A moment later they were seated at a marble-top table.

“Yes, Abe,” B. Gans went on after they had given the order, “Marks Pasinsky stole my samples, too.  Let’s hear your story first.”

Straightway Abe unfolded to B. Gans the tale of Marks Pasinsky’s adventure with Mozart Rabiner and Arthur Katzen, and also told him how the orders based on Potash & Perlmutter’s sample line had found their way into the respective establishments of Sammet Brothers and Klinger & Klein.

“Well, by jimminy!” B. Gans commented, “that’s just the story I got to tell it you.  This feller does the selfsame funny business with my samples.  He gets orders from a couple of big concerns in St. Louis and then he gambles them away to a feller called Levy.  So what do I do, Potash?  He goes to work and has ’em both arrested, and then them two fellers turns around and fixes up a story and the first thing you know the police judge lets ’em go.  Well, Potash, them two fellers goes down to New York and hires a lawyer, by the name Henry D. Feldman, and sue me in the courts yet that I made them false arrested.  Cost me a thousand dollars to settle it, and I also got to agree that if anybody inquires about Pasinsky I should say only that he is a good salesman—­which is the truth, Potash, because he is a good salesman—­and that the reason he left me is by mutual consent, y’understand?”

Abe nodded.

“That’s a fine piece of work, that Marks Pasinsky,” he commented.  “I wish I had never seen him already.  What shall I do, Gans?  I am in a fine mess.”

“No, you ain’t yet,” B. Gans replied.  “Prosnauer and Kuhner knows me, Potash, and I am willing, as long as I got you into this, I will get you out of it.  I will go with you myself, Potash, and I think I got influence enough in the trade that I could easy get them to give you back them samples.”

“I know you can,” Abe said enthusiastically, “and if you would put it to ’em strong enough I think we could swing back to us them orders from Sammet Brothers and Klinger & Klein.”

“That I will do for you, also,” B. Gans agreed.  “But now, Potash, I got troubles ahead of me, too.”

“How’s that?” Abe inquired, much interested.

“I got it a lowlife what I hired for a salesman, also,” he replied, “and three weeks ago that feller left my place with my samples and I ain’t heard a word from him since.  If I got to search every gamblinghouse in Chicago I will find that loafer; and when I do find him, Potash, I will crack his neck for him.”

“I wouldn’t do nothing rash, Gans,” Abe advised.  “What for a looking feller is this salesman of yours?”

“He’s a tall, white-faced loafer with a big red mustache,” Gans replied, “and his name is Ignatz Kresnick.”

Abe jumped to his feet.

“Come with me,” he cried.  Together they took the elevator to the eighth floor and, as Ignatz Kresnick dealt the cards for the five-hundredth time in that game, all unconscious of his fast-approaching Nemesis, Mozart Rabiner played the concluding measures of the Liebestod softly, slowly, like a benediction: