concluded. "Ten dollars down and two dollars a week till paid. No
interest nor nothing."
At this juncture Abe burst into the cutting room.
"_Nu_, Shellak!" he roared. "What are you trying to do? Skin a poor
feller like Nathan, which he got a wife and a child to support?"
"What d'ye mean, skin him?" Aaron retorted. "I ain't no crook, Mr.
Potash."
"That's all right, Shellak," Abe went on. "I heard every word you are
saying. Come inside; I want to talk to you."
Aaron's face blanched and he trembled visibly.
"But, Mr. Potash----" he began.
"Never mind!" Abe bellowed; "take that fiddle and all that _machshovos_
you got there and come in here."
Abe led the way to the front of the showroom, followed by the
crestfallen Shellak, who deposited fiddle, bow, and case on a sample
table.
"Say, lookyhere, Shellak," Abe said in kindly tones, "what the devil are
you trying to sell a _Schnorrer_ like that a good fiddle? Why don't you
give me a show?"
The blood surged suddenly to Aaron's face.
"You!" he stammered. "Why, Mr. Potash, I never knew you was interested
in violins."
"Sure; why not?" Abe replied. "Let me have a look at it."
First he squinted into the right "eff" hole and he grunted in approval
as he spied the label, which read as follows:
NICOLAUS AMATI CREMONENSIS
Faciebat Anno 1670
"Do you know anything about them old violins?" Aaron asked anxiously.
Abe smiled in a superior way.
"Not a whole lot, Aaron," he said, but by the time he had finished his
examination Aaron became convinced that his employer was indeed one of
the _cognoscenti_. First Abe turned the violin upside down and
scrutinized the scroll, neck, belly, and back. Then he blew into the
"eff" holes; and wetting his finger he rubbed the varnish. For five
minutes he pursued the tactics of Mozart Rabiner and even added one or
two fancy touches on his own account, until at length he laid down the
instrument with a profound sigh.
"Always the same thing, Shellak," he said; "people says it is a genu-ine
and it ain't."
Aaron took up his violin and looked at it through new eyes.
"Why ain't it genu-ine?" he asked.
"I should tell you why it ain't!" Abe exclaimed. "If you would know what
I know about them things, Shellak, you wouldn't ask me such a question
at all. Do you doubt my word?"
"Why should I doubt your word, Mr. Potash?" Aaron said. "In the inside
is the paper and that's all I know about it. So, if you would give me a
hundred and fifty dollars, Mr. Potash, you could keep the fiddle, bow,
case _und fertig_."
For some minutes they haggled over the bargain, and at length they
closed at a hundred and twenty-five dollars, for which Abe gave Shellak
his personal check.
[Illustration: "Do you know anything about them old violins?"]
"And you shouldn't say nothing to Mr. Perlmutter about it," Abe
concluded, "because I want to make a present of it as a surprise to my
partner."
* * * * *
When Abe came downtown the following morning he wore so marked an air of
pleased mystery that Morris became irritated.
"Let me in on this too, Abe," he said.
"Let you in on what, Mawruss?" Abe asked innocently. "I don't know what
you mean at all."
"You know very well what I mean," Morris rejoined. "You ain't coming
around here grinning like a barn door for nothing."
"I give you right about that, Mawruss," Abe said. "I got in a good
_Schlag_ at Leon Sammet and Moe Rabiner last night, Mawruss, I bet yer.
I got from Geigermann a repeat order on them two-piece velvet
suits--seven hundred and fifty dollars; and do you know how I done it?"
"Chloroformed him," Morris suggested ironically.
"That's all right, Mawruss," Abe retorted. "Go ahead and joke if you
want to. Maybe I couldn't play the fiddle with my knees and maybe I
don't know nothing about _spieling_ pianners neither, y'understand; but
I got a little gumption, too, Mawruss, and don't you forget it."
He retired to the cutting room with a set expression on his face, as
though to imply that wild horses could not drag from him the secret of
Felix Geigermann's renewed patronage.
