Читать книгу Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things - Glass Montague - Страница 6

Table of Contents

"Nu, what's the matter now?" Morris Perlmutter asked, as he entered the office one morning after the cessation of hostilities on the western front.

"Ai, tzuris!" Abe moaned in reply, and for at least a minute he continued to rock to and fro in his chair and to make incoherent noises through his nostrils in the manner of a person suffering either from toothache or the recent cancelation of a large order.

"It serves you right," Morris said. "I told you you shouldn't eat that liberty roast at Wasserbauer's yesterday. It used to give you the indigestion when it was known as Koenigsburger Klops, which it is like the German Empire now calling itself the German Republic; changing its name ain't going to alter its poisonous disposition none."

"That's right!" Abe said. "Make jokes, why don't you? You are worser as this here feller Zero."

"What feller Zero?" Morris demanded.

"Zero the emperor what fiddled when Rome was burning," Abe replied. "He's got nothing on you. You would fiddle if Rome, Watertown, and Ogdensburg was burning."

"I don't know what you are talking about at all," Morris said. "And, besides, the feller's name was Nero, not Zero."

"That's what you say," Abe commented, "which you also said that the operators was only bluffing and that they wouldn't strike on us in a thousand years, and considering that you said this only yesterday, Mawruss, it's already wonderful how time flies."

"Well," Morris said, "how could I figure that them lunatics is going to pick out the time when we've got practically no work for them and was going to fire them, anyway, to call a strike on us?"

"You should ought to have figured that way," Abe declared. "Didn't the Kaiser abdicate just before them Germans got ready to kick him out?"

"The king business ain't the garment business," Morris observed.

"I know it ain't," Abe agreed. "Kings has got their worries, too, but when it comes to laying awake nights trying to figure out whether them designers somewheres in France is going to turn out long, full skirts or short, narrow skirts for the fall and winter of nineteen-nineteen and nineteen-twenty, Mawruss, I bet yer the entire collection of kings, active or retired, doesn't got to take two grains of trional between them."

"If everybody worried like you do, Abe," Morris said, "the government would got to issue sleeping-powder cards like sugar cards and limit the consumption of sleeping-powders to not more than two pounds of sleeping-powders per person per month in each household."

"Well, some one has got to do the worrying around here, Mawruss," Abe said, "which if it rested with you, y'understand, we could make up a line of samples for next season that wouldn't be no more like Paris designs than General Pershing looks like his pictures in the magazines."

"Say, for that matter," Morris said, "we are just as good guessers as our competitors; on account the way things is going nowadays, nobody is going to try to make a trip to Paris to get fashion designs, because if he figured on crossing the ocean to buy model gowns for the fall and winter of nineteen-nineteen and nineteen-twenty, y'understand, between the time that he applied for his passport and the time the government issued it to him, y'understand, it would already be the spring and summer season of nineteen-twenty-four and nineteen-twenty-five. So the best thing we could do is to snoop round among the trade, and whatever we find the majority is making up for next year, we would make up the same styles also, and that's all there would be to it."

"We wouldn't do nothing of the kind," Abe declared. "I've been thinking this thing over, and I come to the conclusion that it's up to you to go over to Paris and see what is going on over there."

"I don't got to go to Paris for that, Abe," Morris said. "I can read the papers the same like anybody else, and just so long as there is a chance that the war would start up again and them hundred-mile guns is going to resume operations, I am content to get my ideas of Paris styles at a distance of three thousand miles if I never sold another garment as long as I live."

"But when it was working yet, it only went off every twenty minutes," Abe said.

"I don't care if it went off every Fourth of July," Morris said, "because if I went over there it would be just my luck that the peace nogotiations falls through and the Germans invent a gun leaving Frankfort ever hour on the hour and arriving in Paris daily, including Sundays, without leaving enough trace of me to file a proof of death with. Am I right or wrong?"

"All right," Abe said. "If that's the way you feel about it, I will go to Paris."

"You will go to Paris?" Morris exclaimed.

"Sure!" Abe declared. "The operators is on strike, business is rotten, and I'm sick and tired of paying life-insurance premiums, anyway. Besides, if Leon Sammet could get a passport, why couldn't I?"

"You mean to say that faker is going to Paris to buy model gowns?" Morris demanded.

"I seen him on the Subway this morning, and the way he talked about how easy he got his passport, you would think that every time he was in Washington with a line of them masquerade costumes which Sammet Brothers makes up, if he didn't stop in and take anyhow a bit of lunch with the Wilsons, y'understand, the President raises the devil with Tumulty why didn't he let him know Leon Sammet was in town."

"Then that settles it," Morris declared, reaching for his hat.

"Where are you going?" Abe asked.

"I am going straight down to see Henry D. Feldman and tell that crook he should get for me a passport," Morris said.

"You wouldn't positively do nothing of the kind," Abe said. "Did you ever hear the like? Wants to go to a lawyer to get a passport! An idea!"

