mechanically by way of assent.
"So come along, Mr. Stout," Polatkin said, "and look at them Ethel
Barrymore dresses. I think you'll like 'em."
He led Stout from the office as he spoke while Scheikowitz remained
behind with Elkan.
"Honest, Elkan," he said, "I'm surprised to see the way you are acting
with Louis Stout!"
"What do you mean, the way I'm acting, Mr. Scheikowitz?" Elkan
protested. "Do you think I am going to buy a house in a neighbourhood
which I don't want to live in at all just to oblige a customer?"
"_Schmooes_, Elkan!" Scheikowitz exclaimed. "No one asks you you should
buy a house there. Be a little reasonable, Elkan. What harm would it do
you, supposing you and Yetta should go out to Burgess Park next Sunday?
Because you know the way Louis Stout is, Elkan. He will look over our
line for two weeks yet before he decides on his order--and meantime we
shouldn't entegonize him."
"I don't want to antagonize him," Elkan said; "but me and Yetta made our
arrangements to go out to Johnsonhurst next Sunday."
"Go out there the Sunday after," cried Scheikowitz. "Johnsonhurst would
still be on the map, Elkan. It ain't going to run away exactly."
Thus persuaded, Elkan and Yetta on the following Sunday elbowed their
way through the crowd at the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge, and after
a delay of several minutes boarded a train for Burgess Park.
"Well, all I can say is," Yetta gasped, after they had seized on the
only vacant seats in the car, "if it's this way on Sunday what would it
be on weekdays?"
"There must have been a block," Elkan said meekly. Only by the exercise
of the utmost marital diplomacy had he induced his wife to make the
visit to Louis Stout's home, and one of his most telling arguments had
been the advantage of the elevated railroad journey to Burgess Park
over the subway ride to Johnsonhurst.
"Furthermore," Yetta insisted, referring to another of Elkan's plausible
reasons for visiting Burgess Park, "I suppose all these Italieners and
_Betzimmers_ are customers of yours which we was going to run across on
our way down there. Ain't it?"
Elkan blushed guiltily as he looked about him at the carload of
holiday-makers; but a moment later he exclaimed aloud as he recognized
in a seat across the aisle no less a person than Joseph Kamin, of Le
Printemps, Pittsburgh.
"Why, how do you do, Mr. Kamin?" he said.
"Not Elkan Lubliner, from Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company?" Mr. Kamin
exclaimed. "Well, who would think to meet you here!"
He rose from his seat, whereat a bulky Italian immediately sank into it;
and as livery of seizin he appropriated the comic section of Mr. Kamin's
Sunday paper, which had fallen to the floor of the car, and spread it
wide open in front of him.
"Now you lost your seat," Elkan said; "so you should take mine."
He jumped to his feet and Kamin sat down in his place, while a
Neapolitan who hung on an adjacent strap viciously scowled his
disappointment.
"You ain't acquainted with Mrs. Lubliner?" Elkan said.
"Pleased to meetcher," Kamin murmured.
Yetta bowed stiffly and Elkan hastened to make conversation by way of
relieving Mr. Kamin's embarrassment.
"Looks like an early spring the way people is going to the country in
such crowds," he said.
"I bet yer," Kamin rejoined emphatically. "I arrived in New York two
weeks ahead of my schedule, because I simply got to do my buying now or
lose a lot of early spring trade."
"Have you been in town long?" Elkan asked.
"Only this morning," Kamin answered; "and I am going down to eat dinner
with my sister, Mrs. Ortelsburg. She lives in Burgess Park."
"Is that so?" Elkan exclaimed. "We ourselves are going to Burgess
Park--to visit a friend."
"A customer," Yetta corrected.
"A customer could also be a friend," Kamin declared, "especially if he's
a good customer."
"This is a very good customer," Elkan went on, "by the name Louis
Stout."
"Louis Stout, from Flugel & Stout?" Kamin cried. "Why, him and Benno
Ortelsburg is like brothers already! Well, then, I'll probably see you
down in Burgess Park this afternoon, on account every Sunday afternoon
Louis plays pinocle at my brother-in-law's house. Why don't he fetch you
round to take a hand?"
"I should be delighted," Elkan said; but Yetta sniffed audibly.
"I guess we would be going home right after dinner, before the crowd
starts back," she said.
"Not on a fine day like this you wouldn't," Kamin protested; "because
once you get out to Burgess Park you ain't in such a hurry to come back.
I wish we would got such a place near Pittsburgh, Mrs. Lubliner. I bet
yer I would quick move out there. The smoke gets worser and worser in
Pittsburgh; in fact, it's so nowadays we couldn't sell a garment in
pastel shades."
