"Things goes pretty smooth for us lately, Mawruss," Abe Potash remarked,
shortly after M. Garfunkel's failure. "I guess we are due for a _schlag_
somewheres, ain't it?"
"Always you got to kick," Morris cried. "If you would only listen to
what _I_ got to say oncet in a while, Abe, things would always go
smooth."
Abe emitted a raucous laugh.
"Sure, I know," he said, "like this here tenement house proposition you
was talking to me about, Mawruss. You ain't content we should have our
troubles in the cloak and suit business, Mawruss, you got to go outside
yet and find 'em. You got to go into the real estate business too."
"Real-estaters ain't got no such trouble like _we_ got it, Abe," Morris
retorted. "There ain't no seasons in real estate, Abe. A tenement house
this year is like a tenement house last year, Abe, also the year before.
They ain't wearing stripes in tenement houses one year, Abe, and solid
colors the next. All you do when you got a tenement house, Abe, is to go
round and collect the rents, and when you got a customer for it you
don't have to draw no report on him. Spot cash, he pays it, Abe, or else
you get a mortgage as security."
"You talk like Scheuer Blumenkrohn, Mawruss, when he comes round here
last year and wants to swap it two lots in Ozone Grove, Long Island, for
a couple of hundred misses' reefers," Abe replied. "When I speculate,
Mawruss, I take a hand at auction pinochle."
"This ain't no speculation, Abe," said Morris. "This is an investment. I
seen the house, Abe, six stories and basement stores, and you couldn't
get another tenant into it with a shoehorn. It brings in a fine income,
Abe."
"Well, if that's the case, Mawruss," Abe rejoined, "why does Harris
Rabin want to sell it? Houses ain't like cloaks and suits, Mawruss, you
admit it yourself. We sell goods because we don't get no income by
keepin' 'em. If we have our store full with cloaks, Mawruss, and they
brought in a good income while they was in here, Mawruss, I wouldn't
want to sell 'em, Mawruss; I'd want to keep 'em."
"Sure," Morris replied. "But if the income was only four hundred and
fifty dollars a month, and next month you got a daughter what was
getting married to Alec Goldwasser, drummer for Klinger & Klein, and you
got to give Alec a couple of thousand dollars with her, but you don't
have no ready cash, _then_, Abe, you'd sell them cloaks, and so that's
why Harris Rabin wants to sell the house."
"I want to tell you something, Mawruss," Abe replied. "Harris Rabin
could sell a phonograft to a deef-and-dummy. He could sell moving
pictures to a home for the blind, Mawruss. He could also sell anything
he wanted to anybody, Mawruss, for you know as well as I do, Mawruss,
Harris Rabin is a first-class, A-number-one salesman. And so, if he
wants to sell his house so cheap there's lots of real-estaters what know
a bargain in houses when they see it. We don't, Mawruss. We ain't
real-estaters. We're in the cloak and suit business, and why should
Harris Rabin be looking for us to buy his house?"
"He ain't looking for us, Abe," Morris went on. "That's just the point.
I was by Harris Rabin's house last night, and I seen no less than three
real-estaters there. They all want that house, Abe, and if they want it,
why shouldn't we? Ike Magnus makes Harris an offer of forty-eight
thousand five hundred while I was sitting there already, but Harris
wants forty-nine for it. I bet yer, Abe, we could get it for forty-eight
seven-fifty--three thousand cash above the mortgages."
"I suppose, Mawruss, you got three thousand lying loose around your
pants' pocket. What?"
"Three thousand to a firm like us is nothing, Abe. I bet yer I could go
in and see Feder of the Kosciusko Bank and get it for the asking. We
ain't so poor, Abe, but what we can buy a bargain when we see it."
Abe shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, Mawruss, if I got to hear about Harris Rabin's house for the
rest of my life, all right. I'm agreeable, Mawruss; only, don't ask me
to go to no lawyers' offices nor nothing, Mawruss. There's enough to do
in the store, Mawruss, without both of us loafing around lawyers'
offices."
A more grudging acquiescence than this would have satisfied Morris, and,
without pausing for a cigar, he put on his hat and made straight for
Harris Rabin's place of business. The Equinox Clothing Company of which
Harris Rabin was president, board of directors and sole stockholder,
occupied the third loft of a building on Walker Street. There was no
elevator, and as Morris walked upstairs he encountered Ike Magnus at the
first landing.
