tter, Abe?" Felix asked. "Are you afraid of the feller? He
couldn't eat you up, Abe."

"What d'ye mean, afraid of him?" Abe exclaimed. "I am seeing big
merchants every day, Felix, and I could talk right up to them too. But
this here is my partner's affair. He hired Kovalenko in the first place;
and----"

"What's the use talking, Abe?" Morris interrupted. "If you go home I go
home; so you got to stay and we would both see the feller. What is the
difference, supposing the feller does got a couple million dollars?"

"A couple million dollars!" Felix said. "Why, I bet yer, if the feller's
got a cent he is worth twenty million dollars."

Abe drew pale.

"Say, lookyhere, why should I talk to Mr. Steuermann?" he besought. "You
could do this without me, Mawruss."

"Don't be a baby, Abe," Morris retorted. "Felix would stay here with us
and----"

"Not me, boys," Felix said. "I guess you got to excuse me. I done enough
already and if I don't get right home and change my underclothes, which
they are dripping wet with perspiration, I would sure catch a bad cold."

He shook Abe and Morris warmly by the hand; and hardly had the elevator
door closed behind him when the showroom became a scene of nervous
activity.

"Nathan," Abe yelled to the shipping clerk, "fetch the broom. The place
looks like a pigsty here!"

He turned to Morris with excited gesture.

"Do me the favour, Mawruss," he said; "tell a couple of them young
fellers from the cutting room to come in here. Them sample-racks ain't
been straightened up for a week. I am going round to the barber shop,
Mawruss, and I would be right back."

* * * * *

It lacked one minute of five and Abe and Morris sat at their respective
desks in the firm's office, when Miss Cohen, the bookkeeper, knocked
timidly at the door.

"A gentleman wants to see you, Mr. Potash," she said. "He wouldn't give
his name."

Abe cleared his throat with an effort.

"Tell him he should come right in," he croaked; and a moment later a
tall personage, clad in a fur overcoat and wearing a freshly ironed silk
hat, appeared in the doorway.

"Is this Mr. Potash?" he asked in rounded, oratorical tones.

Abe nodded. For a moment he was bereft of speech and he jerked his head
sideways in the direction of his partner.

"This is Mr. Perlmutter," he said at length--"my partner."

"How do you do, sir?" the visitor replied as he seized Morris's clammy
palm in a warm embr