r stock Gunst & Baumer were obliged to buy
in all the Interstate offered at five, and when at length their
resources gave out they announced their suspension. Interstate
immediately collapsed and sold down in less than a quarter of an hour
from five bid, five and a thirty-second asked, to a quarter bid,
three-eighths asked.

Abe handed back the paper to Morris and lit a cigar.

"For a man what has just played his partner for a sucker, Abe," Morris
said, "you take it nice and quiet."

Abe puffed slowly before replying.

"After all, Mawruss," he said, "I was right."

"You was right?" Morris exclaimed. "What d'ye mean?"

"I mean, Mawruss," Abe went on, "I figured it out right. I says to
myself when I got that check for twenty-five hundred dollars: If I buy
this here stock from stock exchanges and we make money Mawruss will go
pretty near crazy. He'll want to buy it the whole stock exchange full
from stocks, and in the end it will bust us. On the other hand, Mawruss,
I figured it out that if we bought this here stock and lose money on it,
then Mawruss'll go crazy also, and want to murder me or something."

He paused and puffed again at his cigar.

"So, Mawruss," he concluded, "I went down to Gunst & Baumer's building,
Mawruss; but instead of going to Gunst & Baumer, Mawruss, I went one
flight lower down to Hill, Arkwright & Thompson's, Mawruss, and I didn't
buy it Interstate Copper, Mawruss, but I bought it instead silk
foulards, Mawruss--seventy-five hundred dollars' worth for twenty-five
hundred dollars, and it's laying right now up in the cutting-room."

He leaned back in his chair and triumphantly surveyed his partner, who
had collapsed into a crushed and perspiring heap.

"So, Mawruss," he said, "I am a gambler. Hey? I shed your blood? What? I
ruin you with my fool advice? Ain't it?"

Morris raised a protesting hand.

"Abe," he murmured huskily, "I done you an injury. It's me what's the
fool. I was carried away by B. Sheitlis' making his money so easy."

Abe jumped to his feet.

"Ho-ly smokes!" he cried and dashed out of the show-room to the
telephone in the rear of the store. He returned a moment later with his
cigar at a rakish angle to his jutting lower lip.

"It's all right, Mawruss," he said. "I rung up the Kosciusko Bank and
the two-hundred-and-seventy-five-dollar check went through all right."

"Sure it did," Morris replied, his drooping spirits once more revived.
"I deposited it at eleven o'c