Elkan Lubliner, American

"Just the same like that Linden Boulevard house," Ortelsburg added, "which you could take it from me, Mrs. Lubliner, if you don't get right away an offer of five hundred dollars advance on your purchase price I would eat the house, plumbing and all."

At the word "plumbing" Glaubmann started visibly.

"The plumbing would be fixed so good as new," he said; "and I tell you what I would do also, Mr. Lubliner – I would pay fifty per cent. of the decorations if Mr. Ortelsburg would make me an allowance of a hundred dollars on the commission!"

"Could anything be fairer than this?" Ortelsburg exclaimed; and he grinned maliciously as Louis Stout succumbed to a fit of coughing.

"But we ain't even seen the house!" Elkan cried.

"Never mind we ain't seen it," Yetta said; "if the house is the same like this that's all I care about."

"Sure, I know," Elkan replied; "but I want to see the house first before I would even commence to think of buying it."

"Schon gut!" Glaubmann said. "I ain't got no objection to show you the house from the outside; aber there is at present people living in the house, understand me, which for the present we couldn't go inside."

"Mr. Lubliner don't want to see the inside, Glaubmann!" Ortelsburg cried, in tones implying that he deprecated Glaubmann's suggestion as impugning Elkan's good faith in the matter. "The inside would be repaired and decorated to suit, Mr. Glaubmann, but the outside he's got a right to see; so we would all go round there and give a look."

Ten minutes afterward a procession of nine persons passed through the streets of Burgess Park and lingered on the sidewalk opposite Glaubmann's house. There Ortelsburg descanted on the comparatively high elevation of Linden Boulevard and Mrs. Ortelsburg pointed out the chicken-raising possibilities of the back lot; and, after gazing at the shrubbery and incipient shade trees that were planted in the front yard, the line of march was resumed in the direction of Burgess Park's business neighbourhood. Another pause was made at Mrs. J. Kaplin's delicatessen store; and, laden with packages of smoked tongue, Swiss cheese and dill pickles, the procession returned to the Ortelsburg residence marshalled by Benno Ortelsburg, who wielded as a baton a ten-cent loaf of rye bread.

Thus the remainder of the evening was spent in feasting and more pinocle until nearly midnight, when Elkan and Yetta returned to town on the last train. Hence, with his late homecoming and the Ortelsburgs' delicatessen supper, Elkan slept ill that night, so that it was past nine o'clock before he arrived at his office the following morning. Instead of the satirical greeting which he anticipated from his senior partner, however, he was received with unusual cordiality by Polatkin, whose face was spread in a grin.

"Well, Elkan," he said, "you done a good job when you decided to buy that house."

"When I decided to buy the house? Who says I decided to buy the house?" Elkan cried.

"J. Kamin did," Polatkin explained. "He was here by a quarter to eight already; and not alone J. Kamin was here, but Joel Ribnik and Julius Tarnowitz comes in also. Scheikowitz and me has been on the jump, I bet yer; in fact, Scheikowitz is in there now with J. Kamin and Tarnowitz. Between 'em, those fellers has picked out four thousand dollars' goods."

Elkan looked at his partner in unfeigned astonishment.

"So soon?" he said.

"Ribnik too," Polatkin continued. "He makes a selection of nine hundred dollars' goods – among 'em a couple stickers like them styles 2040 and 2041. He says he is coming back in half an hour, on account he's got an appointment with a brother-in-law of his."

"By the name Robitscher?" Elkan asked.

"That's the feller," Polatkin answered. "Ribnik says you promised Robitscher the decorations from the house you are buying."

"What d'ye mean I promised him the decorations from the house I am buying?" Elkan exclaimed in anguished tones. "In the first place, I ain't promised him nothing of the kind; and, in the second place, I ain't even bought the house yet."

"That part will be fixed up all right," Polatkin replied, "because Mr. Glaubmann rings up half an hour ago, and he says that so soon as we need him and the lawyer we should telephone for 'em."

For a brief interval Elkan choked with rage.

"Say, lookyhere, Mr. Polatkin," he sputtered at last, "who is going to live in this house – you oder me?"

"You are going to live in the house, Elkan," Polatkin declared, "because me I don't need a house. I already got one house, Elkan, and I ain't twins exactly; and also them fellers is very plain about it, Elkan, which they told me and Scheikowitz up and down, that if you wouldn't buy the house they wouldn't confirm us the orders."

