our place? That's all."

"What?" Abe cried. He sat down in the nearest chair and gaped at
Linkheimer.

"Yes, sir," Linkheimer repeated, "you could be ruined by a thing like
that."

Abe's lower jaw fell still further. He was too dazed for comment.

"W-what could I do about it?" he gasped at length.

"Do about it!" Linkheimer cried. "Why, if I had a partner who played me
a dirty trick like that I'd kick him out of my place. There ain't a
copartnership agreement in existence that doesn't expressly say one
partner shouldn't give a bail bond without the other partner's consent."

Abe rocked to and fro in his chair.

"After all these years a feller should do a thing like that to me!" he
moaned.

Linkheimer smiled with satisfaction, and he was about to instance a
striking and wholly imaginary case of one partner ruining another by
giving a bail bond when the door leading to the cutting room in the rear
opened and Morris Perlmutter appeared. As his eyes rested on Linkheimer
they blazed with anger, and for once Morris seemed to possess a certain
dignity.

"Out," he commanded; "out from _mein_ store, you dawg, you!"

As he rushed on the startled button dealer, Abe grabbed his coat-tails
and pulled him back.

"Say, what are we here, Mawruss," he cried, "a theaytre?"

"Let him alone, Abe," Linkheimer counselled in a rather shaky voice.
"I'm pretty nearly twenty years older than he is, but I guess I could
cope with him."

"You wouldn't cope with nobody around here," Abe replied. "If youse two
want to cope you should go out on the sidewalk."

"Never mind," Morris broke in, his valour now quite evaporated; "I'll
fix him yet."

"Another thing, Mawruss," Abe interrupted; "why don't you come in the
front way like a man."

"I come in which way I please, Abe," Morris rejoined. "And furthermore,
Abe, when I got with me a poor skeleton of a feller like Nathan
Schenkmann, Abe, I don't take him up the front elevator. I would be
ashamed for our competitors that they should think we let our
work-people starve. The feller actually fainted on me as we was coming
up the freight elevator."

"As you was coming up the freight elevator?" Abe repeated. "Do you mean
to tell me you got the nerve to actually bring this feller into _mein_
place yet?"

"Do I got to get your permission, Abe, I should bring who I want to
into my own place?" Morris rejoined.

"Then all I got to say is you should take him right out again," Abe
said. "I