"You did!" Elkan exclaimed. "Well, why didn't you tell me that, Kapfer?"
"I couldn't think of everything," Kapfer protested.
"Go ahead," Elkan said, turning to Fischko; "let me know all about her – everything! I think I got a right to know – ain't it?"
"Sure you have," Fischko said as he cleared his throat oratorically; and therewith he began a laudatory biography of Yetta Silbermacher, while Elkan settled himself to listen. With parted lips and eyes shining his appreciation, he heard a narrative that justified beyond peradventure his choice of a wife, and when Fischko concluded he smote the table with his fist.
"By jiminy!" he cried. "A feller should ought to be proud of a wife like that!"
"Sure he should," Kapfer said; "and her and Fischko would be down at my room at the Prince Clarence to-morrow at two."
He beckoned to the waiter. "So let's pay up and go home," he concluded; "and by to-morrow night Fischko would got two matches to his credit."
"K'mo she-néemar," Fischko said as he rose a trifle laboriously to his feet, "it is commanded to promote marriages, visit the sick and bury the dead."
"And," Kapfer added, "you'll notice that promoting marriages comes ahead of the others."
When Marcus Polatkin arrived at his place of business the following morning he looked round him anxiously for his partner, who had departed somewhat early the previous day with the avowed intention of seeing just how sick Elkan was. As a matter of fact, Scheikowitz had discovered Elkan lying on the sofa at his boarding place, vainly attempting to secure his first few minutes' sleep in over thirty-six hours; and he had gone home truly shocked at Elkan's pallid and careworn appearance, though Elkan had promised to keep the appointment with Fischko. Polatkin felt convinced, however, that his partner must have discovered the pretence of Elkan's indisposition, and his manner was a trifle artificial when he inquired after the absentee.
"How was he feeling, Philip?" he asked.
"Pretty bad, I guess," Scheikowitz replied, whereat a blank expression came over Polatkin's face. "The boy works too hard, I guess. He ain't slept a wink for two days."
"Why, he seemed all right yesterday when I seen him," Polatkin declared.
"Yesterday?" Scheikowitz exclaimed.
"I mean the day before yesterday," Polatkin added hastily as the elevator door opened and a short, stout person alighted. He wore a wrinkled frock coat and a white tie which perched coquettishly under his left ear; and as he approached the office he seemed to be labouring under a great deal of excitement.
"Oo-ee!" he wailed as he caught sight of Polatkin, and without further salutation he sank into the nearest chair. There he bowed his head in his hands and rocked to and fro disconsolately.
"Who's this crazy feller?" Scheikowitz demanded of his partner.
Polatkin shrugged.
"He's a button salesman by the name Rashkind," Polatkin said. "Leave me deal with him." He walked over to the swaying Shadchen and shook him violently by the shoulder. "Rashkind," he said, "stop that nonsense and tell me what's the matter."
Rashkind ceased his moanings and looked up with bloodshot eyes.
"She's engaged!" he said.
"She's engaged!" Polatkin repeated. "And you call yourself a Shadchen!" he said bitterly.
"A Shadchen!" Scheikowitz cried. "Why, I thought you said he was a button salesman."
"Did I?" Polatkin retorted. "Well, maybe he is, Scheikowitz; but he ain't no Shadchen. Actually the feller goes to work and takes Elkan up to see the girl, and they put him off by saying the girl was sick; and now he comes down here and tells me the girl is engaged."
"Well," Scheikowitz remarked, "you couldn't get no sympathy from me, Polatkin. A feller which acts underhand the way you done, trying to make up a Shidduch for Elkan behind my back yet – you got what you deserved."
"What d'ye mean I got what I deserved?" Polatkin said indignantly. "Do you think it would be such a bad thing for us – you and me both, Scheikowitz – if I could of made up a match between Elkan and B. Maslik's a daughter?"
"B. Maslik's a daughter!" Scheikowitz cried. "Do you mean that this here feller was trying to make up a match between Elkan and Miss Birdie Maslik?"
"That's just what I said," Polatkin announced.
