fire, and twenty minutes after Mrs. Duryea had left Sam Green's store
Max was holding a levee behind the old counter. By two o'clock he had
greeted over fifty old friends and at least twenty of them had made
purchases in amounts varying from five to thirty dollars.
"As sure as you're standing there, Mr. Kirschner," Sam declared, "I sold
more goods this morning as in the last two months."
Max grinned delightedly. His face was flushed and he looked at least ten
years younger as he patted Sam on the shoulder.
"Look out for the rush this afternoon," he said. "If we only had a
better assortment, Green, I think we could keep this up for a week
longer and after that we could do a good, steady business."
"We?" Sam exclaimed.
Max coloured and smiled in an embarrassed fashion.
"Of course I mean you," he said.
"Why 'of course'?" Sam asked; and Mrs. Green nodded vigorously. "Why not
we, Mr. Kirschner?"
"Well, you see, I haven't sold goods at retail for so long," Max
explained, "that I really don't know how."
Sam turned to Mrs. Green with a quick shrug.
"_Was hast du gehört?_" he cried. "He don't know how! If I wouldn't know
how to sell goods the way you don't know how, Mr. Kirschner, I would
quick build up a good business here. Tell me, Mr. Kirschner, how much
longer do you got a vacation, because I'd like to make you a
proposition. You could stay with me here for the rest of your vacation
and I would give you half of the profits over the cost price of every
garment you sell. How's that?"
"Very generous," Max said; "but you don't know what you're offering me,
Green, because the vacation might last for several years."
"Several years!" Sam repeated. "You mean you are retired from business,
Mr. Kirschner?"
"Exactly," Max answered; "with a fortune of two diamond rings, a diamond
pin, and eight hundred and sixty-five dollars cash."
Sam and Mrs. Green stared at him incredulously.
"In other words, Green," Max concluded, "I have just been fired out of a
job as travelling salesman, which I held for twenty years, and I don't
see a chance of getting another one."
For a moment Sam and his wife exchanged glances.
"Mr. Kirschner," Sam said, "how much can you get for them diamonds?"
"Fifteen hundred dollars, I guess," Max replied.
"Then what is the use talking nonsense, Mr. Kirschner?" Sam cried
excitedly. "Come along with me over to the Farmers' National Bank and
we'll see Mr. Fuller; and if he would renew my accommodation for a
thousand dollars you and me would go as partners together and _fertig_."
"Fuller!" Max cried. "That ain't Wilbur M. Fuller, is it?"
"That's the one," Sam declared.
"Then we'll not only get him to renew the accommodation, Sam, but we'll
sell him some shirts and neckties as well. He and I clerked together in
Van Buskirk & Patterson's."
As a sequel to Max's visit to the Farmers' National Bank, Abe and Morris
waited in vain for the return of Sam's check.
"How did you know the check wasn't good, Mawruss?" Abe asked his partner
a week later.
"I ain't said it ain't good, Abe," Morris protested; "only I seen
Markson, which he works for Klinger & Klein as a bookkeeper, in
Hammersmith's to-day and he says that Moe Griesman goes round trying to
buy up all Sam Green's bills payable; and he's got about five hundred
dollars' worth now already."
"Sure, I know he did," Abe replied. "He got from Kleiman & Elenbogen
Sam's three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar debt for two hundred and
seventy-five cash and Sam sends 'em the check for the full amount the
day before yesterday. I seen Louis Kleiman yesterday and he was feeling
pretty sore, I bet yer."
Morris nodded. He had been completely mystified about Sam's affairs
since the arrival of a letter from Cyprus addressed to Morris
personally, wherein Sam repaid the money advanced for his hotel
accommodation and announced that he had abandoned for the present his
intention of returning to New York. Morris's mystification was hardly
abated by the following letter, which arrived on the heels of the
conversation above set forth:
SAMUEL GREEN & CO.
