CHAPTER SEVEN
SWEET AND SOUR
ARE THE USES OF COMPETITIVE SALESMANSHIP
"ABER me and Yetta is got it all fixed up we would go to Mrs. Kotlin's already," Elkan Lubliner protested as he mopped his forehead one hot Tuesday morning in July. "The board there is something elegant, Mr. Scheikowitz. Everybody says so."
"Yow! everybody!" Philip Scheikowitz retorted. "Who is everybody, Elkan? A couple drummers like Marks Pasinsky, one or two real estaters, understand me, and the rest of 'em is wives from J to L retailers, third credit, which every time their husbands comes down to spend Sunday with 'em, y'understand, he must pretty near got to pawn the shirt from his back for car fare already."
"Scheikowitz is right, Elkan," Marcus Polatkin joined in. "A feller shouldn't make a god from his stomach, Elkan, especially when money don't figure at all, so if you would be going down to Egremont Beach, understand me, there's only one place you should stay, y'understand, and that's the New Salisbury."
"Which if you wouldn't take our word for it, Elkan," Scheikowitz added, "just give a look here."
He drew from his coat pocket the summer resort section of the previous day's paper and thrust it toward his junior partner, indicating as he did so a half column headed:
MIDSEASON GAIETY AT
EGREMONT BEACH
which reads as follows:
The season is in full swing here.
On Saturday night Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Gans gave a Chinese Lantern Dinner in the Hanging Gardens at which were present Mr. and Mrs. Sam Feder, Mr. and Mrs. Max Koblin, Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Feldman, Mr. Jacob Scharley and Miss Hortense Feldman.
Among those who registered Friday at the New Salisbury were Mr. Jacob Scharley of San Francisco, Mr. and Mrs. Sol Klinger, Mr. Leon Sammet and his mother, Mrs. Leah Sammet.
"I thought that Leon's brother Barney was staying down at Egremont," Polatkin said after he and Elkan had read the item.
"Barney is at Mrs. Kotlin's," Scheikowitz explained, "because mit Leon Sammet, Polatkin, nothing is too rotten for Barney to stay at, and besides he thinks Barney would get a little small business there, which the way Sammet Brothers figures, understand me, if they could stick a feller with three bills of goods for a couple hundred dollars apiece, y'understand, so long as he pays up on the first two, he couldn't eat up their profits if he would bust up on 'em mit the third."
"Sure I know," Elkan said, "aber I ain't going down to Egremont for business, Mr. Scheikowitz, I'm going because it ain't so warm down there."
"Schmooes, Elkan!" Scheikowitz retorted. "It wouldn't make it not one degrees warmer in Egremont supposing you could get a couple new accounts down there."
"B. Gans don't take it so particular about the weather," Polatkin commented. "I bet yer he would a whole lot sooner take off his coat and shirt and spiel a little auction pinocle mit Sol Klinger and Leon Sammet and all them fellers as be giving dinners already in a tuxedo suit to Sam Feder. I bet yer he gets a fine accommodation from the Kosciusko Bank out of that dinner yet."
"The other people also he ain't schencking no dinners to 'em for nothing neither," Scheikowitz declared. "Every one of 'em means something to B. Gans, I bet yer."
Elkan nodded.
"Particularly Scharley," he said.
"What d'ye mean, particularly Scharley?" Polatkin and Scheikowitz inquired with one voice.
"Why, ain't you heard about Scharley?" Elkan asked. "It's right there in the Daily Cloak and Suit Journal."
He indicated the front sheet of that newsy trade paper, where under the heading of "Incorporations" appeared the following item:
The Scharley, Oderburg Drygoods Company, San Francisco, Cal., has filed articles of incorporation, giving its capital stock as $500,000, and expects to open its new store in September next.
"And you are talking about staying by Mrs. Kotlin's!" Scheikowitz exclaimed in injured tones. "You should ought to be ashamed of yourself, Elkan."
Elkan received his senior partner's upbraiding with a patient smile.
"What show do we stand against a concern like B. Gans?" he asked.
