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Potash and Perlmutter: Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures

<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> "Sol Klinger must think he ain't taking chances enough in these here stocks, Mawruss," Abe Potash remarked a week after the slump in Interstate Copper. "He got to hire a drummer by the name Walsh yet. That feller's idee of entertaining a customer is to go into Wasserbauer's and to drink all the schnapps in stock. I bet yer when Walsh gets through, he don't know which is the customer and which is the bartender already." "You got to treat a customer right, Abe," Morris commented, "because nowadays we are up against some stiff competition. You take this here new concern, Abe, the Small Drygoods Company of Walla Walla, Washington, Abe, and Klinger & Klein ain't lost no time. Sol tells me this morning that them Small people start in with a hundred thousand capital all paid in. Sol says also their buyer James Burke which they send it East comes from the same place in the old country as this here Frank Walsh, and I guess we got to hustle if we want to get his trade, ain't it?" "Because a customer is a Landsmann of mine, Mawruss," Abe replied, "ain't no reason why I shall sell him goods, Mawruss. If I could sell all my Landsleute what is in the cloak and suit business,[Pg 174] Mawruss, we would be doing a million-dollar business a month, ain't it?" At this juncture Morris drew on his imagination. "I hear it also, Abe," he hinted darkly, "that this here James Bourke, what the Small Drygoods Company sends East, is related by marriage to this here Walsh's wife." "Wives' relations is nix, Mawruss," Abe replied. "I got enough with wives' relations. When me and my Rosie gets married her mother was old man Smolinski's a widow. He made an honest failure of it in the customer peddler business in eighteen eighty-five, and the lodge money was pretty near gone when I got into the family. Then my wife's mother gives my wife's brother, Scheuer Smolinski, ten dollars to go out and buy some schnapps for the wedding, and that's the last we see of him, Mawruss. But Rosie and me gets married, anyhow, and takes the old lady to live with us, and the first thing you know, Mawruss, she gets sick on us and dies, with a professor and two trained nurses at my expense, and that's the way it goes, Mawruss." He rose to his feet and helped himself to a cigar from the L to N first and second credit customers' box. "No, Mawruss," he concluded, "if you can't sell a man goods on their merits, Mawruss, you'll never get him to take them because your wife is related by marriage to his wife. Ain't it? We got a good line, Mawruss, and we stand a show to sell our[Pg 175] goods without no theayters nor dinners nor nothing." Morris shrugged his shoulders. "All right, Abe," he said, "you can do what you like about it, but I already bought it two tickets for Saturday night." "Of course, if you like to go to shows, Mawruss," Abe declared as he rose to his feet, "I can't stop you. Only one thing I got to say it, Mawruss—if you think you should charge that up to the firm's expense account, all I got to say is you're mistaken, that's all." Abe strode out of the show-room before a retort could formulate itself, so Morris struggled into his overcoat instead and made for the store door. As he reached it his eye fell on the clock over Wasserbauer's Café on the other side of the street. The hands pointed to two o'clock, and he broke into a run, for the Southwestern Flyer which bore the person of James Burke was due at the Grand Central Station at two-ten. Fifteen minutes later Morris darted out of the subway exit at Forty-second Street and imminently avoided being run down by a hansom. Indeed, the vehicle came to a halt so suddenly that the horse reared on its haunches, while a flood of profanity from the driver testified to the nearness of Morris' escape. Far from being grateful, however, Morris paused on the curb and was about to retaliate in kind when one of the two male occupants of the hansom leaned forward and poked a derisive finger at him. [Pg 176]"What's the hurry, Morris?" said the passenger. Morris looked up and gasped, for in that fleeting moment he recognized his tormentor. It was Frank Walsh, and although Morris saw only the features of his competitor it needed no Sherlock Holmes