"Hallo, Mawruss!" Ike cried. "Are you buying clothing now? I thought you
was in the cloak and suit business."
"Whatever business I'm in, Ike," Morris replied, "I'm in my own
business, Ike; and what is somebody else's business ain't my business,
Ike. That's the way I feel about it."
He plodded slowly up the next flight, and there stood Samuel Michaelson,
another real-estate operator.
"Ah, Mr. Perlmutter!" Samuel exclaimed. "You get around to see the
clothing trade once in a while, too. Ain't it?"
"I get around to see all sorts of trade, Mr. Michaelson," Morris
rejoined. "I got to get around and hustle to make a living, Mr.
Michaelson, because, Mr. Michaelson, I can't make no living by loafing
around street corners and buildings, Mr. Michaelson."
"Don't mention it," said Mr. Michaelson as Morris started up the last
flight. When he entered the Equinox Clothing Company's office the clang
of the bell drowned out the last words of Marks Henochstein's sentence.
Mr. Henochstein, another member of the real-estate fraternity, was in
intimate conference with Harris Rabin.
"I think we got him going," he was saying. "My wife seen Mrs. Perlmutter
at a _Kaffeeklatsch_ yesterday, and she told her I made you an offer of
forty-eight four-fifty for the house. Last night when he came around to
your place I told him the house ain't no bargain for any one what ain't
a real-estater, y'understand, and he gets quite mad about it. Also, I
watched him when Ike Magnus tells you he would give forty-eight five for
it, and he turned pale. If he----"
At this juncture the doorbell rang and Morris entered.
"No, sir_ee_, sir," Harris Rabin bawled. "Forty-nine thousand is my
figure, and that ain't forty-eight nine ninety-nine neither."
Here he recognized Morris Perlmutter with an elaborate start and
extended his hand in greeting.
"Hallo, Mawruss," he said. "Them real-estaters pester the life out of a
feller. 'Tain't no use your hanging around here, Henochstein," he called
in sterner tones. "When I make up my mind I make up my mind, and that's
all there is to it."
Henochstein turned in crestfallen silence and passed slowly out of the
room.
"Them sharks ain't satisfied that you're giving away a house, Mawruss,"
Harris went on. "They want it you should let 'em have coupons and
trading stamps with it."
"How much did he offer you?" Morris asked.
"Forty-eight five-fifty," Harris Rabin replied. "That feller's got a
nerve like a horse."
"Oh, I don't know," Morris murmured. "Forty-eight five-fifty is a good
price for the house, Harris."
"Is it?" Harris cried. "Well, maybe you think so, but you ain't such a
_gri_terion."
Morris was visibly offended at so harsh a rejoinder.
"I know I ain't, Harris," he said. "If I was I wouldn't be here, Harris.
I come here like a friend, not like one of them--them--fellers what you
talk about. If it wasn't that my Minnie is such a friend to your
daughter Miriam I shouldn't bother myself; but, knowing Alec Goldwasser
as I do, and being a friend of yours always up to now, Harris, I come to
you and say I will give you forty-eight six hundred for the house, and
that is my last word."
Harris Rabin laughed aloud.
"Jokes you are making it, Mawruss," he said. "A joke is a joke, but when
a feller got all the trouble what I got it, as you know, Mawruss, he got
a hard time seeing a joke, Mawruss."
"That ain't no joke, Harris," Morris replied. "That's an offer, and I
can sit right down now and make a memorandum if you want it, and pay you
fifty dollars as a binder."
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Mawruss," Harris said. "You raised
Henochstein fifty dollars, so I'll come down fifty dollars, and that'll
be forty-eight thousand nine hundred and fifty."
He grew suddenly excited and grabbed Morris by the arm.
"Don't let's waste no time about it," he cried. "What's the use of
memorandums? We go right away by Henry D. Feldman and fix up the
contract."
"Hold on." Morris said with a stare that blended frigidity and surprise
in just the right proportions. "I ain't said nothing about forty-eight
nine-fifty. What I said was forty-eight six."
"You don't mean that, Mawruss," Harris replied. "You mean forty-eight
_nine_."
Morris saw that the psychological moment had arrived.
