The Competitive Nephew

"Why, bless my soul," he roared. "Somebody has been cleaning it with polishing powder."

"Well, suppose they did?" Trinkmann said calmly.

"Suppose they did!" Simon exclaimed. "Why, don't you know you should never clean with polishing powder something which it could touch a person's lips? A friend of mine, by the name Lambdan, once puts his cigar onto an ashtray which they are cleaning it with this powder, and the widder sues in the courts the feller that runs the restaurant for ten thousand dollars yet. From just putting the cigar in his mouth he gets some of the powder on his tongue, Trinkmann, and in two hours, understand me, he turned black all over. It ruined the restaurant man – a decent, respectable feller by the name Lubliner. His mother was Max Maikafer's cousin."

Trinkmann grew pale and started for the kitchen.

"Albert," he said huskily, "take from the tables the ashtrays and the forks and tell that pantryman he should wash 'em off right away in boiling water."

He followed Albert, and after he had seen that his instructions were obeyed he returned to the desk. In the meantime Simon had engaged Louis in earnest conversation.

"Louis," Simon said, "I am just seeing Max Maikafer, and he says you shouldn't worry, because you wouldn't lose your job at all."

"No?" Louis replied. "What for I wouldn't? I am going to get fired this afternoon sure, three o'clock."

"Never mind," Simon declared, "you shouldn't let him make you no bluffs, Louis. Not only he wouldn't fire you, Louis, but I bet yer he gives you a raise even."

Louis nodded despairingly.

"A couple of kidders like you and Mr. Maikafer ain't got no regards for nobody," he said. "Maybe it is a joke for you and Mr. Maikafer that I get fired, Mr. Feinsilver, but for me not, I could assure you."

"I ain't kidding you, Louis," Simon declared. "Keep a good face on you, Louis, and don't let on I said something to you. But you could take it from me, Louis, comes three o'clock this afternoon you should go to the boss and say you are ready to quit. Then the boss says no, you should stay."

"Yow! He would say that!" Louis said bitterly.

"Surest thing you know, Louis," Simon rejoined solemnly. "Me and Max will fix it sure. And after the boss says you should stay you tell him no, you guess you wouldn't. Tell him you know lots of people would hire you right away at two dollars a week more, and I bet yer he would be crazy to make you stay; and if he wouldn't pay you the two dollars a week more I would, so sure I am he would give it to you."

It was then that Trinkmann returned to the cashier's desk, and Louis moved slowly away just as the telephone bell rang sharply. Trinkmann jerked the receiver from the hook and delivered himself of an explosive "Hallo."

"Hallo," said a bass voice; "is this Mr. Trinkmann?"

"Yep," Trinkmann replied.

"I would like to speak a few words something to a waiter which is working for you, by the name Louis Berkfield," the voice continued.

Instantly Trinkmann's mind reverted to Maikafer's parting words.

"Who is it wants to talk with him?" he asked.

"It don't make no difference," said the voice, "because he wouldn't recognize my name at all."

"No?" Trinkmann retorted. "Well, maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't, Mr. Ringentaub; but people which they got the gall to ring up my waiters and steal 'em away from me in business hours yet, Mr. Ringentaub, all I could say is that it ain't surprising they busted up in Brownsville. Furthermore, Mr. Ringentaub, if you think you could hire one of them stores acrosst the street and open up a gemütlicher place with Louis for a waiter, y'understand, go ahead and try, but you couldn't do it over my 'phone."

He hung up the receiver so forcibly that the impact threw down eight boxes of the finest cigars.

"Louis," he shouted, and in response Louis approached from the back of the restaurant.

"I am here, Mr. Trinkmann," Louis said, with a slight tremor in his tones.

"Say, lookyhere, Louis," Trinkmann continued, "to-morrow morning first thing you should ring up Greenberg & Company and tell 'em to call and fetch away them eight boxes cigars. What, do them people think I would be a sucker all my life? They stock me up mit cigars till I couldn't move around at all."

"But, Mr. Trinkmann," Louis protested, "this afternoon three o'clock you are telling me – "

"Koosh!" Trinkmann roared, and Louis fell back three paces; "don't you answer me back. Ain't you got no respect at all?"

Louis made no reply, but slunk away to the rear of the restaurant.

"Schlemiel!" Simon hissed, as Louis passed him. "Why don't you stand up to him?"

Louis shrugged hopelessly and continued on to the kitchen, while Simon concluded his meal and paid his check.

"You didn't told me if you seen Max Maikafer to-day?" he said, as he pocketed a handful of tooth-picks.

