At this juncture the elevator arrived, and as he plunged in he shouted that he would be back before noon. Abe returned to the rear of the loft where a number of rush orders had been arranged for shipment. Under his instruction and supervision the stock boy nailed down the top boards of the packing cases, but in nearly every instance, after the case was strapped and stencilled, they discovered they had left one garment out, and the whole process had to be repeated. Thus it was nearly one o'clock before Abe's task was concluded, and although he had breakfasted late that morning, when he looked at his watch he became suddenly famished. "I could starve yet," he muttered, "for all that feller cares."
He walked up and down the showroom floor in an ecstasy of imaginary hunger, and as he was making the hundredth trip the elevator door opened and Max Linkheimer stepped out. His low-cut waistcoat disclosed that his shirtfront, ordinarily of a glossy white perfection, had fallen victim to a profuse perspiration. Even his collar had not escaped the flood, and as for his I. O. M. A. charm, it seemed positively tarnished.
"Say, lookyhere, Potash," he began, "what d'ye mean by sending your partner to bail out that ganef?"
"Me send my partner to bail out a ganef?" Abe exclaimed. "What are you talking, nonsense?"
"I ain't talking nonsense," Linkheimer retorted. "Look at the kinds of conditions I am in. That feller Feldman made a fine monkey out of me in the police court."
"Was Feldman there too?" Abe asked.
"You don't know, I suppose, Feldman was there," Linkheimer continued; "and your partner went on his bail for two thousand dollars."
Abe shrugged his shoulders.
"In the first place, Mr. Linkheimer," he said, "I didn't tell my partner he should do nothing of the kind. He done it against my advice, Mr. Linkheimer. But at the same time, Mr. Linkheimer, if he wants to go bail for that feller, y'understand, what is it my business?"
"What is it your business?" Linkheimer repeated. "Why, don't you know if that feller runs away the sheriff could come in here and clean out your place? That's all."
"What?" Abe cried. He sat down in the nearest chair and gaped at Linkheimer.
"Yes, sir," Linkheimer repeated, "you could be ruined by a thing like that."
Abe's lower jaw fell still further. He was too dazed for comment.
"W-what could I do about it?" he gasped at length.
"Do about it!" Linkheimer cried. "Why, if I had a partner who played me a dirty trick like that I'd kick him out of my place. There ain't a copartnership agreement in existence that doesn't expressly say one partner shouldn't give a bail bond without the other partner's consent."
Abe rocked to and fro in his chair.
"After all these years a feller should do a thing like that to me!" he moaned.
Linkheimer smiled with satisfaction, and he was about to instance a striking and wholly imaginary case of one partner ruining another by giving a bail bond when the door leading to the cutting room in the rear opened and Morris Perlmutter appeared. As his eyes rested on Linkheimer they blazed with anger, and for once Morris seemed to possess a certain dignity.
"Out," he commanded; "out from mein store, you dawg, you!"
As he rushed on the startled button dealer, Abe grabbed his coat-tails and pulled him back.
"Say, what are we here, Mawruss," he cried, "a theaytre?"
"Let him alone, Abe," Linkheimer counselled in a rather shaky voice. "I'm pretty nearly twenty years older than he is, but I guess I could cope with him."
"You wouldn't cope with nobody around here," Abe replied. "If youse two want to cope you should go out on the sidewalk."
"Never mind," Morris broke in, his valour now quite evaporated; "I'll fix him yet."
"Another thing, Mawruss," Abe interrupted; "why don't you come in the front way like a man."
"I come in which way I please, Abe," Morris rejoined. "And furthermore, Abe, when I got with me a poor skeleton of a feller like Nathan Schenkmann, Abe, I don't take him up the front elevator. I would be ashamed for our competitors that they should think we let our work-people starve. The feller actually fainted on me as we was coming up the freight elevator."
"As you was coming up the freight elevator?" Abe repeated. "Do you mean to tell me you got the nerve to actually bring this feller into mein place yet?"
"Do I got to get your permission, Abe, I should bring who I want to into my own place?" Morris rejoined.
"Then all I got to say is you should take him right out again," Abe said. "I wouldn't have no ganévim in my place. Once and for all, Mawruss, I am telling you I wouldn't stand for your nonsense. You are giving our stock as a bail for this feller, and if he runs away on us, the sheriff comes in and—"
"Who says I give our stock as a bail for this feller?" Morris demanded. "I got a surety company bond, Abe, because Feldman says I shouldn't go on no bail bonds, and I give the surety company my personal check for a thousand dollars which they will return when the case is over. That's what I done it to keep this here Schenkmann out of jail, Abe, and if it would be necessary to get this here Linkheimer into jail, Abe, I would have another check for a thousand dollars for keeps."
Abe grew somewhat abashed at this disclosure. He looked at Linkheimer and then at Morris, but before he could think of something to say the elevator door opened and Jake stepped out. It was perhaps the first time in all their acquaintance with Jake that Abe and Morris had seen him with his face washed. Moreover, a clean collar served further to conceal his identity, and at first Abe did not recognize his former shipping clerk.
"Hallo, Mr. Potash!" Jake said.
"I'll be with you in one moment, Mister—er," Abe began. "Just take a—why, that's Jake, ain't it?"
Here he saw a chance for a conversational diversion and he jumped excitedly to his feet.
"What's the matter, Jake?" he asked. "You want your old job back?"
"It don't go so quick as all that, Mr. Potash," Jake answered. "I got a good business, Mr. Potash. I carry a fine line of cigars, candy, and stationery, and already I got an offer of twenty-five dollars more as I paid for the business. But I wouldn't take it. Why should I? I took in a lot money yesterday, and only this morning, Mr. Potash, a feller comes in my place and—why, there's the feller now!"
"Feller! What d'ye mean—feller?" Abe cried indignantly. "That ain't no feller. That's Mr. Max Linkheimer."
"Sure, I know!" Jake explained. "He's the feller I mean. Half an hour ago I was in his place, and they says there he comes up here. You was in mein store this morning, Mr. Linkheimer, ain't that right, and you bought from me a package of all-tobacco cigarettes?"
"Nu, nu, Jake," Morris broke in. "Make an end. You are interrupting us here."
Jake drew back his coat and clumsily unfastened a large safety pin which sealed the opening of his upper right-hand waistcoat pocket. Then he dug down with his thumb and finger and produced a small yellow wad about the size of a postage stamp. This he proceeded to unfold until it took on the appearance of a hundred-dollar bill.
"He gives me this here," Jake announced, "and I give him the change for a ten-dollar bill. So this here is a hundred-dollar bill, ain't it, and it don't belong to me, which I come downtown I should give it him back again. What isn't mine I don't want at all."
This was perhaps the longest speech that Jake had ever made, and he paused to lick his dry lips for the peroration.
"And so," he concluded, handing the