A moment later Blaustein and Abe followed him to the sidewalk.

“Well, Blaustein,” Morris asked as they walked to the elevated railroad, on their way home, “what do you think of it all?  Huh?”

“I think it’s a good bluff you are making,” Blaustein replied, “but it may work.  So, if you come right down to my office I’ll fix up your proof of loss and send it up to him this afternoon.”

The next morning Abe and Morris reached their loft a good hour ahead of the letter-carrier, and when he entered they both made a grab for the mail which he handed them.  Morris won out, and as he shuffled the letters with the deftness of long pinochle experience he emitted a cry.

“What is it?” Abe asked.

For answer Morris tore open a long yellow envelope and flicked it up and down between his thumb and finger until a small piece of paper fluttered to the carpet.  Abe swooped down on it immediately and ran to the office, hugging it to his breast.  It was a certified check for six hundred dollars.

“Well, Abe,” Morris said as he filled out a deposit slip of the Kosciusko Bank, “there’s one feller comes out of this deal pretty lucky, all considering.”

“Who’s that, Mawruss?” Abe asked.

“The rutt honn Earl of Warrington,” Morris replied.

CHAPTER XIV

Abe Potash entered the firm’s private office one morning in mid-September and deliberately removed his hat and coat.  As he did so he emitted groans calculated to melt the heart of the most hardened medical practitioner, but Morris Perlmutter remained entirely unmoved.

“Well, Abe,” he said, “you’ve been making a hog of yourself again.  Ain’t it?  Sol Klinger says he seen you over to the Harlem Winter Garden, and I suppose you bought it such a fine supper you couldn’t sleep a wink all night.  What?”

Abe started to draw himself up to his full five feet three, but lumbago brooks no hauteur, and he subsided into the nearest chair with a low, expressive “Oo-ee!”

“That’s a heart you got it, Mawruss,” he declared bitterly, “like a stone.  I drunk it nothing but lithia water and some dry toast, which them suckers got the nerve to charge me fifty cents for.”

“Well, why don’t you seen it a doctor, Abe?” Morris said.  “You could monkey with yourself a whole lifetime, Abe, and it would never do you no good; whilst if you seen it a doctor, Abe, he gives you a little pinch of powder, y’understand, and in five minutes you are a well man.”

Abe sighed heavily.

“It don’t go so quick, Mawruss,” he replied.  “I seen a doctor this morning and he says I am full from rheumatism.  I dassen’t do nothing, Mawruss, I dassen’t touch coffee or schnapps.  I dassen’t eat no meat but lamb chops and chicken.”

“I tasted worser things already as lamb chops and chicken, Abe,” Morris retorted.

“And the worstest thing of all, Mawruss,” Abe concluded, “the doctor says he wouldn’t be responsible for my life already if I go out on the road.”