"That's all right," Elkan said. "The only suggestion he makes is that if I go to work and close this contract, y'understand, he would never buy another dollar's worth of goods from us so long as he lives. So you shouldn't bother to ring him up, Mr. Stout."
Louis Stout flushed angrily.
"So far as that goes, Lubliner," he says, "I don't got to ring up Mr. Flugel to tell you the same thing, so you know what you could do."
"Sure I know what I could do," Elkan continued. "I could either do business like a business man or do business like a muzhik, Mr. Stout.Aberthis ain'tRussland, Mr. Stout—this is America; and if I got to run round wiping people's shoes to sell goods, then I don't want to do it at all."
J. Kamin took a cigar out of his mouth and spat vigorously.
"You're dead right, Elkan," he said. "Go ahead and close the contract and I assure you you wouldn't regret it."
Elkan's eyes blazed and he turned on Kamin.
"You assure me!" he said. "Who in thunder are you? Do you think I'm looking for your business now, Kamin? Why, if you was worth your salt as a merchant, understand me, instead you would be fooling away your time trying to make a share of a commission, which the most you would get out of it is a hundred dollars, y'understand, you would be attending to your business buying your spring line. You are wasting two whole days on this deal, Kamin; and if two business days out of your spring buying is only worth a hundred dollars to you, Kamin, go ahead and get your goods somewheres else than in our store. I don't need to be Dun or Bradstreet to get a line on you, Kamin—and don't you forget it!"
At this juncture a faint cough localized Joel Ribnik, who had remained with Julius Tarnowitz in the obscurity cast by several bound volumes of digests and reports.
"Seemingly, Mr. Polatkin," he said, "you are amillionaire concern, the way your partner talks! Might you don't need our business, neither, maybe?"
Polatkin was busy checking the ravages made upon his linen by the perspiration that literally streamed down his face and neck; but Scheikowitz, who had listened open-mouthed to Elkan's pronunciamento, straightened up in his chair and his face grew set with determination.
"We ain't millionaires, Mr. Ribnik," he said—"far from it; and we ain't never going to be, understand me, if we got to buy eighteen-thousand dollar houses for every bill of goods we sell toSchnorrersand deadbeats!"
"Scheikowitz!" Polatkin pleaded.
"Never mind, Polatkin," Scheikowitz declared. "The boy is right, Polatkin; and if we are making our living in America we got to act like Americans—not peasants. So, go ahead, Stout. Telephone Flugel and tell him from me that if he wants to take it that way he should do so; and you, too, Stout—and that's all there is to it!"
"Then I apprehend, gentlemen, that we had better proceed to close," Feldman said; and Elkan nodded, for as Scheikowitz finished speaking a ball had risen in Elkan's throat which, blink as he might, he could not down for some minutes.
"All right, Goldstein," Feldman continued. "Let's fix up the statement of closing."
"One moment, gentlemen," Max Kovner said."Do I understand that, if Elkan Lubliner buys the house to-day, we've got to move out?"
Feldman raised his eyebrows.
"I think Mr. Goldstein will agree with me, Kovner, when I say you haven't a leg to stand on," he declared. "You're completely out of court on your own testimony."
"You mean we ain't got a lease for a year?" Mrs. Kovner asked.
"That's right," Goldstein replied.
"And I am working my fingers to the bone getting rid of themverfluchtepainters and all!" she wailed. "What do you think I am anyway?"
"Well, if you don't want to move right away," Elkan began, "when would it be convenient for you to get out, Mrs. Kovner?"
"I don't want to get out at all," she whimpered. "Why should I want to get out? The house is an elegant house, which I just planted yesterday string beans and tomatoes; and the parlor looks elegant now we got the old paper off."
"Supposing we say the first of May," Elkan suggested—"not that I am so crazy to move out to Burgess Park, y'understand; but I don't see what is the sense buying a house in the country and then not living in it."
There was a brief silence, broken only by the soft weeping of Mrs. Kovner; and at length Max Kovner shrugged his shoulders.
"Nu, Elkan," he said, "what is the use beating bushes round? Mrs. Kovner is stuck on the house and so am I. So long as you don't want the house, and there's been so much trouble about it and all, I tell you what I'll do: Take back two thousand dollars a second mortgage on the house, payable in one year at six per cent., which it is so good as gold, understand me, and I'll relieve you of your contract and give you two hundred dollars to boot."
A smile spread slowly over Elkan's face as he looked significantly at Louis Stout.
"I don't want your two hundred dollars, Max," he said. "You can have the house and welcome; and you should use the two hundred to pay your painting and plumbing bills."
"That's all right," Louis Stout said; "there is people which will see to it that he does. Also, gentlemen, I want everybody to understand that I claim full commission here from Glaubmann as the only broker in the transaction!"
"Nu, gentlemen," Glaubmann said; "I'll leave this to the lawyers if it ain't so: From one transaction I can only be liable for one commission—ain't it?"
Feldman and Goldstein nodded in unison.
"Then all I could say is that yous brokers and drygoods merchants should fight it out between yourselves," he declared; "because I'm going topay the money for the commission into court—and them which is entitled to it can have it."
"But ain't you going to protect me, Glaubmann?" Ortelsburg demanded.
Glaubmann raised his hand for silence.
"One moment, Ortelsburg," he said. "I think it was you and Kamin told me that real estate is a game the same like auction pinocle?"
Ortelsburg nodded sulkily.
"Then you fellers should go ahead and play it," Glaubmann concluded. "And might the best man win!"[B]
[B]In the face of numerous decisions to the contrary, the author holds for the purposes of this story that a verbal lease for one year, to commence in the future, is void.
[B]In the face of numerous decisions to the contrary, the author holds for the purposes of this story that a verbal lease for one year, to commence in the future, is void.