to deduce that Frank's fellow-passenger was none other than James Burke, buyer for the Small Drygoods Company. Two hours later he returned to the store, for he had seized the opportunity of visiting some of the firm's retail trade while uptown, and when he came in he found Abe sorting a pile of misses' reefers. "Well, Mawruss," Abe cried, "you look worried." "I bet you I'm worried, Abe," he said. "You and your wife's relations done it. Two thousand dollars thrown away in the street. I got to the Grand Central Station just in time to get there too late, Abe. This here Walsh was ahead of me already, and he took Burke away in a hansom. When I come out of the subway they pretty near run over me, Abe." "A competitor will do anything, Mawruss," Abe said sympathetically. "But don't you worry. There's just as big fish swimming in the sea as what they sell by fish markets, Mawruss. Bigger even. We ain't going to fail yet a while just because we lose the Small Drygoods Company for a customer." "We ain't lost 'em yet, Abe," Morris rejoined, and without taking off his coat he repaired to Wasserbauer's[Pg 177] Restaurant and Café for a belated lunch. As he entered he encountered Frank Walsh, who had been congratulating himself at the bar. "Hello, Morris," he cried. "I cut you out, didn't I?" "You cut me out?" Morris replied stiffly. "I don't know what you mean." "Of course you don't," Walsh broke in heartily. "I suppose you was hustling to the Grand Central Station just because you wanted to watch the engines. Well, I won't crow over you, Morris. Better luck next time!" His words fell on unheeding ears, for Morris was busily engaged in looking around him. He sought features that might possibly belong to James Burke, but Frank seemed to be the only representative of the Emerald Isle present, and Morris proceeded to the restaurant in the rear. "I suppose he turned him over to Klinger," he said to himself, while from the vantage of his table he saw Frank Walsh buy cigars and pass out into the street in company with another drummer not of Irish extraction. He finished his lunch without appetite, and when he reëntered the store Abe walked forward to greet him. "Well, Mawruss," he said, "I seen Sol Klinger coming down the street a few minutes ago, so I kinder naturally just stood out on the sidewalk till[Pg 178] he comes past, Mawruss. I saw he ain't looking any too pleased, so I asked him what's the trouble; and he says, nothing, only that Frank Walsh, what they got it for a drummer, eats 'em up with expenses. So I says, How so? And he says, this here Walsh has a customer by the name of Burke come to town, and the first thing you know, he spends it three dollars for a cab for Burke, and five dollars for lunch for Burke, and also ten dollars for two tickets for a show for Burke, before this here Burke is in town two hours already. Klinger looked pretty sore about it, Mawruss." "What show is he taking Burke to?" Morris asked. "It ain't a show exactly," Abe replied hastily; "it's a prize-fight." "A fight!" Morris cried. "That's an idea, ain't it?—to take a customer to a fight." "I know it, Mawruss," Abe rejoined, "but you got to remember that the customer's name is also Burke. What for a show did you buy it tickets for?" Morris blushed. "Travvy-ayter," he murmured. "Travvy-ayter!" Abe replied. "Why, that's an opera, ain't it?" Morris nodded. He had intended to combine business with pleasure by taking Burke to hear Tetrazzini. "Well, you got your idees, too, Mawruss," Abe continued; "and I don't know that they're much better as this here Walsh's idees." [Pg 179]"Ain't they, Abe?" Morris replied. "Well, maybe they ain't, Abe. But just because I got a loafer for a customer ain't no reason why I should be a loafer myself, Abe." "Must you take a customer to a show, Mawruss?" Abe rejoined. "Is there a law compelling it, Mawruss?" Morris shrugged his shoulders. "Anyhow, Abe," he said, "I don't see that you got any kick coming, because I'm going to give them tickets to you and Rosie, Abe, and youse two can take in the show." "And where are you going, Mawruss?" "Me?" Morris replied. "I'm going to a prize-fighting, Abe. I don't give up so easy as all that." On his way home that night Morris consulted an evening paper, and when he turned to the sporting page he found the upper halves of seven columns effaced by a huge illustration executed in the