At this juncture Scheikowitz entered the office. From the doorway of the showroom he had observed the discussion between Elkan and his partner; and he had entirely deserted his prospective customers to aid in Elkan's coercion.

"Polatkin is right, Elkan!" he cried. "You got to consider Louis Stout also. Kamin said he would never forgive us if the deal didn't go through."

Elkan bit his lips irresolutely.

"I don't see what you are hesitating about," Polatkin went on. "Yetta likes the house – ain't it?"

"She's crazy about it," Elkan admitted.

"Then what's the use talking?" Scheikowitz declared; and he glanced anxiously toward Tarnowitz and Kamin, who were holding a whispered conference in the showroom. "Let's make an end and get the thing over. Telephone this here Glaubmann he should come right over with Ortelsburg and the lawyer."

"But ain't I going to have no lawyer neither?" Elkan demanded.

"Sure you are," Scheikowitz replied. "I took a chance, Elkan, and I telephoned Henry D. Feldman half an hour since already. He says he would send one up of his assistants, Mr. Harvey J. Sugarberg, right away."

When it came to drawing a real-estate contract there existed for Kent J. Goldstein no incongruities of time and place. Kent was the veteran of a dozen real-estate booms, during which he had drafted agreements at all hours of the day and night, improvising as his office the back room of a liquor saloon or the cigar counter of a barber shop; and, in default of any other writing material, he was quite prepared to tattoo a brief though binding agreement with gunpowder on the skin of the vendor's back.

Thus the transaction between Glaubmann and Elkan Lubliner presented no difficulties to Kent J. Goldstein; and he handled the details with such care and dispatch that the contract was nearly finished before Harvey J. Sugarberg remembered the instructions of his principal. As attorney for the buyer, it was Henry D. Feldman's practice to see that the contract of sale provided every opportunity for his client lawfully to avoid taking title should he desire for any reason, lawful or unlawful, to back out; and this rule of his principal occurred to Harvey just as he and Goldstein were writing the clause relating to incumbrances.

"The premises are to be conveyed free and clear of all incumbrances," Kent read aloud, "except the mortgage and covenant against nuisances above described and the present tenancies of said premises."

He had brought with him two blank forms of agreement; and as he filled in the blanks on one of them he read aloud what he was writing and Harvey Sugarberg inserted the same clause in the other. Up to this juncture Harvey had taken Kent's dictation with such remarkable docility that Elkan and his partners had frequently exchanged disquieting glances, and they were correspondingly elated when Harvey at length balked.

"One moment, Mr. Goldstein," he said – and, but for a slight nervousness, he reproduced with histrionic accuracy the tone and gesture of his employer – "as locum tenens for my principal I must decline to insert the phrase, 'and the present tenancies of said premises.'"

Kent wasted no time in forensic dispute when engaged in a real-estate transaction, though, if necessary, he could make kindling of the strongest rail that ever graced the front of a jury-box.

"How 'bout it, Glaubmann?" he said. "The premises is occupied – ain't they?"

Glaubmann flapped his right hand in a gesture of laissez-faire.

"The feller moves out by the first of next month," he said; and Kent turned to Elkan.

"Are you satisfied that the tenant stays in the house until the first?" he asked. "That will be three days after the contract is closed."

Elkan shrugged his shoulders.

"Why not?" he said.

"All right, Mr. – Forget your name!" Kent cried. "Cut out 'and the present tenancies of said premises.'"

At this easy victory a shade of disappointment passed over the faces of Harvey Sugarberg and his clients, and the contract proceeded without further objection to its rapid conclusion.

"Now then, my friends," Kent announced briskly, "we're ready for the signatures."

At this, the crucial point of all real-estate transactions, a brief silence fell upon the assembled company, which included not only the attorneys and the clients, but Ortelsburg, Kamin, Tarnowitz and Ribnik as well. Finally Glaubmann seized a pen, and, jabbing it viciously in an inkpot, he made a John Hancock signature at the foot of the agreement's last page.

"Now, Mr. Lubliner," Kent said – and Elkan hesitated.

"Ain't we going to wait for Louis Stout?" he asked; and immediately there was a roar of protest that sounded like a mob scene in a Drury Lane melodrama.

"If Louis Stout ain't here it's his own fault," Ortelsburg declared; and Ribnik, Tarnowitz, and Kamin glowered in unison.

"I guess he's right, Elkan," Polatkin murmured.

