Abe and Mawruss Part 35

"Say, lookyhere, Felix," Abe cried, "don't fool with me. Either that fiddle is or it ain't a genu-ine Amati. Ain't it?"

Felix paused. He wanted those velvet suits badly, and it began to look as though there would be a delay in the s.h.i.+pment.

"What is all this leading to, Abe?" he began pleasantly. "If there's anything troubling you speak right up and I'll try to straighten it out."

Abe s.h.i.+fted his cigar in his mouth and made the plunge.

"What is the use beating bushes around, Felix?" he said. "Yesterday I am giving you a fiddle, ain't it? Inside it says the fiddle is a genu-ine Amati. What? _Schon gut_ if that fiddle is a genu-ine Amati it is worth three thousand dollars, ain't it? Because if it ain't, then you are stuck with the other fiddle which you bought it. And if it is worth three thousand, then we are stuck by giving you the fiddle, ain't it? So that's the way it goes."

Felix nodded. It was a delicate situation, in which his credit and the s.h.i.+pment of the suits seemed to be imperilled. To declare flatly that Abe's gift was a bogus Amati might offend him seriously, while to admit that it was genuine, but only worth one hundred dollars, was to foster Abe's notion that he, Felix, had wasted three thousand dollars on a similar violin.

"I want to tell you something, Abe," he began at last. "There's nothing to this business of selling goods by making presents, and I for one don't believe in it. So I'll tell you what I'll do. Come up here to the store to-morrow morning, and I'll get the fiddle from my house and give it back to you."

Abe's scowl merged immediately into a wide grin.

"I don't want the fiddle back, Felix," he said, "but my partner, y'understand, he is the one which is always----"

"Say no more, Abe," Felix cried. "All I want is you should s.h.i.+p that order; and tell your partner, if he is scared I am spending my money foolishly, he can have a new statement whenever he wants it; and I'll swear to it on a truckload of Bibles."

When Abe returned to his place of business that afternoon he expected to find Morris pacing up and down the showroom floor, the picture of distracted anxiety. Instead he was humming a cheerful melody as he piled up two-piece velvet suits.

"Well, Abe," he said, "you have went on a fool's errand, ain't it?"

"What d'ye mean, fool's errand?" Abe demanded.

"Why, I mean I knew all along that fiddle of yours was a fake; and anyhow, Abe, I seen Milton Strauss, of Klipmann, Strauss & Bleimer, and what d'ye suppose he told it me, Abe?"

Abe shrugged angrily.

"If you must got to get it off your chest before I tell you what Geigermann told to me, Mawruss," he said, "go ahead."

"Well, I seen Milton Strauss, Abe," Morris went on calmly, "and he says to me that he knows for a positive fact that Felix Geigermann could have sold that fiddle of his for three thousand five hundred dollars before he even pays for it yet. Strauss says that Felix is all the time buying up old fiddles for a side line, and if he makes a cent at it he makes a couple thousand dollars a year. Furthermore, Abe, he says that if anybody's got a genu-ine who's-this fiddle, he wouldn't let it go for no hundred and twenty-five dollars, and the chances is you are paying a fancy figure for a cheap popular-price line of fiddles."

Abe hung up his hat so violently that he nearly knocked a hole in the crown.

"In the first place, Mawruss," he began, "it was your idee I should go up there and get the fiddle back, and in the second place I am telling you with my own eyes I seen that fiddle and it is the selfsame, identical article--name, lot number and everything--which that feller Geigermann refuses thirty-five hundred dollars for."

He scowled at his partner in antic.i.p.ation of a cutting rejoinder.

"But anyhow, that ain't neither here nor there," he continued as Morris remained silent. "We would quick find out for ourselves what the fiddle really is, because to-morrow morning I am going around to the store and Geigermann gives me the fiddle back."

Morris paused in the folding of a velvet skirt.

"I wouldn't do that, Abe, if I was you," he said. "What is the use giving presents and taking 'em back again? You could make from a feller an enemy for life that way."

"Sure, I know Mawruss. An enemy for life is one thing, Mawruss, but thirty-five hundred dollars ain't to be sniffed at neither, y'understand."

"_Schmooes_, Abe!" Morris cried. "The fiddle ain't worth even thirty-five hundred pins."

