The Competitive Nephew

"But a lawyer can't do that, Mrs. Fieldstone."

"I thought a lawyer could do anything," Mrs. Fieldstone said, "if he was paid for it, Mr. Bienenflug, which I got laying in savings bank over six hundred dollars; and – "

Mr. Bienenflug desired to hear no more. He uncrossed his legs and dropped the penholder abruptly. At the same time he struck a handbell on his desk to summon an office boy, who up to the opening night of the "Head of the Family," six months before, had responded to an ordinary electric pushbutton. But anyone who has ever seen the "Head of the Family" – and, in fact, any one who knows anything about dramatic values – will appreciate how much more effective from a theatrical standpoint the handbell is than the pushbutton. There is something about the imperative Bing! of the handbell that holds an audience. It is, in short, drama – though drama has its disadvantages in real life; for Mr. Bienenflug, after striking the handbell six times without response, was obliged to go to the door and shout "Ralph!" in a wholly untheatrical voice.

"What's the matter with you?" he said when the office boy appeared. "Can't you hear when you're rung for?"

Ralph murmured that he thought it was a – now – Polyclinic ambulance out in the street.

"Get me a stenographer," Mr. Bienenflug said.

In the use of the indefinite article before stenographer he was once again the theatrical lawyer, because Bienenflug & Krimp kept but one stenographer, and at that particular moment she was in earnest conversation with a young lady whose face bore traces of recent tears.

It was this face and not a Polyclinic ambulance that had delayed Ralph Zinsheimer's response to his employer's bell; and after he had retired from Mr. Bienenflug's room he straightway forgot his message in listening to a very moving narrative indeed.

"And after I left his office who should I run into but Sidney Rossmore," said the young lady with the tear-stained face, whom you will now discover to be Miss Vivian Haig; "and he says that he just saw Raymond and she's going to sign up with Fieldstone for the new piece to-night yet."

She began to weep anew and Ralph could have wept with her, or done anything else to comfort her, such as taking her in his arms and allowing her head to rest on his shoulder – and but for the presence of the stenographer he would have tried it, too.

"Well," Miss Schwartz, the stenographer, said, "he'll get his come-uppings all right! His wife is in with Mr. Bienenflug now, and I guess she's going in for a little alimony."

Miss Haig dried her eyes and sat up straight.

"What for?" she said.

"You should ask what for!" Miss Schwartz commented. "I guess you know what theatrical managers are."

"Not Fieldstone ain't!" Miss Haig declared with conviction. "I'll say anything else about him, from petty larceny up; but otherwise he's a perfect gentleman."

At this juncture Mr. Bienenflug's door burst open.

"Ralph!" he roared.

"Oh, Mr. Bienenflug," Miss Haig said, "I want to see you for a minute."

She smiled on him with the same smile she had employed nightly in the second act of "Rudolph" and Mr. Bienenflug immediately regained his composure.

"Come into Mr. Krimp's room," he said.

And he closed the door of Room 6000, which was his own room, and ushered Miss Haig through Room 6010, which was the outer office, occupied by the stenographer and the office boy, into Mr. Krimp's room, or Room 6020; for it was by the simple expedient of numbering rooms in tens and units that the owner of the Algonquin Theatre Building had provided his tenants with such commodious suites of offices – on their letterheads at least.

"By jinks! I clean forgot all about it, Miss Schwartz," Ralph said after Mr. Bienenflug had become closeted with his more recent client. "He told me to tell you to come in and take some dictation."

"I'll go in all right," Miss Schwartz said; and she entered Mr. Bienenflug's room determined to pluck out the heart of Mrs. Fieldstone's mystery.

It needed no effort on the stenographer's part, however; for as soon as she said "How do you do, Mrs. Fieldstone?" Mrs. Fieldstone forthwith unbosomed herself.

"Listen, Miss Schwartz," she said. "I've been here about buying houses, and I've been here about putting out tenants – and all them things; but I never thought I would come here about Jake."

Out of consideration for Ralph, Miss Schwartz had left the door ajar, and Ralph discreetly seated himself on one side where he might hear unobserved.

"Why, what's the trouble now, Mrs. Fieldstone?" Miss Schwartz asked.

"Former times he usen't to come home till two – three o'clock," Mrs. Fieldstone repeated; "and last week twice already he didn't come home at all; but he telephoned – I will say that for him." Here she burst into tears, which in a woman of Mrs. Fieldstone's weight and style of beauty – for she was by no means unhandsome – left Ralph entirely unmoved. "Last night," she sobbed, "he ain't even telephoned!"

