“Sol Klinger ain’t going to sell his.  He’s going to hang on to it.  Maybe it’s this young feller what I see there, Mawruss, only I don’t know his name.”

“Well, then, I’ll make it out to Potash & Perlmutter, and you can indorse it when you get there,” said Morris.

At this juncture a customer entered, and Abe took him into the show-room, while Morris wrote out the check.  For almost an hour and a half Abe displayed the firm’s line, from which the customer selected a generous order, and when at last Abe was free to go down to Gunst & Baumer’s it was nearly twelve o’clock.  He put on his hat and coat, and jumped on a passing car, and it was not until he had traveled two blocks that he remembered the check.  He ran all the way back to the store and, tearing the check out of the checkbook where Morris had left it, he dashed out again and once more boarded a Broadway car.  In front of Gunst & Baumer’s offices he leaped wildly from the car to the street, and, escaping an imminent fire engine and a hosecart, he ran into the doorway and took the stairs three at a jump.

On the second floor of the building was Hill, Arkwright & Thompson’s salesroom, where a trade sale was in progress, and the throng of buyers collected there overflowed onto the landing, but Abe elbowed his way through the crowd and made the last flight in two seconds.

“Is Mr. Fiedler in?” he gasped as he burst into the manager’s office of Gunst & Baumer’s suite.

“Mr. Fiedler went out to lunch,” the office-boy replied.  “He says you should sit down and wait, and he’ll be back in ten minutes.”

But Abe was too nervous for sitting down, and the thought of the customers’ room with its quotation board only agitated him the more.

“I guess I’ll go downstairs to Hill, Arkwright & Thompson’s,” he said, “and give a look around.  I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

He descended the stairs leisurely and again elbowed his way through the crowd into the salesroom of Hill, Arkwright & Thompson.  Mr. Arkwright was on the rostrum, and as Abe entered he was announcing the next lot.

“Look at them carefully, gentlemen,” he said.  “An opportunity like this seldom arises.  They are all fresh goods, woven this season for next season’s business—­foulard silks of exceptionally good design and quality.”

At the word silks Abe started and made at once for the tables on which the goods were piled.  He examined them critically, and as he did so his mind reverted to the half-tone cuts in the Daily Cloak and Suit Record.  Here was a rare chance to lay in a stock of piece goods that might not recur for several years, certainly not before next season had passed.

“It’s to close an estate, gentlemen,” Mr. Arkwright continued.  “The proprietor of the mills died recently, and his executors have decided to wind up the business.  All these silk foulards will be offered as one lot.  What is the bid?”