He rose to his feet and helped himself to a cigar from the L to N first and second credit customers’ box.

“No, Mawruss,” he concluded, “if you can’t sell a man goods on their merits, Mawruss, you’ll never get him to take them because your wife is related by marriage to his wife.  Ain’t it?  We got a good line, Mawruss, and we stand a show to sell our goods without no theayters nor dinners nor nothing.”

Morris shrugged his shoulders.  “All right, Abe,” he said, “you can do what you like about it, but I already bought it two tickets for Saturday night.”

“Of course, if you like to go to shows, Mawruss,” Abe declared as he rose to his feet, “I can’t stop you.  Only one thing I got to say it, Mawruss—­if you think you should charge that up to the firm’s expense account, all I got to say is you’re mistaken, that’s all.”

Abe strode out of the show-room before a retort could formulate itself, so Morris struggled into his overcoat instead and made for the store door.  As he reached it his eye fell on the clock over Wasserbauer’s Cafe on the other side of the street.  The hands pointed to two o’clock, and he broke into a run, for the Southwestern Flyer which bore the person of James Burke was due at the Grand Central Station at two-ten.  Fifteen minutes later Morris darted out of the subway exit at Forty-second Street and imminently avoided being run down by a hansom.  Indeed, the vehicle came to a halt so suddenly that the horse reared on its haunches, while a flood of profanity from the driver testified to the nearness of Morris’ escape.  Far from being grateful, however, Morris paused on the curb and was about to retaliate in kind when one of the two male occupants of the hansom leaned forward and poked a derisive finger at him.

“What’s the hurry, Morris?” said the passenger.

Morris looked up and gasped, for in that fleeting moment he recognized his tormentor.  It was Frank Walsh, and although Morris saw only the features of his competitor it needed no Sherlock Holmes to deduce that Frank’s fellow-passenger was none other than James Burke, buyer for the Small Drygoods Company.

Two hours later he returned to the store, for he had seized the opportunity of visiting some of the firm’s retail trade while uptown, and when he came in he found Abe sorting a pile of misses’ reefers.

“Well, Mawruss,” Abe cried, “you look worried.”

“I bet you I’m worried, Abe,” he said.  “You and your wife’s relations done it.  Two thousand dollars thrown away in the street.  I got to the Grand Central Station just in time to get there too late, Abe.  This here Walsh was ahead of me already, and he took Burke away in a hansom.  When I come out of the subway they pretty near run over me, Abe.”

“A competitor will do anything, Mawruss,” Abe said sympathetically.  “But don’t you worry.  There’s just as big fish swimming in the sea as what they sell by fish markets, Mawruss.  Bigger even.  We ain’t going to fail yet a while just because we lose the Small Drygoods Company for a customer.”