"Well," Miss Schwartz said soothingly, "you've got to expect that in the show business. Believe me, Mrs. Fieldstone, you should ought to jump right in with a motion for alimony before he spends it all on them others."

"That's where you make a big mistake, Miss Schwartz," Mrs. Fieldstone said indignantly. "My Jake ain't got no eyes for no other woman but me! It ain't that, I know! If it was I wouldn't stick at nothing. I'd divorce him like a dawg! The thing is – now – I consider should I sue him in the courts for a separation or shouldn't I wait to see if he wouldn't quit staying out all night. Mr. Bienenflug wants me I should do it – but I don't know."

She sighed tremulously and opened wide the flap of her handbag, which was fitted with a mirror and a powder puff; and after she had made good the emotional ravages to her complexion she rose to her feet.

"Listen, Miss Schwartz. I think I'll think it over and come back to-morrow," she said.

"But, Mrs. Fieldstone," Miss Schwartz protested, "won't you wait till Mr. Bienenflug gets through? He'll be out in a minute."

"He didn't have no business to leave me stay here," Mrs. Fieldstone replied. "I was here first; but, anyhow, I'll be back to-morrow or so." Here she put on her gloves. "Furthermore, I ain't in no hurry," she said. "When you've been married to a man sixteen years, twenty-four hours more or less about getting a divorce don't make no difference one way or the other." She opened the door leading into the hall. "And, anyhow," she declared finally, "I ain't going to get no divorce anyway."

Miss Schwartz shrugged her shoulders.

"My tzuris if you get a divorce or not!" she said as she heard the elevator door close behind Mrs. Fieldstone.

"I hope she does!" Ralph said fervently. "He's nothing but a dawg – that fellow Fieldstone ain't!"

"Most of 'em are dawgs – those big managers," Miss Schwartz said; "and, what with their wives and their actors, they lead a dawg's life, too."

Further discussion was prevented by the appearance of Miss Haig and Mr. Bienenflug from Room 6020.

"I can throw the bluff all right," Mr. Bienenflug was saying; "though I tell you right now, Miss Haig, you haven't any cause of action; and if you did have one there wouldn't be much use in suing on it."

He shook his head sorrowfully.

"A producing manager has to get a couple of judgments entered against him every week, otherwise every one'd think he was an easy mark," he commented; "and that's why I say there ain't any money in the show business for the plaintiff's attorney – unless it's an action for divorce." Here he snapped his fingers as he realized that he had completely forgotten Mrs. Fieldstone during his twenty-minute consultation with Miss Haig. "Well, good-bye, Miss Haig," he said, pressing her hand warmly. "I've got some one in there waiting to see me."

"No, you ain't," Ralph blurted out. "Mrs. Fieldstone went away a few minutes ago; and she said – "

"Went away!" Mr. Bienenflug exclaimed. "Went away! And you let her?"

"He ain't no cop, Mr. Bienenflug," Miss Schwartz said, coming to Ralph's defence. "What did you want him to do – put handcuffs on her?"

"So," Bienenflug said bitterly, "you let Mrs. Fieldstone go out of this office with a counsel fee of two thousand dollars and a rake-off on two hundred a week alimony!"

"Alimony!" Miss Haig cried, with an excellent assumption of surprise. "Is Mrs. Fieldstone suing Mont for divorce?"

She was attempting a diversion in Ralph's favour, but it was no use.

"Excuse me, Miss Haig," Bienenflug said raspingly, for in the light of his vanished counsel fee and alimony he knew now that Miss Haig was a siren, a vampire, and altogether a dangerous female. "I don't discuss one client's affairs with another!"

"Oh, all right!" Miss Haig said, and she walked out into the hallway and slammed the door behind her.

"Now you get out of here!" Bienenflug shouted, and Ralph barely had time to grab his hat when he found himself in front of the elevators with Miss Haig.

"What's the matter?" she said. "Did Mr. Bienenflug fire you?"

Ralph could not trust himself to words; he was too busy trying to prevent his lower lip from wagging.

"Well," Miss Haig went on, "I guess you wouldn't have no trouble finding another job. What did he do it for?"

"I couldn't help her skipping out," Ralph said huskily; "and besides, she ain't going to sue for no divorce, anyway. She said so before she went."

Miss Haig nodded and her rosebud mouth straightened into as thin a line as one could expect of a rouge-à-lèvre rosebud.

"She did, eh?" she rejoined. "Well, if she was to change her mind do you suppose Bienenflug would give you back your job?"