"B. Gans sells him only highgrade goods, Elkan," Scheikowitz declared. "I bet yer the least the feller buys is for twenty thousand dollars garments here, and a good half would be popular price lines, which if we would get busy, we stand an elegant show there, Elkan."
"You should ought to go down there to-morrow yet," Polatkin cried, "because the first thing you know Leon Sammet would entertain him mit oitermobiles yet, and Sol Klinger gets also busy, understand me, and the consequences is we wouldn't be in it at all."
"Next Saturday is the earliest Yetta could get ready," Elkan replied positively, and Polatkin strode up and down the floor in an access of despair.
"All right, Elkan," he said, "if you want to let such an opportunity slip down your fingers, y'understand, all right. Aber if I would be you, Elkan, I would go down there to-night yet."
Elkan shrugged his shoulders.
"I couldn't get Yetta she should close up the flat under the very least two days, Mr. Polatkin," he said. "She must got to fix everything just right, mit moth-camphor and Gott weisst was nach, otherwise she wouldn't go at all. The rugs alone takes a whole day to fix."
"Do as you like, Elkan," Polatkin declared, "aber you mark my words, if Leon Sammet ain't shoving heaven and earth right now, y'understand, I don't know nothing about the garment business at all."
In fulfilment of this prophecy, when Elkan entered his office the following morning Polatkin waved in his face a copy of the morning paper.
"Well," he said, "what did I told you, Elkan?"
Scheikowitz nodded slowly.
"My partner is right, Elkan," he added, "so stubborn you are."
"What's the matter now?" Elkan asked, and for answer Polatkin handed him the paper with his thumb pressed against a paragraph as follows:
Mr. and Mrs. Sam Feder, Mr. and Mrs. Max Koblin, Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Feldman, Miss Hortense Feldman, and Mr. Jacob Scharley were guests of Mr. Leon Sammet at a Chinese Lantern Dinner this evening given in the Hanging Gardens of the New Salisbury.
"I thought it would be at the least an oitermobile ride," Polatkin said in melancholy tones, "but with that sucker all he could do is stealing a competitor's idees. B. Gans gives Scharley a dinner and Leon Sammet is got to do it, too, mit the same guests and everything."
"Even to Feldman's sister already," Scheikowitz added, "which it must be that Feldman is trying to marry her off to Scharley even if he would be a widower mit two sons in college. She's a highly educated young lady, too."
"Young she ain't no longer," Polatkin interrupted, "and if a girl couldn't cook even a pertater, understand me, it don't make no difference if she couldn't cook it in six languages, y'understand, Feldman would got a hard job marrying her off anyhow."
Scheikowitz made an impatient gesture with both hands, suggestive of a dog swimming.
"That's neither here or there, Polatkin," he said. "The point is Elkan should go right uptown and geschwind pack his grip and be down at the Salisbury this afternoon yet, if Yetta would be ready oder not. We couldn't afford to let the ground grow under our feet and that's all there is to it."
Thus, shortly after six o'clock that evening, Elkan and Yetta alighted from the 5:10 special from Flatbush Avenue and picked their way through a marital throng that kissed and embraced with as much ardour as though the reunion had concluded a parting of ten years instead of ten hours. At length the happy couples dragged themselves apart and crowded into the automobile 'bus of the New Salisbury, sweeping Elkan and Yetta before them, so that when the 'bus arrived at the hotel Elkan and Yetta were the last to descend.
A burly yellow-faced porter seized the baggage with the contemptuous manner that Ham nowadays evinces toward Shem, and Elkan and Yetta followed him through the luxurious social hall to the desk. There the room clerk immediately shot out a three-carat diamond ring, and when Elkan's eyes became accustomed to the glare he saw that beneath it was a fat white hand extended in cordial greeting.
"Why, how do you do, Mr. Williams," Elkan cried, as he shook hands fervently. "Ain't you in the Pitt House, Sarahcuse, no more?"