"It is his own fault if he ain't here," Scheikowitz agreed feebly; and, thus persuaded, Elkan appended a small and, by contrast with Glaubmann's, a wholly unimpressive signature to the agreement. Immediately thereafter Elkan passed over a certified check for eight hundred dollars, according to the terms of the contract, which provided that the title be closed in twenty days at the office of Henry D. Feldman.

"Well, Mr. Lubliner," Glaubmann said, employing the formula hallowed by long usage in all real-estate transactions involving improved property, "I wish you luck in your new house."

"Much obliged," Elkan said; and after a general handshaking the entire assemblage crowded into one elevator, so that finally Elkan was left alone with his partners.

Polatkin was the first to break a silence of over five minutes' duration.

"Ain't it funny," he said, "that we ain't heard from Louis?"

Scheikowitz nodded; and as he did so the elevator door creaked noisily and there alighted a short, stout person, who, having once been described in the I. O. M. A. Monthly as Benjamin J. Flugel, the Merchant Prince, had never since walked abroad save in a freshly ironed silk hat and a Prince Albert coat.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Flugel?" Polatkin and Scheikowitz cried with one voice, and Mr. Flugel bowed. Albeit a tumult raged within his breast, he remained outwardly the dignified man of business; and, as Elkan viewed for the first time Louis Stout's impressive partner, he could not help congratulating himself on the mercantile sagacity that had made him buy Glaubmann's house.

"And this is Mr. Lubliner?" Flugel said in even tones.

"Pleased to meet you," Elkan said. "I had dinner with your partner only yesterday."

Flugel gulped convulsively in an effort to remain calm.

"I know it," he said; "and honestly the longer I am in business with that feller the more I got to wonder what a Schlemiel he is. Actually he goes to work and tries to do his own partner without knowing it at all. Mind you, if he would be doing it from spite I could understand it; but when one partner don't know that the other partner practically closes a deal for a tract of a hundred lots and six houses in Johnsonhurst, and then persuades a prospective purchaser that, instead of buying in Johnsonhurst, he should buy in Burgess Park, understand me, all I got to say is that if Louis Stout ain't crazy the least he deserves is that the feller really and truly should buy in Burgess Park."

"But, Mr. Flugel," Elkan interrupted, "I did buy in Burgess Park."

"What!" Flugel shouted.

"I say that I made a contract for a house out there this morning only," Elkan said.

For a few seconds it seemed as though Benjamin J. Flugel's heirs-at-law would collect a substantial death benefit from the I. O. M. A., but the impending apoplexy was warded off by a tremendous burst of profanity.

"Aber, Mr. Flugel," Scheikowitz protested, "Louis tells us only last Saturday, understand me, you told him that Johnsonhurst you wouldn't touch at all, on account such lowlifes like Rabiner and Pasinsky lives out there!"

"I know I told him that," Flugel yelled; "because, if I would say I am going to buy out there, Stout goes to work and blabs it all over the place, and the first thing you know they would jump the price on me a few thousand dollars. He's a dangerous feller, Louis is, Mr. Scheikowitz!"

Elkan shrugged his shoulders.

"That may be, Mr. Flugel," he said, "but I signed the contract with Glaubmann for his house on Linden Boulevard – and that's all there is to it!"

Polatkin and Scheikowitz nodded in melancholy unison.

"Do you got the contract here?" Flugel asked; and Elkan picked up the document from his desk, where it had been placed by Goldstein.

"You paid a fancy price for the house," Flugel continued, as he examined the agreement.

"I took your partner's advice, Mr. Flugel," Elkan retorted.

"Why, for eighteen thousand five hundred dollars, in Johnsonhurst," Flugel continued, "I could give you a palace already!"

He scanned the various clauses of the contract with the critical eye of an experienced real-estate operator; and before he had completed his examination the elevator door again creaked open.

"Is Glaubmann gone?" cried a voice from the interior of the car, and the next moment Kovner alighted.

Flugel looked up from the contract.

"Hello, Kovner," he said, "are you in this deal too?"

"I ain't in any deal," Kovner replied. "I am looking for Barnett Glaubmann. They told me in his office he is coming over here and would be here all the morning."

"Well, he was here," Elkan replied, "but he went away again."

Kovner sat down without invitation.

"It ain't no more as I expected," he began in the dull, resigned tones of a man with a grievance. "That swindler has been dodging me for four months now, and I guess he will keep on dodging me for the rest of the year that he claims I got a lease on his house for."

"What house?" Flugel asked.

"The house which I am living in it," Max replied – "on Linden Boulevard, Burgess Park."