"Then I can explain the whole thing," Scheikowitz rejoined triumphantly. "Miss Maslik had a date to meet Elkan last night yet with a Shadchen by the name Charles Fischko, and that's why B. Maslik told this here button salesman that his daughter was engaged."
Rashkind again raised his head and regarded Scheikowitz with a malevolent grin.
"Schmooes!" he jeered. "Miss Maslik is engaged and the Shadchen was Charles Fischko, but the Chosan ain't Elkan Lubliner by a damsight."
It was now Polatkin's turn to gloat, and he shook his head slowly up and down.
"So, Scheikowitz," he said, "you are trying to fix up a Shidduch between Elkan and Miss Maslik without telling me a word about it, and you get the whole thing so mixed up that it is a case of trying to sit between two chairs! You come down mit a big bump and I ain't got no sympathy for you neither."
"What was the feller's name?" Scheikowitz demanded hoarsely of Rashkind, who was straightening out his tie and smoothing his rumpled hair.
"It's a funny quincidence," Rashkind replied; "but you remember, Mr. Polatkin, I was talking to you the other day about Julius Flixman?"
"Yes," Polatkin said, and his heart began to thump in anticipation of the answer.
"Well, Julius Flixman, as I told you, sold out his store to a feller by the name Max Kapfer," Rashkind said and paused again.
"Nu!" Scheikowitz roared. "What of it?"
"Well, this here Max Kapfer is engaged to be married to Miss Birdie Maslik," Rashkind concluded; and when Scheikowitz looked from Rashkind toward his partner the latter had already proceeded more than halfway to the telephone.
"And that's what your Shadchen done for you, Mr. Scheikowitz!" Rashkind said as he put on his hat. He walked to the elevator and rang the bell.
"Yes, Mr. Scheikowitz," Rashkind added, "as a Shadchen, maybe I am a button salesman; but I'd a whole lot sooner be a button salesman as a thief and don't you forget it!"
After the elevator had borne Rashkind away Scheikowitz went back to the office in time to hear Marcus engaged in a noisy altercation with the telephone operator of the Prince Clarence Hotel.
"What d'ye mean he ain't there?" he bellowed. "With you it's always the same – I could never get nobody at your hotel."
He hung up the receiver with force almost sufficient to wreck the instrument.
"That'll do, Polatkin!" Scheikowitz said. "We already got half our furniture smashed."
"Did I done it?" Polatkin growled – the allusion being to the chair demolished by Scheikowitz on the previous day.
"You was the cause of it," Scheikowitz retorted; "and, anyhow, who are you ringing up at the Prince Clarence?"
"I'm ringing up that feller Kapfer," Polatkin replied. "I want to tell that sucker what I think of him."
Then it was that Kapfer's theory as to the effect of his engagement on his relations with Polatkin & Scheikowitz became justified in fact.
"You wouldn't do nothing of the kind," Scheikowitz declared. "It ain't bad enough that Elkan loses this here Shidduch, but you are trying to Jonah a good account also! Why, that feller Kapfer's business after he marries Miss Maslik would be easy worth to us three thousand dollars a year."
"I don't care what his business is worth," Polatkin shouted. "I would say what I please to that highwayman!"
"What do you want to do?" Scheikowitz pleaded – "bite off your nose to spoil your face?"
Polatkin made no reply and he was about to go into the showroom when the telephone bell rang.
"Leave me answer it," Scheikowitz said; and a moment later he picked up the desk telephone and placed the receiver to his ear.
"Hello!" he said. "Yes, this is Polatkin & Scheikowitz. This is Mr. Scheikowitz talking."
Suddenly the instrument dropped with a clatter to the floor; and while Scheikowitz was stooping to pick it up Polatkin rushed into the office.
"Scheikowitz!" he cried. "What are you trying to do – break up our whole office yet? Ain't it enough you are putting all our chairs on the bum already?"
Scheikowitz contented himself by glaring viciously at his partner and again placed the receiver to his ear.
"Hello, Mr. Kapfer," he said. "Yes, I heard it this morning already. Them things travels fast, Mr. Kapfer. No, I don't blame you – I blame this here Fischko. He gives me a dirty deal – that's all."
