e was by no means of a robust physical type, and his
hands trembled so nervously as he fumbled for his papers in his breast
pocket that he dropped its contents on the office floor. Elkan stooped
to assist in retrieving the scattered papers, and among the documents he
gathered together was a cabinet photograph.

"My wife!" Dishkes murmured hoarsely. "She ain't so strong, and I am
sending her up to the country a couple months ago. I've been meaning I
should go up and see her ever since, but----"

Here he gulped dismally; and there was an embarrassed silence, broken
only by the faint noise occasioned by Philip Scheikowitz scratching his
chin.

"That's a _Rosher_--that feller Sammet," Polatkin said at length.
"Honestly, the way some business men ain't got no mercy at all for the
other feller, you would think, Scheikowitz, they was living back in the
old country yet!"

Scheikowitz nodded and glanced nervously from the photograph to Elkan.

"I think you was telling me you got a couple idees about helping Dishkes
out, Elkan," he said. "So, in the first place, Dishkes, you should
please let us see a list of your creditors."

With this prelude Scheikowitz drew forward his chair and plunged into a
discussion of Dishkes' affairs that lasted for more than two hours; and
when Dishkes at length departed he took with him notices of a meeting
addressed to his twenty creditors, prepared for immediate mailing by
Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's stenographer.

"And that's what we let ourselves in for," Scheikowitz declared after
the elevator door had closed behind Dishkes. "To-morrow morning at
eleven o'clock the place here would look like the waiting room of a
depot, and all our competitors would be rubbering at our stock already."

"Let 'em rubber!" Elkan said. "If I don't get an extension for that
feller my name ain't Elkan Lubliner at all; because between now and then
I am going round to see them twenty creditors, and I bet yer they will
sign an extension agreement, with the figures I am going to put up to
them!"

"Figures!" Scheikowitz jeered. "What good is figures to them fellers?
Showing figures to a bankrupt's creditors is like taking to a restaurant
a feller which is hungry and letting him look at the knives and forks
and plates, understand me!"

Elkan nodded.

"Sure, I know," he said; "but the figures ain't all."

Surreptitiously he drew from his pocket a faded cabinet photograph.

"I sneaked this away from Dish