riddance," and then, as Moe disappeared toward the street, she sniffed
again. "It don't take long for some loafers to forget their wives!" she
said.
* * * * *
"Well, Abe," Morris said, after the first greetings had passed between
them that afternoon, "I'm glad to see you back in the store."
"You ain't half so glad to see me back, Mawruss, as I am that I should
be back," Abe replied. "Not that the trip ain't paid us, Mawruss,
because I got a trunkful of samples on the way up here which I assure
you is a work of art."
"Sure, I know!" Morris commented with just a tinge of bitterness in his
tones; "Paris is the place for styles. Us poor suckers over here don't
know a thing about designing."
"Well, Mawruss, I'll tell you," Abe went on: "you are a first-class, A
number one designer, I got to admit, and there ain't nobody that I
consider is better as you in the whole garment trade; but"--here he
paused to unfasten his suitcase--"but, Mawruss," he continued, "I got
here just one sample style which I brought it with me, Mawruss, and I
think, Mawruss, you would got to agree with me, such models we don't
turn out on this side."
Here he opened the suitcase, and carefully taking out the dress of the
Café de la Paix he spread it on a sample table.
"What d'ye think of that, Mawruss?" he asked.
Morris made no answer. He was gazing at the garment with bulging eyes,
and beads of perspiration ran down his forehead.
"Abe!" he gasped at length, "where did you get that garment from?"
Before Abe could answer, the elevator door opened and a young lady
stepped out. It was now Abe's turn to gasp, for the visitor was no other
than the tanned and ruddy young person from the Café de la Paix.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Perlmutter," she said. "I've just got back."
"Oh, good afternoon, Miss Smith!" Morris cried.
"I hope I'm not interrupting you," she continued.
"Not at all," Morris said; "not at all."
Then a wave of recollection came over him, and he muttered a
half-smothered exclamation.
"Abe, Miss Smith," he almost shouted, and then he sat down. "Say,
lookyhere, Abe, what is all this, anyway? Miss Smith comes in here
and----"
"Well, upon my word!" Miss Smith interrupted; "if it isn't the gentleman
from the Café de la Paix--and, of all things, there is the very dress!"
Abe shrugged his shoulders.
"That's right, Miss Whatever-your-name is," Abe admitted; "that's the
dress, and since I paid you sixty dollars for it I don't think you got
any kick coming."
"Sixty dollars!" Morris cried. "Why, that dress as a sample garment only
cost us twenty-two-fifty to make up."
"Cost us?" Abe repeated. "As a sample garment? What are you talking
about?"
"I am talking about this, Abe," Morris replied: "that dress is the
self-same garment which I designed it, and which you says was rotten and
freaky, and which I give it to Miss Smith here for a present, and which
you paid Miss Smith sixty dollars for."
"And here is the sixty dollars now," Miss Smith broke in. "I hurried
here as fast as I could to give it to you, Mr. Perlmutter."
"One moment," Abe said. "I don't know who this young lady is or nothing;
but do you mean to told me that this here dress which I bought it in
Paris was made up right here in our place?"
"Here, Abe," Morris said, "I want to show you something. Here is from
the same goods a garment, and them goods as you know we get it from the
Hamsuckett Mills. So far what I hear it, the Hamsuckett Mills don't
sell their output in Paris. Am I right or wrong?"
Abe nodded slowly.
"Well, Mr. Perlmutter," Miss Smith said, "here's your sixty dollars.
I've got to get back to my patient. You know that I went to Paris with a
rheumatic case, and I've left the old gentleman in charge of a friend. I
came here to settle up."
"Excuse me," said Abe; "I ain't been introduced to this young lady yet."
"Why, I thought you knew her," Morris said. "This is Miss Smith, the
trained nurse which was so good to my Minnie when my Abie was born."
"Is that so?" Abe cried. "Well, Miss Smith, you should take that sixty
dollars and keep it, because, Mawruss, on the way over I sold Moe
Griesman fifty garments of that there style of yours at forty dollars
apiece."
"You don't say so!" Morris cried. "You don't say so! Well, all I got to
say is, Miss Smith, in the first place, if Abe wouldn't of told you to
keep that sixty dollars I sure would of done so, and in the second
place, I want you to come in here next week and pick out half a dozen
dresses. Ain't that right, Abe?"
"I bet yer that's right, Mawruss; we wouldn't take no for an answer,"
Abe replied. "And you should also leave us your name and address, Miss
Smith, because, _Gott soll hüten_, if I should be sick, y'understand,
I don't want nobody else to nurse me but you."
* * * * *
"Say, lookyhere, Abe," Morris said the following morning, "that trunkful
of Paris samples which the custom-house says we would get this morning
ain't come yet."
