“Dem guys is card fiends all right,” the bell-boy commented.  “Dey started in at five o’clock last night.”

As they waited for the elevator the strains of a piano came from the floor below.

“What’s that?” Abe exclaimed.

“Dat’s anudder member of de gang,” the bell-boy replied.  “Dat’s Mr. Rabiner.  He quit a big loser about one o’clock dis mornin’.”

Abe handed his informant a dime.

“Take me to his room,” he said.

The bell-boy led the way to the seventh floor and conducted Abe to the door of Rabiner’s room.

“Dat’s a pretty said spiel dat guy is tearin’ off,” he commented.  “It makes me tink of a dago funeral.”

Abe nodded.  He knocked at the door, and Liszt’s transcription of the Liebestod ceased immediately.

“Well?” Mozart Rabiner cried and, for answer, Abe opened the door.

“Hallo, Moe!” he said.  “You don’t know me.  What?  I’m Abe Potash.”

“Oh, hello, Potash!” Rabiner said, rising from the piano stool.

“That’s some pretty mournful music you was giving us, Moe,” Abe went on.  “Sounds like business was poor already.  Ain’t you working no more?”

“I am and I ain’t,” Mozart replied.  “I’m supposed to be selling goods for Klinger & Klein, but since I only sold it one bill in two weeks I ain’t got much hopes that I’ll get enough more money out of ’em to move me out of town.”

“What do you make next, Moe?” Abe asked.

“St. Paul and Minneapolis,” Mozart replied.

Abe handed him a large cigar and, lighting the mate to it, puffed away complacently.

“That was a pretty good order you got it from Prosnauer which Sol Klinger tells me about,” he said.

Mozart nodded sadly.

“Looky here, Moe,” Abe went on, “how much money do you need to move you?”

Mozart lifted his eyebrows and shrugged hopelessly.

“More as you would lend me, Potash,” he said.  “So what’s the use talking about it?”

“Well, I was going to say,” Abe continued, “if it was something what you might call within reason, Moe, I might advance it if——­”

“If what?” Moe inquired.

“If you would tell me the insides of just how you got it that order from Prosnauer.”

Mozart gave a deprecatory wave of his right hand.

“You don’t got to bribe me to tell you that, Potash,” he said, “because I ain’t got no concern in that order no longer.  I give up my commission there to a feller by the name Ignatz Kresnick.”

“A white-faced feller with a big red mustache?” Abe asked.

“That’s him,” Mozart replied.  “The luck that feller Kresnick got it is something you wouldn’t believe at all.  He could fall down a sewer manhole and come up in a dress suit and a clean shave already.  He cleans me out last night two hundred dollars and the commission on that Prosnauer order.”

“But you didn’t get that order in the first place, Moe,” Abe said.  “Marks Pasinsky got the order.”