"I didn't got to told you whether I did oder I didn't," Trinkmann replied, "but one thing I will tell you, Mr. Feinsilver – I am running here a restaurant, not a lumber yard."

At ten minutes to three Trinkmann stood behind the cashier's desk, so thoroughly enmeshed in the intricacies of his wife's bookkeeping that not even a knowledge of conic sections would have disentangled him. For the twentieth time he added a column of figures and, having arrived at the twentieth different result, he heaved a deep sigh and looked out of the window for inspiration. What little composure remained to him, however, fled at the sight of Max Maikafer, who stood talking to a stout person arrayed in a fur overcoat. As they conversed, Max's gaze constantly reverted to the restaurant door, as though he awaited the appearance of somebody from that quarter, while the man in the fur overcoat made gestures toward a vacant store across the street. He was a stout man of genial, hearty manner, and it seemed to Trinkmann that he could discern on the fur overcoat an imaginary inscription reading: "Macht's euch gemütlich hier."

Trinkmann came from behind the desk and proceeded to the rear of the restaurant, where Louis was cleaning up in company with Marcus and Albert.

"Louis," he said, "I want you you should go into the kitchen and tell that pantryman he should wash again the forks in hot water, and stay there till he is through. D'ye hear me?"

Louis nodded and Trinkmann walked hurriedly to the store door. He threw it wide open, after the fashion of the lover in a Palais Royal farce who expects to find a prying maidservant at the keyhole.

Maikafer stood directly outside, but, far from being embarrassed by Trinkmann's sudden exit, he remained completely undisturbed and greeted the restaurateur with calm urbanity.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Trinkmann," he said, "ain't it a fine weather?"

Trinkmann choked in mingled rage and indignation, and before he could sufficiently compose himself to sort out an enunciable phrase from all the profanity that surged to his lips Maikafer had brought forward the man in the fur overcoat.

"This is my friend, Mr. Ringentaub," he said, "also in the restaurant business."

"I'm pleased to meet your acquaintance," Mr. Ringentaub said. "Before I got through talking with you on the 'phone this morning some one cut us off."

At this juncture Trinkmann's pent-up emotion found expression.

"Away from here," he bellowed, after he had uttered a highly coloured preamble, "away from here, the both of youse, before I call a policeman and make you arrested!"

"Excuse me, Mr. Trinkmann," Maikafer interrupted, "do you got a lease on the sidewalk, too?"

"Never mind what I got a lease on," Trinkmann said. "You are coming around here trying to steal away my waiters and – "

"One moment, Mr. Trinkmann," Max said. "We are not trying to steal away your waiters at all. Mr. Ringentaub here is a gentleman, even if some people which is in the restaurant business don't act that way, Mr. Trinkmann; but as you told me yourself, Mr. Trinkmann, you are firing Louis and he's going to quit you at three o'clock; and as it is now five minutes to three – "

"Who is going to quit me at three o'clock?" Trinkmann demanded.

"Louis is," Maikafer said.

"That's where you make a big mistake," Trinkmann cried. "Louis ain't going to quit me at all. Here, I'll show you."

He led the way into the restaurant.

"Come inside, Mr. Ringentaub," he said excitedly. "No one is going to harm you. Come right inside, and I'll show you suckers you are mistaken."

He closed the door after them and almost ran to the kitchen.

"Louis," he said, "come here; I want to talk a few words something to you."

He grabbed Louis by the arm and led him to the cashier's desk, where Maikafer and his companion were standing.

"Louis," he said, "tell these gentlemen didn't I told you you should ring up sure to-morrow morning Greenberg & Company about the cigars?"

Louis nodded and Trinkmann glared triumphantly at his visitors.

"Then if I told him to ring up Greenberg & Company about the cigars to-morrow morning, understand me," he cried, "how could it be possible that he quits me this afternoon?"

"But, Mr. Trinkmann," Louis protested, "you did told me I should quit this afternoon."

"Dummer Esel!" Trinkmann exclaimed. "Couldn't I open my mouth in my own restaurant at all?"

"Well, if that's the case," Ringentaub said, "then Louis could come to work by me. Ain't that right, Louis?"

Louis looked at Max Maikafer, whose right eyelid fluttered encouragingly.

"And I would pay him twenty-eight dollars a month," Ringentaub continued, "and guarantee to keep him a year. Is that satisfactory, Louis?"

Louis' tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, but he managed to enunciate a monosyllable of assent.

"That's all right, Mr. Ringentaub," Trinkmann declared; "I would pay him thirty dollars a month and keep him for a year and longer if he wants to stay."

Louis' gaze wandered from Max Maikafer to Trinkmann, and his lower lip jutted out and trembled with gratitude.