"Look-y here, now, Harris," he said. "Forty-eight six from forty-eight
nine is three hundred. Ain't it?"
Harris nodded.
"Then," Morris announced, "we'll split the difference and make it
forty-eight seven-fifty."
For one thoughtful moment Harris remained silent, and then he clapped
his hand into that of Morris.
"Done!" he cried.
Twenty days elapsed, during which Potash & Perlmutter took title to
Harris Rabin's house and paid the balance of the purchase price,
moieties of which found their way into the pockets of Magnus, Michaelson
and Henochstein. At length, the first of the month arrived and Abe and
Morris left the store early so that they might collect the rents of
their real property.
"_I_ seen the house, Abe, and _you_ seen the house," Morris said as they
turned the corner of the crowded East Side street on which their
property fronted, "but you can't tell nothing from looking at a
property, Abe. When you get the rents, Abe, _that's_ when you find it
out that you got a fine property, Abe."
He led the way up the front stoop of the tenement and knocked at the
first door on the left-hand side. There was no response.
"They must be out. Ain't it?" Abe suggested.
Morris faced about and knocked on the opposite door, with a similar lack
of response.
"I guess they go out to work and lock up their rooms," Morris explained.
"We should have came here after seven o'clock."
They walked to the end of the hall and knocked on the door of one of the
two rear apartments.
"Come!" said a female voice.
Morris opened the door and they entered.
"We've come for the rent," he said. "Him and me is the new landlords."
The tenant excused herself while she retired to one of the inner rooms
and explored her person for the money. Then she handed Morris ten greasy
one-dollar bills.
"What's this?" Morris cried. "I thought the rear rooms were fourteen
dollars a month. I saw the receipts made out last month."
The tenant grinned fiendishly.
"Sure you did," she replied. "We've been getting all kinds of receipts.
Oncet we got a receipt for eighteen dollars, when dere was some
vacancies in de house, but one of de syndicate says he'd get some more
of dem 'professional' tenants, because it didn't look so good to a
feller what comes snooping around for to _buy_ the house, to see such
high rents."
"Syndicate?" Abe murmured. "Professional tenants?"
"Sure," the tenant replied. "Dere was four to de syndicate. Magnus was
one. Sumpin about a hen was de other, and den dere was dis here Rabin
and a guy called Michaelson."
"And what is this about professional tenants?" Morris croaked.
"Oh, dere was twenty-four families in de house, includin' de
housekeeper," the tenant replied. "Eighteen of 'em was professionals,
and when de syndicate sold youse de house de professionals moved up to a
house on Fourt' Street what de syndicate owns."
Abe pulled his hat over his eyes and thrust his hands into his trousers'
pockets.
"S'enough, lady," he said; "I heard enough already."
He turned to Morris.
"Yes, Mawruss," he said bitterly. "You're right. There ain't no seasons
in real estate nor in suckers neither, Mawruss. You can catch 'em every
day in the year, Mawruss. I'm going home, but if you need an express
wagon to carry away them rents, Mawruss, there's a livery stable around
the corner."
It was at least a week before Abe could bring himself to address his
partner, save in the gruffest monosyllables; but an unusual rush of
spring customers brought about a reconciliation, and Abe and Morris
forgot their real-estate venture in the reception of out-of-town trade.
In the conduct of their business Morris devoted himself to manufacturing
and shipping the goods, while Abe attended to the selling end. Twice a
year Abe made a long trip to the West or South, with shorter trips down
East between times, and he never tired of reminding his partner how
overworked he, Abe, was.
"I got my hands full, Mawruss," he said, after he had greeted half a
dozen Western customers; "I got enough to do here, Mawruss, without
running around the country. We ought to do what other houses does,
Mawruss. We ought to get a good salesman. We got three thousand dollars
to throw away on real estate, Mawruss; why don't we make an investment
like Sammet Brothers made it? Why don't we invest in a crackerjack,
A-number-one salesman?"
"I ain't stopping you, Abe," Morris replied. "Why don't we? Klinger &
Klein has a good boy, Alec Goldwasser. He done a big trade for 'em, Abe,
and they don't pay him much, neither."
"Alec Goldwasser!" Abe cried. "I'm surprised to hear you, Mawruss, you
should talk that way. We paid Alec Goldwasser enough already, Mawruss.
