ner cried and, for answer, Abe opened the door.

"Hallo, Moe!" he said. "You don't know me. What? I'm Abe Potash."

"Oh, hello, Potash!" Rabiner said, rising from the piano stool.

"That's some pretty mournful music you was giving us, Moe," Abe went on.
"Sounds like business was poor already. Ain't you working no more?"

"I am and I ain't," Mozart replied. "I'm supposed to be selling goods
for Klinger & Klein, but since I only sold it one bill in two weeks I
ain't got much hopes that I'll get enough more money out of 'em to move
me out of town."

"What do you make next, Moe?" Abe asked.

"St. Paul and Minneapolis," Mozart replied.

Abe handed him a large cigar and, lighting the mate to it, puffed away
complacently.

"That was a pretty good order you got it from Prosnauer which Sol
Klinger tells me about," he said.

Mozart nodded sadly.

"Looky here, Moe," Abe went on, "how much money do you need to
move you?"

Mozart lifted his eyebrows and shrugged hopelessly.

"More as you would lend me, Potash," he said. "So what's the use talking
about it?"

"Well, I was going to say," Abe continued, "if it was something what you
might call within reason, Moe, I might advance it if----"

"If what?" Moe inquired.

"If you would tell me the insides of just how you got it that order from
Prosnauer."

Mozart gave a deprecatory wave of his right hand.

"You don't got to bribe me to tell you that, Potash," he said, "because
I ain't got no concern in that order no longer. I give up my commission
there to a feller by the name Ignatz Kresnick."

"A white-faced feller with a big red mustache?" Abe asked.

"That's him," Mozart replied. "The luck that feller Kresnick got it is
something you wouldn't believe at all. He could fall down a sewer
manhole and come up in a dress suit and a clean shave already. He cleans
me out last night two hundred dollars and the commission on that
Prosnauer order."

"But you didn't get that order in the first place, Moe," Abe said.
"Marks Pasinsky got the order."

"Sure, I know," Mozart replied, "but he got set back a couple of four
hundred hands last Tuesday night with Katzen and me in the game, and
the way he settles up his losing is that Katzen and me should take his
commissions on a couple of orders which he says he is going to get from
Simon Kuhner, of Mandleberger Brothers & Co., and Chester Prosnauer, of
the Arcade Mercantile Company. Sure enough, he gets the orders from both
of '