The Competitive Nephew Part 3

No argument could have appealed so strongly to Aaron as this did, and he thrust the bottle into his breast-pocket without another word.

"And how is Fillup coming on?" he asked.

"We couldn't complain," Max replied. "The boy is a good boy, Aaron. He is learning our line like he would be with us six months already."

"That's good," Aaron commented. "I bet yer before he would be here a month yet he would know the line as good as Sam and you."

Max smiled.

"I says the boy is a good boy, Aaron," he said, "but I never says he was a miracle, y'understand."

"That ain't no miracle, Max," Aaron retorted. "That's a prophecy."

Max smiled again, but the prediction more than justified itself in less than a month, for at the end of that time Philip knew the style-number and price of every garment in Zaretsky & Fatkin's line.

"I never see nothing like it, Sam," Max said. "The boy is a human catalogue. You couldn't stump him on nothing."

"Sure, I know," Sam replied. "Sometimes I got to think we make a mistake in letting that boy know all our business."

"A mistake!" Max repeated. "What d'ye mean a mistake?"

"I mean, Max, that the first thing you know Aaron goes around blowing to our compet.i.tors how well that boy is doing here, Max, and then a concern like Sammet Brothers or Klinger & Klein would offer the boy seven dollars a week, and some fine day we'll come downtown and find that Fillup's got another job. Also the feller what hires him would have a human catalogue of our whole line, prices and style-numbers complete."

"Always you are looking for trouble, Sam," Max cried.

"Looking for it I ain't, Max. I don't got to look for it, because when a feller got it a compet.i.tor like Greenberg & Sen, Max, he could find trouble without looking for it. Them suckers was eating lunch in Wa.s.serbauer's on Monday when Aaron goes in there with Fillup.

Elenbogen, of Plotkin & Elenbogen, seen the whole thing, Max, and he told it me this morning in the subway to make me feel bad. Sometimes without meaning it at all a feller could do you a big favour when he tells you something for spite. Ain't it?"

"What did he tell you?" Max asked.

"He says that Greenberg & Sen goes over to Aaron's table and the first thing you know a box of cigars is going around and Fillup is drinking a bottle of celery tonic. Elenbogen says you would think Aaron was n.o.body, because them two fellers ain't paid no attentions to him at all. Everything was Fillup. They made a big holler about the boy, Max, and they asks Elenbogen to lend 'em his fountain pen so the boy could make it birds on the back of the bill-off-fare. Elenbogen says his fountain pen was put out of business ever since. Also, Sen insists on taking the bill-off-fare away with him, and Elenbogen says Aaron feels so set up about it he thought he would spit blood yet, the way he coughs."

"That's a couple of foxy young fellers," Max said. "You could easy get around a feller like Aaron Pinsky, Sam. He's a soft proposition."

Sam nodded and was about to voice another criticism of Aaron much less complimentary in character, when the elevator door clanged and Aaron himself entered the showroom.

"Well, boys," he said, "looks like we would get an early spring. Here it is only February already and I feel it that the winter is pretty near over. I could always tell by my throat what the weather is going to be. My cough lets up on me something wonderful, and with me that's always what you would call a sign of spring."

"Might it's a sign that Miss Meyerson's medicine done you good, maybe,"

Max commented.

"Well, certainly it ain't done me no harm," Aaron said. "I took six bottles already, and though it ain't the tastiest thing in the world, y'understand, it loosens up the chest something wonderful."

He slapped himself in the region of the diaphragm and sat down deliberately.

"However," he began, "I ain't come to talk to you about myself. I got something else to say."

He paused impressively, while Max and Sam exchanged mournful glances.

"I come to talk to you about Fillup," he continued. "There's a boy which he got it ability, y'understand. Five dollars a week is nothing for a boy like that."

"Ain't it?" Max retorted. "Where could you find it a boy which is only six weeks in his first job and gets more, Aaron?"

Aaron waved his hand deprecatingly.

"I don't got to go very far away from here, Max," he said, "to find a concern which would be willing to pay such a boy like Fillup ten dollars a week, and that's twicet as much as five."

"But, Aaron----" Max began, when Sam Zaretsky rose to his feet and raised his hand in the solemn gesture of a traffic policeman at a busy crossing.

"Listen here to me, Aaron," Sam declared. "Always up to now you been a good friend to us. You bought from us goods which certainly we try our best to make up A Number One, and the prices also we made right. In return you always paid us prompt to the day and you give us also a whole lot of advice, which we took it in the spirit in which it was given us. That's all right, too."

He stopped for breath and wet his dry lips before he proceeded.

