“Lemme look at it,” the chauffeur said, as he climbed from his seat.  He gave a hasty glance at the dry battery ignition and laughed uproariously.

“You’se guys will stay here till Christmas if you expect to get that car into running condition,” he said.  “The only thing for you’se to do is to let me give you a tow into Jamaica.  They’ll fix you up at the garage there.”

“I’m much obliged to you,” Morris replied.

“Don’t mention it,” the chauffeur went on.  “I won’t charge you unreasonable.  Ten dollars is my figure.”

“What!” Abe and Morris cried with one voice.

“Why, you wouldn’t charge these gentlemen nothing,” Kleebaum said with a violent wink.  “They’re friends of mine.”

“I know they was friends of yours,” the chauffeur replied, “and that’s why I made it ten dollars.  Anyone else I’d say twenty.”

For almost half an hour Abe and Morris haggled with the chauffeur.  They were vigorously supported by Kleebaum, who punctuated his scathing condemnation of the chauffeur’s greed with a series of surreptitious winks which encouraged the latter to remain firm in his demand.  Finally Morris peeled off two five-dollar bills and an hour later the Appalachian runabout was ignominiously hauled into a Jamaica garage.

The chauffeur alighted from his car and drew the proprietor of the garage aside into his private office.

“Billy,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “this here baby carriage is got the oldest brand of dry battery ignition and one of the wires has come loose from the binding screw.  It’ll take about a minute and a half to fix.”

The proprietor nodded and passed over a dollar bill.  Then he sprang out onto the floor of the garage.

“Ryan,” he bellowed to his foreman, “get the big jack, and tell Schwartz to start up the motor lathe.”

Then he turned to Abe and Mawruss.

“This here’ll be a two hours’ job, gents,” he said, “and I advise you to get your supper at the hotel acrosst the street.”

“But how much is it going to cost us?” Morris asked.

For five minutes the proprietor figured on the back of an envelope.

“Fifteen dollars and twenty-two cents,” he said, and Abe and Morris staggered to the street, followed by their wives.

Twenty minutes later Kleebaum and the chauffeur drew up in front of a road house.

“Your blow,” the chauffeur cried.

Kleebaum nodded.

“Come across with that five first,” he said, and after the transfer had been made they disappeared into the sabbatical entrance.

“Well, Mawruss,” Abe exclaimed when Morris entered the show-room at ten o’clock the next morning.  “What did I told you last week!  Wasn’t I right?”

“I know you told me that one party to a swap was practically bound to get stuck, Abe,” Morris admitted, “but with an oitermobile——­”

“Again oitermobile!” Abe cried.  “You got oitermobile on the brain, Mawruss.  Whenever I open my mouth, Mawruss, you got an idee I’m going to talk about oitermobiles.  This is something else again.  Didn’t you get a morning paper, Mawruss?”