On his way to the office of Schindler & Baum, his employers, he was a
prey to misgivings of the gloomiest kind.
"I got such a chance of getting a feller for that Fannie like I would
never try at all," he murmured to himself; but, as he turned the corner
of Nineteenth Street, Fortune, which occasionally favours the brave,
brought him into violent contact with a short, stout person proceeding
in the opposite direction.
"Why don't you hire it a whole sidewalk for yourself?" Philip began, and
then he recognized the stout gentleman.
"Why, hallo, Mr. Feigenbaum!" he cried.
"Hallo yourself, Margolius!" Feigenbaum grunted. "It's a wonder you
wouldn't murder me yet, the way you go like a steam engine already."
"Excuse me," Philip said. "Excuse _me_, Mr. Feigenbaum. I didn't see you
coming. I got to wear glasses, too."
Mr. Feigenbaum glared at Philip with his left eye, the glare in his
right eye being entirely beyond control, since it was fixed and constant
as the day it was made.
"What are you trying to do, Margolius?" he asked. "Kid me?"
"Kid you!" Philip repeated. "Why should I want to kid you?"
And then for the first time it occurred to him that not only was One-eye
Feigenbaum proprietor of the H. F. Cloak Company and its six stores in
the northern-tier counties of Pennsylvania, but that he was also a
bachelor. Moreover, a bachelor with one eye and the singularly
unprepossessing appearance of Henry Feigenbaum would be just the kind of
person to present to Fannie Goldblatt, for Feigenbaum, by reason of his
own infirmity, could not cavil at Fannie's black moustache, and as for
Fannie--well, Fannie would be glad to take what she could get.
"Come over to Hammersmith's and take a little something, Mr.
Feigenbaum," he said. "You and me hasn't had a talk together in a long
time."
Feigenbaum followed him across the street and a minute later sat down at
a table in Hammersmith's rear cafe.
"What will you take, Mr. Feigenbaum?" Philip asked as the waiter bent
over them solicitously.
"Give me a package of all-tobacco cigarettes," Feigenbaum ordered, "and
a rye-bread tongue sandwich."
Philip asked for a cup of coffee.
"Looky here, Feigenbaum," Philip commenced after they had been served,
"you and me is known each other now since way before the Spanish War
already, when I made my first trip by Sol Unterberg. Why is it I ain't
never sold you a dollar's worth of goods?"
"No, and you never will, Margolius," Feigenbaum said as he licked the
crumbs from his fingers; "and I ain't got a thing against you, because I
think you're a decent, respectable young feller."
Having thus endorsed the character of his host, Feigenbaum lit a
cigarette and grinned amiably.
"But Schindler & Baum got it a good line, Feigenbaum," Philip
protested.
"Sure I know they got it a good line," Feigenbaum agreed; "but I ain't
much on going to theaytres or eating a bunch of expensive feed. No,
Margolius, I like to deal with people what gives their line the benefit
of the theaytres and the dinners."
"What you mean?" Philip cried.
"I mean Ellis Block, from Saracuse, New York, shows me a line of capes
he bought it from you, Margolius," Feigenbaum continued, "which the
precisely same thing I got it down on Division Street at a dollar less
apiece from a feller what never was inside of so much as a moving
pictures, with or without a customer, Margolius, and so he don't got to
add the tickets to the price of the garments."
Philip washed down a tart rejoinder with a huge gulp.
"Not that I don't go to theaytre once in a while," Feigenbaum went on;
"but when I go I pay for it myself."
Philip nodded.
"Supposing I should tell you, Mr. Feigenbaum," he said, "that I didn't
want to sell you no goods."
"Well, if you didn't want to sell me no goods," Feigenbaum replied with
a twinkle in his eye, "the best thing to do would be to take me to a
show, because then I sure wouldn't buy no goods from you."
"All right," Philip replied; "come and take dinner with me and we'll go
and see the Lily of Constantinople."
"I wouldn't take dinner with you because I got to see a feller on East
Broadway at six o'clock," Feigenbaum said; "but if you are willing I
will meet you in front of the Casino at eight o'clock."
"Sure I'm willing," Philip said; "otherwise, I wouldn't of asked you."
"All right," Feigenbaum said, rising from his chair. "Eight o'clock,
look for me in front of the Casino."
At seven o'clock Philip alighted from a Forty-second Street car. He
strode into a fashionable hotel and handed ten dollars to the clerk in
the theatre-ticket office.
"Give me four orchestra seats for the Casino for to-night," he said.
Thence he proceeded to the grill-room and consumed a tenderloin steak,
hashed-brown potatoes, a mixed salad, pastry and coffee, and washed
down the whole with a pint of ebullient refreshment.
Finally, he lit a fine cigar and paid the check, after which he took a
small morocco-bound book from his waistcoat pocket. He turned to the
last page of a series headed, "Schindler & Baum, Expense Account," and
made the following entry:
"To entertainment of Henry Feigenbaum, $15.00."