Elkan Lubliner, American Part 32

"And you forget Mrs. Lubliner," cried Mrs. Ortelsburg, who had hurried downstairs at the sound of voices in the hall. "I'm Mrs. Ortelsburg,"

she continued, turning to Yetta. "Won't you come upstairs and take your things off?"

"Elkan," Louis Stout continued, "you better go along with her. I want you to see what an elegant lot of clothes-closets they got upstairs. You know most houses is designed by archytecks which all they are trying to do is to save money for the builder. _Aber_ this archyteck was an exception. The way he figures it he tries to build the house to please the women, _mit_ lots of closet room, and--excuse me, ladies--to h.e.l.l with the expenses! I'll go upstairs with you and show you what I mean."

Benno frowned angrily.

"'Tain't necessary, Louis," he said. "Mrs. Ortelsburg would show him."

He drew forward chairs; and, after Elkan and Yetta had followed Mrs.

Ortelsburg upstairs, he closed the library door.

"Couldn't I introduce people in my own house, Stout?" he demanded.

Louis Stout shrugged his shoulders.

"If you mean as a matter of ettykit--yes," he retorted; "_aber_ if it's a real-estate transaction--no. When I bring a customer to Mr. Glaubmann for his Linden Boulevard house, Ortelsburg, I do the introducing myself, which afterward I don't want no broker to claim he earned the commission by introducing the customer first--understand me?"

He seated himself and smiled calmly at Kamin, Glaubmann, and his host.

"I ain't living in the country for my health exactly," he declared, "and don't you forget it."

"Where's your written authorization from the owner?" Ortelsburg demanded, raising a familiar point of real-estate brokerage law; and Stout tapped his breast pocket.

"Six months ago already," Stout replied, "Mr. Glaubmann writes me if I hear of a customer for his house he would protect me, and I got the letter here in my pocket. Ain't that right, Mr. Glaubmann?"

Glaubmann had walked toward the window and was looking out upon the budding white poplars that spread their branches at a height of six feet above the sidewalks of Burgess Park. He nodded in confirmation of Louis' statement; and as he did so a short, stout person, who was proceeding hurriedly down the street in the direction of the station, paused in front of the Ortelsburg residence. A moment later he rang the bell and Ortelsburg himself opened the door.

"_Nu_, Mr. Kovner!" he said. "What could I do for you?"

"Mr. Glaubmann just nods to me out of your window," Max Kovner replied, "and I thought he wants to speak to me."

Benno returned to the library with Max at his heels.

"Do you want to speak to Mr. Kovner, Glaubmann?" he asked, and Glaubmann started perceptibly. During the months of Max Kovner's tenancy Glaubmann had not only refrained from visiting his Linden Boulevard house, but he had also performed feats of disappearance resembling Indian warfare in his efforts to avoid Max Kovner on the streets of Burgess Park. All this was the result of Max Kovner's taking possession of the Linden Boulevard house upon Glaubmann's agreement to make necessary plumbing repairs and to paint and repaper the living rooms; and Glaubmann's complete breach of this agreement was reflected in the truculency of Max Kovner's manner as he entered the Ortelsburg library.

"Maybe Glaubmann don't want to speak to me," he cried, "but I want to speak to him, and in the presence of you gentlemen here also."

He banged Ortelsburg's library table with his clenched fist.

"Once and for all, Mr. Glaubmann," he said, "either you would fix that plumbing and do that painting, understand me, or I would move out of your Linden Boulevard house the first of next month sure!"

Glaubmann received this ultimatum with a defiant grin.

"_Schmooes_, Kovner," he said, "you wouldn't do nothing of the kind! You got _mit_ me a verbal lease for one year in the presence of my wife, your wife and a couple of other people which the names I forget."

"And how about the repairs?" Kovner demanded.

"If you seen the house needs repairs and you go into possession anyhow,"

Glaubmann retorted, "you waive the repairs, because the agreement to repair merges in the lease. That's what Kent J. Goldstein, my lawyer, says, Kovner; and ask any other lawyer, Kovner, and he could tell you the same."

"So," Kovner exclaimed, "I am stuck with that rotten house for a year!

Is that the idee?"

Glaubmann nodded.

"All right, Mr. Glaubmann," Kovner concluded. "You are here in a strange house to me and I couldn't do nothing; but I am coming over to your office to-morrow, and if I got to sit there all day, understand me, we would settle this thing up."

"That's all right," Ortelsburg interrupted. "When you got real-estate business with Glaubmann, Mr. Kovner, his office is the right place to see him. _Aber_ here is a private house and Sunday, Mr. Kovner, and we ain't doing no real-estate business here. So, if you got a pressing engagement somewheres else, Mr. Kovner, don't let me hurry you."