For twenty minutes he remained firm in his resolve not to gratify his
partner's curiosity; and then as Morris continued to whistle cheerfully
over the sample-rack in the front of the loft, he returned to the
showroom.
"Yes, Mawruss," he said; "some fellers if they would do what I done with
Felix Geigermann they wouldn't give their partner a minute's peace. For
months together, Mawruss, they would throw it up to him."
"What is the difference, Abe, if a salesman gets orders, how he gets
'em," Morris rejoined, "so long as he ain't padding his expense
account?"
"What d'ye mean, padding my expense account?" Abe cried. "A hundred and
twenty-five dollars the fiddle costed me and that's all I charge up."
"The fiddle!" Morris exclaimed. "What fiddle?"
"The fiddle which I give Geigermann last night," Abe continued; "and if
you don't believe me you could ask Shellak."
"Shellak?" Morris repeated. "What the devil are you talking about, Abe?"
"Yes, Shellak," Abe went on, "the cutter. He comes round here yesterday
with a fiddle, Mawruss, which he wants to sell it to Nathan Schenkman.
So I give him a hundred and twenty-five dollars for it _und fertig_."
"You give Shellak a hundred and twenty-five dollars?" Morris exploded.
"Are you crazy, _oder_ what?"
"It was a genu-ine Amati," Abe explained; "and so soon as I seen it,
Mawruss, I thought to myself if them cut-throats could sell Geigermann a
big bill of goods just by playing on fiddles, y'understand, what sort of
an order could I get out of him supposing I should give him a fiddle
yet? So that's what I done, Mawruss; and he did, Mawruss, and I was
right. Ain't it?"
"Say, lookyhere, Abe," Morris began slowly; "let me get this thing
correct. You are paying Shellak a hundred and twenty-five dollars for a
fiddle which you are giving Geigermann."
"You got it right, Mawruss," Abe said. "It was a genu-ine Amati."
"For a hundred and twenty-five dollars expenses you are getting an order
for seven hundred and fifty dollars, Abe," Morris said relentlessly;
"and some fellers would throw it up to their partners for months
together yet."
"It was a genu-ine Amati, Mawruss," Abe repeated for the third time,
"and for a genu-ine Amati, Mawruss, a hundred and twenty-five dollars is
no price at all."
"Sure, I know, Abe," Morris said bitterly; "to you a hundred and
twenty-five dollars is nothing at all. We are made of money, Abe, ain't
it? What do you care you are spending a hundred and twenty-five dollars
for a fiddle when for seventy-five dollars on Lenox Avenue and a Hundred
and Sixteenth Street, with my own eyes I seen it, you could buy a square
pianner with a stool and scarf yet, as good as new. If you want to
_schenk_ the feller something, why didn't you told me? What for a
present is a fiddle, Abe, when for half the money we could give him a
pianner yet?"
Abe hung his head in embarrassment.
"But Mawruss," he said, "it was a genu-ine Amati."
For one brief moment Morris choked with rage.
"Genu-ine hell!" he roared, and plunged away to the office.
For the remainder of the morning Abe went about his work in crestfallen
silence, although Morris, after subjecting Geigermann's order to a
little cost bookkeeping on the back of an envelope broke once more into
a cheerful whistle.
"Well, Abe," he said at twelve o'clock, "what is _vorbei_ is _vorbei_.
It ain't no use crying over sour milk, so I am going out to lunch."
"What d'ye mean, sour milk, Mawruss?" Abe retorted. "The sour milk is
all on your side, Mawruss, because I am telling you it was a genu-ine
Amati."
"All right, Abe," Morris said, as he rang for the elevator; "you told me
that _schon_ twenty times already. I wouldn't give you two dollars for
all them genu-ine fellers' fiddles in creation; and that's all there is
to it."