best style of Jig, the Sporting Cartoonist. In the left-hand corner crouched Slogger Atkins, the English lightweight, while opposite to him in the right-hand corner stood Young Kilrain, poised in an attitude of defense. Underneath was the legend, "The Contestants in Tomorrow Night's Battle." By reference to Jig's column Morris ascertained that the scene of the fight would be at the Polygon Club's new arena in the vicinity of Harlem Bridge, and at half past eight Saturday night he alighted from a Third Avenue L train at One Hundred and Twenty-ninth[Pg 180] Street and followed the crowd that poured over the bridge. It was nine o'clock before Morris gained admission to the huge frame structure that housed the arena of the Polygon Club. Having just paid five dollars as a condition precedent to membership in good standing, he took his seat amid a dense fog of tobacco smoke and peered around him for Frank Walsh and his customer. At length he discerned Walsh's stalwart figure at the right hand of a veritable giant, whose square jaw and tip-tilted nose would have proclaimed the customer, even though Walsh had not assiduously plied him with cigars and engaged him continually in animated conversation. They were seated well down toward the ring, while Morris found a place directly opposite them and watched their every movement. When they laughed Morris scowled, and once when the big man slapped his thigh in uproarious appreciation of one of Walsh's stories Morris fairly turned green with envy. Morris watched with a jaundiced eye the manner in which Frank Walsh radiated good humor. Not only did Walsh hand out cigars to the big man, but also he proffered them to the person who sat next to him on the other side. This man Morris recognized as the drummer who had been in Wasserbauer's with Frank on the previous day. "Letting him in on it, too," Morris said to himself. "What show do I stand?" The first of the preliminary bouts began. The[Pg 181] combatants were announced as Pig Flanagan and Tom Evans, the Welsh coal-miner. It seemed to Morris that he had seen Evans somewhere before, but as this was his initiation into the realms of pugilism he concluded that it was merely a chance resemblance and dismissed the matter from his mind. The opening bout more than realized Morris' conception of the sport's brutality, for Pig Flanagan was what the cognoscenti call a good bleeder, and during the first second of the fight he fulfilled his reputation at the instance of a light tap from his opponent's left. There are some people who cannot stand the sight of blood; Morris was one of them, and the drummer on Frank Walsh's right was another. Both he and Morris turned pale, but the big man on Walsh's left roared his approbation. "Eat him up!" he bellowed, and at every fresh hemorrhage from Mr. Flanagan he rocked and swayed in an ecstasy of enjoyment. For three crimson rounds Pig Flanagan and Tom Evans continued their contest, but even a good bleeder must run dry eventually, and in the first half of the fourth round Pig took the count. By this time the arena was swimming in Morris' nauseated vision, while, as for the drummer on Frank's right, he closed his eyes and wiped a clammy perspiration from his forehead. The club meeting proceeded, however, despite the stomachs of its weaker members, and the next bout commenced with a rush. It was advertised in advance by Morris'[Pg 182] neighboring seatholders as a scientific contest, but in pugilism, as in surgery, science is often gory. In this instance a scientific white man hit a colored savant squarely on the nose, with the inevitable sanguinary result, and as though by a prearranged signal Morris and the drummer on Walsh's right started for the door. In vain did Walsh seize his neighbor by the coat-tail. The latter shook himself loose, and he and Morris reached the sidewalk together. "T'phooie!" said the drummer. "That's an amusement for five dollars." Morris wiped his face and gasped like a landed fish. At length he recovered his composure. "I seen you sitting next to Walsh," he said. The drummer nodded. "He didn't want me to go," he replied. "He said we come together and we should go together, but I told him I would wait for him till it was over. Him and that other fellow seem to enjoy it." "Some people has got funny idees of a good time," Morris commented. "That's an idee for a loafer," said the