"Sure I'm dead right," he said; "and if you and Mrs. Lubliner would come down to my office in the Siddons Theatre Building to-morrow night, eight o'clock, I would send one of my associates round with you and he will get you tickets for the 'Diners Out,' understand me; and then you would see for yourself what a big house they got there. Even on Monday night they turn 'em away!"
"I'm much obliged to you," Elkan replied. "I'm sure Mrs. Lubliner and me would enjoy it very much."
"I'm sorry for you if you wouldn't," Benson retorted; "and that there 'Diners Out' ain't a marker to the show I'm putting on, Mr. Lubliner—which you can see for yourself, a business proposition, which pans out pretty near two hundred thousand dollars on a fifteen-thousand-dollar investment, is got to be right up to the mark. Ain't it?"
"I thought you said ten thousand dollars was the investment," Elkan remarked.
"I did," Benson replied with some heat; "but if some one comes along and wants to invest the additional five thousand dollars I wouldn't turn him down, Mr. Lubliner."
He rose to his feet to join the pinocle players in the dining room.
"So I hope you enjoy the show to-morrow night," he added as he strolled away.
From six to eight every evening Max Merech underwent a gradual transformation, for six o'clock was the closing hour at Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's establishment, while eight marked the advent of the Sarasate Trio at the Café Román, on Delancey Street. Thus, at six, Max Merech was an assistant cutter; and, indeed, until after he ate his supper he still bore the outward appearance of an assistant cutter, though inwardly he felt a premonitory glow. After half-past seven, however, he buttoned on a low, turned-down collar with its concomitant broad Windsor tie, and therewith he assumed his real character—that of a dilettante.
At the Café Román each evening he specialized on music; but with the spirit of the true dilettante he neglected no one of the rest of the arts, and was ever to be found at the table next to the piano, a warm advocate of the latest movement in painting and literature, as well as an appreciative listener to the ultramodern music discoursed by the Sarasate Trio.