“Conscience, rot! If we can’t get the dope from you, I tell you, we got to get it from somebody else till you get back on the job!”
A cloud seemed to thicken Berel’s glance.
“Here,” he said, taking from his desk his last typewritten songs, “I’ve done my level best to grind this out.”
Shapiro grasped the sheets with quickening interest. He read, and then shook his head with grieved finality.
“It’s no use. It’s not in you any more. You’ve lost the punch.”
“You mean to tell me that my verses wouldn’t go?”
Berel’s eyes shone like hot coals out of his blanched face.
“Look here, old pal,” replied Shapiro, with patronizing pity. “You’ve just gone dry.”
“You ghoul!” Berel lifted his fist threateningly. “It’s you who worked me dry—made of my name nothing but a trade-mark!”
“So that’s what I get for all I done for you!” Revulsion at the boy’s ingratitude swept through Shapiro like a fury. “What do you think I am? Business is business. If you ain’t got the dope no more, why, you ain’t better than the bunch of plumbers that I chucked!”