"On Linden Boulevard, Burgess Park!" Flugel repeated. "Why, then it's the same house – ain't it, Lubliner?"

Elkan nodded, and as he did so Flugel struck the desk a tremendous blow with his fist.

"Fine!" he ejaculated.

"Fine!" Kovner repeated. "What the devil you are talking about, fine? Do you think it's fine I should got to live a whole year in a house which the least it must got to be spent on it is for plumbing a hundred dollars and for painting a couple hundred more?"

"That's all right," Flugel declared with enthusiasm. "It ain't so bad as it looks; because if you can show that you got a right to stay in that house for the rest of the year, understand me, I'll make a proposition to you."

"Show it?" Kovner exclaimed. "I don't got to show it, because I couldn't help myself, Mr. Flugel. Glaubmann claims that I made a verbal lease for one year, and he's right. I was fool enough to do so."

Flugel glanced inquiringly at Polatkin and Scheikowitz.

"How about that?" he asked. "The contract don't say nothing about a year's lease."

"I know it don't," Elkan replied, "because when our lawyer raises the question about the tenant Glaubmann says he could get him out at any time."

"And he can too," Kovner declared with emphasis, but Flugel shook his head.

"No, he can't, Kovner," he said; "or, anyway, he ain't going to, because you are going to stay in that house."

"With the rotten plumbing it's got?" Kovner cried. "Not by a whole lot I ain't."

"The plumbing could be fixed and the painting also," Flugel retorted.

"By Glaubmann?" Kovner asked.

"No, sir," Flugel replied; "by me, with a hundred dollars cash to boot. I would even give you an order on my plumber he should fix up the plumbing and on my house painter he should fix up the painting, Kovner; aber you got to stick it out that you are under lease for the rest of the year."

"And when do I get the work done?" Kovner demanded.

"To-day," Flugel announced – "this afternoon if you want it."

"But hold on there a minute!" Elkan protested. "If I am going to take that house I don't want no painting done there till I am good and ready."

Flugel smiled loftily at Elkan.

"You ain't going to take that house at all," he said, "because the contract says that it is to be conveyed free and clear, except the mortgage and a covenant against nuisances. So you reject the title on the grounds that the house is leased for a year. Do you get the idee?"

Elkan nodded.

"And next Sunday," Flugel continued, "I wish you'd take a run down with me in my oitermobile to Johnsonhurst. It's an elegant, high-class suburb."

Insomnia bears the same relation to the calling of real-estate operators that fossyjaw does to the worker in the match industry; and, during the twenty days that preceded the closing of his contract with Elkan, Barnett Glaubmann spent many a sleepless night in contemplation of disputed brokerage claims by Kamin, Stout and Ortelsburg. Moreover, the knowledge that Henry D. Feldman represented the purchaser was an influence far from sedative; and what little sleep Glaubmann secured was filled with nightmares of fence encroachments, defects in the legal proceedings for opening of Linden Boulevard as a public highway, and a score of other technical objections that Feldman might raise to free Elkan from his contract.

Not once, however, did Glaubmann consider the tenancy of Max Kovner as any objection to title. Indeed, he was so certain of Kovner's willingness to move out that he even pondered the advisability of gouging Max for twenty-five or fifty dollars as a consideration for accepting a surrender of the verbal lease; and to that end he avoided the Linden Boulevard house until the morning before the date set for the closing of the title.

Then, having observed Max board the eight-five train for Brooklyn Bridge, he sauntered off to interview Mrs. Kovner; and as he turned the corner of Linden Boulevard he sketched out a plan of action that had for its foundation the complete intimidation of Mrs. Kovner. This being secured, he would proceed to suggest the payment of fifty dollars as the alternative of strong measures against Max Kovner for allowing the Linden Boulevard premises to fall into such bad repair; and he was so full of his idea that he had begun to ascend the front stoop of the Kovner house before he noticed the odour of fresh paint.

Never in the history of the Kovner house had the electric bell been in working order. Hence Glaubmann knocked with his naked fist and left the imprint of his four knuckles on the wet varnish just as Mrs. Kovner flung wide the door. It was at this instant that Glaubmann's well-laid plans were swept away.

"Now see what you done, you dirty slob you!" she bellowed. "What's the matter with you? Couldn't you ring the bell?"

"Why, Mrs. Kovner," Glaubmann stammered, "the bell don't ring at all. Ain't it?"

"The bell don't ring?" Mrs. Kovner exclaimed. "Who says it don't?"

She pressed the button with her finger and a shrill response came from within.

