Elkan Lubliner, American

"Nu, Dishkes!" Elkan said. "You are pretty early, ain't it?"

Dishkes nodded.

"I'm a Schlemiel, Mr. Lubliner," he said, "and that's all there is to it. Yesterday I went to work and lost my wife's picture."

Elkan slapped his thigh with his hand.

"Well, ain't I a peach?" he said. "I am getting so mixed up with these here antics I completely forgot to tell Yetta anything about it. I didn't even show it to her, Dishkes; so you must leave me have it for a day longer, Dishkes."

As he spoke he drew the cabinet photograph from his breast pocket and handed it to Dishkes, who gazed earnestly at it for a minute. Then, resting his elbows on his knees, he buried his face in his hands and burst into a fit of hysterical sobbing, whereat Elkan jumped from his seat and passed hurriedly out of the room. As he walked toward the showroom the strains of a popular song came from behind a rack.

"Sam," he bellowed, "who asks you you should whistle round here?"

The whistling ceased and Sam emerged from his hiding-place with a feather brush.

"I could whistle without being asked," Sam replied; "and furthermore, Mr. Lubliner, when I am dusting the samples I must got to whistle; otherwise the dust gets in my lungs, which I value my lungs the same like you do, Mr. Lubliner, even if I would be here only a boy working on stock!"

With this decisive rejoinder he resumed dusting the samples, while Elkan returned to his office, where he found that Dishkes had regained his composure.

Despite the fact that all of Dishkes' creditors save one had signed an extension agreement, the meeting in Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's showroom was well attended; and when Leon Sammet came in, at quarter-past eleven, the assemblage had already elected Charles Finkman, of Maisener & Finkman, as chairman. He had just taken his seat in Philip Scheikowitz's new revolving chair and was in the act of noisily clearing his throat in lieu of pounding the table with a gavel.

"Gentlemen," he said, "first, I want to thank you for the signal honour you are doing me in appointing me your chairman. For sixteen years now my labours in the Independent Order Mattai Aaron ain't unknown to most of you here. Ten years ago, at the national convention held in Sarahcuse, gentlemen, I was unanimously elected by the delegates from sixty lodges to be your National Grand Master; and – "

At this juncture Leon Sammet rose ponderously to his feet.

"Say, Finkman!" retorted Sammet. "What has all this Stuss about the I. O. M. A. got to do mit Dishkes here?"

Again Finkman cleared his throat, and this time he produced a note of challenge that caused the members of the I. O. M. A. there present to lean forward in their seats. They expected a crushing rejoinder and they were not disappointed.

"What is the motto of the I. O. M. A., Sammet?" Finkman thundered. "'Justice, Fraternity and Charity!' And I say to you now that, as chairman of this meeting, as well as Past National Grand Master of that noble order to which you and I both belong, verstehst du, I will see that justice be done, fraternity be encouraged and charity dispensed on each and every occasion.

"Now, my brothers, here is a fellow member of our organization in distress, y'understand; and I ask you one and all this question" – he raised his voice to a pitch that made the filaments tremble in the electric-light bulbs – "Who," he roared, "who will come to his assistance?"

He paused dramatically just as Sam, the office boy, stuck his head in the showroom doorway and rent the silence with his high, piping voice.

"Mr. Lubliner," he said, "the man is here about Jacobowitz."

Elkan flapped his hand wildly, but it was too late to prevent the entrance of no less a person than Jacob Paul – the connoisseur of antiques and fine arts.

"Hello, Finkman!" he said; "what's the trouble here?"

Elkan started from his seat to interrupt his visitor, but there was something in Finkman's manner that made him sit down again.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Paul?" Finkman exclaimed; and the clarion note had deserted his voice, leaving only a slight hoarseness to mark its passing. "What brings you here?"

"I might ask the same of you, Finkman," Jacob Paul replied; and as his keen eyes scanned the assembled company they rested for a minute on Leon Sammet, who forthwith began to perspire.

"The fact is," Finkman began, "this here is a meeting of creditors of Louis Dishkes, of the Villy dee Paris Store on Amsterdam Avenue."

Paul turned to Louis Dishkes, proprietor of the Ville de Paris Store, who sat at the side of the room behind Scheikowitz's desk in an improvised prisoner's dock.

"What's the matter, Dishkes?" Paul asked. "Couldn't you make it go up there?"

Dishkes shrugged hopelessly.

"Next month, when them houses round the corner is rented," he said, "I could do a good business there."

"You ought to," Paul agreed. "You ain't got no competitors, so far as I could see."