"Maybe!" Ralph said.

"Then here's your chance!" Miss Haig said. "You're a smart kid, Ralph; so all you've got to do is to get Mrs. Fieldstone round to Sam's at half-past eleven to-night – and if she don't change her mind I miss my guess."

"Why will she?" Ralph asked.

"Because," Miss Haig replied, as she made ready to descend in the elevator, "just about that time Fieldstone'll be pretty near kissing her to make her take fifty dollars a week less than she'll ask."

"Kissing who?" Ralph demanded.

"Be there at half-past eleven," Miss Haig said, "and you'll see!"

Though Ralph Zinsheimer had performed the functions of an office boy in Rooms 6000 to 6020 he was, in fact, "over and above the age of eighteen years," as prescribed by that section of the Code of Civil Procedure dealing with the service of process. Indeed he was so manly for his age that Mr. Bienenflug in moments of enthusiasm had occasionally referred to him as "our managing clerk, Mr. Zinsheimer," and it was in this assumed capacity that he had sought Mrs. Fieldstone and had at length persuaded her to go down to Sam's with him.

"A young man of your age ought to be home and in bed long before this," she said as they turned the corner of Sixth Avenue precisely at half-past eleven.

"I got my duties to perform the same as anybody else, Mrs. Fieldstone; and what Mr. Bienenflug tells me to do I must do," he retorted. "Also, you should remember what I told you about not eating nothing on me except oysters and a glass of beer, maybe, as I forgot to bring much money with me from the office."

"I didn't come down here to eat," Mrs. Fieldstone said, with a catch in her voice.

"Even so, Mrs. Fieldstone, don't you try to start nothing with this woman, as you never know what you're stacking up against in cafés," Ralph warned her. "Young Hartigan, the featherweight champion of the world, used to be a – now – coat boy in Sam's; and they got several waiters working there who has also graduated from the preliminary class."

"I wouldn't open my head at all," Mrs. Fieldstone promised; and with this assurance they entered the most southerly of the three doors to Sam's.

One of the penalties of being one of the few restaurants in New York permitted to do business between one a. m. and six a. m. was that Sam's Café and Restaurant did a light business between six p. m. and one a. m.; and consequently at eleven-thirty p. m. J. Montgomery Fieldstone and Miss Goldie Raymond were the only occupants of the south dining-room.

It is true that there were other customers seated in the middle and north dining-rooms – conspicuously Mr. Sidney Rossmore and Miss Vivian Haig; and it was this young lady who, though hidden from J. Montgomery Fieldstone's view, formed one of the subsidiary heads of his discourse with Miss Raymond.

"Well, I wish you could 'a' seen her, kid!" he said to Miss Raymond. "My little girl seven years old has took of Professor Rheinberger plain and fancy dancing for three weeks only, and she's a regular Pavlowa already alongside of Haig. She's heavy on her feet like an elephant!"

"You should tell me that!" Miss Raymond exclaimed. "Ain't I seen her?"

"And yet you claim I considered giving her this part in the new piece," Fieldstone said indignantly. "I'm honestly surprised at you, kid!"

"Oh, you'd do anything to save fifty dollars a week on your salary list," she retorted.

"About that fifty dollars, listen to me, Goldie!" Fieldstone began, just as Ralph and Mrs. Fieldstone came through the revolving doors. "I don't want you to think I'm small, see? And if you say you must have it, why, I'll give it to you." He leaned forward and smiled affably at her. "After the thirtieth week!" he concluded in seductive tones.

"Right from the day we open!" Miss Raymond said, tapping the tablecloth with her fingertips.

"Now, sweetheart," Fieldstone began, as he seized her hand and squeezed it affectionately, "you know as well as I do when I say a thing I mean it, because – "

And it was here that Mrs. Fieldstone, losing all control of herself and all remembrance of Ralph's admonition, took the aisle in as few leaps as her fashionable skirt permitted and brought up heavily against her husband's table.

"Jake!" she cried hysterically. "Jake, what is this?"

Fieldstone dropped Miss Raymond's hand and jumped out of his chair.

"Why, mommer!" he exclaimed. "What's the matter? Is the children sick?"

He caught her by the arm, but she shook him off and turned threateningly to Miss Raymond.

"You hussy, you!" she said. "What do you mean by it?"

Miss Goldie Raymond stood up and glared at Mrs. Fieldstone.

"Hussy yourself!" she said. "Who are you calling a hussy? Mont, are you going to stand there and hear me called a hussy?"