"I'm taking a short vacation in a sensible manner, Mr. Lubliner," Mr. Williams replied in the rounded tones that only truly great actors, clergymen, and room clerks possess. "Which means that I am interested in a real-estate development near here, and I'm combining business with pleasure for a couple of months."
Elkan nodded admiringly.
"You got the right idee, Mr. Williams," he said. "This is my wife, Mr. Williams."
The room clerk acknowledged the introduction with a bow that combined the grace of Paderewski and the dignity of Prince Florizel in just the right proportions.
"Delighted to know you, Madame," he declared. "Have you made reservations, Mr. Lubliner?"
Elkan shook his head and after an exchange of confidential murmurs Mr. Williams assigned them a room with an ocean view, from which they emerged less than half an hour later to await on the veranda the welcome sound of the dinner gong. A buzz of animated conversation filled the air, above which rose a little shriek of welcome as Mrs. Gans rushed toward Yetta with outstretched hands.
"Why, hello, Yetta!" she cried. "I didn't know you was coming down here."
They exchanged the kiss of utter peace that persists between the kin of highgrade and popular-priced manufacturers.
"I read about you in the newspapers," Yetta said, as they seated themselves in adjoining rockers, and Mrs. Gans flashed all the gems of her right hand in a gesture of deprecation.
"I tell you," she said, "it makes me sick here the way people carries on. Honestly, Yetta, I don't see Barney only at meals and when he's getting dressed. Everything is Mister Scharley, Mister Scharley. You would think he was H. P. Morgan oder the Czar of Russland from the fuss everybody makes over him."
Yetta nodded in sympathy and suddenly Mrs. Gans clutched the arm of her chair.
"There he is now," she hissed.
"Where?" Yetta asked, and Mrs. Gans nodded toward a doorway at the end of the veranda, on which in electric bulbs was outlined the legend, "Hanging Gardens." Yetta descried a short, stout personage between fifty and sixty years of age, arrayed in a white flannel suit of which the coat and waistcoat were cut in imitation of an informal evening costume. On his arm there drooped a lady no longer in her twenties, and from the V-shaped opening in the rear of her dinner gown a medical student could have distinguished with more or less certainty the bones of the cervical vertebræ, the right and left scapula and the articulation of each with the humerus and clavicle.
"That's Miss Feldman," Mrs. Gans whispered. "She's refined like anything, Yetta, and she talks French better as a waiter already."
At this juncture the dinner gong sounded and Yetta rejoined Elkan in the social hall.
"What is the trouble you are looking so rachmonos, Elkan?" she asked as she pressed his arm consolingly.
"To-night it's Sol Klinger," Elkan replied. "He's got a dinner on in the Hanging Gardens for Scharley, Yetta, and I guess I wouldn't get a look-in even."
"You've got six weeks before you," Yetta assured him, "and you shouldn't worry. Something is bound to turn up, ain't it?"
She gave his arm another little caress and they proceeded immediately to the dining room, where the string orchestra and the small talk of two hundred and fifty guests strove vainly for the ascendency in one maddening cacophony. It was nearly eight o'clock before Elkan and Yetta arose from the table and repaired to the veranda whose rockers were filled with a chattering throng.
"Let's get out of this," Elkan said, and they descended the veranda steps to the sidewalk. Five minutes later they were seated on a remote bench of the boardwalk, and until nine o'clock they watched the beauty of the moon and sea, which is constant even at Egremont Beach. When they rose to go Yetta noticed for the first time a shawl-clad figure on the adjacent bench, and immediately a pair of keen eyes flashed from a face whose plump contentment was framed in a jet black wig of an early Victorian design.
"Why, if it ain't Mrs. Lesengeld," Yetta exclaimed and the next moment she enfolded the little woman in a cordial embrace.
"You grown a bisschen fat, Yetta," Mrs. Lesengeld said. "I wouldn't knew you at all, if you ain't speaking to me first."
"This is my husband, Mrs. Lesengeld – Mr. Lubliner," Yetta went on. "He heard me talk often from you, Mrs. Lesengeld, and what a time you got it learning me I should speak English yet."
