erfarb's dress-suits his
establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery
stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices
of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist
Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of
Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead
air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought
to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the
flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of
Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a
straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait."

He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one
window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes
which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a
morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long,
clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven,
was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out
his hands and tried to look benevolent.

"Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt.

"I got just the t'ing for you!"

The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the
first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's
uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!"

Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with
dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked
about it was the good garage stink of gasoline.

"That's almost worn out," he growled.

At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit
flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He
looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt
was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt
humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class."

"Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance,
but if you say so----"

In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble,
Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing
patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed.
He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of
velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become