Here there was a long pause, while Polatkin stood in the middle of the office floor like a bird-dog pointing at a covey of partridges.
"But why couldn't you come down here, Mr. Kapfer?" Scheikowitz asked. Again there was a long pause, at the end of which Scheikowitz said: "Wait a minute – I'll ask my partner."
"Listen here, Polatkin," he said, placing his hand over the transmitter. "Kapfer says he wants to give us from two thousand five hundred dollars an order, and he wants you and me to go up to the Prince Clarence at two o'clock to see him. He wants us both there because he wants to arrange terms of credit."
"I would see him hung first!" Polatkin roared, and Scheikowitz took his hand from the transmitter.
"All right, Mr. Kapfer," he answered in dulcet tones; "me and Polatkin will both be there. Good-bye."
He hung up the receiver with exaggerated care.
"And you would just bet your life that we will be there!" he said. "And that's all there is to it!"
At half-past one that afternoon, while Max Kapfer was enjoying a good cigar in the lobby of the Prince Clarence, he received an unexpected visitor in the person of Julius Flixman.
"Why, how do you do, Mr. Flixman?" he cried, dragging forth a chair.
Flixman extended a thin, bony hand in greeting and sat down wearily.
"I don't do so good, Kapfer," he said. "I guess New York don't agree with me." He distorted his face in what he intended to be an amiable smile. "But I guess it agrees with you all right," he continued. "I suppose I must got to congradulate you on account you are going to be engaged to Miss Birdie Maslik."
"Why, who told you about it?" Kapfer asked.
"I met this morning a real-estater by the name Rashkind, which he is acquainted with the Maslik family," Flixman replied, "and he says it happened yesterday. Also they told me up at the hotel you was calling there this morning to see me."
"That's right," Kapfer said; "and you was out."
"I was down to see a feller on Center Street," Flixman went on, "and so I thought, so long as you wanted to fix up about the note, I might just as well come down here."
"I'm much obliged to you," Kapfer interrupted.
"Not at all," Flixman continued. "When a feller wants to pay you money and comes to see you once to do it and you ain't in, understand me, then it's up to you to go to him; so here I am."
"But the fact is," Kapfer said, "I didn't want to see you about paying the money exactly. I wanted to see you about not paying it."
"About not paying it?" Flixman cried.
"Sure!" Kapfer replied. "I wanted to see if you wouldn't give me a year's extension for that last thousand on account I am going to get married; and with what Miss Maslik would bring me, y'understand, and your thousand dollars which I got here, I would just have enough to fix up my second floor and build a twenty-five-foot extension on the rear. You see, I figure it this way." He searched his pocket for a piece of paper and produced a fountain pen. "I figure that the fixtures cost me twenty-two hundred," he began, "and – "
At this juncture Flixman flipped his fingers derisively.
"Pipe dreams you got it!" he said. "That store as it stands was good enough for me, and it should ought to be good enough for you. Furthermore, Kapfer, if you want to invest Maslik's money and your own money, schon gut; but me, I could always put a thousand dollars into a bond, Kapfer. So, if it's all the same to you, I'll take your check and call it square."
Kapfer shrugged resignedly.
"I had an idee you would," he said, "so I got it ready for you; because, Mr. Flixman, you must excuse me when I tell you that you got the reputation of being a good collector."
"Am I?" Flixman snapped out. "Well, maybe I am, Kapfer, but I could give my money up, too, once in a while; and, believe me or not, Kapfer, this afternoon yet I am going to sign a will which I am leaving all my money to a Talmud Torah School."
"You don't say so?" Kapfer said as he drew out his checkbook.
"That's what I am telling you," Flixman continued, "because there's a lot of young loafers running round the streets which nobody got any control over 'em at all; and if they would go to a Talmud Torah School, understand me, not only they learn 'em there a little Loschen Hakodesch, y'understand, but they would also pretty near club the life out of 'em."
"I'll write out a receipt on some of the hotel paper here," Kapfer said as he signed and blotted the check.