Elkan beamed at Mrs. Lesengeld.
"And not only that," he said, "but also how good to her you was when she was sick already. There ain't many boarding-house ladies like you, Mrs. Lesengeld."
"And there ain't so many boarders like Yetta, neither," Mrs. Lesengeld retorted.
"And do you got a boarding-house down here, Mrs. Lesengeld?" Yetta asked.
"I've gone out of the boarding-house business," Mrs. Lesengeld replied, "which you know what a trouble I got it mit that lowlife Lesengeld, olav hasholom, after he failed in the pants business, how I am working my fingers to the bones already keeping up his insurings in the I. O. M. A. and a couple thousand dollars in a company already."
Yetta nodded.
"Which I got my reward at last," Mrs. Lesengeld concluded. "Quick diabetes, Yetta, and so I bought for ten thousand dollars a mortgage, understand me, and my son-in-law allows me also four dollars a week which I got it a whole lot easier nowadays."
"And are you staying down here?" Elkan asked.
"Me, I got for twenty dollars a month a little house mit two rooms only, right on the sea, which they call it there Bognor Park. You must come over and see us, Yetta. Such a gemütlich little house we got it you wouldn't believe at all, and every Sunday my daughter Fannie and my son-in-law comes down and stays with us."
"And are you going all the way home alone?" Elkan asked anxiously.
"Fannie is staying down with me to-night. She meets me on the corner of the Boulevard, where the car stops, at ten o'clock already," Mrs. Lesengeld replied.
"Then you must got to come right along with us," Elkan said, "and we'll see you would get there on time."
"Where are you going?" Mrs. Lesengeld asked.
"Over to the Salisbury," Elkan answered, and Mrs. Lesengeld sank back on to the bench.
"Geh weg, Mr. Lubliner," she cried. "I am now fifty years old and I was never in such a place in my life, especially which under this shawl I got only a plain cotton dress yet."
Elkan flapped his hand reassuringly.
"A fine-looking lady like you, Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, as he seized her hands and drew her gently to her feet, "looks well in anything."
"And you'll have a water ice in the Hanging Gardens with us," Yetta persisted as she slipped a hand under Mrs. Lesengeld's shawl and pressed her arm affectionately. Ten minutes later they arrived at the stoop of the New Salisbury, to the scandalization and horror of the three score A to F first credit manufacturers and their wives. Moreover, approximately a hundred and fifty karats of blue white diamonds rose and fell indignantly on the bosoms of twenty or thirty credit-high retailers' wives, when the little, toilworn woman with her shawl and ritualistic wig entered the Hanging Gardens chatting pleasantly with Elkan and Yetta; and as they seated themselves at a table the buzz of conversation hushed into silence and then roared out anew with an accompaniment of titters.
At the next table Sol Klinger plied with liquors and cigars the surviving guests of his dinner, and when Elkan nodded to him, he ignored the salutation with a blank stare. He raged inwardly, not so much at Elkan's invasion of that fashionable precinct as at the circumstance that his guest of honour had departed with Miss Feldman for a stroll on the boardwalk some ten minutes previously, and he was therefore unable to profit by Elkan's faux pas.
"The feller ain't got no manners at all," he said to Max Koblin, who nodded gloomily.
"It's getting terrible mixed down here, Sol," Max commented as he hiccoughed away a slight flatulency. "Honestly if you want to be in striking distance of your business, Sol, so's you could come in and out every day, you got to rub shoulders with everybody, ain't it?"
He soothed his outraged sensibilities with a great cloud of smoke that drifted over Elkan's table, and Mrs. Lesengeld broke into a fit of coughing which caused a repetition of the titters.
"And do you still make that brown stewed fish sweet and sour, Mrs. Lesengeld?" Yetta asked by way of putting the old lady at her ease.
"Make it!" Mrs. Lesengeld answered. "I should say I do. Why you wouldn't believe the way my son-in-law is crazy about it. We got it every Sunday regular, and I tell you what I would do, Yetta."
