Johnny had caught Close as he was leaving his club for home, and they went round immediately to Schoppenvoll’s.  At exactly five-thirty Ersten emerged from the wine-room with Kurzerhosen.

“Hello, Louis!” hailed the waiting Close.  “Jump into the taxi here, and I’ll take you down to your train.”

Ersten and Kurzerhosen looked at each other.

“Always we walk,” declared Ersten.

“There’s room for both of you,” laughed Close, shaking hands with Kurzerhosen.

Ersten sighed.

“Always we walk,” he grumbled, but he climbed in.

When they were started for the terminal Ersten leaned forward, with his bushy brows lowering, and glared Close sternly in the eye.

“I will not sell the lease!” he avowed before a word had been spoken.

“We know that,” admitted Close; “but why?”

Ersten hesitated a moment.

“Oh, well; I tell you,” he consented with an almost malignant glance in the direction of Johnny.  “All my customers know me in that place.”

“Your customers would find you anywhere,” Close complimented him.

“Maybe they do,” admitted Ersten.  “My cousin, Otto Gruber, had a fine saloon business.  He moved across the street—­and broke up.”

“It was not the same,” Close assured him.  “In saloons, men want to feel at home.  In your business, your customers come because they get the best—­and they care nothing for the shop itself.”

“They like the place,” asserted Ersten.  “I’ve made a good living there for almost forty years.  Why should I move?”

“Because you would be nearer Fifth Avenue,” Johnny ventured to interject, and spoke to the chauffeur, who drew up to the curb.  “This is the place I have in mind, Mr. Ersten.”

“They come to me where I am,” insisted Ersten, refusing to look, with unglazed eyes.

“You have no such show-windows,” persisted Johnny.

“My customers know my goods inside.”

“There’s a big light gallery—­twice the size of your present workrooms.”

Ersten’s cheeks suddenly puffed and his forehead purpled, while every hair on his head and face stuck straight out.

“My workroom is good enough!” he exploded.  “I told it to Schnitt!”

“Is Schnitt your coat cutter?” asked Johnny, remembering what Constance and Close had said.

Ersten glowered at him.

“He was.  Thirty-seven years he worked with me; then he tried to run my business.  He is gone.  Let him go!”

“He objected to the light in the workroom, didn’t he?” went on the cross-examiner, carefully piecing the situation together bit by bit.

“He could see for thirty-seven years, till everybody talks about moving; then he goes crazy,” blurted Ersten.

“Won’t you look at this place?” he was urged.  “Let me show it to you to-morrow.”

“I stay where I am,” sullenly declared Ersten, still angry.  “We miss my train.”