"That's what we all think!" Elkan broke in – "that is to say, all of us except Mr. Sammet; and he ain't willing to wait for his money."

Leon Sammet moved uneasily in his chair as Jacob Paul faced about in his direction.

"Why ain't you willing to wait, Sammet?" he asked; and Leon mopped his face with his handkerchief.

"Well, it's like this, Mr. Paul – " he began, but the connoisseur of antiques raised his hand.

"One moment, Sammet," he said. "You know as well as anybody else, and better even, that a millionaire concern like the Hamsuckett Mills must got to wait once in a while." He paused significantly. "If we didn't," he continued, "there's plenty of solvent concerns would be forced to the wall – ain't it? Furthermore, if the Hamsuckett Mills did business the way you want to, Sammet, I wouldn't keep my job as credit man and treasurer very long."

Sammet nodded weakly and plied his handkerchief with more vigour, while Elkan sat and stared at his acquaintance of Sunday night in unfeigned astonishment.

"Then what is the use of talking, Sammet?" Paul said. "So long as you are the only one standing out, why don't you make an end of it? How long an extension does Dishkes want?"

"Two months," Finkman answered.

"And where is the agreement you fellows all signed?" Paul continued.

Elkan took a paper from the desk in front of Dishkes and passed it to Paul, who drew from his waistcoat pocket an opulent gold-mounted fountain pen. Then he walked over to Leon Sammet and handed him the pen and the agreement.

"Schreib, Sammet," he said, "and don't make no more fuss about it."

A moment later Sammet appended a shaky signature to the agreement and returned it, with the pen, to Paul.

A quarter of an hour later Jacob Paul sat in Elkan's office and smoked one of Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's best cigars.

"Now I put it up to you, Lubliner," he said: "them Jacobean chairs are pretty high at fifty dollars, but I want 'em, and I'm willing to give you sixty for 'em."

Elkan smiled and made a wide gesture with both hands.

"My dear Mr. Paul," he said, "after what you done to-day for Dishkes I'll make you a present of 'em – free for nothing."

"No, you won't do no such thing," Paul declared; "because I'm going to sell 'em again and at a profit, as I may as well tell you."

"My worries what you are going to do with 'em!" Elkan declared. "But one thing I ain't going to do, Mr. Paul – I ain't going to make no profit on you; so go ahead and take the chairs at what I paid for 'em – and that's the best I could do for you."

It required no further persuasion for Jacob Paul to draw a fifty-dollar check to Elkan's order; and as he rose to leave Elkan pressed his hand warmly.

"Come up and see me, Mr. Paul, when we get through refurnishing," he said. "I promise you you would see a flat furnished to your taste – no crayon portraits nor nothing."

It was late in the afternoon when Elkan's office door opened to admit Sam, the office boy.

"Mr. Lubliner," he said, "another feller is here about this here – now – Jacobowitz."

Elkan glanced through the half-open door and recognized the figure of Ringentaub, the antiquarian.

"Tell him to come in," he said; and a moment later Ringentaub was wringing Elkan's hand and babbling his gratitude for his brother-in-law's deliverance from bankruptcy.

"God will bless you for it, Mr. Lubliner," he said; "and I am ashamed of myself when I think of it. I am a dawg, Mr. Lubliner – and that's all there is to it."

Here he drew a greasy wallet from his breast pocket and extracted three ten-dollar bills.

"Take 'em, Mr. Lubliner," he said, "and forgive me."

He pressed the bills into Elkan's hand.

"What's this?" Elkan demanded.

"That's the change from your fifty dollars," Ringentaub replied; "because, so help me, Mr. Lubliner, there is first-class material in them chairs and the feller that makes 'em for me is a highgrade cabinetmaker. Then you got to reckon it stands me in a couple of dollars also to get 'em fixed up antique, y'understand; so, if you get them chairs for twenty dollars you are buying a bargain, Mr. Lubliner."

"Why, what d'ye mean?" Elkan cried. "Ain't them chairs gen-wine Jacobean chairs?"

"Not by a whole lot they ain't," Ringentaub declared fervently.

"But Mr. Paul thinks they are!" Elkan exclaimed.

"Sure, I know," Ringentaub answered; "and that shows what a lot a collector knows about such things. Paul is a credit man for the Hamsuckett Mills, Mr. Lubliner; but he collects old furniture on the side."

For a moment Elkan gazed open-mouthed at the antiquarian and a great light began to break in on him.

"So-o-o!" he cried. "That's what you mean by a collector!"

