entered the subway, and he reflected bitterly upon the circumstance that
first led him to hire that unfortunate young man. Thus there was
something doubly irritating in the coincidence which seated him next to
Louis Kleiman in the crowded express train he had boarded, and he had
made up his mind to ignore his competitor's presence when Louis caught
sight of him.
"So, Perlmutter," Louis commented, without any introductory greeting,
"you are trying to do us again!"
Morris turned and stared icily at Kleiman.
"I don't want to talk to you at all, Kleiman," he replied; "and, anyhow,
Kleiman, I don't know what you mean--we are trying to do you! The shoe
pinches on the other foot, Kleiman, when you just stop to consider you
are stealing away from us that feller Harkavy, which all he knows we
taught him."
Louis Kleiman emitted a short, raucous guffaw.
"Well, what are you kicking about?" he said. "You stole him back
again--ain't it?"
"Stole him back again!" Morris repeated. "What are you talking nonsense,
Kleiman? We wouldn't take that feller back in our store, not if we could
get him to come to work for two dollars a week."
"Yow!" Kleiman exclaimed skeptically. "I don't suppose you know the
feller left us at all?"
"I did not," Morris replied promptly; "and if he did, Kleiman, I
couldn't blame him. A feller doesn't want to work all his life for ten
dollars a week."
"What d'ye mean, ten dollars a week? We paid Harkavy fifteen and we
offered him twenty-five; but the feller wouldn't stay with us at all.
For two weeks now he acts uneasy and yesterday he leaves us."
"That's all right, Kleiman," Morris said as the train drew into
Ninety-sixth Street. "You could easy steal somebody else from another
concern." Kleiman glared at Morris and was about to utter a particularly
incisive retort when the train stopped.
"I got to change here," he announced; "but when I see you again,
Perlmutter, I would tell you what you are."
"I don't got to tell you what you are, Kleiman," Morris concluded as he
opened his evening paper. "You know only too well."
"_Rosher!_" Kleiman hissed as he hurled himself into the mob of
passengers that blocked the exit.
Morris nodded sardonically and commenced to read his paper. He desisted
immediately, however, when his eye fell upon a cut accompanying Felix
Geigermann's display advertisement. It was a beaded marquisette costume,
made in obvious imitation of one of Potash & Perlmutter's leaders; and
the retail price quoted by Geigermann was precisely one dollar less than
Potash & Perlmutter's lowest wholesale figure.
"That's some of Harkavy's work," Morris muttered; and for the remainder
of the journey he was once more plunged in the gloomiest cogitation.
Almost automatically he alighted at the Brooklyn Bridge and boarded a
Madison Street Car; and it was not until the jolting, old-fashioned
vehicle had nearly reached its eastern terminus that he discerned the
house number furnished to him by Steuermann. He hurried to the rear
platform and jumped to the street, where he collided violently with a
short, bearded person.
"Excuse me!" Morris cried; then he recognized his victim. "Harkavy!" he
exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"I am coming to say good-by to a friend," Harkavy replied with some show
of confusion. "I got to go to Chicago to-morrow."
"Chicago!" Morris repeated. "Why, what are you doing in Chicago,
Harkavy?"
"I am--now--going to got a job out there," Harkavy replied--"a very good
job."
Morris drew his former assistant cutter to the sidewalk. He had
temporarily forgotten the object of his visit to the lower East Side in
the sudden conception of an idea, which was no less than the rehiring of
Harkavy.
"What for a good job?" Morris asked. "Twenty dollars a week?"
Harkavy nodded.
"A little more," he said--"twenty-five."
"_Schon gut_," Morris declared; "then you wouldn't got to go at all,
because we ourselves would give you thirty."
"I moost go," Harkavy said, shaking his head; "my fare is paid."
"Pay 'em back the fare," Morris insisted--"we would see you wouldn't
lose it."
Again Harkavy shook his head.
"I got a bonus too," he declared--"a thousand rubles."
