"Must you go around looking like a crazy idiot, Abe?"
"I must got to laugh, Mawruss," Abe protested, "when I seen it Sam Feder, of the Kosciusko Bank, this morning, and he tells it me you got a permanent
mortgage from the I. O. M. A. He says Milton M. Sugarman told him you got it ahead of Rashkin, because you got influence as a lodge brother of Sugarman."
"Sure, I did," Morris admitted.
"And then, Mawruss," Abe went on, "Rashkin hears that the I. O. M. A. is going to make you a permanent loan, so he goes to see Sugarman too."
"That's right," Morris agreed.
"And he says to Sugarman that so long as Sugarman is got to search the title to your house he wouldn't have to search the title to Rashkin's house, because both houses stands on the same piece of property. So he makes a proposition that if Sugarman would charge him only a hundred dollars he would put in an application by the I. O. M. A. for a permanent loan. Otherwise he would get it from a life-insurance company."
Morris nodded ironically.
"And Sugarman says he would do it, I suppose," he broke in. "No, Abe, Sugarman ain't built that way. It costs me five hundred dollars for that loan, Abe."
"I know it did, Mawruss," Abe said, "and Feder says that Sugarman told him he charges you five hundred dollars, and so he don't want to be a hog, Mawruss, and, therefore, he closes with Rashkin for a hundred and fifty."