DRY-GOODS AND NOTIONS
THE K. & M. SYLPHSHAPE CORSET
CYPRUS, NEW YORK, MAY 1, 1910.
GENTS: We inclose you herewith memorandum of order. Kindly ship same
within ten days by fast freight, and oblige
Yours truly, SAMUEL GREEN & CO.
P. S. You should telegraph Farmers' National Bank for references if
you ain't satisfied to ship without it. Business is good. S. GREEN.
Morris Perlmutter's relations with Sol Klinger retained their
cordiality despite the rupture between Abe Potash and Klinger & Klein.
To be sure, Moe Griesman's defection had rankled, but Morris consoled
himself with the maxim, "Business is business"; and when he met Sol
Klinger in Hammersmith's restaurant during the first week of the spring
buying season he greeted Sol cordially. His friendly advance, however,
met with a decided rebuff.
"What's the matter now, Sol?" Morris asked.
Sol nodded his head slowly.
"It's a great world, Mawruss," he said.
Morris agreed with him. "There's business enough in it for everybody
anyhow, Sol, if that's what you mean," he replied.
"In lots of places, yes, but in others, no," Sol said. "But with some
people, Mawruss, they're like a snake in the grass, which it bites the
hand that feeds it."
"What's Moe Klein been doing now?" Morris asked.
"Moe Klein?" Sol cried. "What d'ye mean, Moe Klein? I ain't talking
about Moe Klein at all. I am talking about Max Kirschner, Mawruss.
There's a feller which we give him for twenty years good wages, Mawruss,
and what do we get for it? After he leaves us, Mawruss--"
"Left you?" Morris interrupted. "Why, I always thought you fired him."
"Sure, we fired him," Sol continued. "A lowlife bum which he makes
always a hog of himself, why shouldn't we fire him? And then, Mawruss,
when we are taking on Moe Greisman's nephew, Rabiner, what does that
sucker Max Kirschner do? He turns around and fixes up with a feller by
the name Sam Green, in Cyprus, to go as partners together in Sam Green's
store up there. And mind you, Mawruss, Moe Griesman had just bought out
Sam Green's competitors, Van Buskirk & Patterson. And Max Kirschner
knows all the time that the only reason that we took on Mozart Rabiner
was on account of his uncle, Moe Griesman."
Sol Klinger was so interested in his own narrative that he completely
failed to notice its effect on Morris Perlmutter, who sat with his jaw
dropping lower and lower, while great beads of perspiration stood on his
forehead.
"Yes, Mawruss," Sol continued; "Moe Griesman even comes down himself
from Sarahcuse to Cyprus to superintend things. Five thousand dollars
fixtures he puts in and forty thousand dollars he pays them two yokels,
Van Buskirk & Patterson, for the good-will, stock, and store building;
and what happens? For a whole month Moe sits in that store and not a
hundred dollars' worth of goods goes out of the place, Mawruss; and why?
It seems that Sam Green and Max Kirschner does all the business because
Max Kirschner is born and raised in Cyprus and knows everybody in the
place."
"Max was born and raised in Cyprus?" Morris gasped.
"That's what I said," Sol replied. "That's a _Nachbarschaft_ for a
feller to be born in! What?"
Morris nodded and rose wearily to his feet.
"I never could remember the name of the place even, at all," he said.
"Well, I guess now I would be getting back to the store."
"You got my permission," Sol said as Morris started from the restaurant.
These were destined to be the last words addressed to Morris by Sol
Klinger in many a long day, for the moving incidents which awaited
Morris's return to his showroom put an end to all friendship between him
and Sol.
_Imprimis_, when Morris entered, Moe Griesman was seated in the firm's
private office, the centre of an animated group of four. "Hello, there,
Mawruss!" Moe shouted; "there's a couple of gentlemen here which would
like to talk to you."
He indicated a ruddy, clean-shaven person of approximately fifty years,
who on closer inspection proved to be Max Kirschner shorn of his white
moustache and without the attendant nimbus of his diamond pin. The other
individual was even harder to identify by reason of a neat-fitting
business suit of brown and a general air of prosperity; but in him
Morris descried the person of what had once been Sam Green.