We paid him that two thousand dollars what he got with Miriam Rabin."
Morris looked guilty.
"Ain't I told you yet, Abe?" he said. "I thought I told you."
"You ain't told me nothing," said Abe.
"Why, Alec Goldwasser and Miriam Rabin ain't engaged no longer. The way
my Minnie tells me, Rabin says he don't want his daughter should marry a
man without a business of his own, so the match is off."
"Well, Mawruss," Abe commented, "you can't make me feel bad by telling
me _that_. But anyhow, I don't see no medals on Alec Goldwasser as a
salesman, neither. He ain't such a salesman what we want it, Mawruss."
"All right," Morris replied. "It's you what goes on the road, not me,
and you meet all the drummers. Suggest somebody yourself."
Abe pondered for a moment.
"There's Louis Mintz," he said finally. "He works by Sammet Brothers.
He's a high-priced man, Mawruss, but he's worth it."
"Sure he's worth it," Morris rejoined, "and he knows it, too. I bet yer
he's making five thousand a year by Sammet Brothers."
"I know it," said Abe, "but his contract expires in a month from now,
and it ain't no cinch to work for Sammet Brothers, neither, Mawruss. I
bet yer Louis' got throat trouble, talking into a customer them garments
what Leon Sammet makes up, and Louis' pretty well liked in the trade,
too, Mawruss."
"Well, why don't you see him, Abe?"
"I'll tell you the truth, Mawruss," Abe replied. "I _did_ see him. I
offered him all what Sammet Brothers gives him, and I told him we make a
better line for the price, but it ain't no use. Louis says a salesman's
got to work hard anyhow, so he may as well work a little harder, and he
says, too, it spoils a man's trade when he makes changes."
Here a customer entered the store and Abe was busy for more than half an
hour. At the end of that time the customer departed and Morris returned
to the show-room.
"Abe," he said, "I got an idea."
Abe looked up.
"More real estate?" he asked.
"Not more real estate, Abe," Morris corrected, "but the _same_ real
estate. When we're stuck we're stuck, Abe, ain't it?"
Abe nodded.
"So I got an idea," Morris went on, "that we go to Louis and tell him we
give him the same money what Sammet Brothers give him, only we give him
a bonus."
"A bonus!" Abe cried. "How much of a bonus?"
"A _big_ bonus, Abe," Morris replied. "We'll give him the house."
Abe remained silent.
"It'll look big, anyhow," Morris continued.
"Look big!" Abe exclaimed. "It is big. It's three thousand dollars."
"Well, you can't reckon stickers by what they cost," Morris explained.
"It's what they'll sell for."
"You're right, Mawruss," Abe commented bitterly. "And that house
wouldn't sell for Confederate money. I'll see Louis Mintz to-night."
Abe saw Louis that very evening, and they met by appointment at the
store ten days later. In the meantime Louis had inspected the house, and
when he entered Potash & Perlmutter's show-room his face wore none too
cheerful an expression.
"Well, Louis," Abe cried, "you come to tell us it's all right. Ain't
it?"
Louis shook his head.
"Abe," he said, "the old saying is you should never look at a horse's
teeth what somebody gives you, but that house is pretty near vacant."
"What of it?" Abe asked. "It's a fine house, ain't it?"
"Sure, it's a fine house," Louis agreed. "But what good is a fine house
if you can't rent it? You can't eat it, can you?"
"No," Morris replied, "but you can sell it."
"Well," Louis admitted, "selling houses ain't in my line? Maybe if I
knew enough about it I could sell it."
"But there's real-estaters what knows all about selling a house," Morris
began.
"You bet there is," Abe interrupted savagely.
"And you could get a real-estater to sell it for you," Morris concluded
with malevolent glance at his partner.
Louis consulted a list of the tenants which he had made.
"I'll think it over," he said, "and let you know to-morrow."
The next day he greeted Abe and Morris more cordially.
"I thought it over, Abe," he said, "and I guess it'll be all right."
"Fine!" Abe cried. "Let's go down and see Henry D. Feldman right away."
Just as a congenital dislocation of the hipbone suggests the name of
Doctor Lorenz, so the slightest dislocation of the cloak and suit
business immediately calls for Henry D. Feldman. No cloak and suit
bankruptcy would be complete without his name as attorney, either for
the petitioning creditors or the bankrupt, and no action for breach of
contract of employment on the part of a designer or a salesman could
successfully go to the jury unless Henry D. Feldman wept crocodile tears
over the summing up of the plaintiff's case.