"What are you talking about, rubles?" Morris said impatiently. "You
ain't a greenhorn no longer. Do you mean a thousand dollars?"
"Six hundred dollars--about," Harkavy replied.
Morris whistled.
"Well," he said after a pause of some seconds, "put off going until
to-morrow anyhow. Maybe we could fix up to give you the six hundred
dollars anyhow."
Harkavy remained silent and Morris clapped him on the shoulder.
"If people is so anxious to get you that they pay you a big lot of money
like that, Harkavy, you could keep 'em waiting anyhow one day. Come
round and see us to-morrow morning at nine o'clock, wouldn't you?"
Harkavy pondered the question for some minutes.
"If you wish it, Mr. Perlmutter," he said, "I would do so; but I must
got to go away by eleven o'clock sure."
"Good!" Morris exclaimed. "Then I'll see you to-morrow morning at nine
o'clock."
They shook hands on the appointment and Morris turned away and ascended
the high stoop of an old-fashioned tenement. In the vestibule he
encountered a boy whose right cheek was apparently distorted by a severe
toothache.
"Do a family by the name Levin live here?" Morris asked.
The boy nodded and disgorged a huge lump of toffee, whereat the
toothache disappeared.
"Dat's me fader," he said. "Fourt' floor front east. He ain't in,
dough."
"Your father!" Morris cried. "Why, the people I am coming to see they
are greenhorns."
"Oh, yeh," the youngster replied; "dat's me fader's uncle. He lives wid
us."
"All right," Morris said. "Take me up there."
The youngster resumed his swollen cheek and escorted Morris up three
flights of slippery brassbound stairs. Without the formality of
knocking, they entered an apartment on the fourth floor where a woman
stood washing dishes.
"Mrs. Levin?" Morris said.
The woman nodded.
"I want to see your man's uncle," Morris continued. Without looking up
the woman cried in stentorian tones: "Mees-taire!"
In response a bent figure, clad in an alpaca caftan, appeared from an
interior bedroom. He wore a velvet skullcap, and a thin gray beard
straggled from his chin; his nose was surmounted by a pair of steel
spectacles.
"_Sholom alaicham!_" Morris cried, according the Rabbi that greeting, as
ancient as the Hebrew tongue itself--"Peace be with you."
"_Alaicham sholom!_" the Rabbi answered, and then he resorted to the
Yiddish jargon: "Do you look for me?"
"I look for the _Rav_ Elkan Levin," Morris said in a tongue to which he
had long been unaccustomed. "I am the servant of the philanthropist
Steuermann."
"Steuermann?" the _Rav_ Levin repeated. "I do not know him."
"In America," Morris said, "his name is honored over the governor's. He
sends me to you to speak for the unfortunate _Tzwee_ Kovalenko."
"_Tzwee_ Kovalenko," the old man cried, and his beard stood out as his
invisible lips tightened, while his nose became sharp and hawk-like. "A
_mishna meshuna_ to him, the same as he sent to my son."
"No," Morris declared; "he did not send it to your son. It was another
that did it."
The old man sank trembling into a nearby chair and clutched the edge of
the table.
"You tell this to me who saw with my own eyes his body!" he said in
shaking tones. "Yes, _Baron_; I saw my own child like a slaughtered
beast, all blood--not a face, but a piece of flesh. I saw him, and you
tell me this!"
"None the less," Morris went on, "if your son did die it was a _kapora_
not meant for him. It was intended for the chief of police."
The _Rav_ shook his head.
"It stands in the _Gemera_" he said, in the singsong tone of the
Talmudical reader: "If one flings a stone for pleasure and it strikes
another so that he dies, the one also shall die."
He rose to his feet and waved one hand with a flapping motion. "An eye
for an eye!" he cried in shrill tones. "A tooth for a tooth!"
Morris shrank back and turned to the woman, who had not raised her head
from the dishwashing.
