Part 45 (1/2)
Counsel for the complainant jumped to his feet.
”This is preposterous!” he declared.
”By no means,” Feldman continued. ”Will you direct counsel not to interrupt me, sir, if you please?”
”I so direct,” the commissioner replied, whereat Feldman again cleared his throat and coughed twice, and, in answer to this cue, Yosel Levin, alias Joseph Harkavy, entered the room.
”The person so bribed, Mr. Commissioner, is named in the pet.i.tion as the _corpus delicti_ of the crime alleged to have been committed,” Feldman said.
”What!” Munjoy and opposing counsel cried in unison, and the clerk to the consulate reached for his hat and started for the door. His counsel leaped after him, however, and succeeded in catching his coat-tails just as he was about to disappear into the hall.
With one hand still grasping the consular clerk, counsel for the complainant turned to the commissioner.
”I think my client wants to consult me outside for one minute,” he said.
”Have I your consent to withdraw?”
The commissioner nodded and Munjoy turned to Feldman.
”What the deuce are you trying to do, Feldman?” he asked as complainant's counsel returned.
”If the commissioner pleases,” Feldman said, ”we consent to a dismissal of the extradition proceedings and to a discharge of the prisoner.”
The imperturbable commissioner bowed and rose to his feet.
”Submit the necessary papers for the prisoner's discharge, gentlemen,”
he said. ”The hearing is closed.”
”Five dollars for doing what that feller done is like picking it up in the street, Mawruss!” Abe declared to Mawruss when they received the doctor's bill a month later.
”How could we be small about it, Abe?” Morris rejoined. ”Look at what Steuermann done! Not only he is paying his lawyers for getting this Kovalenko out of prison but he is taking that young feller and paying for him he should go on with his studying for a doctor.”
”Well, the way doctors soak you, Mawruss,” Abe said, looking at the bill which he held in his hand, ”it wouldn't be long before Kovalenko pays him back with interest, I bet yer.”
”But, anyhow, Abe,” Morris continued, ”now we got Yosel Levin working for us as cutter, it would be a better feeling all around supposing we pay the bill and say nothing about it.”
”I am agreeable we should say nothing more about it, Mawruss,” Abe retorted, ”because we already wasted more time and trouble than the whole thing is worth; but one thing I would like to know, Mawruss, before I shut up my mouth: Why did this here feller, Yosel Levin, call himself Harkavy?”
”Say!” Morris said, using three inflections to the monosyllable: ”he's got just so much right to call himself Harkavy as all them other guys has to call themselves Breslauer, Hamburger, Leipziger _oder_ Berliner.
He anyhow does come from Harkav, Abe--which you could take it from me, Abe, there's many a feller calls himself Hamburger which he don't come from no nearer Hamburg than Vilna _oder_ Kovno.”
Abe shrugged his shoulders expressively in reply.
”My worries where them fellers comes from, Mawruss!” he commented.
”Because, when it comes right down to it, Mawruss, if a feller attends to his own business, Mawruss, and don't monkey with politics, y'understand, where could he make a better living than right here in New York, N. Y.?”
CHAPTER EIGHT