"I mean it, Louis," Trinkmann declared. "I mean it from the bottom of my heart."

"Then in that case, Louis," Ringentaub retorted, "I would give you thirty-two fifty a month."

Louis shook his head.

"I am working here by Mr. Trinkmann six years come this Tishabav," he replied, "and even if he would only say twenty-eight dollars I would of stayed anyway."

Max Maikafer turned disgustedly to Ringentaub. "Did you ever hear the like for a fool?" he said.

"Never mind, Maikafer," Trinkmann interrupted, "even if he would be satisfied with twenty-eight I wouldn't go back on my word. I will pay him thirty dollars a month, and, furthermore, Maikafer, you will see if he stays by me a year and does his work good, maybe – who knows – I would even pay him more yet."

He held out his hand to Louis, who grabbed it effusively.

"When a feller's wife goes to work and has twins on him, Louis," he continued, "he ain't responsible for what he says exactly. Especially if they're both girls."

Three weeks later Mrs. Trinkmann sat behind the cashier's desk, awaiting the luncheon customers, and her eye wandered to the vacant store across the street at the very moment when a wagon backed up against the curb and the driver and his helper unloaded two large signs.

"Trinkmann," Mrs. Trinkmann called, "some one rents the store acrosst the street."

Trinkmann hastened to the door and glanced nervously toward the two signs. Beads of perspiration sprang out on his forehead as he discerned the lettering on one of the signboards, which read as follows:

FELIX RINGENTAUB

He uttered a faint groan and was about to communicate to Mrs. Trinkmann the melancholy tidings that a rival establishment had come into being, when the driver and his helper turned over the second sign. It contained the words:

TAILORS' AND DRESSMAKERS' TRIMMINGS

Hardly had Trinkmann recovered from his astonishment when Felix Ringentaub himself came hurriedly down the street, accompanied by Max Maikafer. A moment later they entered the restaurant.

"Why, how do you do, Mrs. Trinkmann?" Max cried, "How's the twins?"

"Getting on fine," Mrs. Trinkmann said.

"Shake hands with my friend, Mr. Ringentaub," Max continued, as he looked meaningly at Trinkmann. "Mr. Ringentaub, up to a couple of weeks since, used to was in the restaurant business in Brownsville. He goes now into the tailors' and dressmakers' trimmings business instead."

Trinkmann maintained a discreet silence and led them to one of Louis' tables. There he sat down with them, for he was determined to get at the heart of the mystery.

"Mr. Maikafer – " he began, but Max held up his hand protestingly.

"Ask me no questions, Trinkmann," he said, "and I wouldn't tell you no lies. But one thing I will say, Trinkmann, and that is that Louis didn't know nothing about it. We conned you into keeping him and raising his wages. That's all. Am I right or wrong, Ringentaub?"

Ringentaub made no reply. He was holding a fork in his hand and examining it critically.

"Of course, Trinkmann," he said, "I don't want to say nothing the first time I am coming into your place, but this here fork's got onto it something which it looks like a piece Bismarck herring."

"Don't take it so particular, Ringentaub," Maikafer said, blushing guiltily. "Wash it off in the glass water."

"A glass water you drink, Maikafer," Ringentaub rejoined, "and forks should be washed in the kitchen. And, furthermore, Trinkmann," Ringentaub said, "it don't do no harm if the waiters once in a while cleans with polishing powder the forks."

"I thought, Maikafer," Trinkmann said in funereal tones, "you are telling me that polishing powder is rank poison."

"I didn't told you that," Maikafer replied. "It was Feinsilver says that."

"Rank poison!" Ringentaub exclaimed. "Why, you could eat a ton of it."

"Sure, I know," Maikafer concluded; "but who wants to?"

He turned to Louis, who had approached unobserved. "Bring me some Kreploch soup and a plate gefüllte Rinderbrust," he said, "not too much gravy."

"Give me the same," Ringentaub added, as he gazed about him with the air of an academician at a private view. "You got a nice gemütlicher place here, Mr. Trinkmann," he concluded, "only one thing you should put in."

"What's that?" Trinkmann asked.

Maikafer kicked him on the shins, but Ringentaub failed to notice it.

"Marble-top tables," he said.

CHAPTER NINE

"RUDOLPH WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN"

All that J. Montgomery Fieldstone had done to make his name a theatrical boarding-household word from the Pacific Coast to Forty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue was to exercise as a producing manager nearly one tenth of the judgment he had displayed as Jacob M. Fieldstone, of Fieldstone & Gips, waist manufacturers; and he voiced his business creed in the following words:

"Now listen to me, kid," he said, "my idea has always been that, no matter how much value you give for the money, goods don't sell themselves. Ain't I right?"