He opened the library door, and with a final glare at his landlord Max pa.s.sed slowly out.

"That's a dangerous feller," Glaubmann said as his tenant banged the street door behind him. "He goes into possession for one year without a written lease containing a covenant for repairs by the landlord, y'understand, and now he wants to blame me for it! Honestly, the way some people acts so unreasonable, Kamin, it's enough to sicken me with the real-estate business!"

Kamin nodded sympathetically, but Louis Stout made an impatient gesture by way of bringing the conversation back to its original theme.

"That ain't here or there," he declared. "The point is I am fetching you a customer for your Linden Boulevard house, Glaubmann, and I want this here matter of the commission settled right away."

Ortelsburg rose to his feet as a shuffling on the stairs announced the descent of his guests.

"Commissions we would talk about afterward," he said. "First let us sell the house."

In Benno Ortelsburg's ripe experience there were as many methods of selling suburban residences as there were residences for sale; and, like the born salesman he was, he realized that each transaction possessed its individual obstacles, to be overcome by no hard-and-fast rules of salesmans.h.i.+p. Thus he quickly divined that whoever sought to sell Elkan a residence in Burgess Park must first convince Yetta, and he proceeded immediately to apportion the chips for a five-handed game of auction pinocle, leaving Yetta to be entertained by his wife. Mrs. Ortelsburg's powers of persuasion in the matter of suburban property were second only to her husband's, and the game had not proceeded very far when Benno looked into the adjoining room and observed with satisfaction that Yetta was listening open-mouthed to Mrs. Ortelsburg's fascinating narrative of life in Burgess Park.

"Forty hens we got it," she declared; "and this month alone they are laying on us every day a dozen eggs--some days ten, or nine at the least. Then, of course, if we want a little frica.s.see once in a while we could do that also."

"How do you do when you are getting all of a sudden company?" Yetta asked. "I didn't see no delicatessen store round here."

"You didn't?" Mrs. Ortelsburg exclaimed. "Why, right behind the depot is Mrs. J. Kaplan's a delicatessen store, which I am only saying to her yesterday, 'Mrs. Kaplan,' I says, 'how do you got all the time such fresh, nice smoke-tongue here?' And she says, 'It's the country air,'

she says, 'which any one could see; not alone smoke-tongue keeps fresh, _aber_ my daughter also, when she comes down here,' she says, 'she is pale like anything--and look at her now!' And it's a fact, Mrs.

Lubliner, the daughter did look sick, and to-day yet she's got a complexion fresh like a tomato already. That's what Burgess Park done for her!"

"But don't you got difficulty keeping a girl, Mrs. Ortelsburg?" Yetta inquired.

"Difficulty?" Mrs. Ortelsburg cried. "Why, just let me show you my kitchen. The girls love it here. In the first place, we are only twenty minutes from Coney Island; and, in the second place, with all the eggs which we got it, they could always entertain their fellers here in such a fine, big kitchen, which I am telling my girl, Lena: 'So long as you give 'em omelets or fried eggs _mit_ fat, Lena, I don't care how many eggs you use--_aber_ b.u.t.ter is b.u.t.ter in Burgess Park _oder_ Harlem.'"

In this vein Mrs. Ortelsburg continued for more than an hour, while she conducted Yetta to the kitchen and cellar and back again to the bedrooms above stairs, until she decided that sufficient interest had been aroused to justify the more robust method of her husband. She therefore returned to the library, and therewith began for Benno Ortelsburg the real business of the afternoon.

"Well, boys," he said, "I guess we would quit pinocle for a while and join the ladies."

He chose for this announcement a moment when Elkan's chips showed a profit of five dollars; and as, in his capacity of banker, he adjusted the losses of the other players, he kept up a merry conversation directed at Mrs. Lubliner.

"Here in Burgess Park," he said, "we play pinocle and we leave it alone; while in the city when a couple business men play pinocle they spend a day at it--and why? Because they only get a chance to play pinocle once in a while occasionally. Every night they are going to theatre _oder_ a lodge affair, understand me; whereas here, the train service at night not being so extra elegant, y'understand, we got good houses and we stay in 'em; which in Burgess Park after half-past seven in the evening any one could find a dozen pinocle games to play in--and all of 'em breaks up by half-past ten already."

With this tribute to the transit facilities and domesticity of Burgess Park, he concluded stacking up the chips and turned to Mrs. Lubliner.

"Yes, Mrs. Lubliner," he continued with an amiable smile, "if you wouldn't persuade your husband to move out to Burgess Park, understand me, I shall consider it you don't like our house here at all."