"Well, who would I go to, then—an osteaopath?" Morris asked.

"Leon Sammet told me all about it," Abe said. "You go down to a place on Rector Street where you sign an application, and—"

"That's just what I thought," Morris interrupted, "and the least what happens to fellers which signs applications without a lawyer, y'understand, is that six months later a truck-driver arrives one morning and says where should he leave the set of Washington Irving in one hundred and fifty-six volumes or the piano with stool and scarf complete, as the case may be. So I am going to see Feldman, and if it costs me fifteen or twenty dollars, it's anyhow a satisfaction to know that when you do things with the advice of a smart crooked lawyer, nobody could put nothing over on you outside of your lawyer."

When Morris returned an hour later, however, instead of an appearance of satisfaction, his face bore so melancholy an expression that for a few minutes Abe was afraid to question him.

"Nu!" he said at last. "I suppose you got turned down for being overweight or something?"

"What do you mean—overweight?" Morris demanded. "What do you suppose I am applying for—a twenty-year endowment passport or one of them tontine passports with cash surrender value after three years?"

"Then what is the matter you look so rachmonos?" Abe said.

"How should I look with the kind of partner which I've got it?" Morris asked. "Paris models he must got to got. Domestic designs ain't good enough for him. Such high-grade idees he's got, and I've got to suffer for it yet."

"Well, don't go to Europe. What do I care?" Abe said.

"We must go," Morris replied.

"What do you mean—we?" Abe demanded.

"I mean you and me," Morris said. "Feldman says that just so long as it is one operation he would charge the same for getting one passport as for getting two, excepting the government fee of two dollars. So what do you think—I am going to pay Henry D. Feldman two hundred dollars for getting me a passport when for two dollars extra I can get one for you also?"

"But who is going to look after the store?" Abe exclaimed.

"Say!" Morris retorted, "you've got relations enough working around here, which every time you've hired a fresh one, you've given me this blood-is-redder-than-water stuff, and now is your chance to prove it. We wouldn't be away longer as six weeks at the outside, so go ahead, Abe. Here is the application for the passport. Sign your name on the dotted line and don't say no more about it."

"Yes, Mawruss," Abe said, three weeks later, as they sat in the restaurant of their Paris hotel, "in a country where the coffee pretty near strangles you, even when it's got cream and sugar in it, y'understand, the cooking has got to be good, because in a two-dollar-a-day American plan hotel the management figures that no matter how rotten the food is, the guests will say, 'Well, anyhow, the coffee was good,' and get by with it that way."

"On the other hand, Abe," Morris suggested, "maybe the French hotel people figure that if they only make the coffee bad enough, the guests would say, 'Well, one good thing, while the food is terrible, it ain't a marker on the coffee.'"

"But the food tastes pretty good to me, Mawruss," Abe said.

"Wait till you've been here a week, Abe," Morris advised him. "Anything would taste good to you after what you went through on that boat."

"What do you mean—after what I went through?" Abe demanded. "What I went through don't begin to compare with what you went through, which honestly, Mawruss, there was times there on that second day out where you acted so terrible, understand me, that rather as witness such human suffering again, if any one would of really and truly had your interests at heart, they would of give a couple of dollars to a steward that he should throw you overboard and make an end of your misery."

"Is that so!" Morris retorted. "Well, let me tell you something, Abe. If you think I was in a bad way, don't kid yourself, when you lay there in your berth for three days without strength enough to take off even your collar and necktie, y'understand, that the captain said to the first officer ain't it wonderful what an elegant sailor that Mr. Potash is or anything like it, understand me, which on more than one occasion when I seen the way you looked, Abe, I couldn't help thinking of what chances concerns like the Equittable takes when they pass a feller as A number one on his heart and kidneys, and ain't tried him out on so much as a Staten Island ferry-boat to see what kind of a traveler he is."

"Listen, Mawruss," Abe interrupted, "did we come over here paying first-class fares for practically steerage accommodations to discuss life insurance, or did we come over here to buy model garments and get through with it, because believe me, it is no pleasure for me to stick around a country where you couldn't get no sugar or butter in a hotel, not if you was to show the head waiter a doctor's certificate with a hundred-dollar bill pinned on it. So let us go round to a few of these high-grade dressmakers and see how much we are going to get stuck for, and have it over with."

Accordingly, they paid for the coffee and milk without sugar and the dark sour rolls without butter which nowadays form the usual hotel breakfast in France, and set out for the office of the commission agent whose place of business is the rendezvous for American garment-manufacturers in search of Parisian model gowns. The broad avenues in the vicinity of the hotel seemed unusually crowded even to people as accustomed to the congested traffic of lower Fifth Avenue as Abe and Morris were, but as they proceeded toward the wholesale district of Paris the streets became less and less traveled, until at length they walked along practically deserted thoroughfares.

