Elkan Lubliner, American. Glass Montague
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make things worser as they are, Lubliner," Flaxberg advised. "You are in bad, anyhow, and lying don't help none. What did you done with the samples you took away from here?"
"What is it your business what I done with 'em?" Elkan retorted.
"Don't get fresh, Elkan!" Polatkin said. "What is all this about, anyhow? First, you are leaving here yesterday on account you are sick; next, you are going uptown with Mrs. Feinermann and get kicked out of a drygoods store; then you come back here and steal our samples."
"Steal your samples!" Elkan cried.
"You admitted it yourself just now," Flaxberg interrupted. "You are a thief as well as a liar!"
Had Flaxberg's interest in sport extended to pugilism, he would have appreciated the manner in which Elkan's chest and arm muscles began to swell under his coat, even if the ominous gleam in Elkan's dark eyes had provided no other warning. As it was, however, Elkan put into practice the knowledge gained by a nightly attendance at the gymnasium on East Broadway. He stepped back two paces, and left followed right so rapidly to the point of Flaxberg's jaw that the impact sounded like one blow.
Simultaneously Flaxberg fell back over the sample tables and landed with a crash against the office partition just as the telephone rang loudly. Perhaps it was as well for Flaxberg that he was unprepared for the onslaught, since, had he been in a rigid posture, he would have assuredly taken the count. Beyond a cut lip, however, and a lump on the back of his head, he was practically unhurt; and he jumped to his feet immediately. Nor was he impeded by a too eager audience, for Markulies and Feinermann had abruptly fled to the farthermost corner of the cutting room, while Marcus and Philip had ducked behind a sample rack; so that he had a clear field for the rush he made at Elkan. He yelled with rage as he dashed wildly across the floor, but the yell terminated with an inarticulate grunt when Elkan stopped the rush with a drive straight from the shoulder. It found a target on Flaxberg's nose, and he crumpled up on the showroom floor.
For two minutes Elkan stood still and then he turned to the sample racks.
"Mr. Polatkin," he said, "the telephone is ringing."
Polatkin came from behind the rack and automatically proceeded to the office, while Scheikowitz peeped out of the denim curtains.
"You got to excuse me, Mr. Scheikowitz," Elkan murmured. "I couldn't help myself at all."
"You've killed him!" Scheikowitz gasped.
"Yow! I've killed him!" Elkan exclaimed. "It would take a whole lot more as that to kill a bum like him."
He bent over Flaxberg and shook him by the shoulder.
"Hey!" he shouted in his ear. "You are ruining your clothes!"
Flaxberg raised his drooping head and, assisted by Elkan, regained his feet and staggered to the water-cooler, where Elkan bathed his streaming nostrils with the icy fluid.
At length Scheikowitz stirred himself to action just as Polatkin relinquished the 'phone.
"Markulies," Scheikowitz shouted, "go out and get a policeman!"
"Don't do nothing of the kind, Markulies!" Polatkin declared. "I got something to say here too."
He turned severely to Elkan.
"Leave that loafer alone and listen to me," he said. "What right do you got to promise deliveries on them 2060's in a week?"
"I thought – " Elkan began.
"You ain't got no business to think," Polatkin interrupted. "The next time you are selling a concern like Appenweier & Murray don't promise nothing in the way of deliveries, because with people like them it's always the same. If you tell 'em a week they ring you up and insist on it they would got to got the goods in five days."
He put his hand on Elkan's shoulder; and the set expression of his face melted until his short dark moustache disappeared between his nose and his under lip in a widespread grin.
"Come inside the office," he said – "you too, Scheikowitz. Elkan's got a long story he wants to tell us."
Half an hour later, Sam Markulies knocked timidly at the office door.
"Mr. Polatkin," he said, "Marx Feinermann says to me to ask you if he should wait any longer on account they're very busy over to Kupferberg Brothers'."
"Tell him he should come in here," Polatkin said; and Markulies withdrew after gazing in open-mouthed wonder at the spectacle of Elkan Lubliner seated at Polatkin's desk, with one of Polatkin's mildest cigars in his mouth, while the two partners sat in adjacent chairs and smiled on Elkan admiringly.
"You want to speak to me, Mr. Polatkin?" Feinermann asked, as he came in a moment afterward.
"Sure," Polatkin replied as he handed the astonished Feinermann a cigar. "Sit down, Feinermann, and listen to me. In the first place, Feinermann, what for a neighborhood is Pitt Street to live in? Why don't you move uptown, Feinermann?"
"A foreman is lucky if he could live in Pitt Street even," Feinermann said. "You must think I got money, Mr. Polatkin."
"How much more a month would it cost you to live uptown?" Polatkin continued. "At the most ten dollars – ain't it?"
Feinermann nodded sadly.
"To a man which he is only a foreman, Mr. Polatkin, ten dollars is ten dollars," he commented.
"Sure, I know," Polatkin said; "but instead of five dollars a week board, Elkan would pay you seven dollars a week, supposing you would move up to Lenox Avenue. Ain't that right, Elkan?"
"Sure, that's right," Elkan said. "Only, if I am paying him seven dollars a week board, he must got to give Mrs. Feinermann a dollar and a half extra housekeeping money. Is that agreeable, Feinermann?"
Again Feinermann nodded.
"Then that's all we want from you, Feinermann," Polatkin added, "except I want to tell you this much: I am asking Elkan he should come uptown and live with me; and he says no – he would prefer to stick where he is."
Feinermann shrugged complacently.
"I ain't got no objections," he said as he withdrew.
"And now, Elkan," Polatkin cried, "we got to fix it up with the other feller."
Hardly had he spoken when there stood framed in the open doorway the disheveled figure of Flaxberg.
"Nu, Flaxberg," Polatkin said. "What d'ye want from us now?"
"I am coming to tell you this, Mr. Polatkin," Flaxberg said thickly through his cut and swollen lips: "I am coming to tell you that I'm sick and so you must give me permission to go home."
"Nobody wants you to stay here, Flaxberg," Polatkin answered.
"Sure, I know," Flaxberg rejoined; "but if I would go home without your consent you would claim I made a breach of my contract."
"Don't let that worry you in the least, Flaxberg," Polatkin retorted, "because, so far as that goes, we fire you right here and now, on account you didn't make no attempt to sell Appenweier & Murray, when a boy like Elkan, which up to now he wasn't even a salesman at all, could sell 'em one thousand dollars goods."
Flaxberg's puffed features contorted themselves in an expression of astonishment.
"Lubliner sells Appenweier & Murray a bill of goods!" he exclaimed.
By way of answer Polatkin held out the order slip for Flaxberg's inspection.
"That's all right," Flaxberg declared. "I would make it hot for you anyhow! You put this young feller up to it that he pretty near kills me."
"Yow! We put him up to it!" Polatkin retorted. "You put him up to it yourself, Flaxberg. You are lucky he didn't break your neck for you; because, if you think you could sue anybody in the courts yet, we got for witness Feinermann, Markulies and ourselves that you called him a liar and a thief."
"Nu, Polatkin," Scheikowitz said, "give him say a hundred dollars and call it square."
"You wouldn't give me five hundred dollars," Flaxberg shouted as he started for the door, "because I would sue you in