Part 35 (1/2)

”Say, lookyhere, Felix,” Abe cried, ”don't fool with me. Either that fiddle is or it ain't a genu-ine Amati. Ain't it?”

Felix paused. He wanted those velvet suits badly, and it began to look as though there would be a delay in the s.h.i.+pment.

”What is all this leading to, Abe?” he began pleasantly. ”If there's anything troubling you speak right up and I'll try to straighten it out.”

Abe s.h.i.+fted his cigar in his mouth and made the plunge.

”What is the use beating bushes around, Felix?” he said. ”Yesterday I am giving you a fiddle, ain't it? Inside it says the fiddle is a genu-ine Amati. What? _Schon gut_ if that fiddle is a genu-ine Amati it is worth three thousand dollars, ain't it? Because if it ain't, then you are stuck with the other fiddle which you bought it. And if it is worth three thousand, then we are stuck by giving you the fiddle, ain't it? So that's the way it goes.”

Felix nodded. It was a delicate situation, in which his credit and the s.h.i.+pment of the suits seemed to be imperilled. To declare flatly that Abe's gift was a bogus Amati might offend him seriously, while to admit that it was genuine, but only worth one hundred dollars, was to foster Abe's notion that he, Felix, had wasted three thousand dollars on a similar violin.

”I want to tell you something, Abe,” he began at last. ”There's nothing to this business of selling goods by making presents, and I for one don't believe in it. So I'll tell you what I'll do. Come up here to the store to-morrow morning, and I'll get the fiddle from my house and give it back to you.”

Abe's scowl merged immediately into a wide grin.

”I don't want the fiddle back, Felix,” he said, ”but my partner, y'understand, he is the one which is always----”

”Say no more, Abe,” Felix cried. ”All I want is you should s.h.i.+p that order; and tell your partner, if he is scared I am spending my money foolishly, he can have a new statement whenever he wants it; and I'll swear to it on a truckload of Bibles.”

When Abe returned to his place of business that afternoon he expected to find Morris pacing up and down the showroom floor, the picture of distracted anxiety. Instead he was humming a cheerful melody as he piled up two-piece velvet suits.

”Well, Abe,” he said, ”you have went on a fool's errand, ain't it?”

”What d'ye mean, fool's errand?” Abe demanded.

”Why, I mean I knew all along that fiddle of yours was a fake; and anyhow, Abe, I seen Milton Strauss, of Klipmann, Strauss & Bleimer, and what d'ye suppose he told it me, Abe?”

Abe shrugged angrily.

”If you must got to get it off your chest before I tell you what Geigermann told to me, Mawruss,” he said, ”go ahead.”

”Well, I seen Milton Strauss, Abe,” Morris went on calmly, ”and he says to me that he knows for a positive fact that Felix Geigermann could have sold that fiddle of his for three thousand five hundred dollars before he even pays for it yet. Strauss says that Felix is all the time buying up old fiddles for a side line, and if he makes a cent at it he makes a couple thousand dollars a year. Furthermore, Abe, he says that if anybody's got a genu-ine who's-this fiddle, he wouldn't let it go for no hundred and twenty-five dollars, and the chances is you are paying a fancy figure for a cheap popular-price line of fiddles.”

Abe hung up his hat so violently that he nearly knocked a hole in the crown.

”In the first place, Mawruss,” he began, ”it was your idee I should go up there and get the fiddle back, and in the second place I am telling you with my own eyes I seen that fiddle and it is the selfsame, identical article--name, lot number and everything--which that feller Geigermann refuses thirty-five hundred dollars for.”

He scowled at his partner in antic.i.p.ation of a cutting rejoinder.

”But anyhow, that ain't neither here nor there,” he continued as Morris remained silent. ”We would quick find out for ourselves what the fiddle really is, because to-morrow morning I am going around to the store and Geigermann gives me the fiddle back.”

Morris paused in the folding of a velvet skirt.

”I wouldn't do that, Abe, if I was you,” he said. ”What is the use giving presents and taking 'em back again? You could make from a feller an enemy for life that way.”

”Sure, I know Mawruss. An enemy for life is one thing, Mawruss, but thirty-five hundred dollars ain't to be sniffed at neither, y'understand.”

”_Schmooes_, Abe!” Morris cried. ”The fiddle ain't worth even thirty-five hundred pins.”