With this ultimatum he stepped into the elevator and five minutes
afterward he sat at a table in Hammersmith's restaurant and beguiled
with a dill pickle the interval between the giving and filling of his
order. At the table next to him sat an animated group, of which Louis
Kleiman was the centre.
"Yes, sirree, sir!" Louis declared, in defiance of the law of scandal
and libel; "six months I would give the feller at the outside. A feller
couldn't attend to business if he would set up till all hours of the
night playing fiddle with that lowlife, Rabiner. That ain't all yet,
neither! Yesterday he pays for a fiddle three thousand dollars."
"For a fiddle three thousand dollars!" cried one of the group, and the
good half of a dill pickle fell from Morris's limp grasp.
"That's what I said," Louis continued; "for three thousand dollars yet
he is buying a fiddle. With my own eyes I seen it in the paper this
morning; and when a feller puts three thousand dollars into a fiddle,
y'understand, he could kiss himself good-by with his business."
At this juncture Morris beckoned to the waiter.
"Say," he said hoarsely, "never mind that roast spring lamb and stuffed
tomatoes. Bring me instead a rye-bread tongue sandwich and a cup
coffee."
After the waiter had gone Morris settled back in his chair and listened
once more to the conversation at the next table.
"All right; then I'm a liar," he heard Louis say. "I tell you I got the
paper in my overcoat pocket right now."
Louis rose from his seat and securing the morning paper from his
overcoat he read aloud the following item:
PAYS HEAVILY FOR AMATI VIOLIN
Mrs. Helene Karanyi, widow of the celebrated violinist, Bela
Karanyi, has sold her husband's favourite Amati at a price said to
be over three thousand dollars. The purchaser is Felix Geigermann,
who said yesterday that the violin had been in his possession for
some time, and that there was no doubt of its authenticity. It was
presented to Karanyi by the late Prince Ludovic Esterhazy, whose
collection of Cremona violins, now preserved by his son, is said to
be the finest in the world. Mr. Geigermann is the well-known Harlem
dry-goods merchant.
Louis Kleiman folded the paper and laid it on the table.
"That's the way it goes, boys," he said in heightened tones, for by this
time he had caught sight of Morris. "A new beginner comes to you and you
give him a little line of credit, y'understand, and pretty soon he is
buying more and more goods till he gets to be a big _macher_ like Felix
Geigermann. Then either one of two things happens to you: Either he
begins to think you are too small for him and he turns around and buys
goods from some other sucker, y'understand, _oder_ he goes to work and
throws away his money left and right on oitermobiles _oder_ fiddles, and
sooner or later he busts up on you; and that's the way it goes."
"You shouldn't worry yourself, Kleiman," Morris cried, turning around in
his chair. "Felix Geigermann ain't going to fail just yet a while."
"Me worry?" Kleiman retorted. "For my part, Felix Geigermann could fail
to-morrow yet; he don't owe me one cent, nor never would. I ain't
looking to sell no goods to fiddlers, Perlmutter. I am dealing only with
merchants."
"Furthermore," Morris went on, "if Felix Geigermann hears it you are
making a break like this--that he's going to fail yet, and all sorts of
crooks you are calling him, Kleiman--he would sue you in the courts for
a hundred thousand dollars yet. From a big mouth a feller could get
himself into a whole lot of trouble."
Kleiman scrambled hastily to his feet and seized his hat.
"What are you talking nonsense, Perlmutter?" he exclaimed. "I ain't said
nothing out of the way about Geigermann. You are the one what's putting
the words into my mouth already. Did you ever hear anything like it!--I
am saying Geigermann is going to fail? An idee! I never said nothing of
the kind. All I am saying is what is right here in the paper, black on
white; and if you don't believe me you could read it for yourself."
He handed the paper to Morris; and, as the latter commenced to read over
the Geigermann paragraph, Kleiman and his friends slunk hurriedly out of
the restaurant. For nearly half an hour Morris pored over the newspaper;
then he choked down the sandwich and swallowed the coffee, which by this
time was cold.