"Write out two of 'em, so I would have a copy of what I am giving you," Flixman rejoined. "It's always just so good to be businesslike. That's what I told that lawyer to-day. He wants me I should remember a couple of orphan asylums he's interested in, and I told him that if all them suckers would train up their children they would learn a business and not holler round the streets and make life miserable for people, they wouldn't got to be orphans at all. Half the orphans is that way on account they worried their parents to death with their carryings-on, and when they go to orphan asylums they get treated kind yet. And people is foolish enough to pay a lawyer fifty dollars if he should draw up a will to leave the orphan asylum their good hard-earned money."
He snorted indignantly as he examined Kapfer's receipt and compared it with the original.
"Well," he concluded as he appended his signature to the receipt, "I got him down to twenty-five dollars and I'll have that will business settled up this afternoon yet."
He placed the check and the receipt in his wallet and shook hands with Kapfer.
"Good-bye," he said. "And one thing let me warn you against: A Chosan should always get his money in cash oder certified check before he goes under the Chuppah at all; otherwise, after you are married and your father-in-law is a crook, understand me, you could kiss yourself good-bye with your wife's dowry – and don't you forget it!"
Max walked with him down the lobby; and they had barely reached the entrance when Charles Fischko and Miss Yetta Silbermacher arrived.
"Hello, Fischko!" Max cried, as Flixman tottered out into the street; but Fischko made no reply. Instead he suddenly let go Miss Silbermacher's arm and dashed hurriedly to the sidewalk. Max led Miss Silbermacher to a chair and engaged her immediately in conversation. She was naturally a little embarrassed by her unusual surroundings, though she was becomingly – not to say fashionably – attired in garments of her own making; and she gazed timidly about her for her absent lover.
"Elkan ain't here yet," Max explained, "on account you are a little ahead of time."
Miss Silbermacher's brown eyes sparkled merrily.
"I ain't the only one," she said as she jumped to her feet; for, though the hands of the clock on the desk pointed to ten minutes to two, Elkan Lubliner approached from the direction of the café. He caught sight of them while he was still some distance away, and two overturned chairs marked the last of his progress toward them.
At first he held out his hand in greeting; but the two little dimples that accompanied Yetta's smile overpowered his sense of propriety, and he embraced her affectionately.
"Where's Fischko?" he asked.
Both Kapfer and Miss Silbermacher looked toward the street entrance.
"He was here a minute ago," Kapfer said.
"Did you tell him that I wasn't Ury Shemansky at all?" Elkan inquired.
"Sure I did," Miss Silbermacher replied, "and he goes on something terrible, on account he says Mr. Kapfer told him last night you was already engaged; so I told him I know you was engaged because I am the party you are engaged to."
She squeezed Elkan's hand.
"And he says then," she continued, "that if that's the case what do we want him down here for? So I told him we are going to meet Mr. Polatkin and Mr. Scheikowitz, and – "
"And they'll be right here in a minute," Kapfer interrupted; "so you go upstairs to my room and I'll find Fischko and bring him up also."
He conducted them to the elevator, and even as the door closed behind them Fischko came running up the hall.
"Kapfer," he said, "who was that feller which he was just here talking to you?"
"What d'ye want to know for?" Kapfer asked.
"Never mind what I want to know for!" Fischko retorted. "Who is he?"
"Well, if you must got to know," Kapfer said, "he's a feller by the name Julius Flixman."
"What?" Fischko shouted.
"Fischko," Kapfer protested, "you ain't in no Canal Street coffee house here. This is a first-class hotel."
Fischko nodded distractedly.
"Sure, I know," he said. "Is there a place we could sit down here? I want to ask you something a few questions."
Kapfer led the way to the café and they sat down at a table near the door.
"Go ahead, Fischko," he said. "Polatkin and Scheikowitz will be here any minute."
"Well," Fischko began falteringly, "if this here feller is Julius Flixman, which he is coming from Bessarabia schon thirty years ago already, I don't want to do nothing in a hurry, Mr. Kapfer, on account I want to investigate first how things stand."
