Abe and Mawruss Part 11

Morris denied it indignantly.

"_Gott soil huten_," he said. "My name is Mr. Perlmutter and I am in the cloak and suit business."

"Oh, I remember now!" Uncle Mosha cried. The news that Morris was no charity worker restored him to high good-humour.

"I remember you perfect now," he said, shaking hands effusively with Morris. "You got a partner by the name Potash, ain't it?"

"That's right," Morris replied.

"And what brings you over here in this _nachbarschaft_?" Uncle Mosha inquired.

Morris looked from Uncle Mosha to the tarnished bra.s.s plate on the side of the tenement-house door. It read as follows:

M. KRONBERG REAL ESTATE

"The fact is," Morris said, "I am coming to see you in a business way, and if you got time I'd like to say a little something to you."

"Come inside," Uncle Mosha grunted. He thought he discerned a furtive timidity in his visitor's manner strongly indicative of an impending touch.

"In the first place," he began, after Morris was seated, "I ain't got so much money which people think I got it."

"I never thought you did," said Morris, and Uncle Mosha glared in response.

"But I ain't no beggar neither, y'understand," he retorted. "I got a little something left, anyhow."

"Sure, I know," Morris agreed; "but what you have got or what you ain't got is neither here or there. I am coming over this morning to ask you something, a question."

Here he paused. He had not yet determined what the question would be, and it occurred to him that, unless it were sufficiently momentous to account for his presence on the lower East Side during the busiest hours of a business day, Uncle Mosha would show him the door.

"Go ahead and ask it, then," Uncle Mosha broke in impatiently. "I couldn't sit here all day."

"The fact is," Morris said slowly, and then his mind reverted to the bra.s.s plate on the door and he at once proceeded with renewed confidence--"the fact is I am coming over here to ask you something, a question which a friend of mine would like to buy a property on the East Side."

"A property," Uncle Mosha repeated. "A property is something else again.

What for a property would your friend like to buy it?"

"A fine property," Morris replied; "a property like you got it here."

"But this here property ain't for sale," Uncle Mosha said. "I got the house here now since 1890 already, and I guess I would keep it."

"Sure, I know; that's all right," Morris went on; "but I thought, even if you wouldn't want to sell the house, you know such a whole lot about real estate, Mr. Kronberg, you could help us out a little."

The hard lines about Uncle Mosha's mouth relaxed into a smile.

"Well, when it comes to real estate," he said, "I ain't a fool exactly, y'understand."

"That's what I was told," Morris continued. "A friend of mine he says to me: 'If any one could tell you about real estate, Mosha Kronberg could.

There's a man,' he says, 'which his opinion you could trust in it anything what he says is so. If the Astors and the Goelets would know about East Side real estate what that feller knows--understand me--instead of their hundreds of millions they would have thousands of millions already.'"

Uncle Mosha fairly beamed.

"Yes, Mr. Kronberg," Morris went on, without taking breath, "he says to me: 'You should go and see Uncle Mosha; he's a gentleman and he would treat you right.' 'But,' I says to him, 'I ain't got no right to b.u.t.t in on your Uncle Mosha. You see, Alex,' I says----"

"Alex!" Uncle Mosha cried. "Did Alex Kronberg send you here?"

"That's who it was," Morris replied.

"Then all I could say is," Uncle Mosha thundered, "you should go right back to Alex and tell him from me that I says any friend of his which he comes to me looking for information about real estate, he's lucky I don't kick him into the street yet."

He jumped up from his chair and opened the door leading into the public hall.

"Go on," he roared, "out from my house."

Morris rose leisurely to his feet and pulled a large cigar from his pocket.

"If that's the way you feel about it, Mr. Kronberg," he said gently, "_schon gut_. I wouldn't bother you any more. At the same time, Mr.

Kronberg, if ever you should want to sell the house, y'understand, let me know; that's all." As he pa.s.sed out of the door he laid the cigar on a side table and its bright red band immediately caught the eye of Uncle Mosha. He pounced on it and was about to hurl it after his departing visitor when something about the smoothness of the wrapper made him pause. Five minutes later he lolled back in a horsehair-covered rocker and puffed contentedly at Morris's cigar. "After all," he said, "I might get a good price for the house anyway."

From Mosha Kronberg's tenement house on Madison Street to the cloak and suit district, at Nineteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, is less than two miles as the crow flies, but Morris Perlmutter's journey uptown was accomplished in less direct fas.h.i.+on. He spent over half an hour in an antiquated horse car and by the time the Broadway car to which he transferred had reached Madison Square it was nearly twelve o'clock. As he walked down Nineteenth Street he almost collided with Abe, whose face wore a frown.

"Say, lookyhere, Mawruss!" he cried. "What kind of business is this?

Here you are just getting downtown and I am going out to lunch already."

"Sure, I know," Morris retorted. "You think of nothing but your stomach.

Believe me, Abe, I worked hard enough this morning."

"Worked nothing!" Abe rejoined. "You have been up to some monkey business, Mawruss; otherwise why should Mosha Kronberg telephone us just now he thought the matter over since you left there and he would be up to see you this afternoon already."

"What!" Morris cried. "Did Mosha Kronberg telephone that himself?"

"All right, Mawruss; then I am a liar!" Abe exploded. "I am telling you with my own ears I heard him."

"I believe you, Abe," Morris said soothingly. "Don't hurry back from your lunch. I got lots of time."

"I would hurry back _oder_ not, as I please, Mawruss," Abe retorted as he trudged off toward Hammersmith's restaurant. There he ministered to his outraged feelings with a steaming dish of _gefullte rinderbrust_, and it was not till he had sopped up the last drop of gravy with a piece of rye bread that he became conscious of a stranger sitting opposite to him.

"Excuse me," said the latter, "you got a little soup on the lapel of your coat."

"That ain't soup," Abe explained, as he dipped his napkin in his gla.s.s of ice-water and started to remove the stain; "that's a little _gefullte rinderbrust_, which they fix it so thin and watery nowadays it might just as well be soup the way it's always getting over your clothes."

"Things ain't the same like they used to be," the stranger remarked.

"Twenty--twenty-five years ago a feller could get a meal down on Ca.n.a.l Street for a quarter--understand me--which it was really something you could say was remarkable. Take any of them places, Gifkin's _oder_ Wa.s.serbauer's. Ain't I right?"

"Did you used to went to Gifkin's?" Abe asked.

"I should say!" his vis-a-vis replied. "When I was a boy of fifteen I am eating always regularly by Gifkin's."

"Me too. I used to eat a whole lot by Gifkin's," Abe said; "in fact, I think I must of seen you there."