"Morris, you old rascal," Max cried, "when you took me over to the
Prince Clarence Hotel that day why didn't you tell me that the man you
wanted me to go into business with ran a store in Cyprus?"
"I couldn't remember the name of the place at all," Morris admitted.
Abe gazed at him sorrowfully.
"The fact is, gentlemen," he said, "my partner ain't got no head at
all."
Sam Green's face flushed in recollection of the phrase.
"Never mind," he said fervently; "he's got anyhow a heart."
"And I've got a stomach," Max Kirschner added irrelevantly. "At least,
I've recovered one since I've been eating Leah Green's good cooking."
Sam and Moe Griesman smiled sympathetically.
"Well, what's the use wasting time here, boys?" Moe said at last. "Let's
explain to Mawruss about the new combination. Me and Max and Sam Green
here have agreed to go as partners together in Cyprus under the name
'The Cyprus Dry-goods Company.' In a small town like Cyprus competition
is nix."
"Good!" Morris exclaimed. "I'm glad to hear it. Is the Sarahcuse store
included too?"
"A ten per cent. interest they got, although I am going to run my
Sarahcuse business and these here boys is going to run the Cyprus end,"
Moe continued. "And now, Abe, as Max has got to pick out a lot of goods
for the Cyprus store and I want to do the same for my Sarahcuse store,
let's get to work."
For three hours without cessation they laboured over Potash &
Perlmutter's sample line until garments to an amount in excess of five
thousand dollars had been ordered.
When Max Kirschner saw the total of Moe Griesman's selection for the
Syracuse store he emitted a low whistle.
"Say, Moe," he said, "ain't you going to give your nephew, Rabiner, any
show at all this season?"
"_Oser a Stück_," Griesman declared. "I done enough for that feller when
I got him a three years' contract with Klinger & Klein."
CHAPTER SIX
A PRESENT FOR MR. GEIGERMANN
"Well, Abe," Morris Perlmutter declared, one morning in midwinter, "you
look like you had a pretty lively session last night."
Abe nodded slowly. "I want to tell you something, Mawruss," he said
solemnly; "I would do anything at all to hold a customer's trade,
Mawruss. I would go on theayter with him. I would _schmier_ him tenspots
when he's got the bid already, and I would go _bate_ on hands which even
a rotten player like you couldn't lose, Mawruss. But before I would got
to sit through such another evening like last night, Mawruss, Felix
Geigermann should never buy from us again a dollar's worth more goods.
That's all I got to say."
"Why, what was the matter?" Morris asked.
"Well, in the first place, Mawruss, to show you what a liar that feller
Geigermann is, he brings out a fiddle which he tells us is three hundred
years old."
"Yow! Three hundred years old!" Morris exclaimed skeptically. "A fiddle
three hundred years old would be worth, the very least, a hundred or a
hundred and fifty dollars."
"That's what I told him, Mawruss," Abe said. "I says to him if I would
got a fiddle which it is worth that much money I would quick sell it and
buy something which it is anyhow useful, like a diamond ring _oder_ a
scarfpin. But Geigermann only laughs at me, Mawruss; he says he don't
own the fiddle, Mawruss, but that somebody loaned it him. Even if he
would own it, he wouldn't take two hundred dollars for it."
"My worries, if he owns the fiddle _oder_ not, Abe!" Morris commented.
"Sure, I know, Mawruss; but that ain't the point. Afterward Mozart
Rabiner comes in; and if I would be Felix Geigermann, Mawruss, and a
salesman comes into my house and gets fresh with a pianner which the
least it stands Geigermann in is a hundred dollars, Mawruss, I would
kick him into the street yet."
"What is Mozart Rabiner doing there, Abe?" Morris inquired anxiously.
Abe preserved a cheerful demeanour, although it was the circumstance of
Mozart Rabiner's prominence at Geigermann's musicale that had rendered
the evening so unbearable.
