s:
"_Yow! Ich glaub's._"

"Five hundred dollars it costs us only to-day yet, Mr. Eschenbach,"
Birsky went on, clearing his throat pompously; "but certainly, Mr.
Eschenbach, in the end it pays us."

"How do you make that out?" Finkman demanded gruffly.

"Why, the money remains on deposit with a bank," Birsky explained, "and
every week for five weeks we deduct from the operators' wages also one
dollar a week, which we put with the five hundred we are giving."

Finkman continued to nod more briskly in a manner that proclaimed: "I
see the whole thing now."

"So that at the end of five weeks," Birsky went on, "every operator is
got coming to him ten dollars."

Finkman snorted cynically.

"Coming to him!" he said with satirical emphasis.

"Coming to him," Birsky retorted, "that's what I said, Finkman; and the
whole idee is very fine for us as well as for them."

"I should say so," Finkman commented; "because at the end of five weeks
you got in bank a thousand dollars which you ain't paying no interest
on to nobody."

"With us, a thousand dollars don't figure so much as like with some
people, Finkman," Birsky retorted; "and our idee is that if we should
keep the money on deposit it's like a security that our operators
wouldn't strike on us so easy. Furthermore, Finkman, if you are
doubting our good faith, understand me, let me say that Mr. Eschenbach
is welcome he should come round to my place to-morrow morning yet and I
would show him everything is open and aboveboard, like a lodge
already."

"Why, I should be delighted to see how this thing works with you, Mr.
Birsky," Eschenbach said. "I suppose you know what an interest I am
taking in welfare work of this description."

"I think he had a sort of an idee of it," Finkman interrupted, "when he
butts in here."

Again Eschenbach smiled beneficently on the rival manufacturers in an
effort to preserve the peace.

"I should like to have some other details from your plan, Mr. Birsky,"
he said. "How do you propose to spend this money?"

Birsky drew back his chair from the table.

"It's a long story, Mr. Eschenbach," he replied; "and if it's all the
same to you I would tell you the whole thing round at my place
to-morrow morning."

He rose to his feet and, searching in his waistcoat pocket, produced a
card that he laid on the table in front of Eschenbach.

"Here is our card, Mr. Eschenbach," he said, "and I hope we could look
for you at eleven o'clock, say."