Abe shook himself free.
"Why shouldn't I make him arrested?" he insisted. "He's a thief. He stole my samples."
"Well, he stole my samples, too, oncet," B. Gans replied. "Come inside the café and I'll give you a little sad story what I got, too."
A moment later they were seated at a marble-top table.
"Yes, Abe," B. Gans went on after they had given the order, "Marks Pasinsky stole my samples, too. Let's hear your story first."
Straightway Abe unfolded to B. Gans the tale of Marks Pasinsky's adventure with Mozart Rabiner and Arthur Katzen, and also told him how the orders based on Potash & Perlmutter's sample line had found their way into the respective establishments of Sammet Brothers and Klinger & Klein.
"Well, by jimminy!" B. Gans commented, "that's just the story I got to tell it you. This feller does the selfsame funny business with my samples. He gets orders from a couple of big concerns in St. Louis and then he gambles them away to a feller called Levy. So what do I do, Potash? He goes to work and has 'em both arrested, and then them two fellers turns around and fixes up a story and the first thing you know the police judge lets 'em go. Well, Potash, them two fellers goes down to New York and hires a lawyer, by the name Henry
D. Feldman, and sue me in the courts yet that I made them false arrested. Cost me a thousand dollars to settle it, and I also got to agree that if anybody inquires about Pasinsky I should say only that he is a good salesman—which is the truth, Potash, because he is a good salesman—and that the reason he left me is by mutual consent, y'understand?"
Abe nodded.
"That's a fine piece of work, that Marks Pasinsky," he commented. "I wish I had never seen him already. What shall I do, Gans? I am in a fine mess."