Potash & Perlmutter: Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures. Glass Montague

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      The statement of M. Garfunkel's financial condition, which arrived the following day, more than satisfied Morris Perlmutter and, had it not been quite so glowing in character, it might even have satisfied Abe Potash.

      "I don't know, Mawruss," he said; "some things looks too good to be true, Mawruss, and I guess this is one of them."

      "Always you must worry, Abe," Morris rejoined. "If Vanderbilt and Astor was partners together in the cloak and suit business, and you sold 'em a couple of hundred dollars' goods, Abe, you'd worry yourself sick till you got a check. I bet yer Garfunkel discounts his bill already."

      Morris' prophecy proved to be true, for at the end of four weeks M. Garfunkel called at Potash & Perlmutter's store and paid his sixty-day account with the usual discount of ten per cent. Moreover, he gave them another order for two thousand dollars' worth of goods at the same terms.

      In this instance, however, full fifty-nine days elapsed without word from M. Garfunkel, and on the morning of the sixtieth day Abe entered the store bearing every appearance of anxiety.

      "Well, Abe," Morris cried, "what's the matter now? You look like you was worried."

      "I bet yer I'm worried, Mawruss," Abe replied.

      "Well, what's the use of worrying?" he rejoined. "M. Garfunkel's account ain't due till to-day."

      "Always M. Garfunkel!" Abe cried. "M. Garfunkel don't worry me much, Mawruss. I'd like to see a check from him, too, Mawruss, but I ain't wasting no time on him. My Rosie is sick."

      "Sick!" Morris exclaimed. "That's too bad, Abe. What seems to be the trouble?"

      "She got the rheumatism in her shoulder," Abe replied, "and she tries to get a girl by intelligent offices to help her out, but it ain't no use. It breaks her all up to get a girl, Mawruss. Fifteen years already she cooks herself and washes herself, and now she's got to get a girl, Mawruss, but she can't get one."

      Morris clucked sympathetically.

      "Maybe that girl of yours, Mawruss," Abe went on as though making an innocent suggestion, "what we sell the forty-twenty-two to, maybe she got a sister or a cousin maybe, what wants a job, Mawruss."

      "I'll telephone my Minnie right away," Morris said, and as he turned to do so M. Garfunkel entered. Abe and Morris rushed forward to greet him. Each seized a hand and, patting him on the back, escorted him to the show-room.

      "First thing," M. Garfunkel said, "here is a check for the current bill."

      "No hurry," Abe and Morris exclaimed, with what the musical critics call splendid attack.

      "Now that that's out of the way," M. Garfunkel went on, "I want to give you another order. Only thing is, Mawruss, you know as well as I do that in the installment cloak and suit business a feller needs a lot of capital. Ain't it?"

      Morris nodded.

      "And if he buys goods only for cash or thirty or sixty days, Abe," M. Garfunkel continued, "he sometimes gets pretty cramped for money, because his own customers takes a long time to pay up. Ain't it?"

      Abe nodded, too.

      "Well, then," M. Garfunkel concluded, "I'll give you boys a fine order, but this time it's got to be ninety days."

      Abe puffed hard on his cigar, and Morris loosened his collar, which had become suddenly tight.

      "I always paid prompt my bills. Ain't it?" M. Garfunkel asked.

      "Sure, Mr. Garfunkel," Abe replied. "That you did do it. But ninety days is three months, and ourselves we got to pay our bills in thirty days."

      "However," Morris broke in, "that is neither there nor here. A good customer is a good customer, Abe, and so I'm agreeable."

      This put the proposition squarely up to Abe, and he found it a difficult matter to refuse credit to a customer whose check for two thousand dollars was even then reposing in Abe's waistcoat pocket.

      "All right," Abe said. "Go ahead and pick out your goods."

      For two solid hours M. Garfunkel went over Potash & Perlmutter's line and, selecting hundred lots of their choicest styles, bought a three-thousand-dollar order.

      "We ain't got but half of them styles in stock," said Morris, "but we can make 'em up right away."

      "Then, them goods what you got in stock, Mawruss," said Garfunkel, "I must have prompt by to-morrow, and the others in ten days."

      "That's all right," Morris replied, and when M. Garfunkel left the store Abe and Morris immediately set about the assorting of the ordered stock.

      "Look a-here, Mawruss," Abe said, "I thought you was going to see about that girl for my Rosie."

      "Why, so I was, Abe," Morris replied; "I'll attend to it right away."

      He went to the telephone and rang up his wife, and five minutes later returned to the front of the store.

      "Ain't that the funniest thing, Abe," he said. "My Minnie speaks to the girl, and the girl says she got a cousin what's just going to quit her job, Abe. She'll be the very girl for your Rosie."

      "I don't know, Mawruss," Abe replied. "My Rosie is a particular woman. She don't want no girl what's got fired for being dirty or something like that, Mawruss. We first want to get a report on her and find out what she gets fired for."

      "You're right, Abe," Morris said. "I'll find out from Lina to-night."

      Once more they fell to their task of assorting and packing the major part of Garfunkel's order, and by six o'clock over fifteen hundred dollars' worth of goods was ready for delivery.

      "We'll ship them to-morrow," Abe said, as they commenced to lock up for the night, "and don't forget about that girl, Mawruss."

      On his way downtown the next morning Abe met Leon Sammet, senior member of the firm of Sammet Brothers. Between Abe and Leon existed the nominal truce of competition, which in the cloak and suit trade implies that while they cheerfully exchanged credit information from their office files they maintained a constant guerilla warfare for the capture of each other's customers.

      Now, M. Garfunkel had been a particularly strong customer of Sammet Brothers, and since Abe assumed that M. Garfunkel had dropped Sammet Brothers in favor of Potash & Perlmutter his manner toward Leon was bland and apologetic.

      "Well, Leon," he said, "how's business?"

      Leon's face wrinkled into a smile.

      "It could be better, of course, Abe," he said, "but we done a tremendous spring trade, anyhow, even though we ain't got no more that sucker Louis Grossman working for us. We shipped a couple of three-thousand-dollar orders last week. One of 'em to Strauss, Kahn & Baum, of Fresno."

      These were old customers of Potash & Perlmutter, and Abe winced.

      "They was old customers of ours, Leon," he said, "but they done such a cheap class of trade we couldn't cut our line enough to please 'em."

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