Here there was a long pause, while Polatkin stood in the middle of the office floor like a bird-dog pointing at a covey of partridges.
"But why couldn't you come down here, Mr. Kapfer?" Scheikowitz asked. Again there was a long pause, at the end of which Scheikowitz said: "Wait a minute—I'll ask my partner."
"Listen here, Polatkin," he said, placing his hand over the transmitter. "Kapfer says he wants to give us from two thousand five hundred dollars an order, and he wants you and me to go up to the Prince Clarence at two o'clock to see him. He wants us both there because he wants to arrange terms of credit."
"I would see him hung first!" Polatkin roared, and Scheikowitz took his hand from the transmitter.
"All right, Mr. Kapfer," he answered in dulcet tones; "me and Polatkin will both be there. Good-bye."
He hung up the receiver with exaggerated care.
"And you would just bet your life that we will be there!" he said. "And that's all there is to it!"
At half-past one that afternoon, while Max Kapfer was enjoying a good cigar in the lobby of the Prince Clarence, he received an unexpected visitor in the person of Julius Flixman.
"Why, how do you do, Mr. Flixman?" he cried, dragging forth a chair.