* * * * *
"Admitting I am only your partner, Mawruss," Abe began as Morris entered
the showroom a few minutes later, "don't I got to eat too? And in the
second place, Mawruss, if you got to make a hog of yourself, do it at
dinner-time at home, because when a feller takes up a whole hour having
his lunch, Mawruss, he naturally stuffs himself so full that he ain't no
good for the rest of the day."
A lump in Morris's throat, which may or may not have been the tongue
sandwich, prevented him from replying; but at last he swallowed it and,
after removing his hat and coat, he carefully unfolded the paper.
"Don't hurry out to lunch, Abe," he said. "I could save you money. I got
something to tell you which it would take away your appetite so you
wouldn't want even a cup coffee."
Abe paused with his hand on the hatrack.
"What d'ye mean?" he demanded.
"I mean I am eating only a tongue sandwich and a cup coffee in
Hammersmith's just now," Morris went on, "and who should I see at the
next table but Louis Kleiman of Kleiman & Elenbogen. That's a dirty
lowlife, that feller, Abe! A cut-throat like him should be making money
in business! Honestly, Abe, when I see decent, respectable fellers like
----"
"Say, lookyhere, Mawruss," Abe said, "let me go to my lunch, will you?
I'm hungry."
"Hungry, _sagt er_!" Morris retorted. "A feller makes a god of his
stomach, y'understand, and his business is nothing at all. For all you
care, Abe, our whole trade could fail on us, so long as you could eat.
Everybody says the same thing; the feller's ----"
"Do me the favour, Mawruss," Abe begged; "tell me about it afterward.
All I am eating for my breakfast is one egg, so sure as you're standing
there."
"All right, Abe; I wouldn't keep you no longer," Morris said. "If you
could got it in your heart to eat, when one of your best customers is
busting up on you, go ahead."
"Our best customer?" Abe cried--"Mandelberger Brothers & Company?"
"_Geh weg_, you fool!" Morris exclaimed angrily. "Why should a
millionaire concern like Mandelberger Brothers & Company got to fail?
You talk like a lunatic."
Once more Abe seized his hat.
"I got enough of your nonsense, Mawruss," he said, starting for the
elevator.
"Wait!" Morris cried, grabbing him by the arm. "Did you ship any goods
to Felix Geigermann yet?"
"Felix Geigermann?" Abe repeated. "Is that the feller?"
Morris nodded, and this time Abe hung up his hat and sat down heavily in
the nearest chair.
"Who says he's going to fail?" he asked.
"Everybody says so," Morris replied; "even in the papers they got it."
He handed Kleiman's paper to Abe and indicated the paragraph with a
shaking forefinger.
"Where does it say he is going to fail?" Abe asked after he had read it
over hastily.
"Where does it say it?" Morris cried. "Why, if a feller goes to work and
pays three thousand dollars for a fiddle, Abe, while he only got a
business rated twenty-five to thirty thousand, credit fair, ain't it as
plain as the nose on your face he must got to fail?"
Once more Abe read over the paragraph and then the paper fell from his
hands to the floor.
"Why, Mawruss," he gasped, "it says here he is paying three thousand
dollars for an Amati which he had in his possession for some time. That
must be the very fiddle which he is playing on with Moe Rabiner."
"My _tzuris_ if it is _oder_ it ain't," Morris commented. "What
difference does that make to us, Abe?"
Abe's face was white and large beads of perspiration stood out on his
forehead as he replied.
"The difference ain't much, Mawruss," he said slowly. "Only if Felix
Geigermann pays three thousand for the fiddle which he already got it
and we are giving him for nothing another fiddle, which is the selfsame,
identical article, Mawruss, then we are out three thousand dollars--and
that's all the difference it makes to us!"
For two minutes Morris regarded his partner with a glassy stare.
"Do you mean to told me, Abe, that that there fiddle which you bought it
from Shellak is the same identical article like Geigermann pays three
thousand dollars for?"
