CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH JOHNNY TRIES TO MIX BUSINESS WITH SKAT
Louis Ersten, who puffed redly wherever he did not grayly bristle, metJohnny Gamble half-way. Johnny's half consisted in stating that he hadcome to see Mr. Ersten in reference to his lease. Mr. Ersten's halfconsisted in flatly declining to discuss that subject on the premises.
"Here--I make ladies' suits," he explained. "If you come about such abusiness, with good recommendations from my customers, I talk with you.Otherwise not."
"I'll talk any place you say," consented Johnny. "Where do you lunch?"
"At August Schoppenvoll's," replied Mr. Ersten with no hint of anintention to disclose where August Schoppenvoll's place might be. "Atlunch-time I talk no business; I eat."
The speculator studied those forbidding bushy brows in silence for amoment. Beneath them, between heavy lids, glowed a pair of very sterngray eyes; but at the outward corner of each eye were two deep,diverging creases, which belied some of the sternness.
"Where do you sleep?" Johnny asked.
"I don't talk business in my sleep," asserted Mr. Ersten stoutly, andthen he laughed with considerable heartiness, pleased immensely withhis own joke and not noticing that it was more than half Johnny's.After all, Johnny had only implied it; he had said it! Accordingly herelented a trifle. "From four to half-past five, at Schoppenvoll's, Iplay skat," he added.
"Thank you," said Johnny briskly, and started for the nearest telephonedirectory. "I'll drop in on you."
"Well," returned Ersten resignedly, "it won't do you any good."
Johnny grinned and went out, having first made a swift but carefulestimate of Ersten's room, accommodations and requirements. Outside, hestudied the surrounding property, then called on a real estate firm.
At four-ten he went into the dim little basement wine-room ofSchoppenvoll. He had timed this to a nicety, hoping to arrive justafter the greetings were over and before the game had begun, and heaccomplished that purpose; for, with the well-thumbed cards lyingbetween them and three half-emptied steins of beer on the table, Erstenwas opposite a pink-faced man with curly gray hair, whose clothes satupon his slightly portly person with fashion-plate precision. It wasthis very same suit about which Ersten was talking when Johnny entered.
"Na, Kurzerhosen," he said with a trace of pathos in his gutturalvoice, "when you die we have no more suits of clothes like that."
"I thank you," returned the flexible soft voice of Kurzerhosen. "It islike the work you make in your ladies' garments, Ersten. When you diewe shall have no more good walking clothes for our womenfolks."
"And when Schoppenvoll dies we have no more good wine," declared Erstenwith conviction and a wave of his hand as Schoppenvoll approached themwith an inordinately long-necked bottle, balancing it carefully on itsside.
Johnny had drawn near the table now, but no one saw him, for thismoment was one of deep gravity. Schoppenvoll, a tall, straight-backedman with the dignity of a major, a waving gray pompadour, and aclean-cut face that might have belonged to a Beethoven, set down thetray at the very edge of the table and slid it gently into place. Anovergrown fat boy, with his sleeves rolled to his shoulders, broughtthree shining glasses, three bottles of Glanzen Wasser and a corkscrew.
It was at this most inopportune time that Johnny Gamble spoke.
"Well, Mr. Ersten," he cheerfully observed, "I've come round to makeyou an offer for that lease."
Mr. Ersten, his gnarled eyebrows bent upon the sacred ceremony about tobe performed, looked up with a grunt--and immediately returned to hisbusiness. Mr. Kurzerhosen glanced round for an instant in frowningappeal. Mr. Schoppenvoll paid no attention whatever to theinterruption. He gave an exhibition of cork-pulling which a watchmakermight have envied for its delicacy; he poured the tall glasseshalf-full of the clear amber fluid and opened the bottles of GlanzenWasser. The three friends, Schoppenvoll now sitting, clinked theirsteins solemnly and emptied them. Ersten wiped the foam from hisbristling gray mustache.
"About that lease I have nothing to say," he told Johnny, fixing astern eye upon him. "I will not sell it."
The other gentlemen of the party looked upon the stranger as anunforgivable 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'vetaken an option on a long-time lease for it."