Fieldstone paid no attention to this demand. He was clawing affectionately at his wife's arm and repeating, "Listen, mommer! Listen!" in anguished protest.

"I would call you what I please!" Mrs. Fieldstone panted. "I would call you worser yet; and – "

Miss Raymond, however, decided to wait no longer for a champion; and, as the sporting writers would say, she headed a left swing for Mrs. Fieldstone's chin. But it never landed, because two vigorous arms, newly whitened with an emulsion of zinc oxide, were thrown round her waist and she was dragged back into her chair.

"Don't you dare touch that lady, Goldie Raymond!" said a voice that can only be described as clear and vibrant, despite the speaker's recent exhausting solo in the second act of "Rudolph Where Have You Been." "Don't you dare touch that lady, or I'll lift the face off you!"

Miss Raymond was no sooner seated, however, than she sprang up again and with one begemmed hand secured a firm hold on the bird of paradise in Miss Vivian Haig's hat.

"No one can make a mum out of me!" she proclaimed, and at once closed with her adversary.

Simultaneously Mrs. Fieldstone shrieked aloud and sank swooning into the arms of her husband. As for Sidney Rossmore and Ralph Zinsheimer, they lingered to see no more; but at the first outcry they fled through a doorway at the end of the room. In the upper part it was fitted with a ground-glass panel that, as if in derision, bore the legend: Café for Men Only.

When they emerged a few minutes later Miss Goldie Raymond had been spirited away by the management with the mysterious rapidity of a suicide at Monte Carlo, and Miss Vivian Haig, hatless and dishevelled, was laving Mrs. Fieldstone's forehead with brandy, supplied by the management at forty cents a pony.

"You know me, don't you, Mrs. Fieldstone?" Miss Vivian Haig said. "I'm Hattie Katzberger."

Mrs. Fieldstone had now been laved with upward of two dollars and forty cents' worth of brandy, and she opened her eyes and nodded weakly.

"And you know that other woman, too, mommer," Fieldstone protested. "That was Goldie Raymond that plays Mitzi in 'Rudolph.' I was only trying to get her to sign up for the new show, mommer. What do you think? – I would do anything otherwise at my time of life! Foolish woman, you!"

He pinched Mrs. Fieldstone's pale cheek and she smiled at him in complete understanding.

"But you ain't going to give her the new part now, are you, Jake?" she murmured.

"Certainly he ain't!" Miss Vivian Haig said. "I'm going to get that part myself, ain't I, Mr. Fieldstone?"

Fieldstone made a gesture of complete surrender.

"Sure you are!" he said, with the earnestness of a waist manufacturer and not a producing manager. "And a good dancer like you," he concluded, "I would pay the same figure as Goldie Raymond."

The following morning Lyman J. Bienenflug dispatched to Mrs. J. Montgomery Fieldstone a bill for professional services, consultation and advice in and about settlement of action for a separation – Fieldstone versus Fieldstone – six hundred dollars. He also dispatched to Miss Vivian Haig another bill for professional services, consultation and advice in and about settlement of action for breach of contract of employment – Haig versus Fieldstone – two hundred and fifty dollars.

Later in the day Ralph Zinsheimer, managing clerk in the office of Bienenflug & Krimp, and over and above the age of eighteen years as prescribed by the Code, served a copy of the summons and complaint on each of the joint tort-feasors in the ten-thousand dollar assault action of Goldie Raymond, plaintiff, against J. Montgomery Fieldstone and others, defendants. There were important changes that evening in the cast of "Rudolph Where Have You Been."

CHAPTER TEN

CAVEAT EMPTOR

For many years Mr. Herman Wolfson had so conducted the auctioneering business that he could look the whole world, including the district attorney, in the eye and tell 'em to go jump on themselves. This was by no means an easy thing to do, when the wavering line of demarcation between right and wrong often depends on the construction of a comma in the Code of Criminal Procedure. Nevertheless, under the competent advice of Henry D. Feldman, that eminent legal practitioner, Mr. Wolfson had prospered; and although his specialty was the purchasing en bloc of the stock in trade and fixtures of failing shopkeepers, not once had he been obliged to turn over his purchases to the host of clamouring creditors.

"My skirts I keep it clean," he explained to Philip Borrochson, whose retail jewellery business had proved a losing venture and was, therefore, being acquired by Mr. Wolfson at five hundred dollars less than its actual value, "and if I got an idee you was out to do somebody – myself or anybody else – I wouldn't have nothing to do with you, Mr. Borrochson."