In the art of drawing agreements relative to the cloak and suit trade
in all its phases of buying, selling, employing or renting, he was a
virtuoso, and his income was that of six Supreme Court judges rolled
into one. For the rest, he was of impressive, clean-shaven appearance,
and he was of the opinion that a liberal sprinkling of Latin phrases
rendered his conversation more pleasing to his clients.
Louis and Abe were ushered into his office only after half an hour's
waiting at the end of a line of six clients, and they wasted no time in
stating their business.
"Mr. Feldman," Abe murmured, "this is Mr. Louis Mintz what comes to work
by us as a salesman."
"Mr. Mintz," Mr. Feldman said, "you are to be congratulated. Potash &
Perlmutter have a reputation in the trade _nulli secundum_, and it is
generally admitted that the goods they produce are _summa cum laude_."
"We make fall and winter goods, too," Abe explained. "All kinds of
garments, Mr. Feldman. I don't want to give Louis no wrong impression.
He's got to handle lightweights as well as heavyweights, too."
Mr. Feldman stared blankly at Abe and then continued: "No doubt you have
quite settled on the terms."
"We've talked it all over," said Louis, "and this is what it is."
He then specified the salary and commission to be paid, and engaged Mr.
Feldman to draw the deed for the tenement house.
"And how long is this contract to last?" Feldman asked.
"For five years," Abe replied.
"Five years nothing," said Louis. "I wouldn't work for no one on a five
years' contract. One year is what I want it."
"One year!" Abe cried. "Why, Louis, that ain't no way to talk. In one
year you'd just about get well enough acquainted with our trade--of
course, I'm only _talking_, y'understand--to cop it out for some other
house what would pay you a couple of hundred more. No, Louis, I think it
ought to be for five years."
"Of course, if you think I'm the kind what takes a job to cop out the
firm's trade, Abe," Louis commenced, "why----"
"I'm only saying for the sake of argument," Abe hastened to explain.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Louis: I'll make it two years, and at the
end of that time if you want to quit you can do it; only, you should
agree not to work as salesman for no other house for the space of one
year afterward or you can go on working for us for one year afterward.
How's that?"
"I think that's eminently fair," Mr. Feldman broke in hurriedly. "You
can't refuse those terms, Mr. Mintz. Mr. Potash will sign for his
partner, I apprehend, and then Mr. Perlmutter will be bound under the
principle of _qui fecit per alium fecit per se_."
No one could stand up against such a flood of Latin, and Louis nodded.
"All right," he said. "Let her go that way."
Mr. Feldman immediately rang for a stenographer.
"Come back to-morrow at four o'clock," he said. "I shall send a clerk
with the deed to be signed by Mrs. Potash and Mrs. Perlmutter to-night."
The next afternoon, at half an hour after the appointed time, the
contract was executed and the deed delivered to Louis Mintz, and on the
first of the following month Louis entered upon his new employment.
Louis' first season with his new employers was fraught with good results
for Potash & Perlmutter, who reaped large profits from Louis'
salesmanship; but for Louis it had been somewhat disappointing.
"I never see nothing like it," he complained to Abe. "That tenement
house is like a summer hotel--people coming and going all the time; and
every time a tenant moves yet I got to pay for painting and repapering
the rooms. You certainly stuck me good on that house."
"Stuck you!" Abe cried. "We didn't stuck you, Louis. We just give you
the house as a bonus. If it don't rent well, Louis, you ought to sell
it."
"Don't I know I ought to sell it?" Louis cried; "but who's going to buy
it? Real-estater after real-estater comes to look at it, and it all
amounts to nix. They wouldn't take the house for the mortgages."
For nearly a year and a half Louis and Abe repeated this conversation
every time Louis came back from the road, and on the days when Louis
paid interest on mortgages and premiums on fire insurance he grew
positively tearful.
"Why don't you pay me what I am short from paying carrying charges on
that property?" Louis asked one day. "And I'll give you the house back."
Abe laughed.
"You should make that proposition to the feller what sold us the house,"
Abe said jocularly.
"Any one what sold that house once, Abe," Louis rejoined, "don't want it
back again."
