Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things Part 1

Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things.

by Montague Gla.s.s.

I

THEY ARRIVE, AND SO DOES THE PRESIDENT

"_Nu_, what's the matter _now_?" Morris Perlmutter asked, as he entered the office one morning after the cessation of hostilities on the western front.

"_Ai, tzuris!_" Abe moaned in reply, and for at least a minute he continued to rock to and fro in his chair and to make incoherent noises through his nostrils in the manner of a person suffering either from toothache or the recent cancelation of a large order.

"It serves you right," Morris said. "I told you you shouldn't eat that liberty roast at Wa.s.serbauer's yesterday. It used to give you the indigestion when it was known as _Koenigsburger Klops_, which it is like the German Empire now calling itself the German Republic; changing its name ain't going to alter its poisonous disposition none."

"That's right!" Abe said. "Make jokes, why don't you? You are worser as this here feller Zero."

"What feller Zero?" Morris demanded.

"Zero the emperor what fiddled when Rome was burning," Abe replied.

"He's got nothing on you. _You_ would fiddle if Rome, Watertown, and Ogdensburg was burning."

"I don't know what you are talking about at all," Morris said. "And, besides, the feller's name was Nero, not Zero."

"That's what you say," Abe commented, "which you also said that the operators was only bluffing and that they wouldn't strike on us in a thousand years, and considering that you said this only yesterday, Mawruss, it's already wonderful how time flies."

"Well," Morris said, "how could I figure that them lunatics is going to pick out the time when we've got practically no work for them and was going to fire them, anyway, to call a strike on us?"

"You should _ought_ to have figured that way," Abe declared. "Didn't the Kaiser abdicate just before them Germans got ready to kick him out?"

"The king business ain't the garment business," Morris observed.

"I know it ain't," Abe agreed. "Kings has got their worries, too, but when it comes to laying awake nights trying to figure out whether them designers somewheres in France is going to turn out long, full skirts or short, narrow skirts for the fall and winter of nineteen-nineteen and nineteen-twenty, Mawruss, I bet yer the entire collection of kings, active or retired, doesn't got to take two grains of trional between them."

"If everybody worried like _you_ do, Abe," Morris said, "the government would got to issue sleeping-powder cards like sugar cards and limit the consumption of sleeping-powders to not more than two pounds of sleeping-powders per person per month in each household."

"Well, some one has got to do the worrying around here, Mawruss," Abe said, "which if it rested with you, y'understand, we could make up a line of samples for next season that wouldn't be no more like Paris designs than General Pers.h.i.+ng looks like his pictures in the magazines."

"Say, for that matter," Morris said, "we are just as good guessers as our compet.i.tors; on account the way things is going nowadays, n.o.body is going to try to make a trip to Paris to get fas.h.i.+on designs, because if he figured on crossing the ocean to buy model gowns for the fall and winter of nineteen-nineteen and nineteen-twenty, y'understand, between the time that he applied for his pa.s.sport and the time the government issued it to him, y'understand, it would already be the spring and summer season of nineteen-twenty-four and nineteen-twenty-five. So the best thing we could do is to snoop round among the trade, and whatever we find the majority is making up for next year, we would make up the same styles also, and that's all there would be _to_ it."

"We wouldn't do nothing of the kind," Abe declared. "I've been thinking this thing over, and I come to the conclusion that it's up to you to go over to Paris and see what is going on over there."

"I don't got to go to Paris for that, Abe," Morris said. "I can read the papers the same like anybody else, and just so long as there is a chance that the war would start up again and them hundred-mile guns is going to resume operations, I am content to get my ideas of Paris styles at a distance of three thousand miles if I never sold another garment as long as I live."

"But when it _was_ working yet, it only went off every twenty minutes,"

Abe said.

"I don't care if it went off every Fourth of July," Morris said, "because if I went over there it would be just my luck that the peace nogotiations falls through and the Germans invent a gun leaving Frankfort ever hour on the hour and arriving in Paris daily, including Sundays, without leaving enough trace of me to file a proof of death with. Am I right or wrong?"

"All right," Abe said. "If _that's_ the way you feel about it, _I_ will go to Paris."

"_You_ will go to Paris?" Morris exclaimed.

"Sure!" Abe declared. "The operators is on strike, business is rotten, and I'm sick and tired of paying life-insurance premiums, _anyway_.

Besides, if Leon Sammet could get a pa.s.sport, why couldn't I?"

"You mean to say that faker is going to Paris to buy model gowns?"

Morris demanded.

"I seen him on the Subway this morning, and the way he talked about how easy he got his pa.s.sport, you would think that every time he was in Was.h.i.+ngton with a line of them masquerade costumes which Sammet Brothers makes up, if he didn't stop in and take anyhow a bit of lunch with the Wilsons, y'understand, the President raises the devil with Tumulty why didn't he let him _know_ Leon Sammet was in town."

"Then that settles it," Morris declared, reaching for his hat.

"Where are you going?" Abe asked.

"I am going straight down to see Henry D. Feldman and tell that crook he should get for me a pa.s.sport," Morris said.

"You wouldn't positively do nothing of the kind," Abe said. "Did you ever hear the like? Wants to go to a lawyer to get a pa.s.sport! An idea!"

"Well, who would I go to, then--an osteaopath?" Morris asked.

"Leon Sammet told me all about it," Abe said. "You go down to a place on Rector Street where you sign an application, and--"

"That's just what I thought," Morris interrupted, "and the least what happens to fellers which signs applications without a lawyer, y'understand, is that six months later a truck-driver arrives one morning and says where should he leave the set of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving in one hundred and fifty-six volumes or the piano with stool and scarf complete, as the case may be. So I am going to see Feldman, and if it costs me fifteen or twenty dollars, it's anyhow a satisfaction to know that when you do things with the advice of a smart crooked lawyer, n.o.body could put nothing over on you outside of your lawyer."

When Morris returned an hour later, however, instead of an appearance of satisfaction, his face bore so melancholy an expression that for a few minutes Abe was afraid to question him.

"_Nu!_" he said at last. "I suppose you got turned down for being overweight or something?"

"What do you mean--overweight?" Morris demanded. "What do you suppose I am applying for--a twenty-year endowment pa.s.sport or one of them tontine pa.s.sports with cash surrender value after three years?"

"Then what is the matter you look so _rachmonos_?" Abe said.

"How _should_ I look with the kind of partner which I've got it?" Morris asked. "Paris models he must got to got. Domestic designs ain't good enough for him. Such high-grade idees he's got, and I've got to suffer for it yet."

"Well, _don't_ go to Europe. What do _I_ care?" Abe said.

"_We_ must go," Morris replied.

"What do you mean--we?" Abe demanded.

"I mean you and me," Morris said. "Feldman says that just so long as it is one operation he would charge the same for getting one pa.s.sport as for getting two, excepting the government fee of two dollars. So what do you think--I am going to pay Henry D. Feldman two hundred dollars for getting me a pa.s.sport when for two dollars extra I can get one for you also?"

"But who is going to look after the store?" Abe exclaimed.

"Say!" Morris retorted, "you've got relations _enough_ working around here, which every time you've hired a fresh one, you've given me this blood-is-redder-than-water stuff, and now is your chance to prove it. We wouldn't be away longer as six weeks at the outside, so go ahead, Abe.

Here is the application for the pa.s.sport. Sign your name on the dotted line and don't say no more about it."