drummer. "For my part I like it more refined." "I believe you," Morris replied. "Might you would come and take a cup of coffee with me, maybe?" He indicated a bathbrick dairy restaurant on the opposite side of the street. "Much obliged," the drummer replied, "but I got to go out of town to-morrow, and coffee keeps me[Pg 183] awake. I think I'll wait here for about half an hour, and if Walsh and his friends don't come out by then I guess I'll go home." Morris hesitated. A sense of duty demanded that he stay and see the matter through, since his newly-made acquaintance with the tertium quid of Walsh's little party might lead to an introduction to the big man, and for the rest Morris trusted to his own salesmanship. But the drummer settled the matter for him. "On second thought," he said, "I guess I won't wait. Why should I bother with a couple like them? If you're going downtown on the L I'll go with you." Together they walked to the Manhattan terminal of the Third Avenue road and discussed the features of the disgusting spectacle they had just witnessed. In going over its details they found sufficient conversation to cover the journey to One Hundred and Sixteenth Street, where Morris alighted. When he descended to the street it occurred to him for the first time that he had omitted to learn both the name and line of business of his new-found friend. In the meantime Frank Walsh and his companion watched the white scientist and the colored savant conclude their exhibition and cheered themselves hoarse over the pièce de résistance which followed immediately. At length Slogger Atkins disposed of Young Kilrain with a well-directed punch in the solar plexus, and Walsh and his companion rose to go. "What become of yer friend?" the big man asked. "[Pg 184]He had to go out, Jim," Frank replied. "He couldn't stand the sight of the blood." "Is that so?" the big man commented. "It beats all, the queer ideas some people has." "Well, Mawruss," Abe cried as he greeted his partner on Monday morning, "how did it went?" "How did what went?" Morris asked. "The prize-fighting." Morris shook his head. "Not for all the cloak and suit trade on the Pacific slope," he said finally, "would I go to one of them things again. First, a fat Eyetalian by the name Flanagan fights with a young feller, Tom Evans, the Welsh coal-miner, and you never seen nothing like it, Abe, outside a slaughter-house." "Flanagan don't seem much like an Eyetalian, Mawruss," Abe commented. "I know it," Morris replied; "but that wouldn't surprise you much if you could seen the one what they call Tom Evans, the Welsh coal-miner." "Why not?" Abe asked. "Well, you remember Hyman Feinsilver, what worked by us as a shipping clerk while Jake was sick?" "Sure I do," Abe replied. "Comes from very decent, respectable people in the old country. His father was a rabbi." "Don't make no difference about his father, Abe," Morris went on. "That Tom Evans, the Welsh coal-miner, is Hyman Feinsilver what worked by us,[Pg 185] and the way he treated that poor Eyetalian young feller was a shame for the people. It makes me sick to think of it." "Don't think of it, then," Abe replied, "because it won't do you no good, Mawruss. I seen Sol Klinger in the subway this morning, and he says that last Saturday morning already James Burke was in their place and picked out enough goods to stock the biggest suit department in the country. Sol says Burke went to Philadelphia yesterday to meet Sidney Small, the president of the concern, and they're coming over to Klinger & Klein's this morning and close the deal." Morris sat down and lit a cigar. "Yes, Abe, that's the way it goes," he said bitterly. "You sit here and tell me a long story about your wife's relations, and the first thing you know, Abe, I miss the train and Frank Walsh takes away my trade. What do I care about your wife's relations, Abe?" "That's what I told you, Mawruss. Wife's relations don't do nobody no good," Abe replied. "Jokes!" Morris exclaimed as he moved off to the rear of the store. "Jokes he is making it, and two thousand dollars thrown into the street." For the rest of the morning Morris sulked in the cutting-room upstairs, while Abe busied himself in assorting his samples for a forthcoming New England trip. At twelve o'clock a customer came in, and when he left at half-past twelve Abe escorted him to the store door and lingered