Kamin hesitated before replying.
"In business, Joe—it's Esau's fable of the lion and the mouse every time!" Ortelsburg continued. "The mouse scratches the lion's back and the lion scratches the mouse's back! Ain't it?"
"But you know so well as I do, Benno, that Glaubmann's house on Linden Boulevard ain't worth no eighteen thousand dollars," Kamin said.
"Why ain't it?" Benno retorted. "Glaubmann's Linden Boulevard house is precisely the same house as this, built from the same plans and everything—and this house costs me thirteen thousand five hundred dollars. Suburban real estate is worth just so much as you can get some sucker to pay for it, Joe. So I guess I better get the cards and chips ready, because I see Glaubmann coming up the street now."
A moment later Glaubmann entered the library and greeted Kamin uproariously.
"Hello, Joe!" he cried. "How's the drygoods business in Pittsburgh?"
"Not so good as the real-estate business in Burgess Park, Barney," Kamin replied. "They tell me you are selling houses hand over fist."
"Yow—hand over fist!" Barnett cried. "If I carry a house six months and sell it at a couple thousand dollars' profit, what is it?"
"I got to get rid of a whole lot of garments to make a couple thousand dollars, Barney," Kamin said; "and, anyhow, if you sell a house for eighteen thousand dollars which it cost you thirteen-five you would be making a little more as four thousand dollars."
"Sure I would," Glaubmann replied; "aber the people which buys green-goods and gold bricks ain't investing in eighteen-thousand-dollar propositions! Such yokels you could only interest in hundred-dollar lots between high and low water on some of them Jersey sandbars."