"Excuse me, Mr. Scharley," he said, "but I have to be getting back to the hotel and if you're quite through we'll go and look at that map of the lots down in the office."
Scharley waved his hand airily.
"Sit down, Mr. Williams," he said, "and drink the cup of coffee of your life."
He handed the room clerk a cigar.
"I could promise you one thing, Mr. Williams," he went on, "I got a great idee of buying some lots here and building a little house on 'em, gemütlich just like this, and if I do, Williams, I would take them lots from you for certain sure. Only one thing, Williams, I want you to do me for a favour."
He paused and puffed carefully on his cigar.
"I want you to pick me out a couple good vacant rooms on the top floor of the Salisbury for Saturday night," he said, "where I could give a shaving-dish party, so if any of the guests of the hotel objects, understand me, they wouldn't get the smell of the Bortch, coffee, and brown stewed fish sweet and sour."
On the following Wednesday afternoon Elkan sat at his desk, while Marcus Polatkin and Philip Scheikowitz leaned over his left shoulder and right shoulder respectively, and watched carefully the result of a pencilled addition which Elkan was making.
"With them crêpe meteors," Elkan said at last, "Scharley's order comes to four thousand three hundred dollars."