She laid her hand on Yetta's arm and her face broke into a thousand tiny wrinkles of hospitality.
"You should come Friday to lunch sure," she declared, "and we would got some brown stewed fish sweet and sour and a good plate of Bortch to begin with."
Sol Klinger had been leaning back in his chair in an effort to overhear their conversation, and at this announcement he broke into a broad guffaw, which ran around the table after he had related the cause of it to his guests. Indeed, so much did Sol relish the joke that with it he entertained the occupants of about a dozen seats in the smoking car of the 8:04 express the next morning, and he was so full of it when he entered Hammersmith's Restaurant the following noon that he could not forego the pleasure of visiting Marcus Polatkin's table and relating it to Polatkin himself.
Polatkin heard him through without a smile and when at its conclusion Klinger broke into a hysterical appreciation of his own humour, Polatkin shrugged.
"I suppose, Klinger," he said, "your poor mother, olav hasholom, didn't wear a sheitel neither, ain't it?"
"My mother, olav hasholom, would got more sense as to butt in to a place like that," Klinger retorted.
"Even if you wouldn't of been ashamed to have taken her there, Klinger," he added.
Klinger flushed angrily.
"That ain't here or there, Polatkin," he said. "You should ought to put your partner wise, Polatkin, that he shouldn't go dragging in an old Bubé into a place like the Salisbury and talking such nonsense like brown stewed fish sweet and sour."
He broke into another laugh at the recollection of it – a laugh that was louder but hardly as unforced as the first one.
"What's the matter mit brown stewed fish sweet and sour, Klinger?" Polatkin asked. "I eat already a lot of a-la's and en cazzerolls in a whole lot of places just so grossartig as the Salisbury, understand me, and I would schenck you a million of 'em for one plate of brown stewed fish sweet and sour like your mother made it from zu Hause yet."
"But what for an interest does a merchant like Scharley got to hear such things," Klinger protested lamely. "Honestly, I was ashamed for your partner's sake to hear such a talk going on there."
"Did Scharley got any objections?" Polatkin asked.
"Fortunately the feller had gone away from the table," Klinger replied, "so he didn't hear it at all."
"Well," Polatkin declared, taking up his knife and fork as a signal that the matter was closed, "ask him and see if he wouldn't a whole lot sooner eat some good brown stewed fish sweet and sour as a Chinese Lantern Dinner – whatever for a bunch of poison that might be, Klinger – and don't you forget it."
Nevertheless when Polatkin returned to his place of business he proceeded at once to Elkan's office.
"Say, lookyhere Elkan," he demanded, "what is all this I hear about you and Yetta taking an old Bubé into the Hanging Gardens already, and making from her laughing stocks out of the whole place."
Elkan looked up calmly.
"It's a free country, Mr. Polatkin," he said, "and so long as I pay my board mit U. S. money, already I would take in there any of my friends I would please."
"Sure, I know," Polatkin expostulated, "but I seen Klinger around at Hammersmith's and he says – "
"Klinger!" Elkan exclaimed. "Well, you could say to Klinger for me, Mr. Polatkin, that if he don't like the way I am acting around there, understand me, he should just got the nerve to tell it me to my face yet."
Polatkin flapped the air with his right hand.
"Never mind Klinger, Elkan," he said. "You got to consider you shouldn't make a fool of yourself before Scharley and all them people. How do you expect you should get such a merchant as Scharley he should accept from you entertainment like a Chinese Lantern Dinner, if you are acting that way?"
"Chinese Lantern Dinner be damned!" Elkan retorted. "When we got the right goods at the right price, Mr. Polatkin, why should we got to give a merchant dinners yet to convince him of it?"
"Dinners is nothing, Elkan," Polatkin interrupted with a wave of his hand. "You got to give him dyspepsha even, the way business is nowadays."
"Aber I was talking to the room clerk last night," Elkan went on, "and he tells me so sure as you are standing there, Mr. Polatkin, a Chinese Lantern Dinner would stand us in twenty dollars a head."