Ringentaub nodded.

"And furthermore, Mr. Lubliner, when collectors knows more about antiques as dealers does, Mr. Lubliner," he said with his hand on the doorknob, "I'll go into the woollen piece-goods business too – which you could take it from me, Mr. Lubliner, it wouldn't be soon, by a hundred years even."

When Elkan emerged from the One-Hundred-and-Sixteenth Street station of the subway that evening a familiar voice hailed him from the rear.

"Nu, Elkan!" cried B. Gans, for it was none other than he. "You made out fine at the meeting this morning – ain't it?"

"Who told you?" Elkan asked as he linked arms with the highgrade manufacturer.

"Never mind who told me," B. Gans said jokingly; "but all I could say is you made a tremendous hit with Jacob Paul, Elkan – and if that ain't no compliment, understand me, I don't know what is. Why, there ain't a better judge of men oder antique furniture in this here city than Paul, Elkan. He's an A-Number-One credit man, too, and I bet yer he gets a big salary from them Hamsuckett Mills people, which the least his income could be – considering what he picks up selling antiques – is fifteen thousand a year."

"Does Paul sell all the antiques he collects?" Elkan asked.

"Does he?" B. Gans rejoined. "Well, I should say he does! Myself I bought from him in the past two weeks half a dozen chairs, understand me – four last week and two to-day – which I am paying him five hundred dollars for the lot. They're worth it, too, Elkan. I never seen finer examples of the period."

"But are you sure they're gen-wine?" Elkan asked as they reached the entrance to his apartment house.

"Paul says they are," B. Gans answered, slapping Elkan's shoulder in farewell; "and if he's mistaken, Elkan, then I'm content that I should be."

Two hours later, however, after Elkan had recounted to Yetta all the incidents of Dishkes' meeting and the resulting sale of the chairs, his conscience smote him.

"What d'ye think, Yetta?" he asked. "Should I tell Paul and Gans the chairs ain't gen-wine, oder not?"

For more than ten minutes Yetta wrinkled her forehead over this knotty ethical point; then she delivered her opinion.

"Mr. Gans tells you he is just as happy if they ain't gen-wine – ain't it?" she said.

Elkan nodded.

"And Mr. Paul acted honest, because he didn't know they wasn't gen-wine neither, ain't it?" she continued.

Again Elkan nodded.

"Then," Yetta declared, "if you are taking it so particular as all that, Elkan, there's only one thing for you to do – give me the thirty dollars!"

"Is that so!" Elkan exclaimed ironically. "And what will you do with the money?"

"The only thing I can do with it, Schlemiel," she said. "Ten dollars I will give Louis Dishkes he should take a trip up to the country over Sunday and visit his wife."

"And what will we do with the other twenty?" Elkan asked.

"We'll send a present with him to Mrs. Dishkes," Yetta concluded with a smile, "and it wouldn't be no antics neither!"

CHAPTER SEVEN

SWEET AND SOUR

ARE THE USES OF COMPETITIVE SALESMANSHIP

"ABER me and Yetta is got it all fixed up we would go to Mrs. Kotlin's already," Elkan Lubliner protested as he mopped his forehead one hot Tuesday morning in July. "The board there is something elegant, Mr. Scheikowitz. Everybody says so."

"Yow! everybody!" Philip Scheikowitz retorted. "Who is everybody, Elkan? A couple drummers like Marks Pasinsky, one or two real estaters, understand me, and the rest of 'em is wives from J to L retailers, third credit, which every time their husbands comes down to spend Sunday with 'em, y'understand, he must pretty near got to pawn the shirt from his back for car fare already."

"Scheikowitz is right, Elkan," Marcus Polatkin joined in. "A feller shouldn't make a god from his stomach, Elkan, especially when money don't figure at all, so if you would be going down to Egremont Beach, understand me, there's only one place you should stay, y'understand, and that's the New Salisbury."

"Which if you wouldn't take our word for it, Elkan," Scheikowitz added, "just give a look here."

He drew from his coat pocket the summer resort section of the previous day's paper and thrust it toward his junior partner, indicating as he did so a half column headed:

MIDSEASON GAIETY ATEGREMONT BEACH

which reads as follows:

The season is in full swing here.

On Saturday night Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Gans gave a Chinese Lantern Dinner in the Hanging Gardens at which were present Mr. and Mrs. Sam Feder, Mr. and Mrs. Max Koblin, Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Feldman, Mr. Jacob Scharley and Miss Hortense Feldman.