there a few minutes to[Pg 186] get a breath of fresh air. As he was about to reënter the store he discerned the corpulent figure of Frank Walsh making his way down the opposite sidewalk toward Wasserbauer's Café. With him were two other men, one of them about as big as Frank himself, the other a slight, dark person. Abe darted to the rear of the store. "Mawruss," he called, "come quick! Here is this Walsh feller with Small and Burke." Morris took the first few stairs at a leap, and had his partner not caught him he would have landed in a heap at the bottom of the flight. They covered the distance from the stairway to the store door so rapidly that when they reached the sidewalk Frank and his customers had not yet arrived in front of Wasserbauer's. "The little feller," Morris hissed, "is the same one what was up to the fighting. I guess he's a drummer." "Him?" Abe replied. "He ain't no drummer, Mawruss. He's Jacob Berkowitz, what used to run the Up-to-Date Store in Seattle. I sold him goods when me and Pincus Vesell was partners together, way before the Spanish War already. Who's the other feller?" At that moment the subject of Abe's inquiry looked across the street and for the first time noticed Abe and Morris standing on the sidewalk. He stopped short and stared at Abe until his bulging eyes caught the sign above the store. For one brief moment[Pg 187] he hesitated and then he leaped from the curb to the gutter and plunged across the roadway, with Jacob Berkowitz and Frank Walsh in close pursuit. He seized Abe by both hands and shook them up and down. "Abe Potash!" he cried. "So sure as you live." "That's right," Abe admitted; "that's my name." "You don't remember me, Abe?" he went on. "I remember Mr. Berkowitz here," Abe said, smiling at the smaller man. "I used to sell him goods oncet when he ran the Up-to-Date Store in Seattle. Ain't that so, Mr. Berkowitz?" The smaller man nodded in an embarrassed fashion, while Frank Walsh grew red and white by turns and looked first at Abe and then at the others in blank amazement. "But," Abe went on, "you got to excuse me, Mister—Mister——" "Small," said the larger man, whereat Morris fairly staggered. "Mister Small," Abe continued. "You got to excuse me. I don't remember your name. Won't you come inside?" "Hold on!" Frank Walsh cried. "These gentlemen are going to lunch with me." Small turned and fixed Walsh with a glare. "I am going to do what I please, Mr. Walsh," he said coldly. "If I want to go to lunch I go to lunch; if I don't that's something else again." "Oh, I've got lots of time," Walsh explained. "I[Pg 188] was just reminding you, that's all. Wasserbauer's got a few good specialties on his bill-of-fare that don't improve with waiting." "All right," Mr. Small said. "If that's the case go ahead and have your lunch. I won't detain you none." He put his hand on Abe's shoulder, and the little procession passed into the store with Abe and Mr. Small in the van, while Frank Walsh constituted a solitary rear-guard. He sat disconsolately on a pile of piece goods as the four others went into the show-room. "Sit down, Mr. Small," Abe said genially. "Mr. Berkowitz, take that easy chair." Then Morris produced the "gilt-edged" cigars from the safe, and they all lit up. "First thing, Mr. Small," Abe went on, "I should like to know where I seen you before. Of course, I know you're running a big business in Walla Walla, Washington, and certainly, too, I know your face." "Sure you know my face, Abe," Mr. Small replied. "But my name ain't familiar. The last time you seen my face, Abe, was some twenty years since." "Twenty years is a long time," Abe commented. "I seen lots of trade in twenty years." "Trade you seen it, yes," Mr. Small said, "but I wasn't trade." He paused and looked straight at Abe. "Think, Abe," he said. "When did you seen me last?" [Pg 189]Abe gazed at him earnestly and then shook his head. "I give it up," he said. "Well, Abe," Mr. Small murmured, "the last time you seen me I went out to buy ten dollars' worth of schnapps." "What!" Abe cried. "But that afternoon there was a sure-thing mare going to start over to Guttenberg just as I happened to be passing Butch Thompson's old place, and I no more than got the ten dollars down than she blew up in the stretch. So I boarded a freight over to West Thirtieth Street and fetched up in Walla Walla, Washington." "Look a-here!" Abe