"Well, Mawruss," he explained, "you don't suppose that Geigermann buys
all his goods from us?"
Morris elevated his eyebrows gloomily.
"I don't suppose nothing, Abe," he said; "but once you let a shark like
Rabiner get in with Geigermann, Klinger & Klein would give him the
privilege to cut our price till they run us right out of there."
"It's an open market, Mawruss," Abe said, "and anyhow I am doing all I
can to keep that feller's business. You would think so if you would of
been there last night, Mawruss. First a lady in one of them two-piece
velvet suits--afterward I see the jacket; a ringer for our style
forty-two-twenty, Mawruss--she gets up on the floor, Mawruss, and she
hollers bloody murder, Mawruss. I never heard the like since that
Italiener girl which we got working for us on White Street catches her
finger in the buttonhole machine. Mozart Rabiner plays for her on the
pianner, Mawruss; and when she gets through, the way Rabiner jollies her
you would think she would be buying goods for Marshall Field yet. After
that, Geigermann takes the fiddle and him and Moe Rabiner gets together
by the pianner and for three quarters of an hour, Mawruss, they work
away like they was being paid for it."
"Moe Rabiner gets paid for it, I bet yer," Morris agreed.
"What a noise them fellers make it, Mawruss!" Abe continued. "Honestly,
I thought my head was busting; and when they get finished the lady which
done the hollering asks 'em who the piece is by, Mawruss--and who do you
think Rabiner says?"
"How should I know who he says?" Morris retorted angrily.
"Richard Strauss," Abe replied.
"Richard Strauss?" Morris asked. "You mean that feller Strauss of
Klipmann, Strauss & Bleimer, I suppose?"
"It must be the same feller," Abe said. "Seemingly everybody there knows
him; and besides, Mawruss, that feller Strauss is another one of them
musical fellers too. Only the other day Klipmann tells me that feller
spends a fortune going on the opera with customers."
"But I thought Klipmann's partner was called Milton Strauss," Morris
said.
"Maybe it was Milton Strauss," Abe continued. "Milton _oder_ Richard, I
couldn't remember. It was one of them up-to-date names anyhow; and, mind
you, Mawruss, that feller Rabiner has got the nerve to ask me if I
didn't like Strauss. What could I say? If that cut-throat Rabiner thinks
he is going to get me to knock a competitor in front of Geigermann he's
mistaken. 'Sure I like him,' I says; 'why not?' 'In that case,' Moe
says, 'we'll play some more of this.' 'Go as far as you like,' I says,
and they kept it up till the elevator boy rings the bell and says a lady
on the top floor is sick. I don't blame her, Mawruss; I was pretty sick
myself."
Morris nodded sympathetically.
"So, then, Mawruss," Abe continued, "Geigermann takes the fiddle again
and shows it to us, Mawruss; and he says on the back is a ruby varnish."
"Rubies is pretty high now, Abe," Morris said; "carat for carat, rubies
is a whole lot more expensive as diamonds."
"_Gewiss_, Mawruss," Abe cried; "but I seen the back of the fiddle,
Mawruss, and if the varnish on it was made from rubies, Mawruss, I would
eat it. The fiddle was an ordinary fiddle like any other fiddle; only
one thing I see, Mawruss--on the inside is a little piece from paper,
y'understand, and printed on it is the name from some Italiener or
another, with some figures on it. Geigermann says it was stuck in there
three hundred years ago, when the fiddle was made. And you ought to see
Moe Rabiner, Mawruss. He looks at that fiddle for pretty near half an
hour. He turns it upside down and he blows into it and he takes his
finger and wets it and rubs on it, and he smells it, and _Gott weiss_
what he don't do with it."
"He's a dangerous feller, Abe," Morris commented. "He don't never stop
at nothing to sell goods."