At length, when Louis was absent on a business trip some three months
before the expiration of his contract, Abe approached Morris in the
show-room and mooted the subject of taking back the house.
"That house is a sticker, Mawruss," he said, "and we certainly shouldn't
let Louis suffer by it. The boy done well by us, and we don't want to
lose him."
"Well, Abe," Morris replied, "the way I look at it, we should wait till
his time is pretty near up. Maybe he will renew the contract without our
taking back the house, Abe; but if the worst comes to the worst, Abe, we
give him what he spent on the house and take it back, _providing_ he
renews the contract for a couple of years. Ain't it?"
Abe nodded doubtfully.
"Maybe you're right, Mawruss," he said; "but the boy done good for us,
Mawruss. We made it a big profit by him this year already, and I don't
want him to think that we ain't doing the right thing by him."
"Since when was you so soft-hearted, Abe?" Morris asked satirically; and
when Louis came back from the road, a week later, no mention was made of
the house until Louis himself broached the topic.
"Look'y here, Abe," Louis said, "what are you going to do for me about
that house? Counting the rent I collected and the money I laid out for
carrying charges, I'm in the hole eight hundred and fifty dollars
already."
"Do for you, Louis!" Morris replied. "Why, what can we do for you? Why
don't you fix it up like this, Louis? Why don't you make one last
campaign among the real-estaters, and then if you don't succeed maybe we
can do something."
"That's right, Louis," Abe said. "Just try it and see what comes of it."
Then Abe handed Louis a cigar and dismissed the subject, which never
again arose until Louis was on his final trip.
"Ain't it funny, Mawruss," Abe said, the morning of Louis' expected
return--"ain't it funny he ain't mentioned that house to us since we
spoke to him the last time he was home?"
"I know it," Morris replied, "but you needn't worry, Abe. It says in
the contract that Louis can't take a job as salesman with any other
house till one year is up, and the boy can't afford to stay loafing
around for a whole year."
Abe nodded, and as he turned to look up the contract in the safe the
store door opened and Louis himself entered.
"Hallo, Louis," Abe cried. "Glad to see you, Louis. Another good trip?"
Louis nodded, and they all passed into the show-room.
"Well, you're going to make many more of them for us before you're
through, Louis," Abe said.
Louis grunted, and Abe and Morris exchanged disquieting glances.
"You know, Louis," Morris said in the dulcet accents of the sucking
dove, "your contract is up next week, and Abe and me was talking about
it the other day, Louis, and about the house, too, and we says we should
do something about that house, Louis, and so we'll make another contract
for about, say, three years, and we'll fix it up about the house when we
all sign the contract, Louis. We meant to take back the house all the
time, Louis. We was only kidding you along, Louis," he continued.
"So you was only kidding me along when you told me to see them
real-estaters, hey?" Louis demanded.
"Sure," Abe and Morris replied.
"Then you was the ones what got kidded," Louis said, "for the last time
I was in town I took your advice. Do you know a feller called
Michaelson? And two other fellers by the name of Henochstein and
Magnus?"
Abe nodded.
"Well, them three fellers took that house off of my hands and paid me
six hundred dollars to boot, over and above the seven hundred and fifty
I sunk in it."
Abe and Morris puffed vigorously at their cigars.
"And what's more," Louis went on, "they introduced me to Harris Rabin,
of the Equinox Clothing Company. I guess you know him, too, don't you?"
Morris admitted sullenly that he did.
"He's got a daughter, Miss Miriam Rabin," Louis concluded. "Her and me
is going to announce our engagement in next Sunday's Herald."
He paused and watched Morris and Abe, to see the news sink in.
"And as soon as we're married," he said, "back to the road for mine, but
not with Potash & Perlmutter."
"I guess you're mistaken, Louis," Abe cried. "I guess you got a contract
with us what will stop you going on the road for another year yet."
"Back up, Abe," Louis said. "That there contract says I can't work as a
_salesman_ for any other house for a year. But Rabin and me is going as
partners together in the cloak and suit business, and if there's
anything in that contract about me not selling cloaks as my own boss
I'll eat it."
Abe went to the safe for the contract. At last he found it, and after
reading it over he handed it to Morris.
"_You_ eat it, Mawruss," he said. "Louis is right."