Potash & Perlmutter Part 31

Small turned and fixed Walsh with a glare. "I am going to do what I please, Mr. Walsh," he said coldly. "If I want to go to lunch I go to lunch; if I don't that's something else again."

"Oh, I've got lots of time," Walsh explained. "I was just reminding you, that's all. Wa.s.serbauer's got a few good specialties on his bill-of-fare that don't improve with waiting."

"All right," Mr. Small said. "If that's the case go ahead and have your lunch. I won't detain you none."

He put his hand on Abe's shoulder, and the little procession pa.s.sed into the store with Abe and Mr. Small in the van, while Frank Walsh const.i.tuted a solitary rear-guard. He sat disconsolately on a pile of piece goods as the four others went into the show-room.

"Sit down, Mr. Small," Abe said genially. "Mr. Berkowitz, take that easy chair."

Then Morris produced the "gilt-edged" cigars from the safe, and they all lit up.

"First thing, Mr. Small," Abe went on, "I should like to know where I seen you before. Of course, I know you're running a big business in Walla Walla, Washington, and certainly, too, I know your _face_."

"Sure you know my face, Abe," Mr. Small replied. "But my _name_ ain't familiar. The last time you seen my face, Abe, was some twenty years since."

"Twenty years is a long time," Abe commented. "I seen lots of trade in twenty years."

"Trade you seen it, yes," Mr. Small said, "but I wasn't trade."

He paused and looked straight at Abe. "Think, Abe," he said. "When did you seen me last?"

Abe gazed at him earnestly and then shook his head. "I give it up," he said.

"Well, Abe," Mr. Small murmured, "the last time you seen me I went out to buy ten dollars' worth of schnapps."

"What!" Abe cried.

"But that afternoon there was a sure-thing mare going to start over to Guttenberg just as I happened to be pa.s.sing Butch Thompson's old place, and I no more than got the ten dollars down than she blew up in the stretch. So I boarded a freight over to West Thirtieth Street and fetched up in Walla Walla, Washington."

"Look a-here!" Abe gasped. "You ain't Scheuer Smolinski, are you?"

Mr. Small nodded.

"That's me," he said. "I'm Scheuer Smolinski or Sidney Small, whichever you like. When me and Jake Berkowitz started this here Small Drygoods Company we decided that Smolinski and Berkowitz was too big a mouthful for the Pacific Slope, so we slipped the 'inski' and the 'owitz.'

Scheuer Small and Jacob Burke didn't sound so well, neither. Ain't it?

So, since there ain't no harm in it, we just changed our front names, too, and me and him is Sidney Small and James Burke."

Abe sat back in his chair too stunned for words, while Morris pondered bitterly on the events of Sat.u.r.day night. Then the prize was well within his grasp, for even at that late hour he could have persuaded Mr. Burke to reconsider his decision and to bring Mr. Small over to see Potash & Perlmutter's line first. But now it was too late, Morris reflected, for Mr. Small had visited Klinger & Klein's establishment and had no doubt given the order.

"Say, my friends," Frank Walsh cried, poking his head in the door, "far from me to be b.u.t.tin' in, but whenever you're ready for lunch just let me know."

Mr. Small jumped to his feet. "I'll let you know," he said--"I'll let you know right now. Half an hour since already I told Mr. Klinger I would make up my mind this afternoon about giving him the order for them goods what Mr. Burke picked out. Well, you go back and tell him I made up my mind already, sooner than I expected. I ain't going to give him the order at all."

Walsh's red face grew purple. At first he gurgled incoherently, but finally recovered sufficiently to enunciate; and for ten minutes he denounced Mr. Small and Mr. Burke, their conduct and antecedents. It was a splendid exhibition of profane invective, and when he concluded he was almost breathless.

"Yah!" he jeered, "five-dollar tickets for a prize-fight for the likes of youse!"

He fixed Morris and Mr. Burke with a final glare.

"Pearls before swine!" he bellowed, and banged the show-room door behind him.

Mr. Burke looked at Morris. "That's a lowlife for you," he said. "A respectable concern should have a salesman like him! Ain't it a shame and a disgrace?"

Morris nodded.

"He takes me to a place where nothing but loafers is," Mr. Burke continued, "and for two hours I got to sit and hear him and his friend there, that big feller--I guess you seen him, Mr. Perlmutter--he told me he keeps a beer saloon--another lowlife--for two hours I got to listen to them loafers cussing together, and then he gets mad that I don't enjoy myself yet."

Mr. Small shrugged his shoulders.

"Let's forget all about it," he said. "Come, Abe, I want to look over your line, and you and me will do business right away."

Abe and Morris spent the next two hours displaying their line, while Mr.

Small and Mr. Burke selected hundred lots of every style. Finally, Abe and Mr. Small retired to the office to fill out the order, leaving Morris to replace the samples. He worked with a will and whistled a cheerful melody by way of accompaniment.

"Mister Perlmutter," James Burke interrupted, "that tune what you are whistling it, ain't that the drinking song from Travvy-ater already?"

Morris ceased his whistling. "That's right," he replied.

"I thought it was," Mr. Burke said. "I was going to see that opera last Sat.u.r.day night if that lowlife Walsh wouldn't have took me to the prize-fight."

He paused and helped himself to a fresh cigar from the "gilt-edged" box.

"For anybody else but a loafer," he concluded, "prize-fighting is nix.

Opera, Mr. Perlmutter, that's an amus.e.m.e.nt for a gentleman."

Morris nodded a vigorous acquiescence. He had nearly concluded his task when Abe and his new-found brother-in-law returned.

"Well, gentlemen," Mr. Small announced, "we figured it up and it comes to twenty-five hundred dollars. That ain't bad for a starter."

"You bet," Abe agreed fervently.

Mr. Burke smiled. "You got a good line, Mr. Potash," he said. "Ever so much better than Klinger & Klein's."

"That's what they have," Mr. Small agreed. "But it don't make no difference, anyhow. I'd give them the order if the line wasn't _near_ so good."

He put his arm around Abe's shoulder. "It stands in the Talmud, an old saying, but a true one," he said--"'Blood is redder than water.'"

CHAPTER X

The Small Drygoods Company's order was the forerunner of a busy season that taxed the energies of not only Abe and Morris but of their entire business staff as well, and when the hot weather set in, Morris could not help noticing the f.a.gged-out appearance of Miss Cohen the bookkeeper.

"We should give that girl a vacation, Abe," he said. "She worked hard and we ought to show her a little consideration."

"I know, Mawruss," Abe replied; "but she ain't the only person what works hard around here, Mawruss. I work hard, too, Mawruss, but I ain't getting no vacation. That's a new _idee_ what you got, Mawruss."