The Competitive Nephew Part 53

Borrochson laughed raucously.

"What do you think I am?" he said. "A greenhorn?"

Then commenced a hard, long battle in which a truce was declared at six hundred dollars.

"But mind you," Wolfson said, "I should be alone when I examine the safe."

"Alone without a safe feller you couldn't do nothing," Borrochson declared, "but if you mean that I shouldn't be there to see the whole thing, I tell you now the deal is off."

"Don't you trust me?" Wolfson asked, in accents of hurt astonishment.

"Sure I trust you," Borrochson said; "but if you should find it a big diamond, we will say, for instance, in that safe, where would I come in?"

"You think I would steal the diamond and tell you nothing, and then refuse to take the safe?" Wolfson asked.

"I don't think nothing," Borrochson replied stubbornly, and lapsed into silence.

Here was a deadlock that bade fair to break up the deal.

"Take a chance on me, Borrochson," Wolfson said at last.

"Why should I take a chance on you, Wolfson," Borrochson replied, "when we can both take a chance on the safe? If you don't want to take it, I will take it. You don't got to buy the safe, Wolfson, if you don't want to."

For five minutes more Wolfson pondered and at length he surrendered.

"All right," he said. "I'll make you this proposition: If I find it anything in the safe I will pay you six hundred, and if I don't find it nothing in the safe, I will pay you one hundred dollars for the privilege of looking. I'm willing to take a chance, too."

"That ain't no chance what you take it," Borrochson cried. "That's a dead-sure certainty."

"Why is it a certainty, Borrochson?" Wolfson retorted. "If I don't find nothing in the safe you can keep it, and then you got it one hundred dollars from me; and when Rubin comes into the store you could sell him the safe for five hundred dollars, anyway. So which whatever way you look at it, Borrochson, you get six hundred dollars for the safe."

Borrochson frowned in deep consideration of the plan.

"I tell you what it is, Wolfson," he said at last, "and this is my last word, so sure as you stand there. If you don't want to consider it, the deal is off. Pay me two hundred dollars now in advance and four hundred dollars additional when you find it something in the safe. That is all there is to it."

Wolfson looked hard at Borrochson, but there was a glitter of finality in the jeweller's eyes that clinched things.

"And you and the safe feller can look at the safe alone," Borrochson concluded.

"I'm satisfied," Wolfson said finally, and drew a checkbook from his waistcoat-pocket.

Borrochson raised his hand solemnly.

"Either cash _oder_ nothing," was his ultimatum, and Wolfson replaced the checkbook in his vest pocket and drew a roll of bills from his trousers. He peeled off two hundred dollars and handed it to Borrochson.

"You see," he said, "I trust you. Ain't it?"

"You got to trust me," Borrochson replied, as Wolfson rose to examine the safe.

"Who did you get to look at the safe?" he asked Borrochson.

"Experts from everywhere," Borrochson replied. "I must of got ten fellers here from every big safe house in town. I can show you the bills already."

Wolfson waved his hand.

"I don't want to see 'em," he said. "But on the front of the safe I see it, J. Daiches, maker, Grand Street, New York. Did you have him to look at it?"

"Daiches!" Borrochson repeated with a laugh. "I should say I didn't get him to look at it. Why, that feller Daiches don't know no more about safes than I do about aljibbery what they learn it young fellers by night school. He come from Minsk ten years ago and made it a little money as an operator on shirts. So he buys out a feller in Grand Street and goes into the safe business since only a year ago."

"I take a chance on him, anyhow," Wolfson declared. "So do me the favour and go to the saloon on the corner and ring him up."

Borrochson shrugged his shoulders.

"You're up against a b.u.m proposition in Daiches, Wolfson," he said, "because that feller don't know nothing about safes."

"But he's in the safe business, ain't he? And a feller can learn a whole lot about a business inside a year."

"A horse could pull it a truckload of books for a hundred years, Wolfson," Borrochson said, "and when he got through he wouldn't know no more what's inside of them books than when he started; ain't it?"

"'S enough, Borrochson," Wolfson said, "if you're afraid to trust me alone in the store here while you go and telephone, why we can lock up the store and I will go with you."

Accordingly they repaired to the sabbatical entrance of the nearest liquor saloon and rang up Daiches' store in Grand Street. They had no difficulty in speaking to him, for on the lower end of Grand Street business goes forward on Sunday as briskly as on weekdays.

"Mr. Daiches," Borrochson said, "this is Philip Borrochson from Third Avenue. Could you come up by my store and look over my safe?"

"I ain't in the market for no safes, Borrochson," Daiches replied at the other end of the telephone wire.

"Not to buy no safes," Borrochson corrected. "There's a feller here what wants you to look at my safe."

"Tell him for five dollars," Wolfson whispered in Borrochson's ear.

"He wants to give you five dollars for the job," Borrochson repeated.

"For five dollars is different," Daiches answered. "I will be up in half an hour. Should I bring it tools?"

Borrochson turned to Wolfson.

"He wants to know should he bring it tools," he said.

"Sure he should bring it tools," Wolfson cried; "powder also."

"Powder!" Borrochson exclaimed. "What for?"

"Powder what you blow it up with," Wolfson answered.

"Positively not," Borrochson declared. "I wouldn't tell him nothing about powder. Might you wouldn't find nothing in the safe, and when you blew it up already I couldn't sell it to Rubin for a b.u.t.ton."

He turned to the 'phone again.