Part 30 (1/2)
”Well, I guess now I would be getting back to the store.”
”You got my permission,” Sol said as Morris started from the restaurant.
These were destined to be the last words addressed to Morris by Sol Klinger in many a long day, for the moving incidents which awaited Morris's return to his showroom put an end to all friends.h.i.+p between him and Sol.
_Imprimis_, when Morris entered, Moe Griesman was seated in the firm's private office, the centre of an animated group of four. ”h.e.l.lo, there, Mawruss!” Moe shouted; ”there's a couple of gentlemen here which would like to talk to you.”
He indicated a ruddy, clean-shaven person of approximately fifty years, who on closer inspection proved to be Max Kirschner shorn of his white moustache and without the attendant nimbus of his diamond pin. The other individual was even harder to identify by reason of a neat-fitting business suit of brown and a general air of prosperity; but in him Morris descried the person of what had once been Sam Green.
”Morris, you old rascal,” Max cried, ”when you took me over to the Prince Clarence Hotel that day why didn't you tell me that the man you wanted me to go into business with ran a store in Cyprus?”
”I couldn't remember the name of the place at all,” Morris admitted.
Abe gazed at him sorrowfully.
”The fact is, gentlemen,” he said, ”my partner ain't got no head at all.”
Sam Green's face flushed in recollection of the phrase.
”Never mind,” he said fervently; ”he's got anyhow a heart.”
”And I've got a stomach,” Max Kirschner added irrelevantly. ”At least, I've recovered one since I've been eating Leah Green's good cooking.”
Sam and Moe Griesman smiled sympathetically.
”Well, what's the use wasting time here, boys?” Moe said at last. ”Let's explain to Mawruss about the new combination. Me and Max and Sam Green here have agreed to go as partners together in Cyprus under the name 'The Cyprus Dry-goods Company.' In a small town like Cyprus compet.i.tion is nix.”
”Good!” Morris exclaimed. ”I'm glad to hear it. Is the Sarahcuse store included too?”
”A ten per cent. interest they got, although I am going to run my Sarahcuse business and these here boys is going to run the Cyprus end,”
Moe continued. ”And now, Abe, as Max has got to pick out a lot of goods for the Cyprus store and I want to do the same for my Sarahcuse store, let's get to work.”
For three hours without cessation they laboured over Potash & Perlmutter's sample line until garments to an amount in excess of five thousand dollars had been ordered.
When Max Kirschner saw the total of Moe Griesman's selection for the Syracuse store he emitted a low whistle.
”Say, Moe,” he said, ”ain't you going to give your nephew, Rabiner, any show at all this season?”
”_Oser a Stuck_,” Griesman declared. ”I done enough for that feller when I got him a three years' contract with Klinger & Klein.”
CHAPTER SIX
A PRESENT FOR MR. GEIGERMANN
”Well, Abe,” Morris Perlmutter declared, one morning in midwinter, ”you look like you had a pretty lively session last night.”
Abe nodded slowly. ”I want to tell you something, Mawruss,” he said solemnly; ”I would do anything at all to hold a customer's trade, Mawruss. I would go on theayter with him. I would _schmier_ him tenspots when he's got the bid already, and I would go _bate_ on hands which even a rotten player like you couldn't lose, Mawruss. But before I would got to sit through such another evening like last night, Mawruss, Felix Geigermann should never buy from us again a dollar's worth more goods.
That's all I got to say.”