"You talk foolish, Mawruss; you would get forty-seven thousand, sure, for that house."
"Would I?" Morris cried. "How would I do that?"
"Leave that to me," Abe replied.
He put on his hat and coat.
"Where are you going, Abe?" Morris asked.
Abe waggled his head solemnly.
"You shouldn't ask me, Mawruss," he said. "I got an idee."
It was a quarter to twelve when Abe left the loft building on Nineteenth Street, and he repaired immediately to the real-estate salesroom on Vesey Street, where auction sales of real estate are held at noon daily. To this center of real-estate activity comes every real-estate broker of the East Side, together with his brothers from Harlem and the Bronx, and Abe felt reasonably sure that B. Rashkin would be on hand.
Indeed, he had hardly entered the salesroom when he descried B. Rashkin standing on the outskirts of a little throng that surrounded the rostrum of a popular auctioneer.
"Now, gentlemen," said the auctioneer, "what am I offered for this six-story, four-family house. Remember, gentlemen, it is practically new and stands on a lot forty by a hundred."