The stolid boy removed the steins. The three gentlemen poured theGlanzen Wasser into their wine.
"I will not sell the lease," announced Ersten with such calm finalitythat Johnny apologized for the intrusion and withdrew. As he went out,Ersten and Kurzerhosen and Schoppenvoll, in blissful forgetfulness ofhim, raised their glasses for the first delicious sip of theRheinthranen, of which there were only two hundred and eighty preciousbottles left in the world.
Outside, Johnny hailed a passing taxi. He called on Morton Washer, onBen Courtney, on Colonel Bouncer, and even on Candy-King Slosher; butto no purpose. Finally he descended upon iron-hard Joe Close.
"Do you know anybody who knows Louis Ersten, the ladies' tailor?" heasked almost automatically.
"Ersten?" replied Close unexpectedly. "I've quarreled with him forthirty years. He banks with me."
"Start a quarrel for me," requested Johnny. "I've been down to look himover. I can do business with him if he'll listen."
Close smiled.
"I doubt it," he rejoined. "Ersten has just lost the coat cutter whohelped him build up his business, and he's soured on everything in theworld 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 makehim 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 ofpersuading a bull to sleep in a red blanket."
Johnny had caught Close as he was leaving his club for home, and theywent round immediately to Schoppenvoll's. At exactly five-thirty Erstenemerged from the wine-room with Kurzerhosen.
"Hello, Louis!" hailed the waiting Close. "Jump into the taxi here, andI'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 withKurzerhosen.
Ersten sighed.
"Always we walk," he grumbled, but he climbed in.
When they were started for the terminal Ersten leaned forward, with hisbushy 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 inthe 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 finesaloon business. He moved across the street--and broke up."
"It was not the same," Close assured him. "In saloons, men want to feelat home. In your business, your customers come because they get thebest--and they care nothing for the shop itself."
"They like the place," asserted Ersten. "I've made a good living therefor almost forty years. Why should I move?"
"Because you would be nearer Fifth Avenue," Johnny ventured tointerject, and spoke to the chauffeur, who drew up to the curb. "Thisis the place I have in mind, Mr. Ersten."
"They come to me where I am," insisted Ersten, refusing to look, withunglazed 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 everyhair 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 Constanceand Close had said.
Ersten glowered at him.
"He was. Thirty-seven years he worked with me; then he tried to run mybusiness. He is gone. Let him go!"
"He objected to the light in the workroom, didn't he?" went on thecross-examiner, carefully piecing the situation together bit by bit.
"He could see for thirty-seven years, till everybody talks aboutmoving; then he goes crazy," blurted Ersten.
"Won't you look at this place?" he was urged. "Let me show it to youto-morrow."
"I stay where I am," sullenly declared Ersten, still angry. "We miss mytrain."
Close told the driver to go on. Before Ersten alighted at the terminal,Johnny made one more attempt upon him.
"If a majority of your best customers insisted that they liked the newshop better would you look at the other place?" he asked.
"My customers don't run my business either!" he puffed.
"Good-by," stated Mr. Kurzerhosen, who had been looking steadily at theopposite side of the street throughout the journey. "I thank you."
Close stared at Johnny in silence for a moment after their guests hadgone.
"I told you so," he said. "You'll have to give him up as a bad job."
"He's beginning to look like a good job," asserted Johnny. "He can behandled like wax, but you have to melt him. Schnitt's the real reason.Do you know Schnitt?"
"I am happy to say I do not," laughed Close. "One like Ersten isenough."
"Somebody must lead me to him," declared Johnny. "I'm going to seeSchnitt in the morning. I'd call to-night if I didn't have to be thebig works at a Coney Island dinner party."
"I don't see how Schnitt can help you," puzzled Close.
"He's the tack in the tire. I can see what happened as well as if I hadbeen there. Ersten knew he ought to move. Lofty tried to buy him andSchnitt tried to force him. Then he got his Dutch up. Schnitt left onaccount of it. Now Ersten won't do anything."
"You can't budge him an inch," prophesied the banker. "I know him."
"I'll coax him," stated Johnny determinedly. "There's a profit in him,and I have to have it!"
Five Thousand an Hour: How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress Page 14