Among those who registered Friday at the New Salisbury were Mr. Jacob Scharley of San Francisco, Mr. and Mrs. Sol Klinger, Mr. Leon Sammet and his mother, Mrs. Leah Sammet.

"I thought that Leon's brother Barney was staying down at Egremont," Polatkin said after he and Elkan had read the item.

"Barney is at Mrs. Kotlin's," Scheikowitz explained, "because mit Leon Sammet, Polatkin, nothing is too rotten for Barney to stay at, and besides he thinks Barney would get a little small business there, which the way Sammet Brothers figures, understand me, if they could stick a feller with three bills of goods for a couple hundred dollars apiece, y'understand, so long as he pays up on the first two, he couldn't eat up their profits if he would bust up on 'em mit the third."

"Sure I know," Elkan said, "aber I ain't going down to Egremont for business, Mr. Scheikowitz, I'm going because it ain't so warm down there."

"Schmooes, Elkan!" Scheikowitz retorted. "It wouldn't make it not one degrees warmer in Egremont supposing you could get a couple new accounts down there."

"B. Gans don't take it so particular about the weather," Polatkin commented. "I bet yer he would a whole lot sooner take off his coat and shirt and spiel a little auction pinocle mit Sol Klinger and Leon Sammet and all them fellers as be giving dinners already in a tuxedo suit to Sam Feder. I bet yer he gets a fine accommodation from the Kosciusko Bank out of that dinner yet."

"The other people also he ain't schencking no dinners to 'em for nothing neither," Scheikowitz declared. "Every one of 'em means something to B. Gans, I bet yer."

Elkan nodded.

"Particularly Scharley," he said.

"What d'ye mean, particularly Scharley?" Polatkin and Scheikowitz inquired with one voice.

"Why, ain't you heard about Scharley?" Elkan asked. "It's right there in the Daily Cloak and Suit Journal."

He indicated the front sheet of that newsy trade paper, where under the heading of "Incorporations" appeared the following item:

The Scharley, Oderburg Drygoods Company, San Francisco, Cal., has filed articles of incorporation, giving its capital stock as $500,000, and expects to open its new store in September next.

"And you are talking about staying by Mrs. Kotlin's!" Scheikowitz exclaimed in injured tones. "You should ought to be ashamed of yourself, Elkan."

Elkan received his senior partner's upbraiding with a patient smile.

"What show do we stand against a concern like B. Gans?" he asked.

"B. Gans sells him only highgrade goods, Elkan," Scheikowitz declared. "I bet yer the least the feller buys is for twenty thousand dollars garments here, and a good half would be popular price lines, which if we would get busy, we stand an elegant show there, Elkan."

"You should ought to go down there to-morrow yet," Polatkin cried, "because the first thing you know Leon Sammet would entertain him mit oitermobiles yet, and Sol Klinger gets also busy, understand me, and the consequences is we wouldn't be in it at all."

"Next Saturday is the earliest Yetta could get ready," Elkan replied positively, and Polatkin strode up and down the floor in an access of despair.

"All right, Elkan," he said, "if you want to let such an opportunity slip down your fingers, y'understand, all right. Aber if I would be you, Elkan, I would go down there to-night yet."

Elkan shrugged his shoulders.

"I couldn't get Yetta she should close up the flat under the very least two days, Mr. Polatkin," he said. "She must got to fix everything just right, mit moth-camphor and Gott weisst was nach, otherwise she wouldn't go at all. The rugs alone takes a whole day to fix."

"Do as you like, Elkan," Polatkin declared, "aber you mark my words, if Leon Sammet ain't shoving heaven and earth right now, y'understand, I don't know nothing about the garment business at all."

In fulfilment of this prophecy, when Elkan entered his office the following morning Polatkin waved in his face a copy of the morning paper.

"Well," he said, "what did I told you, Elkan?"

Scheikowitz nodded slowly.

"My partner is right, Elkan," he added, "so stubborn you are."

"What's the matter now?" Elkan asked, and for answer Polatkin handed him the paper with his thumb pressed against a paragraph as follows:

Mr. and Mrs. Sam Feder, Mr. and Mrs. Max Koblin, Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Feldman, Miss Hortense Feldman, and Mr. Jacob Scharley were guests of Mr. Leon Sammet at a Chinese Lantern Dinner this evening given in the Hanging Gardens of the New Salisbury.

"I thought it would be at the least an oitermobile ride," Polatkin said in melancholy tones, "but with that sucker all he could do is stealing a competitor's idees. B. Gans gives Scharley a dinner and Leon Sammet is got to do it, too, mit the same guests and everything."