"Well, we got plenty blacks, navy blues, Copenhagen blues and brown in
our spring line, Mr. Kamin," Elkan said; and therewith he commenced so
graphically to catalogue Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's new stock
that, by the time the train drew into Burgess Park, Kamin was making
figures on the back of an envelope in an effort to convince Elkan that
his prices were all wrong.
"But, anyhow," Kamin said, as they parted in front of the Ortelsburgs'
colonial residence, "I will see you in the store to-morrow morning
sure."
"You'll see me before then, because me and Yetta is coming round this
afternoon sure--ain't we, Yetta?"
Mrs. Lubliner nodded, for her good humour had been restored by Elkan's
splendid exhibition of salesmanship.
"This afternoon is something else again," Kamin said, "because a feller
which tries to mix pinocle with business is apt to overplay his hand in
both games."
* * * * *
"No, Joe; you're wrong," Benno Ortelsburg said to his brother-in-law,
Joseph Kamin, as they sipped their after-dinner coffee in the Ortelsburg
library that day. "It wouldn't be taking advantage of the feller at all.
You say yourself he tries to sell goods to you on the car already. Why
shouldn't we try to sell Glaubmann's house to him while he's down here?
And we'll split the commission half and half."
Kamin hesitated before replying.
"In business, Joe--it's Esau's fable of the lion and the mouse every
time!" Ortelsburg continued. "The mouse scratches the lion's back and
the lion scratches the mouse's back! Ain't it?"
"But you know so well as I do, Benno, that Glaubmann's house on Linden
Boulevard ain't worth no eighteen thousand dollars," Kamin said.
"Why ain't it?" Benno retorted. "Glaubmann's Linden Boulevard house is
precisely the same house as this, built from the same plans and
everything--and this house costs me thirteen thousand five hundred
dollars. Suburban real estate is worth just so much as you can get some
sucker to pay for it, Joe. So I guess I better get the cards and chips
ready, because I see Glaubmann coming up the street now."
A moment later Glaubmann entered the library and greeted Kamin
uproariously.
"Hello, Joe!" he cried. "How's the drygoods business in Pittsburgh?"
"Not so good as the real-estate business in Burgess Park, Barney," Kamin
replied. "They tell me you are selling houses hand over fist."
"_Yow_--hand over fist!" Barnett cried. "If I carry a house six months
and sell it at a couple thousand dollars' profit, what is it?"
"I got to get rid of a whole lot of garments to make a couple thousand
dollars, Barney," Kamin said; "and, anyhow, if you sell a house for
eighteen thousand dollars which it cost you thirteen-five you would be
making a little more as four thousand dollars."
"Sure I would," Glaubmann replied; "_aber_ the people which buys
green-goods and gold bricks ain't investing in eighteen-thousand-dollar
propositions! Such yokels you could only interest in hundred-dollar lots
between high and low water on some of them Jersey sandbars."
"There is all kinds of come-ons, Barney," Joe said, "and the biggest
one, understand me, is the business man who is willing to be played for
a sucker, so as he can hold his customers' trade."
"You got the proper real-estate spirit, Joe," Benno declared, as he
returned with the cards and chips. "You don't allow the ground to grow
under your feet. Just at present, though, we are going to spiel a
little pinocle and we would talk business afterward."
"Real estate ain't business," Kamin retorted. "It's a game like pinocle;
and I got a little Jack of Diamonds and Queen of Spades coming round
here in a few minutes which I would like to meld."
"Now you are talking poetry," Barnett said.
"Take it from me, Barney," Benno Ortelsburg interrupted, "this ain't no
poetry. It's a fact; and if you could see your way clear to pay a
thousand dollars' commission, y'understand, me and Joe is got a customer
for your Linden Boulevard house at eighteen thousand dollars."
"Jokes you are making me!" Barnett cried. "You shouldn't drink so much
schnapps after dinner, Benno, because I could as much get eighteen
thousand for that Linden Boulevard house as I would pay you a thousand
dollars commission if I got it."
"You ain't paying me the thousand dollars," Benno protested. "Don't you
suppose Joe's got a look-in-here?"
"And furthermore," Joe said, "you also got Louis Stout to consider. If
you think Louis Stout is going to sit by and see a commission walk past
him, Benno, you are making a big mistake."
"I'm willing we should give Louis a hundred or so," Benno agreed. "We
got to remember Louis is a customer of his also."
"A customer of who's?" Barnett asked, as the doorbell rang.