"Also," he continued, "when you come to us and wanted us we should take on Fillup, Aaron, we didn't need him, y'understand, but all the same we took him because always you was a good customer of ours, and certainly, Aaron, I got to say that the boy is a good boy and he is worth to us if not five dollars a week, anyhow four dollars a week."

There was an ominous silence in the showroom as Sam gave himself another rest before continuing his ultimatum.

"But," he went on, "when you come to us and tell us that Greenberg & Sen offers the boy ten dollars a week and that we should raise him also, Aaron, all I got to say is--we wouldn't do it. Greenberg & Sen want your trade, Aaron; they don't want the boy. But if they got to pay the boy ten dollars a week, Aaron, then they would do so, and if it was necessary to pay him fifteen, they would do that, too. Then, Aaron, when you would buy goods off of them all they do is to add Fillup's wages to the price of the goods, y'understand, and practically he would work for them for nothing, because the wages comes out of your pocket, Aaron, and not theirs."

"I never said nothing at all about Greenberg & Sen," Aaron blurted out.

"No one else would make such a proposition, Aaron," Sam said, "because no one else wants business so bad as that. Ourselves we could offer the boy ten dollars, too, and although we couldn't raise prices on you, Aaron, we could make it up by skimping on the garments; but we ain't that kind, Aaron. A business man is got to be on the level with his customers, Aaron, otherwise he wouldn't be in business long; and you take it from me, Aaron, these here two young fellers, Greenberg & Sen, would got to do business differencely or it would be quick good-bye with 'em, and don't you forget it."

Aaron Pinsky rose to his feet and gazed hard at Sam Zaretsky.

"Shall I tell you something, Sam?" he said. "You are sore at them two boys because they quit you and goes into business by themselves. Ain't it?"

"I ain't sore they goes into business, Aaron," Sam replied. "Everybody must got to make a start, Aaron, and certainly it ain't easy for a new beginner to get established, y'understand. Also compet.i.tion is compet.i.tion, Aaron, and we ourselves cop out a compet.i.tor's trade oncet in a while, too, Aaron, but Greenberg & Sen takes advantage, Aaron.

They see that you are fond of that boy Fillup, and certainly it does you credit, because you ain't married and you ain't got no children of your own, Aaron. But it don't do them credit that they work you for business by pretending that they want the boy because he is a smart boy and that they are going to pay him ten dollars a week because he's worth it. No, Aaron; they don't want the boy in the first place, and in the second place he ain't worth ten dollars a week, and in the third place they ain't going to pay him ten dollars a week, because they will add it to the cost of their garments; and, Aaron, if you want any fourth, fifth, or sixth places I could stand here talking for an hour.

But you got business to attend to, Aaron, and so you must excuse me."

He thrust his hands into his trousers-pockets and walked stolidly toward the cutting room, while Aaron blinked in default of a suitable rejoinder.

"My partner is right, Aaron," Max said. "He is right, Aaron, even if he is the kind of feller that would throw me out of the window, supposing I says half the things to you as he did. But, anyhow, Aaron, that ain't neither here nor there. You heard what Sam says, Aaron, and me, I stick to it also."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You heard what Sam says, Aaron, and me, I stick to it also"]

Aaron blinked once or twice more and then he put on his hat.

"All right," he said. "All right."

He turned toward the front of the showroom where his nephew was sorting over a pile of garments.

"Fillup!" he bellowed. "You should put on your hat and coat and come with me."

It was during the third month of Philip Pinsky's employment with Greenberg & Sen that Blaukopf, the druggist, insisted on a new coat of white paint for the interior of his up-to-date store at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and One Hundred and Twenty-second Street. His landlord demurred at first, but finally, in the middle of June, a painter's wagon stopped in front of the store and Harris Shein, painter and decorator, alighted with two a.s.sistants. They conveyed into the store pots of white lead and cans of turpentine, gasoline, and other inflammable liquids used in the removal and mixing of paints. Harris Shein was smoking a paper cigarette, and one of the a.s.sistants, profiting by his employer's example, pulled a corncob pipe from his pocket. Then, after he had packed the tobacco down firmly with his finger, he drew a match across the seat of his trousers and forthwith he began a three months' period of enforced abstinence from house-painting and decorating. Simultaneously Blaukopf's plate-gla.s.s show-window fell into the street, the horse ran away with the painter's wagon, a policeman turned in a fire alarm, three thousand children came on the run from a radius of ten blocks, and Mr. Blaukopf's stock in trade punctuated the cremation of his fixtures with loud explosions at uncertain intervals. In less than half an hour the entire building was gutted, and when the firemen withdrew their apparatus Mr. Blaukopf searched in vain for his prescription books. They had resolved themselves into their original elements, and the number on the label of the bottle which Aaron carried around in his breast-pocket provided no clew to the ingredients of the medicine thus contained.