"Well, I wasn't much behind him, Mawruss," Abe said. "When he smells it,
I smell it. He wets his finger, I wet my finger. Everything what that
sucker does to that fiddle, I did. He couldn't get nothing on me.
Mawruss. If he would offer to eat the fiddle, y'understand, I would got
just so good appetite as he got it, Mawruss, and don't you forget it. I
ain't going to let go so easy."
"Might you couldn't help yourself maybe," Morris commented.
"You shouldn't worry, Mawruss," Abe concluded. "I sold Felix Geigermann
since way before the Spanish War already, and I would sooner expect my
own brother--supposing I got one--to turn us down as him."
Despite Abe's optimism, however, the order for spring goods that Felix
Geigermann bestowed on them a month later fell short of their
expectations by over five hundred dollars.
"Business couldn't be so good with Felix this year, Mawruss," Abe
commented.
"Don't you jolly yourself, Abe," Morris replied. "It ain't so much that
business is bad with Felix as it is better with Klinger & Klein. Them
two cut-throats ain't paying Rabiner good money for only playing the
pianner. He's got to sell goods too."
"That's all right, Mawruss," Abe said. "Let him go ahead and _spiel_
pianner till he's blue in the face. Sooner or later Geigermann would
find out what stickers them Klinger & Klein garments is, and then Moe
Rabiner couldn't sell him no more of them goods, not if he would be a
whole orchestra already."
* * * * *
The personality of Aaron Shellak was simply thrown away on the garment
trade. His lean, scholarly face, surmounted by a shock of wavy brown
hair, would have assured his success as a virtuoso, and no one knew this
better than his brother, Professor Ladislaw Wcelak, under whose tuition
he had struggled through the intricacies of the first and second
positions.
"If you would only forget you ain't got a pair of shears in your right
hand, Aaron," the professor said, "and listen to what I am telling you,
in two years' time you are making more money than all the garment
cutters together. All you got to do is to play just halfway good."
"I suppose you're a millionaire, ain't it?" Aaron rejoined. "And you can
play fiddle like a streak." The professor heaved a great sigh as he
passed his hand over his bald head.
"With your hair, Aaron," he said, "I could make fifty thousand a year on
concert towers alone, to say nothing of two recitals up on Fifty-seventh
Street. But if a feller only got one arm, Aaron, he would better got a
show to be a fiddle virtuoso as if he would be bald.".
Thus encouraged Aaron persevered with his practice for some months; but,
despite the patient instruction of his brother Louis the garment
cutter's wrist still handicapped him.
"That's a legato phrase," Louis Shellak cried impatiently, one night in
mid-February. "With one bow you got to play it."
"Which phrase are you talking about," Aaron asked--"the one that goes
'Ta-ra-reera, ta-ra-reera'?"
He sang the two measures in a clear tenor voice, whereat Louis snatched
the violin from his brother's grasp and, seating himself at the piano,
he struck the major triad of C natural with force sufficient to wreck
the instrument.
"Sing 'Ah'!" he commanded.
Aaron attacked the high C like a veteran and Professor Ladislaw Wcelak
leaped from the piano stool with an inarticulate cry. Immediately
thereafter he secured a strangle-hold on his brother and kissed him
Budapest fashion on both cheeks.
"To-morrow night already you will commence lessons with the best teacher
money could buy," he declared.
"Whose money?" Aaron Shellak inquired, as he wiped away the marks of his
brother's affection--"yours or mine?"
"Me--I ain't got no money," Louis admitted.
"Me neither," Aaron said. He was the sole support of his mother and
sisters, for Louis, as _chef d'orchestre_ in a Second Avenue restaurant,
constantly anticipated his salary over _stuss_ or _tarrok_ in the rear
of his employer's café.
"How much would it take?" he asked Louis after a silence of several
minutes.
Louis shrugged.
"Who knows?" he replied. "Fifty dollars _oder_ a hundred, perhaps."