Abe nodded.
"You couldn't tell the difference between 'em, Mawruss," he declared.
"Even inside the label is the same--the same name and everything."
Morris took off his hat and coat methodically and hung them up on the
rack.
"So, Abe," he commenced, "you are giving to a _Schnorrer_ like
Geigermann a genu-ine who's-this violin, which it is worth three
thousand dollars!"
"How should I know it is worth three thousand?" Abe said.
"Everybody knows that one of them genu-ine feller's violins is worth
three thousand dollars," Morris thundered. "I'm surprised to hear you,
you should talk that way."
"Shellak didn't know it for one," Abe interrupted, "otherwise why should
he sell to us for a hundred and twenty-five dollars a fiddle worth three
thousand dollars?"
"What should a greenhorn like Shellak know about such things?" Morris
said.
"Don't you fool yourself, Mawruss. If Shellak finds out he is getting a
hundred and twenty-five for a fiddle worth three thousand, he's got
gumption enough to sue us in the courts yet, and don't you forget it."
"Why should he sue us, Abe?" Morris asked. "A bargain is a bargain,
ain't it?"
"Sure I know, Mawruss; but I told the feller the fiddle wasn't genu-ine,
y'understand, when all the time I knew it was genu-ine."
"Might you are mistaken maybe, Abe," Morris broke in. "Might the fiddle
ain't genu-ine."
"What d'ye mean, ain't genu-ine? I am telling you the label was inside
and even the lot number is the same."
"The lot number?"
"Sure, the lot number. Sixteen-seventy, I think it was; and the only
thing for us to do, Mawruss, is we should fix up some scheme to get that
fiddle back from Geigermann; and that's all there is to it."
"Well, go ahead, Abe," Morris said. "Go ahead and see him this
afternoon."
For the third time Abe put on his hat.
"First and foremost I would go out and get a bite to eat, Mawruss," he
said. "What good would it do me to get the fiddle back if I would die
from starvation first?"
* * * * *
Although the manufacturers of mechanical piano-players had never
solicited Felix Geigermann's photograph for half-tone reproductions in
the advertising section of anybody's magazine, he dressed as though he
expected the immediate arrival of the man with the camera--that is to
say, he wore his hair after Mahler, while Hollman and Moritz Rosenthal
contributed to the pattern of his moustache. Moreover, he assumed a
Paderewski tuft, a rolling collar that exposed the points of his right
and left clavicles, a Windsor tie, and, to preserve the unity of his
characterization, a slight nondescript foreign accent, despite the
circumstance that he was born in Newark, N. J. All this, however, was
not an idle pose on Felix's part. He merely applied to a dry-goods store
the business principles of the successful virtuoso, and he had found
them so efficacious that personally he sold more garments than any six
of his clerks. He was no less astute in the buying end of the business;
for in pitting Sammet Brothers, Klinger & Klein, and Potash & Perlmutter
against one another he not only secured better terms of credit, but he
found that it materially added to the quality of their garments.
Thus, had Abe but known it, his seven-hundred-and-fifty-dollar order
proceeded not from the gift of the violin, but from the circumstance
that the velvet suits had sold like hot cakes; and when he entered the
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street store that afternoon Felix greeted him
effusively. He wanted that second order badly, and if cordiality could
accelerate its shipment he was willing to try it with Abe.
"Ah, _mon ami_," he cried. "Come inside my office. What good wind blows
you here?"
Abe scowled. All this enthusiasm betokened but one thing--the violin was
a genuine Amati, after all. He sat down slowly and bit the end off a
large cigar.
"The fact is, Felix," he began, "for myself I don't care, y'understand,
but you know Mawruss Perlmutter, what a crank that feller is, Felix; and
so I am coming up here to ask you something for a question."
"Fire away, Abe; you couldn't feaze me none," Felix replied in the
accents of Newark, N. J.
