V
There was something about Mr. Elkan Goldblatt's face that would make the most hardy real-estater pause before entering into a business deal with him. He had an eye like a poll-parrot with its concomitant beak, and his closely cropped beard and moustache accentuated rather than mollified his harsh appearance.
"Such fellers I wouldn't have no more mercy on than a dawg," he said to his attorney, Eleazer Levy. "Oncet already I practically kicked him out from my house, and then he's got the nerve to come back, and two weeks ago he brings yet a feller with him and makes bluffs that the feller wants to marry my daughter Fannie."
"He was just trying to get you to extend those second mortgages, I suppose," Levy said.
"Sure he was, because this here feller—a homely looking feller with one eye, mind you—says he got to go back to Pennsylvania where his stores is, and we ain't seen nor heard a word from him since," Goldblatt concluded. "And him eating two meals a day by us for ten days yet!"
Eleazer Levy clucked with his tongue in sympathy.
"But, anyhow, now I want we should go right straight ahead and foreclose on Margolius," Goldblatt continued. "Don't lose no time, Levy, and get out the papers to-day. How long would it be before we can sell the property?"
"Six weeks," said Levy, "if I serve the summons to-morrow. I put in a search some days ago, and the feller ain't got a judgment against him."
"So much the better," Goldblatt commented. "The property won't bring the amount of the first mortgage and I suppose I got to buy it in. Then I will get deficiency judgments against that feller, and I'll make him sorry he ever tried any monkey business with me and my daughters. Why, that feller actually turned my own children against me, Levy."
"Is that so?" Levy murmured.
"My Birdie abused me, I assure you, like I was a pickpocket when I says I would foreclose on him," Goldblatt replied. "And even my Fannie, although she is all broke up about that one-eyed feller, she says I should give the young feller a show. What d'ye think of that, hey?"
"Terrible!" Levy replied. "A feller like that deserves all he gets, and you can bet yer sweet life he won't have any let-up from me, Mr. Goldblatt."
Levy was as good as his word, for that very afternoon he filed a notice of pendency of action against the Heidenfeld Avenue property, and the next morning, as Philip left his house, a clerk from Levy's office served him with four copies of the summons and complaint in the foreclosure suit of Goldblatt vs. Margolius, actions numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. But Philip stuffed them into his pocket unread; he had other and more poignant woes than foreclosure suits. Only ten days wed, and he was denied even the sight of his wife longer than five minutes; for she was not endangering future prospects in favour of present happiness.
"We could, anyway, get the furniture out of him," she argued when she saw Philip that day, "and, maybe, a couple of thousand dollars."
"I don't care a pinch of snuff for his furniture," Philip cried. "I will buy the furniture myself."
"But I can't leave Fannie just now," she declared; "she's all broke up about that feller."
"What about me?" Philip protested. "Ain't I broke up, too?"
"So long you waited, you could wait a little longer yet," she replied; "but poor Fannie, you got no idea how that girl takes on."
"She shouldn't worry," Philip cried. "I promised I would fix her up, and I will fix her up."
Daily the same scene was enacted at the Goldblatt residence on One Hundred and Eighteenth Street, and daily Birdie refused to forsake her sister, until six weeks had elapsed.
"But, Birdie," Philip announced for the hundredth time, "so sure as you stand there I couldn't keep this up no longer. I will either go crazy or either I will jump in the river."
Birdie patted him on the back.
"Don't think about it," she said. "Take your mind off it. To-day your property gets sold and Popper says he will be down at the salesroom at twelve o'clock."
"Let 'em sell it," Philip cried; "I don't care."
He turned away after a hurried embrace, and was proceeding down Lenox Avenue toward the subway when Marks Henochstein, the real-estate broker, encountered him. Marks clutched him by the shoulder.
"Well, Philip," Henochstein cried, "you are in luck at last."
"In luck!" Philip exclaimed bitterly. "A dawg shouldn't have the luck what I got it."
"Well, if you don't call it lucky," Henochstein continued, "what would you call it lucky?"
