wouldn't got
sense enough to play pool with him. You would waste your time trying to
learn him auction pinochle."

"But, Mr. Gembitz," Schrimm began, "when a feller plays Kelly pool----"

"And as for Max," Gembitz interrupted, "if you would be so good a boy
as Max is, Schrimm, might your father would be alive to-day yet."

"What d'ye mean?" Schrimm cried. "My father died when I was two years
old already."

"Sure, I know," Gembitz concluded; "and one thing I am only sorry,
Schrimm: your father was a decent, respectable man, Schrimm, but he
ought to got to die three years sooner. That's all."

No sooner had Mr. Gembitz left Hammersmith's restaurant than the
_gefuellte Rinderbrust_ commenced to assert itself; and by the time
he arrived at his place of business he was experiencing all the
preliminary symptoms of a severe bilious attack. Nevertheless, he
pulled himself together and as he sat down at his desk he called loudly
for Sidney.

"He ain't in," Max said.

"Oh, he ain't, ain't he?" Mr. Gembitz retorted. "Well, where is he?"

"He went out with a feller from the New Idea Store, Bridgetown," Max
answered, drawing on his imagination in the defence of his brother.

"New Idea Store!" Gembitz repeated. "What's the feller's name?"

Max shrugged.

"I forgot his name," he answered.

"Well, I ain't forgot his name," Gembitz continued. "His name is Kelly;
and every afternoon Schrimm tells me Sidney is playing this here Kelly
pool."

For a brief interval Max stared at his father; then he broke into an
unrestrained laugh.

"_Nu!_" Gembitz cried. "What's the joke?"

"Why," Max explained, "you're all twisted. Kelly ain't a feller at all.
Kelly pool's a game, like you would say straight pinochle and auction
pinochle--there's straight pool and Kelly pool."

Gembitz drummed on his desk with his fingers.

"Do you mean to told me there ain't no such person, which he is buying
goods for a concern, called Kelly?" he demanded.

Max nodded.

"Then that loafer just fools away his time every afternoon," Gembitz
said in choking tones; "and, after all I done for him, he----"

"What's the matter, popper?" Max cried, for Gembitz's lips had suddenly
grown purple, and, even as Max reached forward to aid him, he lurched
from his chair on to the floor.

Half an hour later Samuel Gembitz was undergoing the entirely novel
experience of riding uptown in a taxicab, accompanied by a young
physician who had been procured from the