"Well, Felix, it's like this," Abe went on: "If we would be selling
goods to J. B. Morgan, y'understand, and Mawruss here he is buying for
eight dollars a fur overcoat--understand me--he right away would want
another statement."
Felix nodded. "Nowadays you can't be too cautious," he agreed.
"So, this morning, in the paper," Abe continued, "Mawruss reads you are
buying for three thousand dollars a fiddle and----"
"But, Abe," Felix interrupted, "it was a genuine Amati."
"Sure, I know," Abe said; "but yesterday I myself am bringing you a
genu-ine Amati and I didn't pay no such figure for it."
Felix looked carefully at Abe's stolid face for some gleam of humour;
and then he broke into a fit of laughter so violent that Abe suspected
it to be a trifle forced.
"All right, Felix," he grumbled; "maybe you think it is a joke, but just
the same I am telling you I paid for that fiddle only two hundred
dollars."
Felix stopped laughing and wiped his eyes.
"Well, I'm sorry, Abe," he said seriously. "A feller should never look a
gift horse in the teeth, Abe; but that fiddle ain't worth a cent more
than a hundred at the outside."
"Do you mean to say it ain't a genu-ine Amati?" Abe asked angrily.
"Why, I don't mean to say anything, Abe," Felix began; "but there are
Amatis and Amatis. Some of them are worth little fortunes and others are
very ordinary-like."
"Say, lookyhere, Felix," Abe cried, "don't fool with me. Either that
fiddle is or it ain't a genu-ine Amati. Ain't it?"
Felix paused. He wanted those velvet suits badly, and it began to look
as though there would be a delay in the shipment.
"What is all this leading to, Abe?" he began pleasantly. "If there's
anything troubling you speak right up and I'll try to straighten it
out."
Abe shifted his cigar in his mouth and made the plunge.
"What is the use beating bushes around, Felix?" he said. "Yesterday I am
giving you a fiddle, ain't it? Inside it says the fiddle is a genu-ine
Amati. What? _Schon gut_ if that fiddle is a genu-ine Amati it is worth
three thousand dollars, ain't it? Because if it ain't, then you are
stuck with the other fiddle which you bought it. And if it is worth
three thousand, then we are stuck by giving you the fiddle, ain't it? So
that's the way it goes."
Felix nodded. It was a delicate situation, in which his credit and the
shipment of the suits seemed to be imperilled. To declare flatly that
Abe's gift was a bogus Amati might offend him seriously, while to admit
that it was genuine, but only worth one hundred dollars, was to foster
Abe's notion that he, Felix, had wasted three thousand dollars on a
similar violin.
"I want to tell you something, Abe," he began at last. "There's nothing
to this business of selling goods by making presents, and I for one
don't believe in it. So I'll tell you what I'll do. Come up here to the
store to-morrow morning, and I'll get the fiddle from my house and give
it back to you."
Abe's scowl merged immediately into a wide grin.
"I don't want the fiddle back, Felix," he said, "but my partner,
y'understand, he is the one which is always----"
"Say no more, Abe," Felix cried. "All I want is you should ship that
order; and tell your partner, if he is scared I am spending my money
foolishly, he can have a new statement whenever he wants it; and I'll
swear to it on a truckload of Bibles."
When Abe returned to his place of business that afternoon he expected to
find Morris pacing up and down the showroom floor, the picture of
distracted anxiety. Instead he was humming a cheerful melody as he piled
up two-piece velvet suits.
"Well, Abe," he said, "you have went on a fool's errand, ain't it?"
"What d'ye mean, fool's errand?" Abe demanded.
"Why, I mean I knew all along that fiddle of yours was a fake; and
anyhow, Abe, I seen Milton Strauss, of Klipmann, Strauss & Bleimer, and
what d'ye suppose he told it me, Abe?"
Abe shrugged angrily.
"If you must got to get it off your chest before I tell you what
Geigermann told to me, Mawruss," he said, "go ahead."