"_Stiegen!_" Benno hissed; and a moment later he ushered Elkan and Yetta
into the library, while Mr. Stout brought up the rear.
Benno cleared his throat preparatory to introducing the newcomers, but
Louis Stout brushed hastily past him.
"Mr. Glaubmann," Louis said, "this is my friend, Elkan Lubliner."
"And you forget Mrs. Lubliner," cried Mrs. Ortelsburg, who had hurried
downstairs at the sound of voices in the hall. "I'm Mrs. Ortelsburg,"
she continued, turning to Yetta. "Won't you come upstairs and take your
things off?"
"Elkan," Louis Stout continued, "you better go along with her. I want
you to see what an elegant lot of clothes-closets they got upstairs. You
know most houses is designed by archytecks which all they are trying to
do is to save money for the builder. _Aber_ this archyteck was an
exception. The way he figures it he tries to build the house to please
the women, _mit_ lots of closet room, and--excuse me, ladies--to hell
with the expenses! I'll go upstairs with you and show you what I mean."
Benno frowned angrily.
"'Tain't necessary, Louis," he said. "Mrs. Ortelsburg would show him."
He drew forward chairs; and, after Elkan and Yetta had followed Mrs.
Ortelsburg upstairs, he closed the library door.
"Couldn't I introduce people in my own house, Stout?" he demanded.
Louis Stout shrugged his shoulders.
"If you mean as a matter of ettykit--yes," he retorted; "_aber_ if it's
a real-estate transaction--no. When I bring a customer to Mr. Glaubmann
for his Linden Boulevard house, Ortelsburg, I do the introducing myself,
which afterward I don't want no broker to claim he earned the commission
by introducing the customer first--understand me?"
He seated himself and smiled calmly at Kamin, Glaubmann, and his host.
"I ain't living in the country for my health exactly," he declared, "and
don't you forget it."
"Where's your written authorization from the owner?" Ortelsburg
demanded, raising a familiar point of real-estate brokerage law; and
Stout tapped his breast pocket.
"Six months ago already," Stout replied, "Mr. Glaubmann writes me if I
hear of a customer for his house he would protect me, and I got the
letter here in my pocket. Ain't that right, Mr. Glaubmann?"
Glaubmann had walked toward the window and was looking out upon the
budding white poplars that spread their branches at a height of six
feet above the sidewalks of Burgess Park. He nodded in confirmation of
Louis' statement; and as he did so a short, stout person, who was
proceeding hurriedly down the street in the direction of the station,
paused in front of the Ortelsburg residence. A moment later he rang the
bell and Ortelsburg himself opened the door.
"_Nu_, Mr. Kovner!" he said. "What could I do for you?"
"Mr. Glaubmann just nods to me out of your window," Max Kovner replied,
"and I thought he wants to speak to me."
Benno returned to the library with Max at his heels.
"Do you want to speak to Mr. Kovner, Glaubmann?" he asked, and Glaubmann
started perceptibly. During the months of Max Kovner's tenancy Glaubmann
had not only refrained from visiting his Linden Boulevard house, but he
had also performed feats of disappearance resembling Indian warfare in
his efforts to avoid Max Kovner on the streets of Burgess Park. All this
was the result of Max Kovner's taking possession of the Linden Boulevard
house upon Glaubmann's agreement to make necessary plumbing repairs and
to paint and repaper the living rooms; and Glaubmann's complete breach
of this agreement was reflected in the truculency of Max Kovner's manner
as he entered the Ortelsburg library.
"Maybe Glaubmann don't want to speak to me," he cried, "but I want to
speak to him, and in the presence of you gentlemen here also."
He banged Ortelsburg's library table with his clenched fist.
"Once and for all, Mr. Glaubmann," he said, "either you would fix that
plumbing and do that painting, understand me, or I would move out of
your Linden Boulevard house the first of next month sure!"
Glaubmann received this ultimatum with a defiant grin.
"_Schmooes_, Kovner," he said, "you wouldn't do nothing of the kind! You
got _mit_ me a verbal lease for one year in the presence of my wife,
your wife and a couple of other people which the names I forget."
"And how about the repairs?" Kovner demanded.
"If you seen the house needs repairs and you go into possession anyhow,"
Glaubmann retorted, "you waive the repairs, because the agreement to
repair merges in the lease. That's what Kent J. Goldstein, my lawyer,
says, Kovner; and ask any other lawyer, Kovner, and he could tell you
the same."
"So," Kovner exclaimed, "I am stuck with that rotten house for a year!
Is that the idee?"
Glaubmann nodded.