"You tell him," he said, "that the philanthropist Steuermann invites him
to come to the address I shall give you--to-morrow at ten o'clock. Tell
him you know that when Steuermann commands, governors obey."
"What is it my business?" Mrs. Levin replied. "Tell him yourself."
"Your man should go with him," Morris insisted. "He and you will not
lose by it."
Morris wrote the address on the back of one of Potash & Perlmutter's
business cards and handed it to her.
"Put on it the table," she said.
"Tell your man," Morris continued, "if he does take this old man to
Steuermann I myself will pay him twenty-five dollars."
Once more he faced the _Rav_, who had sunk again into the chair.
"Will it bring back your son to you if _Tzwee_ Kovalenko dies?" he
asked.
The old man plucked at his beard.
"He was my son, my only son," he said; "my _Kaddish_. A good son he
was."
Mrs. Levin, still at her dishwashing, raised her head and snorted
impatiently.
"Yow--a good son!" she commented in English, "A dirty, lowlife bum he
was. If it wouldn't be that he _ganvered_ a couple bottles wine from a
store he wouldn't of been in the police office at all. He brought it on
himself, mister--believe me."
Morris nodded.
"What is _vorbei_ is _vorbei_," he said. "Tell your man he should bring
his uncle to Steuermann and I would pay him sure twenty-five dollars
cash."
He bowed to the _Rav_ and with a final "_Sholom alaicham!_" passed
downstairs to the street.
As he waited at the corner for a west-bound car he thought he discerned
a familiar figure in the shadow of the house he had just quitted. He
walked slowly up the block and Harkavy stole out of the basement area
and slunk hurriedly past him.
"Harkavy!" Morris called, but the assistant cutter only hastened his
steps and it seemed to Morris that a sound like a sob was borne
backward.
"What is the trouble, Harkavy?" Morris cried; but in response Harkavy
broke into a run, and with a mystified shake of his head Morris
commenced his tedious journey uptown.
* * * * *
When Morris, in company with his partner, entered the showroom at eight
o'clock the following morning he had already enumerated to Abe the
events of the preceding evening, not omitting his encounter with
Harkavy.
"I bet yer he would be waiting for us, Mawruss," Abe said; "and if I
ain't mistaken here he is now."
Their visitor, however, proved to be a stranger, who bore only a slight
resemblance to their former cutter.
"Mr. Perlmutter," he said--"ain't it?"
"My name is Mr. Perlmutter," Morris said. "What do you want from us?"
For answer the visitor drew from his pocket a card and handed it to
Morris.
"Me, I am Pincus Levin, and you are leaving this by my wife last night,"
he said; "so I am coming to tell you I am agreeable to take Mr. Levin to
Steuermann's place."
"All right," Morris replied. "You can go ahead."
Pincus Levin shuffled his feet uneasily, but made no attempt to depart.
"Well?" Morris cried.
"Sure, I know," Pincus said; "but if I would take uncle, Mr. Levin, to
Steuermann, y' understand and then, maybe--I am only saying, Mr.
Perlmutter, you might forget the other part--ain't it?"
"You mean you want your twenty-five dollars in advance?" Morris asked.
"Why not?" Pincus replied. "If I wouldn't took Mr. Levin to-day yet to
this here Steuermann's office, Mr. Perlmutter, you could stop the
check----"
Abe shrugged his shoulders expressively.
"An idee!" he cried. "You ain't never seen this feller before,
Mawruss--ain't it?"
Morris admitted it.
"Well, then, what's the use talking?" Abe continued. "How do we know
he's this here Levin's nephew?"
"Why, Mr. Potash," Levin cried, "I ain't no crook! I got the old man in
a coffee house round the corner right now."
"Bring him up here then," Abe said, "and we'll give you your money."
Pincus Levin nodded and shuffled off toward the back stairs, while Abe
turned and gazed after him.