Following this observation there ensued a controversy of over an hour's duration, at the end of which Morris compromised.

"Say, listen here to me, Abe!" he declared. "You say the fiddle is worth it and I say it ain't. Now if I am right and we take the fiddle back, then we are acting like a couple of cheap yokels, ain't it? _Aber_ if you are right, Abe, then we are out thirty-five hundred dollars. So what's the use talking, Abe? Only one thing we got to do. We got to find a feller which he could right away tell whether the fiddle is _oder_ not is genu-ine--just by looking at it, y'understand. This feller we got to send up to Geigermann's house to look at the fiddle to-night yet, and if he says the fiddle is, Abe, then we would take it back. _Aber_ if he says the fiddle ain't, Abe, then, Geigermann could keep the fiddle _und fertig_."

Abe nodded slowly.

"The idee is all right, Mawruss," he said; "but in the first place, Mawruss, where could we find such a feller, and in the second place, if we did found him, Mawruss, what excuse would we give Geigermann for sending him up there in the third place?"

Morris scratched his head.

"Well, for that matter, Abe, if we found such a feller, we could send him up there to say that he hears from you that you are giving away such a Who's-this fiddle to Geigermann, and that the feller would like to buy it off of him."

"And then, Mawruss?" Abe asked.

"And then," Morris went on, "Geigermann shows the feller the fiddle, y'understand, and if it is worth it _oder_ it isn't worth it the feller says nothing to Geigermann, but he comes back and reports to us."

Abe nodded again.

"If I was to tell you all the weak points of that scheme, Mawruss," he said, "I could stand here talking till my tongue dropped out yet. But all I got to say is, Mawruss, the idee is yours, and you should go ahead and carry it out. Me, I got nothing to say about it either one way or the other."

At seven that evening, while Professor Ladislaw Wcelak was was.h.i.+ng down a late breakfast with a bottle of beer, there came a violent knocking at the hall door. The professor answered it in person, for Aaron was busily engaged over Concone's vocalizations in the front parlour and the other members of the family were was.h.i.+ng dishes in the rear.

"_Nu, Landsmann!_" Ladislaw cried. "Ain't you working to-night?"

The newcomer was none other than Emil Pilz, _Konzertmeister_ of the Palace Theatre of Varieties, if that dignified term may be applied to the first violin of an orchestra of twenty.

"I am and I ain't," Emil replied. "I've got a job, Louis, which it would take me till nine o'clock, so be a good feller and subst.i.tute for me at the theayters till I am coming back."

"And who would subst.i.tute for me, Emil?" the professor asked.

"That's all right," Emil replied. "I stopped in on my way over and I seen old man Hubai. He ain't _s.h.i.+kker_ yet, so I told him he should go over and fiddle a couple _czardas_ till you come, and to tell the boss you got a _Magenweh_ and would be a little late. Me, I am going uptown to look at a fiddle. I got the job through an old pupil, Milton Strauss, which he says a feller by the name Potash gives away a fiddle which he bought, and now he thinks it's a genuine Amati. So I should please go up and look at it; and if it is _oder_ it isn't, I get ten dollars."

"Who's this feller Potash?" the professor asked, and Emil shrugged.

"What difference does that make?" he said. "He gives a hundred and twenty-five dollars for the fiddle only a couple days ago. What d'ye want to know for?"

"Oh, nothing," the professor replied; "only my brother Aaron sold to a feller by the name Potash the other day a fiddle which I myself bought from old Hubai a couple years ago for fifteen dollars yet; and if that's the one you are talking about, Emil, you should quick go up to the theayter and forget about it. Because, Emil, if that fiddle is an Amati, you are a Kubelik and I am a Kreisler."

"Sure, I know, Louis," Emil agreed; "but just the same I got to go up there to make the ten, so if you would do me the favour and _spiel_ for me till half-past nine you could get anyhow three dollars of it."

"I am willing," the professor said; and ten minutes later he was on his way up to the Palace Theatre of Varieties.

It was precisely half-past nine, while a tabloid drama in progress on the stage rendered the presence of the orchestra unnecessary, that Emil Pilz returned.

"_Nu_ Emil," Louis said as they stood in the corridor leading to the stage entrance, "did you seen the Amati?"

He grinned in humorous antic.i.p.ation of Emil's answer.