It was at this most inopportune time that Johnny Gamble spoke.

“Well, Mr. Ersten,” he cheerfully observed, “I’ve come round to make you an offer for that lease.”

Mr. Ersten, his gnarled eyebrows bent upon the sacred ceremony about to be performed, looked up with a grunt—­and immediately returned to his business.  Mr. Kurzerhosen glanced round for an instant in frowning appeal.  Mr. Schoppenvoll paid no attention whatever to the interruption.  He gave an exhibition of cork-pulling which a watchmaker might have envied for its delicacy; he poured the tall glasses half-full of the clear amber fluid and opened the bottles of Glanzen Wasser.  The three friends, Schoppenvoll now sitting, clinked their steins solemnly and emptied them.  Ersten wiped the foam from his bristling gray mustache.

“About that lease I have nothing to say,” he told Johnny, fixing a stern eye upon him.  “I will not sell it.”

The other gentlemen of the party looked upon the stranger as an unforgivable interloper.

“I’m prepared to make you a very good offer for it,” insisted Johnny.  “I have a better location for you, not half a block away, and I’ve taken an option on a long-time lease for it.”

The stolid boy removed the steins.  The three gentlemen poured the Glanzen Wasser into their wine.

“I will not sell the lease,” announced Ersten with such calm finality that Johnny apologized for the intrusion and withdrew.  As he went out, Ersten and Kurzerhosen and Schoppenvoll, in blissful forgetfulness of him, raised their glasses for the first delicious sip of the Rheinthranen, of which there were only two hundred and eighty precious bottles left in the world.

Outside, Johnny hailed a passing taxi.  He called on Morton Washer, on Ben Courtney, on Colonel Bouncer, and even on Candy-King Slosher; but to no purpose.  Finally he descended upon iron-hard Joe Close.

“Do you know anybody who knows Louis Ersten, the ladies’ tailor?” he asked almost automatically.

“Ersten?” replied Close unexpectedly.  “I’ve quarreled with him for thirty years.  He banks with me.”

“Start a quarrel for me,” requested Johnny.  “I’ve been down to look him over.  I can do business with him if he’ll listen.”

Close smiled.

“I doubt it,” he rejoined.  “Ersten has just lost the coat cutter who helped him build up his business, and he’s soured on everything in the world but Schoppenvoll’s and skat and Rheinthranen.”

“Could I learn to play skat in about a day?” inquired Johnny.

“You have no German ancestors, have you?” retorted Close.

“No.”

“Then you couldn’t learn it in a thousand years!”

“I have to find his weak spot,” Johnny persisted.  “If you’ll just make him talk with me I’ll do the rest.”

Close shook his head and sighed.

“I’ll try,” he agreed, “but I feel about as hopeful as I would be of persuading a bull to sleep in a red blanket.”