"I couldn't make it out at all, Mawruss," he said. "The more I look at
that feller, Mawruss, the more he makes me think of this here----"
"Good morning, Mr. Potash!" a familiar voice interrupted. It was
Harkavy.
"Hello there!" Morris cried cheerfully. "I thought you would be here."
Hakavy smiled sadly. His face was white and drawn and his shoes and
trousers were covered with mud as though he had walked the streets all
night.
"I am keeping my word anyhow," he said; "but I am only coming to tell
you I got to go to Chicago."
"Why must you got to go?" Abe insisted.
"Well, there's certain reasons, Mr. Potash," Harkavy replied. "There's
certain--rea----"
He struggled to control his speech as his eyes rested on the rear
stairway, but his words became more and more inarticulate until, with a
shudder and a gasp, he fell heavily to the floor.
"_Oi gewoldt!_" Abe exclaimed. He rushed to the office for a glass of
water, but even before he had reached the cooler he stopped suddenly. A
great wailing cry came from the showroom and when he ran back with the
water a bearded old man lay prostrate across Harkavy's body.
Only Miss Cohen, the bookkeeper, kept a clear head during the confusion
that followed. She despatched Nathan, the shipping clerk, for a doctor
and directed her frightened employers to loosen the shirt-bands of the
unconscious men.
"Some whiskey!" Morris shouted--and one of the cutters produced it
bashfully from his hip-pocket.
"Never try to force whiskey on a fainting person," Miss Cohen cried. "It
might get into their lungs and suffocate 'em."
"I wasn't going to," Morris said hastily, as he took a yeoman's pull at
the bottle. "I am feeling faint myself."
"_Mir auch_," Abe said, taking the bottle from his partner's grasp.
After a refreshing draught he passed it on to Pincus, who returned it
empty to the crestfallen cutter just as a physician dashed out of the
elevator.
"What caused this trouble?" he asked Abe as he knelt down by the side of
Harkavy.
Abe looked helplessly at Morris and turned to Pincus Levin, who
commenced to tremble violently.
"Hold on there!" Morris shouted. "He's going to faint too."
Abe seized the glass of ice-water and flung its contents into Pincus
Levin's face. He gasped and sat down suddenly.
"The old man," he murmured, "he's Yosel's father."
"Yosel who?" Morris shouted. "The old man's only got one son--and he's
dead."
"Yes, I know," Pincus answered; "he is and he ain't. I always thought so
too, Mr. Perlmutter, but this feller here is Yosel Levin which he got
blew up in Harkav two years ago."
"What d'ye mean got blew up?" Abe asked as the doctor worked steadily
over the two prostrate men. "How could he be blew up if he is here now?"
Pincus shrugged his shoulders.
"How should I know?" he said weakly. "I ain't lying to you. This feller
here is Yosel Levin and my uncle there is his father."
"Do you mean to told me that the old man's son ain't dead at all?"
Morris demanded.
"Seemingly," Pincus said; "_aber_ this is the first time I heard it and
I guess it's the first time the old man heard it too."
Harkavy moaned and tried to sit up.
"Easy there!" the doctor commanded. "Two of you take him inside and put
him on a lounge if you have one."
Abe and Morris followed Pincus and the head cutter as they supported the
half-conscious Harkavy into the firm's office. Ten minutes later the old
man was restored to consciousness.
"_Wo ist er?_" he murmured. "_Mein kind!_"
"It's all right," the doctor replied, and then he turned to the office.
"Come out here, you, and talk to the old man."
Pincus came running from the office and reassured his uncle, who, under
the ministrations of the doctor, grew rapidly stronger until he was
sufficiently recovered to be placed on a chair.
"Keep him quiet while I attend to the other fellow," said the doctor;
"and don't let him talk."
He went at once to the office, where Harkavy sat on the edge of the
lounge.
"Here! What are you doing?" he cried. "You shouldn't let that fellow do
any talking."
"That's all right, doctor," Abe said calmly. "He should go on talking
now if it would kill him even. Go ahead, Harkavy."