gasped. "You ain't Scheuer Smolinski, are you?" Mr. Small nodded. "That's me," he said. "I'm Scheuer Smolinski or Sidney Small, whichever you like. When me and Jake Berkowitz started this here Small Drygoods Company we decided that Smolinski and Berkowitz was too big a mouthful for the Pacific Slope, so we slipped the 'inski' and the 'owitz.' Scheuer Small and Jacob Burke didn't sound so well, neither. Ain't it? So, since there ain't no harm in it, we just changed our front names, too, and me and him is Sidney Small and James Burke." Abe sat back in his chair too stunned for words, while Morris pondered bitterly on the events of Saturday night. Then the prize was well within his grasp, for even at that late hour he could have persuaded[Pg 190] Mr. Burke to reconsider his decision and to bring Mr. Small over to see Potash & Perlmutter's line first. But now it was too late, Morris reflected, for Mr. Small had visited Klinger & Klein's establishment and had no doubt given the order. "Say, my friends," Frank Walsh cried, poking his head in the door, "far from me to be buttin' in, but whenever you're ready for lunch just let me know." Mr. Small jumped to his feet. "I'll let you know," he said—"I'll let you know right now. Half an hour since already I told Mr. Klinger I would make up my mind this afternoon about giving him the order for them goods what Mr. Burke picked out. Well, you go back and tell him I made up my mind already, sooner than I expected. I ain't going to give him the order at all." Walsh's red face grew purple. At first he gurgled incoherently, but finally recovered sufficiently to enunciate; and for ten minutes he denounced Mr. Small and Mr. Burke, their conduct and antecedents. It was a splendid exhibition of profane invective, and when he concluded he was almost breathless. "Yah!" he jeered, "five-dollar tickets for a prize-fight for the likes of youse!" He fixed Morris and Mr. Burke with a final glare. "Pearls before swine!" he bellowed, and banged the show-room door behind him. Mr. Burke looked at Morris. "That's a lowlife for you," he said. "A respectable concern should have[Pg 191] a salesman like him! Ain't it a shame and a disgrace?" Morris nodded. "He takes me to a place where nothing but loafers is," Mr. Burke continued, "and for two hours I got to sit and hear him and his friend there, that big feller—I guess you seen him, Mr. Perlmutter—he told me he keeps a beer saloon—another lowlife—for two hours I got to listen to them loafers cussing together, and then he gets mad that I don't enjoy myself yet." Mr. Small shrugged his shoulders. "Let's forget all about it," he said. "Come, Abe, I want to look over your line, and you and me will do business right away." Abe and Morris spent the next two hours displaying their line, while Mr. Small and Mr. Burke selected hundred lots of every style. Finally, Abe and Mr. Small retired to the office to fill out the order, leaving Morris to replace the samples. He worked with a will and whistled a cheerful melody by way of accompaniment. "Mister Perlmutter," James Burke interrupted, "that tune what you are whistling it, ain't that the drinking song from Travvy-ater already?" Morris ceased his whistling. "That's right," he replied. "I thought it was," Mr. Burke said. "I was going to see that opera last Saturday night if that lowlife Walsh wouldn't have took me to the prize-fight." [Pg 192]He paused and helped himself to a fresh cigar from the "gilt-edged" box. "For anybody else but a loafer," he concluded, "prize-fighting is nix. Opera, Mr. Perlmutter, that's an amusement for a gentleman." Morris nodded a vigorous acquiescence. He had nearly concluded his task when Abe and his new-found brother-in-law returned. "Well, gentlemen," Mr. Small announced, "we figured it up and it comes to twenty-five hundred dollars. That ain't bad for a starter." "You bet," Abe agreed fervently. Mr. Burke smiled. "You got a good line, Mr. Potash," he said. "Ever so much better than Klinger & Klein's." "That's what they have," Mr. Small agreed. "But it don't make no difference, anyhow. I'd give them the order if the line wasn't near so good." He put his arm around Abe's shoulder. "It stands in the Talmud, an old saying, but a true one," he said—"'Blood is redder than water.'" <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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