"And we thought business was rotten in America," Morris said. "Why, there ain't hardly one store open, hardly."

Abe nodded gloomily.

"It looks to me, Mawruss, that if there is any new garments being designed over here," he said, "they would be quiet morning gowns appropriate for attending something informal like a sale by a receiver in supplementary proceedings, or a more or less elaborate afternoon costume, not too showy, y'understand, but the kind of model that a fashionable Paris dressmaker could wear to a referee in bankruptcy's office so as not to make the attending creditors say she was her own best customer, understand me."

"Well, what could you expect?" Morris said, as they toiled up the stairs to the commission agent's office. "The chances is that up to a couple of months ago, in a Paris dressmaker's shop, a customer arrived only every other week, whereas a nine-inch bomb arrived every twenty minutes, and furthermore, Abe, it was you that suggested this trip, not me, so now that we are over here, we should ought to make the best of it, and if this here commission agent can't show us no new designs, he could, anyhow, show us the sights."

But even this consolation was denied them, for when they reached the commission agent's door it was locked and barred, as were all the other offices on that floor, and bore a placard reading:

FERME

À Cause Du Jour de Fête

"Nu!" Morris said, after he had read and re-read the notice a number of times, "what are we going to do now?"

"This is the last hair," Abe said, "because you know how it is with these Frenchers, if they close for a death in the family, it is liable to be a matter of weeks already."

"Maybe it says gone to lunch, will be back in half an hour," Morris suggested, hopefully.

"Not a chance," Abe declared. "More likely it means this elegant office with every modern improvement except an elevator, steam heat, and electric light, to be sublet, because it would be just our luck that the commission agent is back in New York right now with a line of brand-new model gowns, asking our bookkeeper will either of the bosses be back soon."

"We wouldn't get back in ten years, I'll tell you that, unless we hustle," Morris declared. He led the way down-stairs to the ground floor, where, after a few minutes, they managed to attract the attention of the concierge, who emerged from her shelter at the foot of the stairs and in rapid French explained to Abe and Morris that all Paris was celebrating with a public holiday the arrival of President Wilson.

"It's a funny thing about the French language," Morris said, as she concluded. "Even if you don't understand what the people mean, you could 'most always tell what they've been eating, which if the French people was limited by law to a ton of garlic a month per person, Abe, this lady would go to jail for the rest of her life."

"Attendez!" said the concierge. "Au dessus il yà un monsieur qui parle anglais."

She motioned for them to wait and ascended the stairs to the floor above, where they heard her knock on an office door. Evidently the person who opened it was annoyed by the interruption, for his voice—and to Abe and Morris it was a strangely familiar voice—was raised in angry protest.

"Now listen," said the tenant, "I told you before that I've only got this place temporarily, and as long as I am in here I don't want you to do no cleaning nor nothing, because the air is none too good here as it is, and furthermore—"

He proceeded no farther, however, for Abe and Morris had taken the stairs three at a jump and began to wring his hands effusively upon the principle of any port in a storm.

"Well, well, well, if it ain't Leon Sammet!" Abe cried, and his manner was as cordial as though, instead of their nearest competitor, Leon were Potash & Perlmutter's best customer.

"The English language bounces off of that woman like water from a duck's neck," Leon said, "which every five minutes she comes up here and talks to me in French high speed with the throttle wide open like a racing-car already."

"And the exhaust must be something terrible," Abe said.

"I am nearly frozen from opening the windows to let out her conversation," Leon said, "and especially this morning, when I thought I could get a lot of letter-writing done without being interrupted, on account of the holiday."

"So that's the reason why everything is closed up!" Morris exclaimed.

"But Christmas ain't for pretty near two weeks yet," Abe said.

"What has Christmas got to do with it?" Leon retorted. "To-day is a holiday because President Wilson arrives in Paris."

"And you are working here?" Abe cried.

"Why not?" Leon asked.

"You mean to say that President Wilson is arriving in Paris to-day and you ain't going to see him come in?" Morris exclaimed. "What for an American are you, anyway?"

"Say, for that matter, President Wilson has been arriving in New York hundreds of times in the past four years," Leon said, "and I 'ain't heard that you boys was on the reception committee exactly."

"That's something else again," Abe said. "In New York we've got business enough to do without fooling away our time rubbering at parades, but President Wilson only comes to Paris once in a lifetime."

"And some of the people back home is kicking because he comes to Paris even that often," Leon commented.

"Let 'em kick," Morris declared, "which the way some Americans runs down President Wilson only goes to show that it's an old saying and a true one that there is no profit for a man in his own country, so go ahead and write your letters if you want to, Leon, but Abe and me is going down-town to the Champs Elizas and give the President a couple of cheers like patriotic American sitsons should ought to do."

"In especially," Abe added, "as it is a legal holiday and we wouldn't look at no model garments to-day."