"And so," Harkavy continued, "after I am stealing the wine they took me
to the police office. There was a place! But, anyhow, Mr. Potash, I
could tell you all about it afterward. Inside the backyard was a dead
moujik which he is got run over by a train. His face is all damaged so
you couldn't tell who he was at all."
He faltered and waved his hand.
"Give me, please, a glass water," he said, and the doctor seized his
hand.
"Never mind!" Abe cried inexorably. "Leave him alone, doctor. He should
finish what he's got to say."
Harkavy nodded and sipped some water.
"Then comes the package for the chief of police," he went on; "and they
put it first in a pail of water. Then they open it, Mr. Potash, and it
don't harm nobody; but them _roshers_ want to put it on to somebody, so
they make me a proposition they would give me a couple hundred rubles
and a ticket to America--and I took 'em up. For stealing that wine I
could get five years yet; so what should I do? They give me the money
and I run away; and the dead moujik they are telling everybody is me,
which I am blew up to pieces by the package."
"And you let the old man bury the moujik and think it was you?" Morris
asked.
Harkavy nodded.
"Over and over again he is telling me I am no good and he wishes I was
dead," he said. "I wish I was, Mr. Perlmutter--I wish I was!"
He commenced to cry weakly and Morris handed him the water.
"But when I hear last week the old man, my father, is here," he
continued, "I couldn't help myself--I am hanging around Madison Street
trying I should get one look at him only. I didn't see him till just
now."
He struggled to raise himself from the lounge.
"Let me go to him," he wailed; "let me go!"
Abe looked inquiringly at the doctor, who nodded in reply.
"Let him go," he said. "Happiness never harmed anybody yet."
* * * * *
"Gentlemen," said the United States Commissioner as he sat behind his
shabby desk in the Post-office Building, "the prisoner is in the
marshal's office. Shall he be brought in?"
He addressed his question to Mr. Munjoy, who was seated between Henry D.
Feldman and Steuermann at one side of a huge table. Opposite them were
the clerk of the Russian Consulate and his counsel, who was obviously
nervous at the formidable appearance presented by the lawyer, Henry D.
Feldman.
The latter was about to pull off--as in his colloquial moments he
himself would have expressed it--a rotten trick on his fellow counsel;
for Abe and Morris had not informed either Mr. Munjoy or Mr. Steuermann
of the stirring scene in their showroom that morning. Instead, they had
called on Feldman, who, with the dramatic intuition of the effective
jury lawyer, saw an opportunity for a coup that would at once gain the
admiration and respect, if not the legal business, of Moses M.
Steuermann and procure Feldman a column and a half of publicity in next
day's paper. Hence he had sworn Abe and Morris to secrecy in
consideration of making no charge for his services, since he deemed the
accruing benefit to be worth at least two hundred dollars.
"Shall he be brought in, gentlemen?" the commissioner asked.
Counsel for the Russian Consulate bowed, as did Mr. Munjoy; but Henry D.
Feldman cleared his throat with a great rasping noise that penetrated to
the corridor without. This was the signal, and Abe and Morris entered
the room supporting the old Rabbi, who was followed by Pincus Levin.
"One moment, sir," Feldman said. "I have a preliminary objection to
make. Will you hear the offer, sir?"
The commissioner nodded and Steuermann and his counsel Mr. Munjoy,
turned to Feldman in amazement.
"What's all this, Feldman?" Munjoy cried.
Feldman waved his hand impressively.
"My objection is, sir, that a gross fraud has been practised on this
court. It has come to my attention that somebody connected with this
proceeding has furnished a material witness for the defense with a
ticket for Chicago and one thousand rubles as a bribe to stay away from
the hearing."
Counsel for the complainant jumped to his feet.
"This is preposterous!" he declared.
"By no means," Feldman continued. "Will you direct counsel not to
interrupt me, sir, if you please?"
