The Competitive Nephew Part 16

"But, Mr. Gembitz," Schrimm began, "when a feller plays Kelly pool----"

"And as for Max," Gembitz interrupted, "if you would be so good a boy as Max is, Schrimm, might your father would be alive to-day yet."

"What d'ye mean?" Schrimm cried. "My father died when I was two years old already."

"Sure, I know," Gembitz concluded; "and one thing I am only sorry, Schrimm: your father was a decent, respectable man, Schrimm, but he ought to got to die three years sooner. That's all."

No sooner had Mr. Gembitz left Hammersmith's restaurant than the _gefullte Rinderbrust_ commenced to a.s.sert itself; and by the time he arrived at his place of business he was experiencing all the preliminary symptoms of a severe bilious attack. Nevertheless, he pulled himself together and as he sat down at his desk he called loudly for Sidney.

"He ain't in," Max said.

"Oh, he ain't, ain't he?" Mr. Gembitz retorted. "Well, where is he?"

"He went out with a feller from the New Idea Store, Bridgetown," Max answered, drawing on his imagination in the defence of his brother.

"New Idea Store!" Gembitz repeated. "What's the feller's name?"

Max shrugged.

"I forgot his name," he answered.

"Well, I ain't forgot his name," Gembitz continued. "His name is Kelly; and every afternoon Schrimm tells me Sidney is playing this here Kelly pool."

For a brief interval Max stared at his father; then he broke into an unrestrained laugh.

"_Nu!_" Gembitz cried. "What's the joke?"

"Why," Max explained, "you're all twisted. Kelly ain't a feller at all.

Kelly pool's a game, like you would say straight pinochle and auction pinochle--there's straight pool and Kelly pool."

Gembitz drummed on his desk with his fingers.

"Do you mean to told me there ain't no such person, which he is buying goods for a concern, called Kelly?" he demanded.

Max nodded.

"Then that loafer just fools away his time every afternoon," Gembitz said in choking tones; "and, after all I done for him, he----"

"What's the matter, popper?" Max cried, for Gembitz's lips had suddenly grown purple, and, even as Max reached forward to aid him, he lurched from his chair on to the floor.

Half an hour later Samuel Gembitz was undergoing the entirely novel experience of riding uptown in a taxicab, accompanied by a young physician who had been procured from the medical department of an insurance company across the street.

"Say, lookyhere," Sam protested as they a.s.sisted him into the cab, "this ain't necessary at all!"

"No, I know it isn't," the doctor agreed, in his best imitation of an old pract.i.tioner's jocular manner. He was, in fact, a very young pract.i.tioner and was genuinely alarmed at Samuel's condition, which he attributed to arteriosclerosis and not to _gefullte Rinderbrust_. "But, just the same," he concluded, "it is just as well to keep as quiet as possible for the present."

Sam nodded and lay back wearily in the leather seat of the taxicab while it threaded its way through the traffic of lower Fifth Avenue.

Only once did he appear to take an interest in his surroundings, and that was when the taxicab halted at the end of a long line of traffic opposite the debris of a new building.

"What's going on here?" he asked faintly.

"It's pretty nearly finished," the doctor replied. "Weldon, Jones & Company, of Minneapolis, are going to open a New York store."

Sam nodded again and once more closed his eyes. He grew more uncomfortable as the end of the journey approached, for he dreaded the reception that awaited him. Max had telephoned the news of his father's illness to his sister, Miss Babette Gembitz, Sam's only daughter, who upon her mother's death had a.s.sumed not only the duties but the manner and bearing of that tyrannical person; and Sam knew she would make a searching investigation of the cause of his ailment.

"Doctor, what do you think is the matter with me?" he asked, by way of a feeler.

"At your age, it's impossible to say," the doctor replied; "but nothing very serious."

"No?" Sam said. "Well, you don't think it's indigestion, do you?"

"Decidedly not," the doctor said.

"Well, then, you shouldn't forget and tell my daughter that," Sam declared as the cab stopped opposite his house, "otherwise she will swear I am eating something which disagrees with me."

He clambered feebly to the sidewalk, where stood Miss Babette Gembitz with Dr. Sigmund Eichendorfer.

"_Wie gehts_, Mr. Gembitz?" Doctor Eichendorfer cried cheerfully as he took Sam's arm.

"_Unpa.s.slich_, Doctor," Sam replied. "I guess I'm a pretty sick man."

He glanced at his daughter for some trace of tears, but she met his gaze unmoved.

"You've been making a hog of yourself again, popper!" she said severely.

"_Oser!_" Sam protested. "Crackers and milk I am eating for my lunch.

The doctor could tell you the same."

Ten minutes afterward Sam was tucked up in his bed, while in an adjoining room the young physician communicated his diagnosis to Doctor Eichendorfer.

"Arteriosclerosis, I should say," he murmured, and Doctor Eichendorfer sniffed audibly.

"You mean Bright's Disease--ain't it?" he said. "That feller's arteries is as sound as plumbing."

Doctor Eichendorfer had received his medical training in Vienna and he considered it to be a solemn duty never to agree with the diagnosis of a native M.D.

"I thought of Bright's Disease," the young physician replied, speaking a little less than the naked truth; for in diagnosing Sam's ailment he had thought of nearly every disease he could remember.

"Well, you could take it from me, Doctor," Eichendorfer concluded, "when one of these old-timers goes under there's a history of a rich, unbalanced diet behind it; and Bright's Disease it is. Also, you shouldn't forget to send in your bill--not a cent less than ten dollars."

He shook his confrere warmly by the hand; and three hours later the melancholy circ.u.mstance of Sam's Bright's Disease was known to every member of the cloak and suit trade, with one exception--to wit, as the lawyers say, Sam himself. He knew that he had had _gefullte Rinderbrust_, but by seven o'clock this knowledge became only a torment as the savoury odour of the family dinner ascended to his bedroom.

"Babette," he called faintly, as becomes a convalescent, "ain't I going to have no dinner at all to-night?"

For answer Babette brought in a covered tray, on which were arranged two pieces of dry toast and a gla.s.s of b.u.t.termilk.

"What's this?" Sam cried.