Miss Goldie Raymond nodded, though she was wholly absorbed in a full-length enlarged photograph which hung framed and glazed on the wall behind Fieldstone's desk. She looked at it as a millionaire collector might look at a Van Dyck he had recently acquired from an impoverished duke, against a meeting of protest held in Trafalgar Square. Her head was on one side. Her lips were parted. It was a portrait of Miss Goldie Raymond as Mitzi in the Viennese knockout of two continents – "Rudolph, Where Have You Been."

"Now this new show will stay on Broadway a year and a half, kid," Mr. Fieldstone proceeded, "in case I get the right people to push it. Therefore I'm offering you the part before I speak to any one else."

"Any one else!" Miss Raymond exclaimed. "Well, you've got a nerve, after all I've done for you in 'Rudolph'!"

"Sure, I know," Fieldstone said; "but you've got to hand something to Sidney Rossmore."

"Him?" Miss Raymond cried. "Say, Mont, if I had to play opposite him another season I'd go back into vaudeville."

Fieldstone began to perspire freely. As a matter of fact he had signed Rossmore for the new show that very morning after an all-night discussion in Sam's, the only restaurant enjoying the confidence of the last municipal administration.

"Then how about the guy that wrote the music, Oskar Schottlaender?" he protested weakly. "That poor come-on don't draw down only ten thousand dollars a week royalties from England, France, and America alone!"

"Of course if you ain't going to give me any credit for what I've done – " Miss Raymond began.

"Ain't I telling you you're the first one I spoke to about this?" Fieldstone interrupted.

"Oh, is that so?" Miss Raymond said. "I wonder you didn't offer that Vivian Haig the part, which before I called myself after a highball I'd use my real name, even if it was Katzberger."

"I told you before, kid, Vivian Haig goes with the Rudolph Number Two Company next month to play the same part as she does now; and you know as well as I do it ain't no better than walking on and off in the second act – that's all."

"Then you'd oughter learn her to walk, Mont," Miss Raymond said as she rose from her chair. "She fell all over herself last night."

"I know it," Fieldstone said, without shifting from his desk. "She ain't got nothing to do and she can't do that!"

Miss Raymond attempted what a professional producer had told her was a bitter laugh. It turned out to be a snort.

"Well, I can't stay here all day talking about people like Haig," she announced. "I got a date with my dressmaker in a quarter of an hour."

"All right, Goldie," Fieldstone said, still seated. "Take care of yourself, kid, and I'll see you after the show to-night."

He watched her as she disappeared through the doorway and sighed heavily – but not for love, because the domestic habits of a lifetime in the waist business are not to be so easily overcome. Indeed, theatrical beauty, with all its allurements, reposed in Fieldstone's office as free from temptation to the occupant as thousand dollar bills in a paying-teller's cage.

What if he did call Miss Goldie Raymond "kid"? He meant nothing by it. In common with all other theatrical managers he meant nothing by anything he ever said to actors or playwrights, unless it appeared afterward that he ought to have meant it and would stand to lose money by not meaning it.

The telephone bell rang and he lifted the receiver from its hook.

"Who d'ye say?" he said after a pause. "Well, see if Raymond is gone down the elevator, and if it's all right tell her I'll see her."

A moment later a side door opened – not the door by which Miss Raymond had departed – and a young woman of determined though graceful and alluring deportment entered.

"Well," she said, "how about it, Mont? Do I get it or don't I?"

"Sit down, kid," Fieldstone said, himself seated; for he had not risen at his visitor's entrance. "How goes it, sweetheart?"

It is to be understood that "sweetheart" in this behalf had no more significance than "kid." It was a synonym for "kid" and nothing else.

"Rossmore says you're going to play Raymond in the new piece," she went on, ignoring his question; "and you know you told me – "

"Now listen here, kid," he said, "you ain't got no kick coming. In 'Rudolph' you've got a part that's really the meaty part of the whole piece. I watched your performance from behind last night, kid, and I hope I may die if I didn't say to Raymond that it was immense and you were running her out of the business. I thought she'd throw a fit!"

"Then I do get the part in the new piece?" Miss Vivian Haig insisted – for it was none other than herself.

"Well, it's like this," Fieldstone explained: "If you play another season with 'Rudolph,' and – "

Miss Haig waited to hear no more, however. She bowed her head in her hands and burst into sobs; and she might well have saved herself the trouble, for to J. Montgomery Fieldstone the tears of an actress on or off were only "bus. of weeping." He lit a fresh cigar, and it might have been supposed that he blew the smoke in Miss Haig's direction as a substitute for smelling salts or aromatic spirits of ammonia. As a matter of fact he just happened to be facing that way.

