"That's a Rosher—that feller Sammet," Polatkin said at length. "Honestly, the way some business men ain't got no mercy at all for the other feller, you would think, Scheikowitz, they was living back in the old country yet!"
Scheikowitz nodded and glanced nervously from the photograph to Elkan.
"I think you was telling me you got a couple idees about helping Dishkes out, Elkan," he said. "So, in the first place, Dishkes, you should please let us see a list of your creditors."
With this prelude Scheikowitz drew forward his chair and plunged into a discussion of Dishkes' affairs that lasted for more than two hours; and when Dishkes at length departed he took with him notices of a meeting addressed to his twenty creditors, prepared for immediate mailing by Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company's stenographer.
"And that's what we let ourselves in for," Scheikowitz declared after the elevator door had closed behind Dishkes. "To-morrow morning at eleven o'clock the place here would look like the waiting room of a depot, and all our competitors would be rubbering at our stock already."
"Let 'em rubber!" Elkan said. "If I don't get an extension for that feller my name ain't Elkan Lubliner at all; because between now and then I am going round to see them twenty creditors, and I bet yer they will sign an extension agreement, with the figures I am going to put up to them!"
"Figures!" Scheikowitz jeered. "What good is figures to them fellers? Showing figures to a bankrupt's creditors is like taking to a restaurant a feller which is hungry and letting him look at the knives and forks and plates, understand me!"
Elkan nodded.
"Sure, I know," he said; "but the figures ain't all."
Surreptitiously he drew from his pocket a faded cabinet photograph.