The conversation took place in the business premises of Mr. Borrochson, a small, poorly-stocked store on Third Avenue, one Sunday morning in January, which is always a precarious month in the jewellery trade.

"If it should be the last word what I ever told it you, Mr. Wolfson," Borrochson declared, "I ain't got even a piece of wrapping-paper on memorandum. Everything in my stock is a straight purchase at sixty and ninety days. You can take my word for it."

Mr. Wolfson nodded.

"When I close the deal to buy the place, Borrochson," he said, "I'll take more as your word for it. You got a writing from me just now, and I'll get a writing from you. I'll take your affidavit, the same what Henry D. Feldman draws it in every case when I buy stores. There ain't never no mistakes in them affidavits, neither, Borrochson, otherwise the party what makes it is got ten years to wait before he makes another one."

"Sure, I know it, you can make me arrested if I faked you, Mr. Wolfson," Borrochson replied, "but this is straight goods."

"And how about them showcases?" Wolfson asked.

"Only notes I give it for 'em," Borrochson answered him. "I ain't give a chattel mortgage or one of them conditional bill-off-sales on so much as a tin tack."

"Well, Feldman will look out for that, Borrochson," Wolfson replied, "and the safe, too."

Borrochson started.

"I thought I told it you about the safe," he exclaimed.

"You ain't told me nothing about the safe," Wolfson answered. "The writing what I give you says the stock and fixtures."

Borrochson took out the paper which Wolfson had just signed, and examined it carefully.

"You're wrong," Borrochson said. "I stuck it in the words 'without the safe' before you signed it."

Wolfson rose heavily to his feet.

"Let see it the writing," he said, making a grab for it.

"It's all right," Borrochson replied. "Here it is, black on white, 'without the safe.'"

"Then you done me out of it," Wolfson cried.

"I didn't done you out of nothing," Borrochson retorted. "You should of read it over before you signed it, and, anyhow, what difference does the safe make? It ain't worth fifty dollars if it was brand-new."

"Without a safe a jewellery stock is nothing," Wolfson said. "So if you told it me you wouldn't sell the safe I wouldn't of signed the paper. You cheated me."

He walked toward the door of the store and had about reached it when it burst open to admit a tall, slight man with haggard face and blazing eyes. He rushed past Wolfson, who turned and stared after him.

"Mr. Borrochson," the newcomer cried, "what's the use your fooling me any longer? Five hundred dollars I will give for the safe, and that's my last word."

"Sssh!" Borrochson hissed, and drew his visitor toward the end of the store. There a whispered conversation took place with frequent outbursts of sacred and profane exclamations from the tall, slender person, who finally smacked Borrochson's face with a resounding slap and ran out of the store.

"Bloodsucker!" he yelled as he slammed the door behind him. "You want my life."

Wolfson stared first at the departing stranger and then at Borrochson, who was thoughtfully rubbing his red and smarting cheek.

"It goes too far!" Borrochson cried. "Twicet already he does that to me and makes also my nose bleed. The next time I make him arrested."

"What's the matter with him?" Wolfson asked. "Is he crazy?"

"He makes me crazy," Borrochson replied. "I wish I never seen the safe."

"The safe!" Wolfson exclaimed. "What's he got to do with the safe?"

"Oh, nothing," Borrochson answered guardedly; "just a little business between him and me about it."

"But, Mr. Borrochson," Wolfson coaxed, "there can't be no harm in telling me about it."

He handed a cigar to Borrochson, who examined it suspiciously and put it in his pocket.

"Seed tobacco always makes me a stomachache," he said, "unless I smoke it after a meal."

"That ain't no seed tobacco," Wolfson protested; "that's a clear Havana cigar. But anyhow, what's the matter with this here Who's-this and the safe?"

"Well," Borrochson commenced, "the feller's name is Rubin, and he makes it a failure in the jewellery business on Rivington Street last June already. I went and bought the safe at the receiver's sale, and ever since I got it yet he bothered the life out of me I should sell him back the safe."

"Well, why don't you do it?"

"Because we can't come to terms," Borrochson replied. "He wants to give me five hundred for the safe, and I couldn't take it a cent less than seven-fifty."

"But what did you give for the safe when you bought it originally already?" Wolfson asked.

"Forty-five dollars."

Wolfson whistled.

"What's the matter with it?" he said finally.

"To tell you the candid and honest truth," Borrochson replied, "I don't see nothing the matter with the safe. Fifty dollars I paid it to experts who looked at that safe with telescopes already, like they was doctors, and they couldn't find nothing the matter with it, neither. The safe is a safe, they say, and that's all there is to it."