"Even to Feldman's sister already," Scheikowitz added, "which it must be that Feldman is trying to marry her off to Scharley even if he would be a widower mit two sons in college. She's a highly educated young lady, too."

"Young she ain't no longer," Polatkin interrupted, "and if a girl couldn't cook even a pertater, understand me, it don't make no difference if she couldn't cook it in six languages, y'understand, Feldman would got a hard job marrying her off anyhow."

Scheikowitz made an impatient gesture with both hands, suggestive of a dog swimming.

"That's neither here or there, Polatkin," he said. "The point is Elkan should go right uptown and geschwind pack his grip and be down at the Salisbury this afternoon yet, if Yetta would be ready oder not. We couldn't afford to let the ground grow under our feet and that's all there is to it."

Thus, shortly after six o'clock that evening, Elkan and Yetta alighted from the 5:10 special from Flatbush Avenue and picked their way through a marital throng that kissed and embraced with as much ardour as though the reunion had concluded a parting of ten years instead of ten hours. At length the happy couples dragged themselves apart and crowded into the automobile 'bus of the New Salisbury, sweeping Elkan and Yetta before them, so that when the 'bus arrived at the hotel Elkan and Yetta were the last to descend.

A burly yellow-faced porter seized the baggage with the contemptuous manner that Ham nowadays evinces toward Shem, and Elkan and Yetta followed him through the luxurious social hall to the desk. There the room clerk immediately shot out a three-carat diamond ring, and when Elkan's eyes became accustomed to the glare he saw that beneath it was a fat white hand extended in cordial greeting.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Williams," Elkan cried, as he shook hands fervently. "Ain't you in the Pitt House, Sarahcuse, no more?"

"I'm taking a short vacation in a sensible manner, Mr. Lubliner," Mr. Williams replied in the rounded tones that only truly great actors, clergymen, and room clerks possess. "Which means that I am interested in a real-estate development near here, and I'm combining business with pleasure for a couple of months."

Elkan nodded admiringly.

"You got the right idee, Mr. Williams," he said. "This is my wife, Mr. Williams."

The room clerk acknowledged the introduction with a bow that combined the grace of Paderewski and the dignity of Prince Florizel in just the right proportions.

"Delighted to know you, Madame," he declared. "Have you made reservations, Mr. Lubliner?"

Elkan shook his head and after an exchange of confidential murmurs Mr. Williams assigned them a room with an ocean view, from which they emerged less than half an hour later to await on the veranda the welcome sound of the dinner gong. A buzz of animated conversation filled the air, above which rose a little shriek of welcome as Mrs. Gans rushed toward Yetta with outstretched hands.

"Why, hello, Yetta!" she cried. "I didn't know you was coming down here."

They exchanged the kiss of utter peace that persists between the kin of highgrade and popular-priced manufacturers.

"I read about you in the newspapers," Yetta said, as they seated themselves in adjoining rockers, and Mrs. Gans flashed all the gems of her right hand in a gesture of deprecation.

"I tell you," she said, "it makes me sick here the way people carries on. Honestly, Yetta, I don't see Barney only at meals and when he's getting dressed. Everything is Mister Scharley, Mister Scharley. You would think he was H. P. Morgan oder the Czar of Russland from the fuss everybody makes over him."

Yetta nodded in sympathy and suddenly Mrs. Gans clutched the arm of her chair.

"There he is now," she hissed.

"Where?" Yetta asked, and Mrs. Gans nodded toward a doorway at the end of the veranda, on which in electric bulbs was outlined the legend, "Hanging Gardens." Yetta descried a short, stout personage between fifty and sixty years of age, arrayed in a white flannel suit of which the coat and waistcoat were cut in imitation of an informal evening costume. On his arm there drooped a lady no longer in her twenties, and from the V-shaped opening in the rear of her dinner gown a medical student could have distinguished with more or less certainty the bones of the cervical vertebræ, the right and left scapula and the articulation of each with the humerus and clavicle.

"That's Miss Feldman," Mrs. Gans whispered. "She's refined like anything, Yetta, and she talks French better as a waiter already."

At this juncture the dinner gong sounded and Yetta rejoined Elkan in the social hall.

"What is the trouble you are looking so rachmonos, Elkan?" she asked as she pressed his arm consolingly.

"To-night it's Sol Klinger," Elkan replied. "He's got a dinner on in the Hanging Gardens for Scharley, Yetta, and I guess I wouldn't get a look-in even."