Part 26 (2/2)

”Say, lookyhere, Max, the whole thing is this,” he said after they were seated: ”I'm going to lend you three thousand dollars to go into a business with a feller which he got a store in a small town upstate, and you're going to do it.”

Max shook his head.

”No; I ain't,” he answered. ”I'm too old a dog to learn new tricks.”

”If you sell goods wholesale you could sell 'em retail,” Morris declared. ”So, if you would listen to me I'll tell you what the proposition is.”

Forthwith Morris unfolded to Max the history of Sam Green's mercantile establishment.

”And now, after all them years, Max,” he concluded, ”that feller gets practically run out of town because his bank shuts down on him.”

”What's the name of the place?” Max asked.

”The name of the place?” Morris repeated.

”Yes,” Max said, ”the name of the town where the fellow comes from.”

Morris scratched his head for a minute.

”I should remember the name of every little one-horse town where we got customers!” he said. ”The name of the place don't matter, Max; it's got two thousand people living in it and practically only one store, because the way Sam Green is running his business now you couldn't call it a store at all.”

Max rose from the table.

”I'll tell you the truth, Morris,” he said; ”what's the use wasting our time? The proposition ain't attractive. I was born and raised in a one-horse town upstate; and, even though I ain't been back for twenty years, I know what it's like. You'll have to excuse me.”

”But, Max----” Morris commenced.

”I needn't tell you that I'm more than grateful to you, Morris,” Max concluded; ”and if ever I want to dispose of my diamonds you shall have first chance.”

He shook Morris's limp and unresisting hand and returned at once to the showroom of Kleiman & Elenbogen.

”Any one come for me, Miss Cashman?” he asked the bookkeeper, who was busily engaged in the preparation of the firm's monthly statement.

”Say, lookyhere, Kirschner,” Louis Kleiman called from his office; ”leave the girl alone, can't you? She's got enough to do tending to our business.”

”I'm only asking her if she has any word for me,” Max replied.

”I don't care what you are asking her,” Kleiman said as he came out of his office to confront Max. ”You are acting altogether too fresh around here, Kirschner. Do you pay rent here _oder_ what?”

Max made no reply.

”And furthermore,” Kleiman continued, ”we got business to attend to here, Kirschner, and we couldn't afford to have no dead ones hanging around.”

For a brief interval he scowled at Max, who turned on his heel and made for the elevator without another word. His applications for employment during the past few days had met with polite refusals coupled with cheerful prophecies of his early employment. To be sure, Max had taken little stock in this consoling optimism, but it had all helped to keep alive his spirits, which had sunk again to their lowest ebb at Kleiman's epithet, ”dead one.”

After all, he was a dead one, he reflected as he stumbled along the sidewalk toward his boarding house on Irving Place. A man of sixty safely intrenched in his own business, with the confidence his wealth inspires, is in the very prime of life. But Max, with his health impaired and his employment taken away from him, felt and looked a decrepit old man as he tottered upstairs to his third-floor room and flung himself on the bed, where he lay for more than an hour staring at the ceiling.

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