"All right, Mr. Glaubmann," Kovner concluded. "You are here in a strange
house to me and I couldn't do nothing; but I am coming over to your
office to-morrow, and if I got to sit there all day, understand me, we
would settle this thing up."
"That's all right," Ortelsburg interrupted. "When you got real-estate
business with Glaubmann, Mr. Kovner, his office is the right place to
see him. _Aber_ here is a private house and Sunday, Mr. Kovner, and we
ain't doing no real-estate business here. So, if you got a pressing
engagement somewheres else, Mr. Kovner, don't let me hurry you."
He opened the library door, and with a final glare at his landlord Max
passed slowly out.
"That's a dangerous feller," Glaubmann said as his tenant banged the
street door behind him. "He goes into possession for one year without a
written lease containing a covenant for repairs by the landlord,
y'understand, and now he wants to blame me for it! Honestly, the way
some people acts so unreasonable, Kamin, it's enough to sicken me with
the real-estate business!"
Kamin nodded sympathetically, but Louis Stout made an impatient gesture
by way of bringing the conversation back to its original theme.
"That ain't here or there," he declared. "The point is I am fetching you
a customer for your Linden Boulevard house, Glaubmann, and I want this
here matter of the commission settled right away."
Ortelsburg rose to his feet as a shuffling on the stairs announced the
descent of his guests.
"Commissions we would talk about afterward," he said. "First let us sell
the house."
* * * * *
In Benno Ortelsburg's ripe experience there were as many methods of
selling suburban residences as there were residences for sale; and, like
the born salesman he was, he realized that each transaction possessed
its individual obstacles, to be overcome by no hard-and-fast rules of
salesmanship. Thus he quickly divined that whoever sought to sell Elkan
a residence in Burgess Park must first convince Yetta, and he proceeded
immediately to apportion the chips for a five-handed game of auction
pinocle, leaving Yetta to be entertained by his wife. Mrs. Ortelsburg's
powers of persuasion in the matter of suburban property were second only
to her husband's, and the game had not proceeded very far when Benno
looked into the adjoining room and observed with satisfaction that Yetta
was listening open-mouthed to Mrs. Ortelsburg's fascinating narrative of
life in Burgess Park.
"Forty hens we got it," she declared; "and this month alone they are
laying on us every day a dozen eggs--some days ten, or nine at the
least. Then, of course, if we want a little fricassee once in a while we
could do that also."
"How do you do when you are getting all of a sudden company?" Yetta
asked. "I didn't see no delicatessen store round here."
"You didn't?" Mrs. Ortelsburg exclaimed. "Why, right behind the depot is
Mrs. J. Kaplan's a delicatessen store, which I am only saying to her
yesterday, 'Mrs. Kaplan,' I says, 'how do you got all the time such
fresh, nice smoke-tongue here?' And she says, 'It's the country air,'
she says, 'which any one could see; not alone smoke-tongue keeps fresh,
_aber_ my daughter also, when she comes down here,' she says, 'she is
pale like anything--and look at her now!' And it's a fact, Mrs.
Lubliner, the daughter did look sick, and to-day yet she's got a
complexion fresh like a tomato already. That's what Burgess Park done
for her!"
"But don't you got difficulty keeping a girl, Mrs. Ortelsburg?" Yetta
inquired.
"Difficulty?" Mrs. Ortelsburg cried. "Why, just let me show you my
kitchen. The girls love it here. In the first place, we are only twenty
minutes from Coney Island; and, in the second place, with all the eggs
which we got it, they could always entertain their fellers here in such
a fine, big kitchen, which I am telling my girl, Lena: 'So long as you
give 'em omelets or fried eggs _mit_ fat, Lena, I don't care how many
eggs you use--_aber_ butter is butter in Burgess Park _oder_ Harlem.'"
In this vein Mrs. Ortelsburg continued for more than an hour, while she
conducted Yetta to the kitchen and cellar and back again to the
bedrooms above stairs, until she decided that sufficient interest had
been aroused to justify the more robust method of her husband. She
therefore returned to the library, and therewith began for Benno
Ortelsburg the real business of the afternoon.
"Well, boys," he said, "I guess we would quit pinocle for a while and
join the ladies."
He chose for this announcement a moment when Elkan's chips showed a
profit of five dollars; and as, in his capacity of banker, he adjusted
the losses of the other players, he kept up a merry conversation
directed at Mrs. Lubliner.