"What d'ye mean?" Kapfer demanded.
"Why, I mean this," Fischko cried: "If this here Flixman is well fixed, Kapfer, I want to know it, on account Miss Yetta Silbermacher is from Flixman's sister a daughter, understand me!"
Kapfer lit a cigar deliberately before replying. He was thinking hard.
"Do you mean to tell me," he said at last, "that this here Miss Silbermacher is Julius Flixman's a niece?"
"That's what I said," Fischko replied. "He comes here from Bessarabia thirty years ago already and from that day to this I never heard a word about him – Miss Silbermacher neither."
"Ain't the rest of his family heard from him?" Kapfer asked guardedly.
"There ain't no rest of his family," Fischko said. "Mrs. Silbermacher was his only sister, and she's dead over ten years since."
Kapfer nodded and drew reflectively on his cigar.
"Well, Fischko," he said finally, "I wouldn't let Flixman worry me none. He's practically a Schnorrer; he was in here just now on account he hears I am going to marry a rich girl and touches me for some money on the head of it. I guess you noticed that he looks pretty shabby – ain't it?"
"And sick too," Fischko added, just as a bellboy came into the café.
"Mr. Copper!" he bawled, and Max jumped to his feet.
"Right here," he said, and the bellboy handed him a card.
"Tell them I'll be with them in a minute," he continued; "and you stay here till I come back, Fischko. I won't be long."
He followed the bellboy to the desk, where stood Polatkin and Scheikowitz.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen," he said.
"Well, Mr. Kapfer," Scheikowitz replied, "I guess I got to congradulate you."
"Sure!" Kapfer murmured perfunctorily. "Let's go into the Moorish Room."
"What's the matter with the café?" Polatkin asked; but Scheikowitz settled the matter by leading the way to the Moorish Room, where they all sat down at a secluded table.
"The first thing I want to tell you, gentlemen," Kapfer said, "is that I know you feel that I turned a dirty trick on you about Elkan."
Scheikowitz shrugged expressively.
"The way we feel about it, Mr. Kapfer," he commented, "is that bygones must got to be bygones – and that's all there is to it."
"But," Kapfer said, "I don't want the bygones to be all on my side; so I got a proposition to make you. How would it be if I could fix up a good Shidduch for Elkan myself?"
"What for a Shidduch?" Polatkin asked.
"The girl is an orphan," Kapfer replied, "aber she's got one uncle, a bachelor, which ain't got no relation in the world but her, and he's worth anyhow seventy-five thousand dollars."
"How do you know he's worth that much?" Polatkin demanded.
"Because I got some pretty close business dealings with him," Kapfer replied; "and not only do I know he's worth that much, but I guess you do too, Mr. Polatkin, on account his name is Julius Flixman."
"Julius Flixman?" Scheikowitz cried. "Why, Julius Flixman ain't got a relation in the world – he told me so himself."
"When did he told you that?" Kapfer asked.
"A couple of days ago," Scheikowitz replied.
"Then that accounts for it," Kapfer said. "A couple of days ago nobody knows he had a niece – not even Flixman himself didn't; but to-day yet he would know it and he would tell you so himself."
"But – " Scheikowitz began, when once again a page entered the room, bawling a phonetic imitation of Kapfer's name.
"Wanted at the 'phone," he called as he caught sight of Kapfer.
"Excuse me," Kapfer said. "I'll be right back."
He walked hurriedly out of the room, and Polatkin turned with a shrug to his partner.
"Well, Scheikowitz," he began, "what did I told you? We are up here on a fool's errand – ain't it?"
Scheikowitz made no reply.
"I'll tell you, Polatkin," he said at length, "Flixman himself says to me he did got one sister living in Bessarabia, and he ain't heard from her in thirty years; and – "
At this juncture Kapfer rushed into the room.
"Scheikowitz," he gasped, "I just now got a telephone message from a lawyer on Center Street, by the name Goldenfein, I should come right down there. Flixman is taken sick suddenly and they find in his pocket my check and a duplicate receipt which he gives me, written on the hotel paper. Do me the favour and come with me."
