Part 22 (2/2)
As a matter of fact, at that precise moment Morris was taking in the entire situation from behind a convenient rack of raincoats, and was mentally designing a new line of samples to be called The P & P System.
He figured that he would launch it with a good, live ad in the Daily Cloak and Suit Record, to be headed: Let 'Em _All_ Come. We Can Fit _Everybody_. _Large_ Sizes a Specialty.
”Do you think you will like it here?” Abe hazarded.
”Oh, sure,” Max replied for his sister-in-law. ”This ain't the first time she works in a cloak and suit house. She helps me out in the store whenever she comes to Buffalo. In fact, she knows part of your line already, Abe, and the rest she learns pretty quick.”
”You won't find me slow, Mr. Potash,” Miss Kreitmann broke in. ”Maybe I ain't such a good model except for large sizes, but I learned to sell cloaks by my brother-in-law and by my uncle, Philip Hahn, before I could talk already. What I want to do now is to meet the trade that comes into the store.”
”That's what you're going to do,” Abe said. ”I will introduce you to everybody.”
The thought that this would be, perhaps, the only way to get rid of her lent fervor to his words, and Max shook him warmly by the hand.
”I'm much obliged,” he said. ”Me and Philip Hahn will be in sure in a couple of hours, and Gussie comes to work to-morrow morning.”
Once more Abe proffered his hand to his new model, and a moment later the door slammed behind them.
”So, that's the party, is it?” said Morris, emerging from his hiding-place. ”What's she looking for a job by us for, Abe? She could make it twice as much by a circus sideshow or a dime museum.”
”Philip Hahn will be here in a couple of hours, Mawruss,” Abe replied, avoiding the thrust. ”I guess he's going to buy a big bill of goods, Mawruss.”
”I hope so, Abe, because it needs quite a few big bills to offset the damage a model like this here Miss Kreitmann can do. In fact, Abe,” he concluded, ”I'd be just as well satisfied if Miss Kreitmann could give us the orders, and we could get Philip Hahn to come to work by us as a model. I ain't never seen him, Abe, but I think he's got a better shape for the line.”
A singular devotion to duty marked every action of Emanuel Gubin, s.h.i.+pping clerk in the wholesale cloak and suit establishment of Potash & Perlmutter. That is to say, it had marked every action until the commencement of Miss Kreitmann's inc.u.mbency. In the very hour that Emanuel first observed the l.u.s.ter of her fine black eyes his heart gave one bound and never more regained its normal gait.
As for Miss Kreitmann, she saw only a s.h.i.+pping clerk, collarless, coatless and with all the grime of his calling upon him. Two weeks elapsed, however, and one evening, on Lenox Avenue, she encountered Emanuel, freed from the chrysalis of his employment, a natty, lavender-trousered b.u.t.terfly of fas.h.i.+on. Thereafter she called him Mannie, and during business hours she flashed upon him those same black eyes with results disastrous to the s.h.i.+pping end of Potash & Perlmutter's business.
Packages intended for the afternoon delivery of a local express company arrived in Florida two weeks later, while the irate buyer of a Jersey City store, who impatiently awaited an emergency s.h.i.+pment of ten heavy winter garments, received instead half a hundred gossamer wraps designed for the sub-tropical weather of Palm Beach.
”I don't know what's come over that fellow, Mawruss,” Abe said at last.
”Formerly he was a crackerjack--never made no mistakes nor nothing; and now I da.s.sen't trust him at all, Mawruss. Everything we s.h.i.+p I got to look after it myself, Mawruss. We might as well have no s.h.i.+pping clerk at all.”
”You're right, Abe,” Morris replied. ”He gets carelesser every day. And why, Abe? Because of that Miss Kreitmann. She breaks us all up, Abe. I bet yer if that feller Gubin has took her to the theayter once, Abe, he took her fifty times already. He spends every cent he makes on her, and the first thing you know, Abe, we'll be missing a couple of pieces of silk from the cutting-room. Ain't it?”
”He ain't no thief, Mawruss,” said Abe, ”and, besides, you can't blame a young feller if he gets stuck on a nice girl like Miss Kreitmann, Mawruss. She's a smart girl, Mawruss. Mendel Immerglick, of Immerglick & Frank, was in here yesterday, Mawruss, and she showed him the line, Mawruss, and believe me, Mawruss, Immerglick says to me I couldn't have done it better myself.”
”Huh!” Morris snorted. ”A young feller like Immerglick, what buys it of us a couple of hundred dollars at a time, she falls all over herself to please him, Abe. And why? Because Immerglick's got a fine _mus_tache and is a swell dresser and he ain't married. But you take it a good customer like Adolph Rothstein, Abe, and what does she do? At first she was all smiles to him, because Adolph is a good-looking feller. But then she hears him telling me a hard-luck story about his wife's operation and how his eldest boy Sammie is now seven already and ain't never been sick in his life, and last month he gets the whooping cough and all six of Adolph's boys gets it one after the other. Then, Abe, she treats Adolph like a dawg, Abe, and the first thing you know he looks at his watch and says he got an appointment and he'll be back. But he don't come back at all, Abe, and this noontime I seen Leon Sammet and Adolph in Wa.s.serbauer's Restaurant. They was eating the regular dinner _with chicken_, Abe, and I seen Leon pay for it.”
Abe received his partner's harangue in silence. His eyes gazed vacantly at the store door, which had just opened to admit the letter-carrier.
”Suppose we do lose a couple of hundred dollars trade,” he said at length; ”one customer like Philip Hahn will make it up ten times, Mawruss.”
”Well, you'll lose him, too, Abe, if you don't look out,” said Morris, who had concluded the reading of a typewritten letter with a scrawled postscript. ”Just see what he writes us.”
He handed over the missive, which read as follows:
MESSRS. POTASH & PERLMUTTER.
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