Aaron nodded; and the next day, when he entered Potash & Perlmutter's
place of business, he carried with him his violin and bow in a black
leather case. Thus it happened that the strains of Godard's _Berceuse_
saluted Abe as he stepped from the elevator that morning; and without
removing his coat he made straight for the cutting room.
"_Koosh!_" he bellowed. "What are we running here, anyhow, Shellak--a
cloak-and-suit house _oder_ a theayter?"
Aaron hastily replaced the instrument in its case.
"I am only showing it to Nathan," he mumbled by way of explanation.
"Might he would like to buy it maybe."
"If you want to sell fiddles, Shellak," Abe said, "do it outside
business hours. That's all I got to say."
He proceeded at once to the showroom, where Morris was peeling off his
overcoat. The latter greeted Abe with a sour nod. "I am sick and tired
of it, Abe," he declared. "Everybody is stealing our business."
"What d'ye mean, everybody's stealing our business?" Abe asked.
"Last night I am sitting in the Harlem Winter Garden with Felix
Geigermann, and Leon Sammet butts in on us and tells Geigermann he's got
a cousin which he could play shello, and Geigermann says that he should
come around to the house next Tuesday and play it with him and Rabiner."
Abe shrugged his shoulders.
"My _tzuris_ if he does, Mawruss," he said; "because while I don't know
nothing about this here game, y'understand, a good way to lose a
customer is to play cards with him."
"What are you talking nonsense, Abe?" Morris cried. "Shello ain't cards.
A shello is a fiddle which you play it with your knees."
"For my part he could play it with his nose, Mawruss," Abe declared
hotly. "Do you mean to told me, Mawruss, that a business man like
Geigermann is going to buy a line of goods like Sammet Brothers got it
just because Leon Sammet's cousin plays a fiddle with his knees?"
"Yow! His cousin?" Morris exclaimed. "He's as much got a cousin which he
plays the shello as I got one. He's going to give some greenhorn a
couple of dollars to go with him to Geigermann's house and play the
fiddle; and the first thing you know, Abe, Geigermann is buying from him
a big bill of goods and all the time our orders gets smaller and smaller
till we lose his trade altogether."
Abe laughed mirthlessly and bit the end off his after-breakfast cigar.
"If I would worry myself the way you do, Mawruss, every time a
competitor says 'Hello' to a customer of ours," he said as he turned
away, "I would gone crazy in the head _schon_ long since ago already."
Nevertheless he pondered Leon Sammet's move all the morning, and after
Morris had gone to lunch he paced the showroom floor for more than a
quarter of an hour in an effort to formulate some plan for regaining
Geigermann's business. His reflections were at length interrupted by a
faint scraping from the rear of the store. Once more Aaron Shellak was
entertaining the cutting-room staff with a pianissimo rendition of
Godard's _Berceuse_; but even as Abe tiptoed across the showroom to
crush the performance with an explosive "_Koosh!_" the melody ceased.
"That's a genu-ine Amati," Aaron said, "and you could see for
yourself--inside here is the label."
Abe stopped short. The word "Amati" brought back to him the scene of
Felix Geigermann's musicale, and his heart thumped unpleasantly as he
listened to Aaron's exhibition of salesmanship.
"Moreover," Aaron continued, "here is the scroll which it is ever so
much finer as them other fiddles you could buy for fifty _oder_ sixty
dollars. Look at the varnish on the back, Nathan--shines like rubies,
ain't it?"
"What would I do with a fiddle, Aaron?" Nathan Schenkman, the shipping
clerk, asked.
"You I ain't saying at all," Aaron said; "but you got a little boy
Nathan."
"He ain't a year old yet," Nathan interrupted.
"Sure, I know," Shellak went on; "but now is the time, Nathan. You
couldn't begin too early. Look at Kubelik and Kreisler and all them
fellers. When they was eating from a bottle already the old man give 'em
a fiddle to play with, and to-day where are they? In one concert tower
alone, Nathan, them fellers makes from fifty to a hundred thousand
dollars."
He paused so that Nathan might better apprehend the alluring prospect.