represent only the preliminary lunches which I give this here Bolo. Further down you would see where he gets the real big money, and then I'll explain.'

"'Well, explain this,' the old man says. 'Here under date July second, nineteen sixteen, it stand an item:

To blowing up munitions plant $10,000

Who did you get to do it? Caruso?'

"'You couldn't blow up a munitions plant and make a first-cla.s.s job of it under ten thousand dollars, Boss,' Bernstorff says.

"'Is _that_ so?' the Kaiser tells him. 'Well, let me tell you something, Bernstorff. I've got a pretty good line on what them munitions explosions ought to cost. My eldest boy has been blowing up buildings in France for over three years now, and for what it costs to blow up a factory he could blow up two cathedrals and a chateau.'

"'Have it your own way, Boss,' Bernstorff says, 'but them chateau buildings is so old that they're pretty near falling down, anyway.'

"'Don't give me no arguments,' the Kaiser says. 'I suppose you're going to tell me these here

8 5-12 doz a.s.std bombs $3,200

was some Sat.u.r.day specials you picked up in a bargain bas.e.m.e.nt. What was they filled with, rubies?'

"'Bombs is awful high, Boss,' Bernstorff says. 'Ask Dernburg what he used to pay for bombs; ask Von Papen; ask this here judge of the New York Supreme Court--I forget his name; ask anybody; they would tell you the same.'

"'Should I also ask 'em if spies gets paid in America the same like stomach specialists in Germany? Look at this:

To one week's salary 12,235 spies $1,223,500

What have you been doing, Bernstorff? Keeping a steam-yacht on me and charging it up as spies?'

"'Listen, Boss,' Bernstorff says. 'If you would know what an awful strong organization spies has got in the United States, instead you would be talking to me this way you would be thanking your lucky stars that I didn't let 'em run the wage scale up on me no higher than they did. Why, before I left Washington a deputation from Local Number One Amalgamated Spies of North America comes to see me and--'

"'What the devil you are talking nonsense?' the Kaiser shouts. '_Moost_ you got to employ union spies? Couldn't you find thousands and thousands of non-union spies to work for you?'

"'That only goes to show what you know about America,' Bernstorff says.

'There's a whole lot of people in America which would stand for blowing up factories, sinking pa.s.senger-steamers, shooting up hospitals, and dropping bombs on kindergartens, y'understand, but when it comes to people employing scab labor, they draw the line. And then again, Boss, spies is very highly thought of in America. Respectable people, like lawyers and doctors, gets arrested every day over there, and even once in a while a minister, y'understand, but a spy--_never_!'

"At this point when it looks like plain sailing for Bernstorff, the Kaiser picks out that fifty-thousand-dollar item, and right there Bernstorff makes his big mistake, for as soon as he starts that Congressmen story the old man begins to figure that if Congressmen are so cheap and spies so dear, y'understand, the only thing to do is to call up the _Polizeiprasidium_ and tell 'em to send around a plain-clothes man right away to number Twenty-six A Schloss Platz, ring Hohenzollern's bell."

"Then you really think that Bernstorff and Von Papen and all them crooks didn't spend the money over here that they claimed they spent," Morris said.

"They probably spent it, all right," Abe replied, "but whether or not they spent it for what they claimed they spent it _for_, Mawruss, _that_ I don't know, because if them fellers didn't stop at arson, dynamiting, and murder, why should they hesitate at petty larceny?"

"But what them boys did in the way of blowing up munitions plants and sinking pa.s.senger-steamers was because they loved the Kaiser so much, and instead of arresting Bernstorff for the money he spent, Abe, I bet yer the Kaiser made him a thirty-second degree pa.s.sed a.s.sistant _Geheimrat_ or something," Morris declared.

"Well, there's no accounting for tastes, Mawruss," Abe said, "and if these here Germans is willing to slaughter, rob, and burn because they are in love with a feller which to me has a personality as attractive as the framed insides of the entrance to a safe deposit vault, y'understand, all I can say is that I don't give them no more credit for it than I would to a bookkeeper who committed forgery because he was in love with the third lady from the end in the second row of the original Bowery Burlesquers."

"The wonder to me is that the Kaiser don't see it that way, too," Morris commented.

"That's because when it comes right down _to_ it, Mawruss, the third lady from the end ain't no more stuck on herself than the Kaiser is on _him_self," Abe said. "Them third ladies from the end figure that the poor suckers always _did_ like 'em, and that therefore they are always _going_ to like 'em, so they go ahead and treat their admirers like dawgs and take everything they give 'em, y'understand, and the end of it is that either a third lady becomes so careless that from a perfect thirty-six she comes to be an imperfect fifty-four and has to work for a living, or else she gets pinched for receiving the property which them poor buffaloed admirers of hers handed over to her, and that'll be the end of the Kaiser, too."

"And how soon do you think _that_ will happen?" Morris asked.

"That depends on how soon the Kaiser's admirers gets through with him,"

Abe said.

"Maybe the Kaiser will quit first," Morris concluded, "because you take them third ladies from the end, Abe, and sooner or later they grow terrible tired of this here--now--fast life."

V

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS ON THE FRONT PAGE AND OFF

What war done ain't a marker on what peace is going to do to a great many of these here front-page propositions which is nowadays accustomed to being continued on page two, column five, y'understand.

"Yes, Mawruss," Abe said, as he thrust aside the sporting section one Sunday in October, "a people at war is like a man with a sick wife.

Nothing else interests him, which here it stands an account from how them loafers out in Chicago plays baseball for the world's record yet, and for all the effect it has on me, Mawruss, it might just so well be something which catches my eye for the first time in the old newspaper padding which my wife pulls out from under the carpet when she is house-cleaning in the spring of nineteen twenty."