do nothing rash, Gans," Abe advised. "What for a looking
feller is this salesman of yours?"

"He's a tall, white-faced loafer with a big red mustache," Gans replied,
"and his name is Ignatz Kresnick."

Abe jumped to his feet.

"Come with me," he cried. Together they took the elevator to the eighth
floor and, as Ignatz Kresnick dealt the cards for the five-hundredth
time in that game, all unconscious of his fast-approaching Nemesis,
Mozart Rabiner played the concluding measures of the _Liebestod_ softly,
slowly, like a benediction:

_Ertrinken--
Versinken--
Unbewusst--
Hoechste Lust._

CHAPTER XV

"Who do you think I seen it in Hammersmith's just now, Mawruss?" Abe
Potash shouted as he burst into the show-room one Saturday afternoon
in April.

"I ain't deaf, Abe," Morris replied. "Who did you seen it?"

"J. Edward Kleebaum from Minneapolis," Abe answered.

Morris shrugged.

"What d'ye want _me_ to do, Abe?" he asked.

Abe ignored the question.

"He promised he would come in at two o'clock and look over the line," he
announced triumphantly.

"Plenty crooks looked over our line already, Abe," Morris commented,
"and so far as I'm concerned, they could look over it all they want to,
Abe, so long as they shouldn't buy nothing from us."

"What d'ye mean? Crooks?" Abe cried. "The way Kleebaum talks he would
give us an order for a thousand dollars goods, maybe, Mawruss. He ain't
no crook."

"Ain't he?" Morris replied. "What's the reason he ain't, Abe? The way I
look at it, Abe, when a feller makes it a dirty failure like that feller
made it in Milwaukee, Abe, and then goes to Cleveland, Abe, and opens up
as the bon march, Abe, and does another bust up, Abe, and then he goes
to----"

"S'enough, Mawruss," Abe interrupted. "Them things is from old times
already. To-day is something else again. That feller done a tremendous
business last spring, Mawruss, and this season everybody is falling over
themselves to sell him goods."

"Looky here, Abe," Morris broke in, "you think the feller ain't a crook,
and you're entitled to think all you want to, Abe, but I seen it Sol
Klinger yesterday, and what d'ye think he told me?"

"I don't know what he told you, Mawruss," Abe replied, "but it wouldn't
be the first time, Mawruss, that a feller tells lies about a concern
that he couldn't sell goods to, Mawruss. It's the old story of the dawg
and the grapes."

Morris looked hurt.

"I'm surpris