Abe clapped his partner on the shoulder and grinned happily.
"What do I care, Mawruss?" he said. "For my part they should never come.
I ain't got no use for Paris fashions at all. Styles which Mawruss
Perlmutter originates is good enough for me, because I always said it,
Mawruss, you are a cracker-jack, high-grade, A number one designer!"
CHAPTER THREE
DEAD MEN'S SHOES
"There goes that sucker, Aaron Kronberg, from Port Sullivan," Abe Potash
declared to his partner, Morris Perlmutter, as they looked from the
windows of their showroom to the opposite sidewalk some four stories
below. "Ain't it funny that feller would never buy from us a dollar's
worth more goods?"
"The reason ain't hard to find, Abe," Morris replied. "Oncet a garment
buyer gets into the hands of a competitor like Leon Sammet, it's all
off. I bet yer Leon tells him we are all kinds of crooks and swindlers."
"What could you expect from a cut-throat like Leon Sammet? That feller
is no good and his father before him is also a thief. I know his people
from the old country yet. One was worser as the other."
"Well, there's nothing the matter with Aaron's cousin, Alex Kronberg,
anyhow," Morris observed. "That feller does a fine business in
Bridgetown, and Sammet Brothers could no more take his trade away from
us than they could fly."
"That ain't our fault, Mawruss," Abe rejoined. "Sammet Brothers is fly
enough to do anything, Mawruss; but, the way Aaron Kronberg hates Alex
Kronberg, if they was to sell Alex a single garment, y'understand, Aaron
would never buy from them a dollar's worth more goods so long as he
lived."
"Ain't it a disgrace them two fellers is such enemies, Abe?"
"Alex ain't no enemy, Mawruss," Abe said. "It's Aaron what's the enemy.
Alex don't trouble himself at all. He told me so himself. But that's the
way it goes, Mawruss. Mosha Kronberg, Hillel Kronberg, and Elkan
Kronberg was three brothers which you don't see nowadays at all--more
like friends than brothers, Mawruss. Hillel died ten years ago and I
thought it would broke Mosha's heart. He looked after Hillel's widow and
Hillel's boy, Alex, because Mosha never married, Mawruss. He was a born
uncle. Then, when Elkan died a year later, I never seen a feller so
broke up like Mosha in all my life. He goes to work and sends Elkan's
boy, Aaron, to business college, and Elkan's widow he takes to live with
Hillel's widow, all together with himself and the two boys in that house
of his on Madison Street. For three years they lived that way, and in
the rest of the house Mosha couldn't keep any tenants at all. At last he
gives Aaron a couple thousand dollars and Alex the same, and Aaron
buys a store up in Port Sullivan, and Alex goes up to Bridgetown."
"What become of the widows, Abe?" Morris asked.
"I don't know is Elkan's widow living now _oder_ not," Abe said, "but
Mosha told me Hillel's widow wants to get married again, and Alex comes
to him and says he should give the old lady anyhow a thousand dollars.
Mosha wants to know what for, and Alex tells him he owes from Hillel's
estate yet a couple thousand dollars."
"And did he?" Morris inquired.
"Suppose he did?" Abe replied. "He is entitled to it after what he puts
up with during them three years they lived together. Well, Mosha and
Alex gets right away fighting about it, and I guess Alex would of sued
Mosha in the courts yet, only the old lady goes to work and dies on 'em
all of a sudden."
"But why is Aaron and Alex such enemies, Abe?" Morris asked.
"Well, it's like this, Mawruss: Aaron and Alex is good friends until
Uncle Mosha cut Alex out of his will. You see Aaron and Alex is the only
two relations which Mosha got at all. So naturally when Aaron thinks he
is coming in for the whole thing he begins to get sore at Alex, and the
more Aaron thinks that the old man really ought to leave half to Alex,
the more he gets sore at Alex."
"The whole business is dead wrong, Abe," Morris commented. "In the
first place, the old man ain't got no right to leave his money only to
Aaron; and in the second place, Aaron ain't got no right to feel sore at
Alex. And furthermore Alex ought to go round and see his uncle oncet in
a while when he is in New York, in the third place."
"Well, why don't you tell him so this afternoon, Mawruss?" Abe said.
"Alex is staying up at the Prince Clarence since last night already, and
he said he would be sure down here this afternoon."
"I will do so," Morris replied firmly.
