For all I would know, he might of sold his
house already."

"You don't mean to say that his house is on the market, do you?" Marks
said sharply.

"I don't mean to say nothing," Abe replied, as he started to leave. "All
I mean to say is that I am tired of waiting for that lowlife Rothschild,
and I must get back to my store."

"Wait a bit; I'll go downstairs with you," Marks broke in.

As they walked down to the elevated road they exchanged further
confidences, by which it appeared that Mr. Marks was in the furniture
business on Third Avenue, and that he lived on Lenox Avenue near One
Hundred and Sixteenth Street.

"Why, you are practically a neighbor of Mawruss Perlmutter," Abe cried.

"Is that so?" Mr. Marks said, as they reached the elevated railway.

"Yes," Abe went on, "he lives on a Hundred and Eighteenth Street and
Lenox Avenue."

"You don't say so?" Mr. Marks replied. "Well, Mr. Potash, I guess I got
to leave you here."

They shook hands, and after Abe had proceeded half-way up the steps to
the station platform he paused to observe Mr. Marks penciling an address
in his memorandum book.

When he again entered his show-room Morris had just hung up the
telephone receiver.

"Yes, Abe," he said, "you've gone and stuck your feet in it all right."

"What d'ye mean?" Abe asked.

"Ferdy Rothschild just rung me up," Morris explained, "and he says you
went down to his office while he was out, and you seen it there a feller
what he was going to sell Rashkin's house to, and you went and broke up
the deal, and that he will sue you yet in the courts."

"Let him sue us," Abe said. "All he knows about is what the office-boy
tells him. I didn't break up no deal, because there wasn't no deal to
bust up, Mawruss."

"Why not?" Morris asked.

"Because if the deal was to sell Rashkin's house," Abe explained,
"Rothschild ain't in it at all, because I myself is the only person what
could sell that house."

He drew the option from his breast pocket and handed it to Morris, who
read it over carefully.

"Well, Abe," Morris commented, "that's only throwing away good money
with bad, because you couldn't do nothing with that house in two weeks
or in two years, neither."

"I know it," Abe said confidently, "but so long as I got an option on
that house nobody else couldn't do nothing with it, neither. And so long
as Rashkin ain't able to undersell you, Mawruss, you got a chance to get
rid of your house and to come out e