"Here in Burgess Park," he said, "we play pinocle and we leave it alone;
while in the city when a couple business men play pinocle they spend a
day at it--and why? Because they only get a chance to play pinocle once
in a while occasionally. Every night they are going to theatre _oder_ a
lodge affair, understand me; whereas here, the train service at night
not being so extra elegant, y'understand, we got good houses and we stay
in 'em; which in Burgess Park after half-past seven in the evening any
one could find a dozen pinocle games to play in--and all of 'em breaks
up by half-past ten already."
With this tribute to the transit facilities and domesticity of Burgess
Park, he concluded stacking up the chips and turned to Mrs. Lubliner.
"Yes, Mrs. Lubliner," he continued with an amiable smile, "if you
wouldn't persuade your husband to move out to Burgess Park, understand
me, I shall consider it you don't like our house here at all."
"But I do like your house!" Yetta protested.
"I should hope so," Benno continued, "on account it would be a poor
compliment to a lot of people which could easy be good customers of your
husband. For instance, this house was decorated by Robitscher, Smith &
Company, which Robitscher lives across the street already; and his wife
is Joel Ribnik's--the McKinnon-Weldon Drygoods Company's--a sister
already."
"You don't tell me?" Yetta murmured.
"And Joel is staying with 'em right now," Benno went on. "Furthermore,
we got our furniture and carpets by Sig Tarnowitz, which he lives a
couple of doors down from here--also got relatives in the retail
drygoods business by the name Tarnowitz-Wixman Drygoods Company. The
brother, Julius Tarnowitz, is eating dinner with 'em to-day."
"It's a regular buyers' colony here, so to speak," Louis Stout said, and
Joseph Kamin nodded.
"Tell you what you do, Benno," Joseph suggested. "Get Tarnowitz and
Ribnik to come over here. I think Elkan would like to meet them."
Benno slapped his thigh with a resounding blow.
"That's a great idee!" he cried; and half an hour later the Ortelsburg
library was thronged with visitors, for not only Joel Ribnik and Julius
Tarnowitz had joined Benno's party, but seated in easy chairs were
Robitscher, the decorator, and Tarnowitz, the furniture dealer.
"Yes, siree, sir!" Robitscher cried. "Given the same decorative
treatment to that Linden Boulevard house, Mr. Lubliner, and it would got
Ortelsburg's house here skinned to pieces, on account over there it is
more open and catches the sun afternoon and morning both."
During this pronouncement Elkan's face wore a ghastly smile and he
underwent the sensations of the man in the tonneau of a touring car
which is beginning to skid toward a telegraph pole.
"In that case I should recommend you don't buy a Kermanshah rug for the
front room," Sigmund Tarnowitz interrupted. "I got in my place right now
an antique Beloochistan, which I would let go at only four hundred
dollars."
"_Aber_ four hundred dollars is an awful lot of money to pay for a rug,"
Elkan protested. He had avoided looking at Yetta for the past half-hour;
but now he glanced fearfully at her, and in doing so received a distinct
shock, for Yetta sat with shining eyes and flushed cheeks, inoculated
beyond remedy with the virus of the artistic-home fever.
"Four hundred ain't so much for a rug," she declared.
"Not for an antique Beloochistan," Sig Tarnowitz said, "because every
year it would increase in value on you."
"Just the same like that Linden Boulevard house," Ortelsburg added,
"which you could take it from me, Mrs. Lubliner, if you don't get right
away an offer of five hundred dollars advance on your purchase price I
would eat the house, plumbing and all."
At the word "plumbing" Glaubmann started visibly.
"The plumbing would be fixed so good as new," he said; "and I tell you
what I would do also, Mr. Lubliner--I would pay fifty per cent. of the
decorations if Mr. Ortelsburg would make me an allowance of a hundred
dollars on the commission!"
"Could anything be fairer than this?" Ortelsburg exclaimed; and he
grinned maliciously as Louis Stout succumbed to a fit of coughing.
"But we ain't even seen the house!" Elkan cried.
"Never mind we ain't seen it," Yetta said; "if the house is the same
like this that's all I care about."
"Sure, I know," Elkan replied; "but I want to see the house first before
I would even commence to think of buying it."
"_Schon gut!_" Glaubmann said. "I ain't got no objection to show you the
house from the outside; _aber_ there is at present people living in the
house, understand me, which for the present we couldn't go inside."
"Mr. Lubliner don't want to see the inside, Glaubmann!" Ortelsburg
cried, in tones implying that he deprecated Glaubmann's suggestion as
impugning Elkan's good faith in the matter. "The inside would be
repaired and decorated to suit, Mr. Glaubmann, but the outside he's got
a right to see; so we would all go round there and give a look."