nside the regular door,
is worth pretty near a hundred dollars."

Abe nodded again.

"And I bet the whole shooting-match don't fetch five hundred dollars at
the receiver's sale," Feinstein said.

"Why, I'd give that much for it myself," Abe cried.

Feinstein puffed away at his cigar for a minute.

"Do you honestly mean you'd like to buy them fixtures?" he said at last.

"Sure I'd like to buy them," Abe replied. "When is the receiver's sale
going to be?"

"Next week, right after the order of adjudication is signed. But that
won't do you no good. The dealers would bid 'em up on you, and you
wouldn't stand no show at all. What you want to do is to buy 'em from
the receiver at private sale."

"So?" Abe commented. "Well, how would I go about that?"

Feinstein pulled his hat over his eyes and, resting his cigar on the top
of Rifkin's desk with the lighted end next to the wood, he drew Abe
toward the rear of the office.

"Leave that to me," he said mysteriously. "Of course, you couldn't
expect to get them fixtures much under six hundred dollars at private
sale, because it's got to be done under the direction of the court; but
for fifty dollars I could undertake to let you in on 'em for, say, five
hundred and seventy-five dollars. How's that?"

Abe puffed at his cigar before replying.

"I got to see it my partner first," he said.

"That's all right, too," Feinstein rejoined; "but there was one dealer
in here this morning already. As soon as the rest of 'em get on to
this here failure they'll be buzzing around them fixtures like flies
in a meat market, and maybe I won't be able to put it through for you
at all."

"I tell you what I'll do," Abe said. "I'll go right down to the store
and I'll be back here at two o'clock."

"You've got to hustle if you want them fixtures," he said.

"I bet yer I got to hustle," Abe said, his eyes fixed on the marred
surface of the desk, "for if you're going to smoke many more cigars
around here them fixtures won't be no more good to nobody."

"That don't harm 'em none," Feinstein replied. "A cabinetmaker could fix
that up with a piece of putty and some shellac so as you wouldn't know
it from new."

"But if I buy it them fixtures," Abe concluded, as he turned toward the
door, "I'd as lief have 'em without putty, if it's all the same to you."

"Sure," Feinstein replied, and no sooner had Abe disappeared into the
hall than he drew a morning paper from his pocket and settled dow