"Go ahead," Abe added, "only one thing I got to tell you, Mawruss. There
is some customers which would stand anything, Mawruss. You could ship
'em two garments short in every order; you could send 'em goods which
ain't no more like the sample than bread is like _motsos_; you could
overcharge 'em in your statements; you could even draw on 'em one day
after their account is due, and still they would buy goods of you; but
so soon as you start to butt into their family affairs, Mawruss, that's
the finish, Mawruss. They would leave you like a shot."
"Alex Kronberg wouldn't take it so particular," Morris retorted. "He
knows I am only doing it for his own good."
"Oh, if you are only doing it for his own good, Mawruss, then that's
something again," Abe said; "because in that case we would not only lose
him for a customer, Mawruss, but we would also make an enemy of him
for life."
"You shouldn't worry," Morris replied as he put on his hat preparatory
to going out to lunch. "I know how to take care of a customer all
right."
Nevertheless Morris cogitated his partner's advice throughout the entire
lunch hour, and over his dessert he commenced to formulate a tentative
plan for restoring Alex Kronberg to his inheritance.
Two cups of coffee and a second helping of _mohn_ cake aided the process
of celebrating this scheme, so that when Morris returned to his place of
business it was nearly two o'clock.
"Abe," he said as he entered, "I've been thinking over this here matter
about Alex Kronberg, and I ain't going to talk to Alex about it at all.
Do you know what I'm going to do?"
Abe grabbed his hat and turned to Morris with a savage glare.
"Sure, I know what you are going to do, Mawruss," Potash bellowed
belligerently. "Henceforth, from to-morrow on, you are going to do this,
Mawruss: you are going to lunch after I am coming back. I could drop
dead from hunger already for all you care. I got a stomach too, Mawruss,
and don't you forget it."
* * * * *
Mosha Kronberg lived on the ground floor of his own tenement house on
Madison Street, and to say that Aaron Kronberg worshipped the ground
his uncle walked on would be to utter the literal truth.
"Well, uncle, how do you feel to-day?" Aaron inquired the morning after
Abe and Morris had so thoroughly discussed the Kronberg family
relations.
"I could feel a whole lot better, Aaron, and I could feel a whole lot
worse," Mosha Kronberg replied. "Them suckers has been after me again."
"Which ones are they now?" Aaron asked, his curiosity aroused.
"An orphan asylum," Mosha replied. "The gall which some people got it,
Aaron, honestly you wouldn't believe it at all. They want me I should
give 'em two hundred and fifty dollars. I told 'em time enough when I
would die, _Gott soll hüten_."
"What are you talking nonsense, Uncle Mosha?" Aaron broke in. "You ain't
going to die for a long time yet; and anyhow, Uncle Mosha, if people
goes to work and has children which they couldn't support while they are
living even, why should they get any of your money to support 'em after
you are dead? No one asks them suckers they should have children. Ain't
I right?"
"Sure you are right," Uncle Mosha agreed. "Hospitals also, Aaron. If I
got one hospital bothering me, I must got a dozen. Why should I bother
myself with hospitals, Aaron? A lowlife, a gambler, hangs around liquor
saloons all times of the night till he gets sick, y'understand, and
then he must go to a hospital and get well on my money yet. I see
myself!"
"What hospital was it?" Aaron inquired.
"The Mount Hebron Hospital," Uncle Mosha replied. "There is the
catalogue now. They are sending it me this morning only."
Aaron seized the annual report and list of donating members of the
hospital and opened it at the letter K.
"Do you know what I think, uncle?" Aaron cried. "I think that Alex
Kronberg puts 'em up to asking you for money."
"Alex puts 'em up to it?" Mosha repeated. "What for should Alex do such
a thing?"
"Here; let me show you," Aaron cried. "Alex himself gives them fakers
five dollars. Here it is in black on white: 'Alex Kronberg, Bridgetown,
Pennsylvania, five dollars.'"
Uncle Mosha adjusted a pair of eyeglasses to his broad, flat nose and
perused the record of his nephew's extravagance with bulging eyes.
"Well, what d'ye think for a sucker like that!" he exclaimed.
"I tell you the honest truth, uncle," Aaron said, "I don't want to say
nothing about Alex at all, but the way that feller is acting, just
because he does a little good business in his store, honestly it's a
disgrace. He sends my mother for ten dollars a birthday present too. Do
I need that sucker he should give my mother birthday presents? He is
throwing away his money left and right, and the first thing you know he
is coming to you borrowing yet."
"He should save himself the trouble," Uncle Mosha declared. "His tongue
should be hanging out of his mouth with hunger, Aaron, and I wouldn't
give him _oser_ one cent."
Aaron's face broke into a thousand wrinkles as he beamed his
satisfaction.
"Well, uncle," he said, "I must got to be going. I got a whole lot of
things to do to-day. Take care of yourself."