Fifteen minutes later they stepped out of a taxicab in front of an old-fashioned office building in Center Street and elbowed their way through a crowd of over a hundred people toward the narrow doorway.
"Where do yous think you're going?" asked a policeman whose broad shoulders completely blocked the little entrance.
"We was telephoned for, on account a friend of ours by the name Flixman is taken sick here," Kapfer explained.
"Go ahead," the policeman said more gently; "but I guess you're too late."
"Is he dead?" Scheikowitz cried, and the policeman nodded solemnly as he stood to one side.
More than two hours elapsed before Kapfer, Polatkin, and Scheikowitz returned to the Prince Clarence. With them was Kent J. Goldenfein.
"Mr. Kapfer," the clerk said, "there's a man been waiting for you in the café for over two hours."
"I'll bring him right in," Kapfer said, and two minutes afterward he brought the gesticulating Fischko out of the café.
"Do you think I am a dawg?" Fischko cried. "I've been here two hours!"
"Well, come into the Moorish Room a minute," Kapfer pleaded, "and I'll fix everything up with you afterward."
He led the protesting Shadchen through the lobby, and when they entered the Moorish Room an impressive scene awaited them. On a divan, beneath some elaborate plush draperies, sat Kent J. Goldenfein, flanked on each side by Polatkin and Scheikowitz respectively, while spread on the table in front of them were the drafts of Flixman's will and the engrossed, unsigned copy, together with such other formidable-looking documents as Goldenfein happened to find in his pockets. He rose majestically as Fischko entered and turned on him a beetling frown.
"Is this the fellow?" he demanded sepulchrally, and Kapfer nodded.
"Mr. Fischko," Goldenfein went on, "I am an officer of the Supreme Court and I have been retained to investigate the affairs of Mr. Julius Flixman."
"Say, lookyhere, Kapfer," Fischko cried. "What is all this?"
Kapfer drew forward a chair.
"Sit down, Fischko," he said, "and answer the questions that he is asking you."
"But – " Fischko began.
"Come, come, Mr. Fischko," Goldenfein boomed, "you are wasting our time here. Raise your right hand!"
Fischko glanced despairingly at Kapfer and then obeyed.
"Do you solemnly swear," said Goldenfein, who, besides being an attorney-at-law was also a notary public, "that the affidavit you will hereafter sign will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"
"But – " Fischko began again.
"Do you?" Goldenfein roared, and Fischko nodded. Forthwith Goldenfein plied him with such ingeniously fashioned questions concerning the Flixman family that the answers presented a complete history of all its branches. Furthermore, the affidavit which Goldenfein immediately drew up lacked only such confirmatory evidence as could easily be supplied to establish the identity of Miss Yetta Silbermacher as Julius Flixman's only heir-at-law; and, after Fischko had meekly signed the jurat, Goldenfein rose ponderously to his feet.
"I congratulate you, Mr. Polatkin," he said. "I think there is no doubt that your nephew's fiancée will inherit Flixman's estate, thanks to my professional integrity."
"What d'ye mean your professional integrity?" Kapfer asked.
"Why, if I hadn't refused to accept twenty-two dollars for drawing the will and insisted on the twenty-five we had agreed upon," Goldenfein explained, "he would never have suffered the heart attack which prevented his signing the will before he died."
"Died!" Fischko exclaimed. "Is Julius Flixman dead?"
"Koosh, Fischko!" Polatkin commanded. "You would think you was one of the family the way you are acting. Come down to our store to-morrow and we would arrange things with you." He turned to Kapfer.
"Let's go upstairs and see Elkan – and Yetta," he said.
Immediately they trooped to the elevator and ascended to the seventh floor.
"All of you wait here in the corridor," Kapfer whispered, "and I'll go and break it to them." He tiptoed to his room and knocked gently at the door.
"Come!" Elkan cried, and Kapfer turned the knob.
On a sofa near the window sat Elkan, with his arm surrounding his fiancée's waist and her head resting on his shoulder.
"Hello, Max!" he cried. "What's kept you? We must have been waiting here at least a quarter of an hour!"