"Twenty dollars a head!" Polatkin exclaimed and indulged himself in a low whistle.
"So even if I would be staying at the Salisbury, understand me," Elkan said, "I ain't going to throw away our money out of the window exactly."
"Aber how are you going to get the feller down here, if you wouldn't entertain him or something?"
Elkan slapped his chest with a great show of confidence.
"Leave that to me, Mr. Polatkin," he said, and put on his hat preparatory to going out to lunch.
Nevertheless when he descended from his room at the New Salisbury that evening and prepared to take a turn on the boardwalk before dinner, his confidence evaporated at the coolness of his reception by the assembled guests of the hotel. Leon Sammet cut him dead, and even B. Gans greeted him with half jovial reproach.
"Well, Elkan," he said, "going to entertain any more fromme Leute in the Garden to-night?"
"Seemingly, Mr. Gans," Elkan said, "it was a big shock to everybody here to see for the first time an old lady wearing a sheitel. I suppose nobody here never seen it before, ain't it?"
B. Gans put a fatherly hand on Elkan's shoulder.
"I'll tell yer, Elkan," he said, "if I would be such a rosher, understand me, that I would hold it against you because you ain't forgetting an old friend, like this here lady must be, y'understand, I should never sell a dollar's worth more goods so long as I live, aber if Klinger and Sammet would start kidding you in front of Scharley, understand me, it would look bad."
"Why would it look bad, Mr. Gans?" Elkan broke in.
"Because it don't do nobody no good to have funny stories told about 'em, except an actor oder a politician, Elkan," Gans replied as the dinner gong began to sound, "which if a customer wouldn't take you seriously, he wouldn't take your goods seriously neither, Elkan, and that's all there is to it."
He smiled reassuringly as he walked toward the dining room and left Elkan a prey to most uncomfortable reflections, which did not abate when he overheard Klinger and Sammet hail Gans at the end of the veranda.
"Well, Mr. Gans," Klinger said with a sidelong glance at Elkan, "what are you going to eat to-night – brown stewed fish sweet und sour?"
Elkan could not distinguish B. Gans' reply, but he scowled fiercely at the trio as they entered the hotel lobby, and he still frowned as he sauntered stolidly after them to await Yetta in the social hall.
"What's the matter, Mr. Lubliner," the room clerk asked when Elkan passed the desk. "Aren't you feeling well to-day?"
"I feel all right, Mr. Williams," Elkan replied, "but this here place is getting on my nerves. It's too much like a big hotel out on the road somewheres. Everybody looks like they would got something to sell, understand me, and was doing their level best to sell it."
"You're quite right, Mr. Lubliner," the clerk commented, "and that's the reason why I came down here. In fact," he added with a guilty smile, "I made a date to show some of my lots to-morrow to a prospective customer."
At this juncture a porter appeared bearing a basket of champagne and followed by two waiters with ice buckets, and the room clerk jerked his head sideways in the direction toward which the little procession had disappeared.
"That's for Suite 27, the Feldmans' rooms," he explained. "Miss Feldman is giving a little chafing-dish dinner there to Mr. Scharley and a few friends."
He accepted with a graceful nod Elkan's proffered cigar.
"Which goes to show that it's as you say, Mr. Lubliner," he concluded. "If you have drygoods, real estate or marriageable relatives to dispose of, Mr. Lubliner, Egremont's the place to market them."
"Yes, Mr. Williams," said Jacob Scharley at two o'clock the following afternoon as they trudged along the sands of Bognor Park, one of Egremont Beach's new developments, "I was trying to figure out how these here Chinese Lantern Dinners stands in a sucker like Leon Sammet twenty dollars a head, when by the regular bill of fare it comes exactly to seven dollars and fifty cents including drinks."
"You can't figure on a special dinner according to the prices on the regular bill of fare," said Mr. Williams, the room clerk, who in his quality of real-estate operator was attempting to shift the conversation from hotel matters to the topic of seaside lots. "Why, ice cream is twenty-five cents on the bill of fare, but at one of those dinners it's served in imitation Chinese lanterns, which makes it worth double at least."
