At this easy victory a shade of disappointment passed over the faces of Harvey Sugarberg and his clients, and the contract proceeded without further objection to its rapid conclusion.
"Now then, my friends," Kent announced briskly, "we're ready for the signatures."
At this, the crucial point of all real-estate transactions, a brief silence fell upon the assembled company, which included not only the attorneys and the clients, but Ortelsburg, Kamin, Tarnowitz and Ribnik as well. Finally Glaubmann seized a pen, and, jabbing it viciously in an inkpot, he made a John Hancock signature at the foot of the agreement's last page.
"Now, Mr. Lubliner," Kent said—and Elkan hesitated.
"Ain't we going to wait for Louis Stout?" he asked; and immediately there was a roar of protest that sounded like a mob scene in a Drury Lane melodrama.
"If Louis Stout ain't here it's his own fault," Ortelsburg declared; and Ribnik, Tarnowitz, and Kamin glowered in unison.
"I guess he's right, Elkan," Polatkin murmured.
"It is his own fault if he ain't here," Scheikowitz agreed feebly; and, thus persuaded, Elkan appended a small and, by contrast with Glaubmann's, a wholly unimpressive signature to the agreement. Immediately thereafter Elkan passed over a certified check for eight hundred dollars, according to the terms of the contract, which provided that the title be closed in twenty days at the office of Henry D. Feldman.
"Well, Mr. Lubliner," Glaubmann said, employing the formula hallowed by long usage in all real-estate transactions involving improved property, "I wish you luck in your new house."
"Much obliged," Elkan said; and after a general handshaking the entire assemblage crowded into one elevator, so that finally Elkan was left alone with his partners.