"Excuse me, Henochstein," said Philip; "I ain't good at guessing puzzles. What am I lucky for?"
"Why, ain't you heard it yet?"
"I ain't heard nothing," Philip replied. "Do me the favour and don't keep me on suspension."
"Why, the city is going to widen Two Hundred and Sixty-fourth Street in front of them houses of yours, and you will get damages. Oi! what damages you will get!"
Philip stared blankly at his informant for one hesitating moment; then he dashed off for the nearest subway station.
Half an hour later he sat in the office of Henry D. Feldman and gasped out his story.
"In three quarters of an hour, Mr. Feldman," he cried, "that property will be sold, and, if it is, the feller what buys it will get damages for the street opening and I will get nix."
"This is a fine time to tell me about it, Margolius," Feldman said. "You came in here six weeks ago and asked me to help you out, and I haven't seen you since. The time to do something was six weeks ago. Why didn't you come back to see me before the suit was started?"
"Because I was busy, Mr. Feldman," Margolius replied. "A whole lot of things happened to me about that time. In the first place, the next day after I saw you I got married."
"What!" Feldman exclaimed, "you got married? Well, Margolius, you recovered pretty quickly from that affair with Birdie Goldblatt."
Margolius stared gloomily at his attorney.
"What d'ye mean I recover from it?" he echoed. "I didn't recover from it, Mr. Feldman. That's who I married—Miss Birdie Goldblatt."
Feldman sat back in his chair.
"Well, of all the unfatherly brutes," he said, "to shut down on his own daughter's husband!"
"Hold on there, Mr. Feldman," Philip interrupted; "he don't know he's shutting down on his daughter's husband, because we was secretly married, y' understand? And even to-day yet the old man don't know nothing about it."
"What do you mean?" Feldman asked. "Why wouldn't he know his own daughter was married?"
"Because she's living home yet," Philip replied, and "I can't persuade her to go housekeeping, neither."
Feldman frowned for a moment and then he struck the desk with his fist.
"By jiminy!" he shouted, "you've got the old man by the whiskers!"
It was now Philip's turn to ask what Feldman meant.
"Why," the latter explained, "your wife's inchoate right of dower is still outstanding."
"That's where you make a big mistake, Mr. Feldman," Philip corrected. "My Birdie is a neat dresser and never so much as a pin out of place."
"You don't understand," Feldman continued. "As soon as Birdie and you got married she took an interest in your property."
"Sure she took an interest in my property," Philip assented. "Why, if it wouldn't be for her I wouldn't know nothing about this here sale to-day."
"But I mean that as soon as she married you she became vested with the right to receive the rents of a third of that property during her lifetime as soon as you died," said Feldman.
"Well, we won't worry about that," Philip said with a deprecatory wave of his hand, "because, in the first place, that property is pretty near vacant and don't bring in enough rents to pay the taxes, and, in the second place, I'm still good and healthy and I wouldn't die for a long time yet."
"Oh, what's the use!" Feldman cried. "What I mean is that they can't foreclose those second mortgages unless they make Birdie a party to the suit and serve her with the summons; so, all you have to do to stop the sale is to go down to the salesroom and, when the auctioneer starts to ask for bids, get up and tell 'em all about it. Why, they'll have to begin their suit all over again."
"But," Philip protested, "if I tell 'em all about it the old man will throw Birdie out of the house."
"Hold on!" Feldman broke in. "You mustn't tell them you're married to Birdie. Just tell them you're married, and let them find out your wife's name for themselves. Although, to be sure, that won't take long, for the record of marriage licenses at the city hall will show it."
"License nothing!" Philip cried. "We didn't get no license at the city hall. We got married by a justice of the peace in Jersey City."
"Fine!" Feldman exclaimed, his professional ethics thrown to the winds. "That'll keep 'em guessing as long as you want."
"All I want is a month, and by that time I can raise the money and fix the whole thing up," Margolius replied.
Feldman looked at his watch.
"Chase yourself," he said; "it's a quarter of twelve, and the foreclosure sale begins at noon."