"Don't worry about me," Aaron's Uncle Mosha replied. "I could take care
of myself all right. You wouldn't drink maybe a glass of _schnaps_ or
something before you go? No? All right."
He always delayed his proffer of hospitality until Aaron was on the
front stoop. After the latter had turned the corner of Pike Street,
Uncle Mosha lingered to take the morning air. A fresh breeze from the
southwest brought with it a faint odour of salt herring and onions from
the grocery store next door, while from the bakery across the street
came the fragrant evidence of a large batch of _Kümmel brod_. He sighed
contentedly and turned to reënter the house, but even as he did so he
wheeled about in response to the greeting: "How do you do, Mr.
Kronberg?"
The speaker was none other than Morris Perlmutter, who had tossed on his
pillow until past midnight devising a plan for approaching Uncle Mosha
in a plausible manner. Now that his quarry had fallen so opportunely
within his grasp, Morris's face wreathed itself in smiles of such
amiability that Uncle Mosha grew at once suspicious.
"You got the advantage from me," he said.
"Why, don't you know me?" Morris cooed.
"I think," Uncle Mosha replied guardedly, "I seen you oncet before
somewheres. You are a collector for a hospital or a orphan asylum, or
some such sucker game. Ain't it?"
Morris laughed mirthlessly. His discarded plan for renewing his
acquaintance with Uncle Mosha had involved the pretence that he was
seeking to interest the old gentleman in the Home for Chronic Invalids,
Independent Order Mattai Aaron, of which fraternity Morris was an active
member; and Uncle Mosha's apparent distaste for organized charity proved
rather disconcerting.
"You're a poor guesser, Mr. Kronberg," he said.
"Then you are connected with some charity. Ain't it?" Uncle Mosha
continued.
Morris denied it indignantly.
"_Gott soil hüten_," he said. "My name is Mr. Perlmutter and I am in the
cloak and suit business."
"Oh, I remember now!" Uncle Mosha cried. The news that Morris was no
charity worker restored him to high good-humour.
"I remember you perfect now," he said, shaking hands effusively with
Morris. "You got a partner by the name Potash, ain't it?"
"That's right," Morris replied.
"And what brings you over here in this _nachbarschaft_?" Uncle Mosha
inquired.
Morris looked from Uncle Mosha to the tarnished brass plate on the side
of the tenement-house door. It read as follows:
M. KRONBERG
REAL ESTATE
"The fact is," Morris said, "I am coming to see you in a business way,
and if you got time I'd like to say a little something to you."
"Come inside," Uncle Mosha grunted. He thought he discerned a furtive
timidity in his visitor's manner strongly indicative of an impending
touch.
"In the first place," he began, after Morris was seated, "I ain't got so
much money which people think I got it."
"I never thought you did," said Morris, and Uncle Mosha glared in
response.
"But I ain't no beggar neither, y'understand," he retorted. "I got a
little something left, anyhow."
"Sure, I know," Morris agreed; "but what you have got or what you ain't
got is neither here or there. I am coming over this morning to ask you
something, a question."
Here he paused. He had not yet determined what the question would be,
and it occurred to him that, unless it were sufficiently momentous to
account for his presence on the lower East Side during the busiest hours
of a business day, Uncle Mosha would show him the door.
"Go ahead and ask it, then," Uncle Mosha broke in impatiently. "I
couldn't sit here all day."
"The fact is," Morris said slowly, and then his mind reverted to the
brass plate on the door and he at once proceeded with renewed
confidence--"the fact is I am coming over here to ask you something, a
question which a friend of mine would like to buy a property on the East
Side."
"A property," Uncle Mosha repeated. "A property is something else again.
What for a property would your friend like to buy it?"
"A fine property," Morris replied; "a property like you got it here."
"But this here property ain't for sale," Uncle Mosha said. "I got the
house here now since 1890 already, and I guess I would keep it."
"Sure, I know; that's all right," Morris went on; "but I thought, even
if you wouldn't want to sell the house, you know such a whole lot about
real estate, Mr. Kronberg, you could help us out a little."
The hard lines about Uncle Mosha's mouth relaxed into a smile.
"Well, when it comes to real estate," he said, "I ain't a fool exactly,
y'understand."
"That's what I was told," Morris continued. "A friend of mine he says to
me: 'If any one could tell you about real estate, Mosha Kronberg could.
There's a man,' he says, 'which his opinion you could trust in it
anything what he says is so. If the Astors and the Goelets would know
about East Side real estate what that feller knows--understand
me--instead of their hundreds of millions they would have thousands of
millions already.'"
Uncle Mosha fairly beamed.
