Abe and Mawruss Part 25

Sam deemed it hardly worth while to acquiesce in this statement, but he indorsed it unconsciously with a large tear, which stole put of the corner of his eye and worked a clean groove down one travel-stained cheek.

"Have a smoke, Sam," Morris added hastily as he thrust a cigar toward his late customer. "Did you got your lunch yet? No? Come on out with me now and we would have a little bite to eat."

He jumped to his feet and seized his hat.

"Nathan," he bawled to the s.h.i.+pping clerk, "tell Mr. Potash I am going out with a customer and I'll be back when I am here."

Max Kirschner had reached the age of sixty without making a single enemy save his stomach, which at length ungratefully rejected all the rich favours that Max had bestowed on it so long and so generously. Indeed, he was reduced to a diet of crackers and milk when Abe encountered him in Hammersmith's restaurant that September morning.

"h.e.l.lo, Max!" Abe cried. "When did you get back? I thought you was in one of them--now--sanatoriums."

"A sanatorium is no place for a drummer to find a job, Abe," Max replied.

"A good salesman like you could find a job anywhere without much trouble, Max," Abe said cheerfully.

"That's what everybody says, Abe; meantime I'm loafing."

"It wouldn't be for long, Max," Abe rejoined as he cast a hungry eye over Hammersmith's bill of fare. "How's that fillet de who's this, with asparagra.s.s tips and mushrooms?"

For a brief moment Max's eye gleamed and then grew dull again.

"It's fine to put the stomach out of business, Abe," Max said. "Take the tip from one who has lost sixty pounds, ten customers, and a good job all in six weeks--and order poached eggs on toast."

Abe compromised on boiled beef with horseradish sauce; and when he was well into the noisy consumption of that simple dish he broached the subject of Max's future plans.

"When d'ye think you'll go to work again, Max?" he asked.

Max shrugged expressively.

"I'm not a prophet, Abe; I'm a salesman," he said.

"Well, there ain't no particular hurry, Max. It ain't the same like you would got a family to look out for."

"I've been a drummer all my life, Abe," Max declared, "and a drummer has no right to be married. When I was a kid I had a chance to go into the store of a couple of yokels upstate in the town where I was born and raised; and I guess if I'd done so I'd been married and had a whole family of children by now."

"Maybe you're just as well off, Max," Abe said consolingly. "Children is a gamble anyhow, Max. The boys is a.s.sets and the girls is liabilities; and if you got a large family of girls you're practically bankrupt, no matter how good business would be."

"Don't you believe it, Abe," Max said. "Those two yokels both had big families and they didn't do such a big business either. But they managed to make a good living, and last week I hear they sold out to some city dry goods man for forty thousand dollars."

Abe paused with a loaded knife in midair.

"Forty thousand dollars between two ain't much, Max," he said.

"It's more than I've got, anyhow," Max rejoined as he rose to his feet.

"You got lots of time to make money, Max," Abe concluded. "Come round and see us when you get time, won't you?"

Max nodded; and as he walked down the street to make a further canva.s.s of the garment trade he pa.s.sed the broad windows of the dairy lunchroom, where Morris was regaling Sam Green with a popular-price meal.

"Yes, Sam," Morris said as he caught sight of Max Kirschner's dejected figure, "you're lucky when you consider some people. You are still a young man and it ain't too late for you to start in as a new beginner somewhere. A young man could always make a living anyhow."

"Sure," Sam agreed, "but why should I start in as a new beginner, Mawruss? I already got an established business, y'understand; and if I could get a feller with a headpiece, Mawruss--never mind he ain't got so much money--with a couple thousand dollars, we could run that feller from Sarahcuse out of town."

"What feller from Sarahcuse?" Morris asked.

"Ain't I told you?" Sam continued. "I thought I says that the reason the bank shuts down on me is a feller from Sarahcuse buys out them two suckers, Van Buskirk and Patterson, and he's going to operate the store as a branch house."

Morris nodded his head slowly.

"So, Sam," he said, "you are up against one of them sharks from Sarahcuse? I'm afraid you got a dead proposition in that store of yours."

Two cups of coffee had revived Sam Green's ambition, however, and he laughed aloud.

"You don't understand them people up in Cyprus, Mawruss," he said.

"Strangers they don't like at all; and even me, though I lived in that town ten years, most of 'em wouldn't buy goods off of me because Van Buskirk and Patterson is born and raised in that town and they dealt with 'em ever since they was boys together. So you see I got ten years'

start of that feller from Sarahcuse, Mawruss. If I could get some feller which he knows the garment business to go as partners together with me, and to put a little money into the store, we could yet do a good business there."

"How much money would you got to have?" Morris asked.

"Two thousand dollars, anyhow," Sam replied.

Morris tapped the table with his right index finger and frowned reflectively.

"The necktie pin alone must be worth a thousand dollars," he murmured almost to himself, "and two rings he got it which I know about must stand him in anyhow a thousand dollars more."

He thrust back his chair and rose to his feet.

"All right, Sam," he said aloud. "You got a little egg on your chin.

Wipe it off and we'll go back to the store. I got an idee."

"On second thought, Sam," Morris said as they approached Potash & Perlmutter's place of business, "I wouldn't go up with me if I was you on account I don't want to say nothing to my partner just yet a while.

Where are you staying, Sam?"

"I got a room at a hotel over on Third Avenue," Sam replied.

"Third Avenue!" Morris exclaimed. "That's a _Nachbarschaft_ for a business man!"

He handed Sam a five-dollar bill.

"Go and get yourself a room over at the Prince Clarence," Morris said.

"I'll be over there presently."

Nathan, the s.h.i.+pping clerk, was alone in the showroom when Morris entered.

"Ain't my partner come back yet, Nathan?" he demanded.