"Who fixed it?" Glaubmann asked.

"Who fixed it?" Mrs. Kovner repeated. "Who do you suppose fixed it? Do you think we got from charity to fix it? Gott sei Dank, we ain't exactly beggars, Mr. Glaubmann. Ourselves we fixed it, Mr. Glaubmann – and the painting and the plumbing also; because if you would got in savings bank what I got it, Mr. Glaubmann, you wouldn't make us so much trouble about paying for a couple hundred dollars' repairs."

"Aber," Glaubmann began, "you shouldn't of done it!"

"I know we shouldn't," Mrs. Kovner replied. "We should of stayed here the rest of the year with the place looking like a pigsty already! Aber don't kick till you got to, Mr. Glaubmann. It would be time enough to say something when we sue you by the court yet that you should pay for the repairs we are making here."

Glaubmann pushed his hat back from his forehead and wiped his streaming brow.

"Nu, Mrs. Kovner," he said at last, "it seems to me we got a misunderstanding all round here. I would like to talk the matter over with you."

With this conciliatory prelude he assumed an easy attitude by crossing his legs and supporting himself with one hand on the freshly painted doorjamb, whereat Mrs. Kovner uttered a horrified shriek, and the rage which three weeks of housepainters' clutter had fomented in her bosom burst forth unchecked.

"Out from here, you dirty loafer you!" she shrieked, and grabbed a calcimining brush from one of the many paintpots that bestrewed the hallway. Glaubmann bounded down the front stoop to the sidewalk just as Mrs. Kovner made a frenzied pass at him with the brush; and consequently, when he entered Kent J. Goldstein's office on Nassau Street an hour later, his black overcoat was speckled like the hide of an axis deer.

"Goldstein," he said hoarsely, "is it assault that some one paints you from head to foot with calcimine?"

"It is if you got witnesses," Goldstein replied; "otherwise it's misfortune. Who did it?"

"That she-devil – the wife of the tenant in that house I sold Lubliner," Glaubmann replied. "I think we're going to have trouble with them people, Goldstein."

"You will if you try to sue 'em without witnesses, Glaubmann," Goldstein observed; "because suing without witnesses is like trying to play pinocle without cards. It can't be done."

Glaubmann shook his head sadly.

"I ain't going to sue 'em," he said. "I ain't so fond of lawsuits like all that; and, besides, a little calcimine is nothing, Goldstein, to what them people can do to me. They're going to claim they got there a year's verbal lease."

Goldstein shrugged his shoulders.

"That's all right," he commented. "They want to gouge you for fifty dollars or so; and, with the price you're getting for the house, Glaubmann, you can afford to pay 'em."

"Gouge nothing!" Glaubmann declared. "They just got done there a couple hundred dollars' painting and plumbing, y'understand, and they're going to stick it out."

Goldstein pursed his lips in an ominous whistle.

"A verbal lease, hey?" he muttered.

Glaubmann nodded sadly.

"And this time there is witnesses," he said; and he related to his attorney the circumstances under which the original lease was made, together with the incident attending Kovner's visit to Ortelsburg's house.

"It looks like you're up against it, Glaubmann," Goldstein declared.

"But couldn't I claim that I was only bluffing the feller?" Glaubmann asked.

"Sure you could," Goldstein replied; "but when Kovner went to work and painted the house and fixed the plumbing he called your bluff, Glaubmann; so the only thing to do is to ask for an adjournment to-morrow."

"And suppose they won't give it to us?" Glaubmann asked.

Goldstein shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm a lawyer, Glaubmann – not a prophet," he said; "but if I know Henry D. Feldman you won't get any adjournment – so you may as well make your plans accordingly."

For a brief interval Glaubmann nodded his head slowly, and then he burst into a mirthless laugh.

"Real estate," he said, "that's something to own. Rheumatism is a fine asset compared to it; in fact if some one gives me my choice, Goldstein, I would say rheumatism every time. Both of 'em keep you awake nights; but there's one thing about rheumatism, Goldstein" – here he indulged in another bitter laugh – "you don't need a lawyer to get rid of it!" he said, and banged the door behind him.

If there was any branch of legal practice in which Henry D. Feldman excelled it was conveyancing, and he brought to it all the histrionic ability that made him so formidable as a trial lawyer. Indeed, Feldman was accustomed to treat the conveyancing department of his office as a business-getter for the more lucrative field of litigation, and he spared no pains to make each closing of title an impressive and dramatic spectacle.