He slammed the door behind him and five minutes later he entered the business premises of Klinger & Klein.  There he found the senior member of the firm busy over the sample line.

“Hallo, Sol!” he cried.  “I just seen it Mr. Brady, credit man for the Manhattan Mills, and he says he come across you riding in an oitermobile near Coney Island at nine o’clock this morning already.  He says he always thought you and Klein was pretty steady people, but I says nowadays you couldn’t never tell nothing about nobody.  ’Because a feller is a talmudist already, Mr. Brady,’ I says, ’that don’t say he ain’t blowing in his money on the horse races yet.’”

Klinger turned pale.

“Ain’t that a fine thing,” he exclaimed, “that a feller with a responsible position like Brady should be fooling away his time at Coney Island in business hours.”

Abe laughed and clapped Sol Klinger on the back.

“As a matter of fact, Sol,” he said, “I ain’t seen Brady in a month, y’understand, but supposing Brady should come across you in an oitermobile down at Coney Island at nine o’clock in the morning, y’understand.  I bet yer he would call for a new statement from you and Klein the very next day, Sol, and make you swear to it on a truck load of Bibles already.  A feller shouldn’t take no chances, Sol.”

“I was in good company anyhow, Abe,” Sol declared.  “I was with J. Edward Kleebaum, but I suppose Mawruss Perlmutter told it you.  Ain’t it?”

“Sure, he did,” Abe said, “and he also told it me last week that you says J. Edward Kleebaum was a crook because he runs a couple of oitermobiles out in Minneapolis.”

“I made a mistake about Kleebaum, Abe,” Klinger interrupted.  “I changed my mind about him.”

“That’s all right, Sol,” Abe said, “but if Kleebaum was a crook last week, Sol, and a gentleman this week, what I would like to know is, what he will be next week, because I got for twenty-one hundred dollars an order from that feller and I got to ship it next week.  So if you got any information about Kleebaum, Sol, you would be doing me a favor if you would let me know all about it.”

“All I know about him is this, Abe,” Klinger replied.  “We drew on him two reports and both of ’em gives him fifty to seventy-five thousand credit good.  He’s engaged to be married to Miss Julia Pfingst, who is Joseph Pfingst’s a daughter.”

“Joseph Pfingst,” Abe repeated.  “I don’t know as I ever hear that name before.”

“It used to be Pfingst & Gusthaler,” Klinger went on, “in the rubber goods business on Wooster Street.  First they made it raincoats, and then they went into rubber boots, and just naturally they got into bicycle tires, and then comes the oitermobile craze, and Gusthaler dies, and so Pfingst sells oitermobile tires, and now he’s in the oitermobile business.”

“Certainly, he got there gradually,” Abe commented.

“Maybe he did, Abe,” Klinger said, “but he also got pretty near a million dollars, and you know as well as I do, Abe, a feller what’s a millionaire already don’t got to marry off his daughter to a crook, y’understand.  No, Abe, I changed my mind about that feller.  I think Kleebaum’s a pretty decent feller, and ourselves we sold him goods for twenty-five hundred dollars.”