"Yes, Mr. Kronberg," Morris went on, without taking breath, "he says to
me: 'You should go and see Uncle Mosha; he's a gentleman and he would
treat you right.' 'But,' I says to him, 'I ain't got no right to butt in
on your Uncle Mosha. You see, Alex,' I says----"
"Alex!" Uncle Mosha cried. "Did Alex Kronberg send you here?"
"That's who it was," Morris replied.
"Then all I could say is," Uncle Mosha thundered, "you should go right
back to Alex and tell him from me that I says any friend of his which
he comes to me looking for information about real estate, he's lucky I
don't kick him into the street yet."
He jumped up from his chair and opened the door leading into the public
hall.
"Go on," he roared, "out from my house."
Morris rose leisurely to his feet and pulled a large cigar from his
pocket.
"If that's the way you feel about it, Mr. Kronberg," he said gently,
"_schon gut_. I wouldn't bother you any more. At the same time, Mr.
Kronberg, if ever you should want to sell the house, y'understand, let
me know; that's all." As he passed out of the door he laid the cigar on
a side table and its bright red band immediately caught the eye of Uncle
Mosha. He pounced on it and was about to hurl it after his departing
visitor when something about the smoothness of the wrapper made him
pause. Five minutes later he lolled back in a horsehair-covered rocker
and puffed contentedly at Morris's cigar. "After all," he said, "I might
get a good price for the house anyway."
From Mosha Kronberg's tenement house on Madison Street to the cloak and
suit district, at Nineteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, is less than two
miles as the crow flies, but Morris Perlmutter's journey uptown was
accomplished in less direct fashion. He spent over half an hour in an
antiquated horse car and by the time the Broadway car to which he
transferred had reached Madison Square it was nearly twelve o'clock. As
he walked down Nineteenth Street he almost collided with Abe, whose face
wore a frown.
"Say, lookyhere, Mawruss!" he cried. "What kind of business is this?
Here you are just getting downtown and I am going out to lunch already."
"Sure, I know," Morris retorted. "You think of nothing but your stomach.
Believe me, Abe, I worked hard enough this morning."
"Worked nothing!" Abe rejoined. "You have been up to some monkey
business, Mawruss; otherwise why should Mosha Kronberg telephone us just
now he thought the matter over since you left there and he would be up
to see you this afternoon already."
"What!" Morris cried. "Did Mosha Kronberg telephone that himself?"
"All right, Mawruss; then I am a liar!" Abe exploded. "I am telling you
with my own ears I heard him."
"I believe you, Abe," Morris said soothingly. "Don't hurry back from
your lunch. I got lots of time."
"I would hurry back _oder_ not, as I please, Mawruss," Abe retorted as
he trudged off toward Hammersmith's restaurant. There he ministered to
his outraged feelings with a steaming dish of _gefüllte rinderbrust_,
and it was not till he had sopped up the last drop of gravy with a piece
of rye bread that he became conscious of a stranger sitting opposite to
him.
"Excuse me," said the latter, "you got a little soup on the lapel of
your coat."
"That ain't soup," Abe explained, as he dipped his napkin in his glass
of ice-water and started to remove the stain; "that's a little _gefüllte
rinderbrust_, which they fix it so thin and watery nowadays it might
just as well be soup the way it's always getting over your clothes."
"Things ain't the same like they used to be," the stranger remarked.
"Twenty--twenty-five years ago a feller could get a meal down on Canal
Street for a quarter--understand me--which it was really something you
could say was remarkable. Take any of them places, Gifkin's _oder_
Wasserbauer's. Ain't I right?"
"Did you used to went to Gifkin's?" Abe asked.
"I should say!" his vis-à-vis replied. "When I was a boy of fifteen I am
eating always regularly by Gifkin's."
"Me too. I used to eat a whole lot by Gifkin's," Abe said; "in fact, I
think I must of seen you there."
"I shouldn't wonder," the stranger continued. "At the time, I was
working by old man Baum right across from Gifkin's. He was my uncle
already."
"You are old man Baum's nephew!" Abe exclaimed. "How could that be? Old
man Baum only got one brother, Nathan, which he got mixed up in a
railroad accident near Knoxville. He was always up to some monkey
business, that feller, _olav hasholom_."
"Sure, I know," the stranger continued; "but old man Baum got also one
sister, my mother, Mrs. Gershon. You must remember my father, Sam
Gershon. Works for years by Richter as a cutter. My name is Mr. Max
Gershon."
"Why, sure I do!" Abe said, shaking hands with his new-found
acquaintance. "So you are a son of old man Gershon? Do you live here in
New York, Mr. Gershon?"