"Now don't do that, kid," he said, "because you know as well as I do that if there was anything I could do for the daughter of Morris Katzberger I'd do it. Him and me worked as cutters together in the old days when I didn't know no more about the show business than Morris does to-day; but I jumped you right from the chorus into the part of Sonia in 'Rudolph,' and you got to rest easy for a while, kid."

"I g-got notices above the star," Miss Haig sobbed; "and you told popper the night after we opened in Atlantic City that you were planning to give me a b-better part next season."

"Ain't your father got diabetes?" Fieldstone demanded. "What else would I tell him?"

"But you said to Sidney Rossmore that if I could dance as well as I sang I'd be worth two hundred and fifty a week to you."

"I said a hundred and fifty," Fieldstone corrected; "and, anyhow, kid, you ain't had no experience dancing."

"Ain't I?" Miss Haig said. She flung down her pocketbook and handkerchief, and jumped from her seat. "Well, just you watch this!"

For more than ten minutes she postured, leaped, and pranced by turns, while Fieldstone puffed great clouds of smoke to obscure his admiration.

"How's that?" she panted at last, sinking into a chair.

"Where did you get it?" Fieldstone asked.

"I got it for money – that's where I got it," Miss Haig replied; "and I got to get money for it – if not by you, by some other concern."

Fieldstone shrugged his shoulders with apparent indifference.

"You know your own book, kid," he said; "but, you can take it from me, you'll be making the mistake of your life if you quit me."

"Maybe I will and maybe I won't!" Miss Haig said as she gathered up her handkerchief and pocketbook. "I ain't going to do nothing in a hurry; but if you want to give me my two weeks' notice now go ahead and do it!"

"Think it over, kid," Fieldstone said calmly as Miss Haig started for the door. "Anything can happen in this business. Raymond might drop dead or something."

Miss Haig slammed the door behind her, but in the moment of doing it Fieldstone caught the unspoken wish in her flashing eyes.

"So do I!" he said half aloud.

Lyman J. Bienenflug, of the firm of Bienenflug & Krimp, Rooms 6000 to 6020 Algonquin Theatre Building, was a theatrical lawyer in the broadest sense of the term; and it was entirely unnecessary for Mrs. Ray Fieldstone to preface every new sentence with "Listen, Mr. Bienenflug!" because Mr. Bienenflug was listening as a theatrical lawyer ought to listen, with legs crossed and biting on the end of a penholder, while his heavy brows were knotted in a frown of deep consideration, borrowed from Sir J. Forbes Robertson in "Hamlet," Act III, Scene 1.

"Listen, Mr. Bienenflug! I considered why should I stand for it any longer?" Mrs. Fieldstone went on. "He usen't anyhow to come home till two – three o'clock. Now he don't come home at all sometimes. Am I right or wrong?"

"Quite right," Mr. Bienenflug said. "You have ample grounds for a limited divorce."

While retaining or, rather, as a dramatic producer would say, registering the posture of listening, Mr. Bienenflug mentally reviewed all J. Montgomery Fieldstone's successes of the past year, which included the "Head of the Family," a drama, and Miss Goldie Raymond in the Viennese knockout of two continents, "Rudolph, Where Have You Been." He therefore estimated the alimony at two hundred dollars a week and a two-thousand dollar counsel fee; and he was proceeding logically though subconsciously to a contrasting of the respective motor-car refinement displayed by a ninety-horse-power J.C.B. and the new 1914 model Samsoun – both six cylinders – when Mrs. Fieldstone spoke again.

"Listen, Mr. Bienenflug!" she protested. "I don't want no divorce. I should get a divorce at my time of life, with four children already! What for?"

"Not an absolute divorce," Mr. Bienenflug explained; "just a separation."

"A separation!" Mrs. Fieldstone exclaimed in a manner so agitated that she forgot to say, "Listen, Mr. Bienenflug!" "If I would want a separation I don't need to come to a lawyer, Mr. Bienenflug. Any married woman if she is crazy in the head could go home to her folks to live, Mr. Bienenflug, without paying money to a lawyer he should advise her to do so, Mr. Bienenflug; which I got six married sisters, Mr. Bienenflug – and before I would go and live with any of them, Mr. Bienenflug, my husband could make me every day fresh a blue eye – and still I wouldn't leave him. No, Mr. Bienenflug, I ain't asking you you should get me a separation. What I want is you should get him to come home and stay home."