"What do you mean?" Feldman asked. "Why wouldn't he know his own daughter was married?"
"Because she's living home yet," Philip replied, and "I can't persuade her to go housekeeping, neither."
Feldman frowned for a moment and then he struck the desk with his fist.
"By jiminy!" he shouted, "you've got the old man by the whiskers!"
It was now Philip's turn to ask what Feldman meant.
"Why," the latter explained, "your wife's inchoate right of dower is still outstanding."
"That's where you make a big mistake, Mr. Feldman," Philip corrected. "My Birdie is a neat dresser and never so much as a pin out of place."
"You don't understand," Feldman continued. "As soon as Birdie and you got married she took an interest in your property."
"Sure she took an interest in my property," Philip assented. "Why, if it wouldn't be for her I wouldn't know nothing about this here sale to-day."
"But I mean that as soon as she married you she became vested with the right to receive the rents of a third of that property during her lifetime as soon as you died," said Feldman.
"Well, we won't worry about that," Philip said with a deprecatory wave of his hand, "because, in the first place, that property is pretty near vacant and don't bring in enough rents to pay the taxes, and, in the second place, I'm still good and healthy and I wouldn't die for a long time yet."
"Oh, what's the use!" Feldman cried. "What I mean is that they can't foreclose those second mortgages unless they make Birdie a party to the suit and serve her with the summons; so, all you have to do to stop the sale is to go down to the salesroom and, when the auctioneer starts to ask for bids, get up and tell 'em all about it. Why, they'll have to begin their suit all over again."
"But," Philip protested, "if I tell 'em all about it the old man will throw Birdie out of the house."
"Hold on!" Feldman broke in. "You mustn't tell them you're married to Birdie. Just tell them you're married, and let them find out your wife's name for themselves. Although, to be sure, that won't take long, for the record of marriage licenses at the city hall will show it."
"License nothing!" Philip cried. "We didn't get no license at the city hall. We got married by a justice of the peace in Jersey City."
"Fine!" Feldman exclaimed, his professional ethics thrown to the winds. "That'll keep 'em guessing as long as you want."
"All I want is a month, and by that time I can raise the money and fix the whole thing up," Margolius replied.
Feldman looked at his watch.
"Chase yourself," he said; "it's a quarter of twelve, and the foreclosure sale begins at noon."
VI
On the rostrum of an auctioneer in the Vesey Street salesroom stood Eleazer Levy in weighty conversation with Miles M. Scully, the referee in foreclosure. Scully's brow was furrowed into a thousand earned wrinkles, and the little knot of real-estate brokers who regularly attend foreclosure sales gazed reverently on the two advocates.
"And here was this guy," Levy concluded, "with nothing but a pair of sixes all the time."
"But in a table-stakes game," Scully murmured, "you make a sight more if you don't butt into every pot. If you think you're topped lay 'em down. That's what I do, and it pays."
They were waiting for the auctioneer to appear, and Goldblatt hung around the edge of the crowd and gazed anxiously at them. He had heard that morning of the proposed street widening and wanted the sale to go through without a hitch. At length the auctioneer arrived and the clerk read off the notice of sale in a monotonous gabble just as Philip elbowed his way through the crowd.
"Now, then, gentlemen," the auctioneer announced pompously, "the four parcels will be sold separately. Each is subject to a first mortgage of twenty thousand dollars and is otherwise free and clear except the taxes. The amount of taxes is – "
"Hey, there!" Philip cried at this juncture. "I got something to say, too."
The auctioneer paused and fixed Philip with what was intended to be a withering look.
"Put that man out!" the auctioneer called to one of the attendants.
"You could put me out," Philip yelled, "if you want to, but you couldn't put my wife out, because she ain't been served with the summons and complaint in the first place, and she ain't here in the second place."
Goldblatt turned pale and started for the rostrum, while the auctioneer motioned the attendant to hold off for a minute.
"Is he a married man?" the auctioneer asked Levy.
"He's a faker," Levy replied. "Go ahead with the sale."
"Am I a faker?" Philip yelled, holding up his left hand. "Well, look at that there ring."
He pulled it off with an effort and handed it to the auctioneer.
"Look inside," he said. And, sure enough, the inner side bore the inscription: "B. G. to P. M., 10-20-'09." Goldblatt looked at it, too; but B. G. meant nothing to him and he handed it back to the auctioneer.
"That's only a scheme what he's trying to work it," he said. "Give him back the ring and go ahead with the sale."
"One moment," said Miles M. Scully. "I'm the referee here, and I ain't going to take no such chance as that. I'm going to adjoin this here sale one week and investigate what this here guy says in the meantime."
Forthwith, the auctioneer announced a week's adjournment of the four sales, and Philip resumed his wedding ring with a parting diabolical grin at Goldblatt, and left the auction-room. He went to the nearest telephone pay station and rang up the Goldblatt residence, but for over half an hour he received only Central's assurance that as soon as there was an answer she would call him.
"But, Central," he protested, "there's got to be somebody there. They can't all be out."
And Philip was right. There were two people sitting in the front parlour of the Goldblatt residence, and another and more interested person stooped in the back parlour, with her ear to the crack of the sliding doors which divided the two rooms. The telephone bell trilled impatiently at brief intervals, but all three were oblivious to its appeal; for the two persons in the front parlour were engaged in conversation of an earnest character, and the person in the rear room would not have missed a word of it for all the telephones in the world.
"Yes, Fannie," said one of the two persons, "I come back to you, anyhow, and I come back for good."
He placed his arms around her ample waist.
"I assure you, Fannie," he concluded, "them dollar-a-day American-plan hotels in the northern-tier counties is nothing but poison to a feller. I am pretty near starved."
"Why didn't you say so at first?" Fannie replied, rising from the couch where she had been sitting with Feigenbaum. "I got some fine gefüllte Fische in the ice-box."
Whereupon Birdie answered the 'phone.
"Hallo!" came a voice from the other end of the wire. "Where was you all the time? I got some good news for you."
"I've got some good news for you, too," Birdie replied. "Fannie and Mr. Feigenbaum are engaged."