"For my part," Scharley broke in, "they could serve it in kerosene lamps, Mr. Williams, because I never touch the stuff."
"It's a parallel case to lots here and lots on Mizzentop Beach, which is the next beach below," Williams continued. "Here we have a boardwalk extending right down to our property, and we are getting seven hundred and fifty dollars a lot, while there, with practically the same transit facilities but no boardwalk or electric lights, they get only four hundred and – "
"Aber you take a piece of tenderloin steak a half an inch thick and about the size of a price ticket, understand me," Scharley interrupted, "and even if you would fix it up with half a cent's worth of peas and spill on it a bottle cough medicine and glue, verstehst du mich, how could you make it figure up more as a dollar and a quarter, Mr. Williams? Then the clams, Mr. Williams, must got to have inside of 'em at the very least a half a karat pink pearl in 'em, otherwise thirty-five cents would be big yet."
"Very likely," Mr. Williams agreed as a shade of annoyance passed over his well modelled features, "but just now, Mr. Scharley, I'm anxious to show you the advantage of these lots of ours, and you won't mind if I don't pursue the topic of Chinese Lantern Dinners any farther."
"I'm only too glad not to talk about it at all," Scharley agreed. "In fact if any one else tries to ring in another one of them dinners on me, Mr. Williams, I'll turn him down on the spot. Shaving-dish parties neither, which I assure you, Mr. Williams, even if Miss Feldman would be an elegant, refined young lady, understand me, she fixes something in that shaving dish of hers last night, understand me, which I thought I was poisoned already."
Williams deemed it best to ignore this observation and therefore made no comment.
"But anyhow," Scharley concluded as they approached a little wooden shack on the margin of the water, "I'm sick and tired of things to eat, so let's talk about something else."
Having delivered this ultimatum, his footsteps lagged and he stopped short as he began to sniff the air like a hunting dog.
"M-m-m-m!" he exclaimed. "What is that?"
"That's a two-room shed we rent for twenty dollars a month," Williams explained. "We have eight of them and they help considerably to pay our office rent over in New York."
"Sure I know," Scharley agreed, "aber, m-m-m-m!"
Once more he expanded his nostrils to catch a delicious fragrance that emanated from the little shack.
"Aber, who lives there?" he insisted, and Mr. Williams could not restrain a laugh.
"Why, it's that old lady with the wig that Lubliner brought over to the hotel the other night," he replied. "I thought I saw Sol Klinger telling you about it yesterday."
"He started to tell me something about it," Scharley said, "when Barney Gans butted in and wouldn't let him. What was it about this here old lady?"
"There isn't anything to it particularly," Williams replied, "excepting that it seemed a little strange to see an old lady in a shawl and one of those religious wigs in the Hanging Gardens, and there was something else Klinger told me about Mrs. Lubliner and the old lady talking about brown stewed fish sweet and – "
At this juncture Scharley snapped his fingers excitedly.
"Brown stewed fish sweet and sour!" he almost shouted. "I ain't smelled it since I was a boy already."
He wagged his head and again murmured, "M-m-m-m-m!"
Suddenly he received an inspiration.
"How much did you say them shanties rents for, Mr. Williams?" he said.
"Twenty dollars a month," Williams replied.
"You don't tell me!" Scharley exclaimed solemnly. "I wonder if I could give a look at the inside of one of 'em – this one here, for instance."
"I don't think there'd be any objection," Williams said, and no sooner were the words out of his mouth than Scharley started off on a half trot for the miniature veranda on the ocean side of the little house.
"Perhaps I'd better inquire first if it's convenient for them to let us in now," Williams said, as he bounded after his prospective customer and knocked gently on the doorjamb. There was a sound of scurrying feet within, and at length the door was opened a few inches and the bewigged head of Mrs. Lesengeld appeared in the crack.
"Nu," she said, "what is it?"
"I represent the Bognor Park Company," Williams replied, "and if it's perfectly convenient for you, Mrs. – "