"I so direct," the commissioner replied, whereat Feldman again cleared
his throat and coughed twice, and, in answer to this cue, Yosel Levin,
alias Joseph Harkavy, entered the room.
"The person so bribed, Mr. Commissioner, is named in the petition as the
_corpus delicti_ of the crime alleged to have been committed," Feldman
said.
"What!" Munjoy and opposing counsel cried in unison, and the clerk to
the consulate reached for his hat and started for the door. His counsel
leaped after him, however, and succeeded in catching his coat-tails just
as he was about to disappear into the hall.
With one hand still grasping the consular clerk, counsel for the
complainant turned to the commissioner.
"I think my client wants to consult me outside for one minute," he said.
"Have I your consent to withdraw?"
The commissioner nodded and Munjoy turned to Feldman.
"What the deuce are you trying to do, Feldman?" he asked as
complainant's counsel returned.
"If the commissioner pleases," Feldman said, "we consent to a dismissal
of the extradition proceedings and to a discharge of the prisoner."
The imperturbable commissioner bowed and rose to his feet.
"Submit the necessary papers for the prisoner's discharge, gentlemen,"
he said. "The hearing is closed."
* * * * *
"Five dollars for doing what that feller done is like picking it up in
the street, Mawruss!" Abe declared to Mawruss when they received the
doctor's bill a month later.
"How could we be small about it, Abe?" Morris rejoined. "Look at what
Steuermann done! Not only he is paying his lawyers for getting this
Kovalenko out of prison but he is taking that young feller and paying
for him he should go on with his studying for a doctor."
"Well, the way doctors soak you, Mawruss," Abe said, looking at the bill
which he held in his hand, "it wouldn't be long before Kovalenko pays
him back with interest, I bet yer."
"But, anyhow, Abe," Morris continued, "now we got Yosel Levin working
for us as cutter, it would be a better feeling all around supposing we
pay the bill and say nothing about it."
"I am agreeable we should say nothing more about it, Mawruss," Abe
retorted, "because we already wasted more time and trouble than the
whole thing is worth; but one thing I would like to know, Mawruss,
before I shut up my mouth: Why did this here feller, Yosel Levin, call
himself Harkavy?"
"Say!" Morris said, using three inflections to the monosyllable: "he's
got just so much right to call himself Harkavy as all them other guys
has to call themselves Breslauer, Hamburger, Leipziger _oder_ Berliner.
He anyhow does come from Harkav, Abe--which you could take it from me,
Abe, there's many a feller calls himself Hamburger which he don't come
from no nearer Hamburg than Vilna _oder_ Kovno."
Abe shrugged his shoulders expressively in reply.
"My worries where them fellers comes from, Mawruss!" he commented.
"Because, when it comes right down to it, Mawruss, if a feller attends
to his own business, Mawruss, and don't monkey with politics,
y'understand, where could he make a better living than right here in New
York, N. Y.?"
CHAPTER EIGHT
"R. S. V. P."
It was the tenth of the month, and Abe Potash, of Potash & Perlmutter,
was going through the firm mail with an exploratory thumb and finger,
looking for checks.
"Well, Mawruss," he said to his partner, Morris Perlmutter, "all them
hightone customers of yours they don't take it so particular that they
should pay on the day, Mawruss. If they was only so prompt with checks
as they was to claim deductions, Mawruss, you and me would have no
worries. I think some of 'em finds a shortage in the shipment before
they open the packing-case that the goods come in. Take your friend
Hyman Maimin, of Sarahcuse--nothing suits him. He always kicks that the
goods ain't made up right, or we ain't sent him enough fancies, or
something like that. Five or six letters he writes us, Mawruss, when he
gets the goods; but when he got to pay for 'em, Mawruss, that's
something else again. You might think postage stamps was solitaire
diamonds, and that he dassen't use 'em!"
"Quit your kicking," Perlmutter broke in. "This is only the tenth of the
month."