Later in the day Ralph Zinsheimer, managing clerk in the office of Bienenflug & Krimp, and over and above the age of eighteen years as prescribed by the Code, served a copy of the summons and complaint on each of the joint tort-feasors in the ten-thousand dollar assault action of Goldie Raymond, plaintiff, against J. Montgomery Fieldstone and others, defendants. There were important changes that evening in the cast of "Rudolph Where Have You Been."
CHAPTER TEN
CAVEAT EMPTOR
F or many years Mr. Herman Wolfson had so conducted the auctioneering business that he could look the whole world, including the district attorney, in the eye and tell 'em to go jump on themselves. This was by no means an easy thing to do, when the wavering line of demarcation between right and wrong often depends on the construction of a comma in the Code of Criminal Procedure. Nevertheless, under the competent advice of Henry D. Feldman, that eminent legal practitioner, Mr. Wolfson had prospered; and although his specialty was the purchasing en bloc of the stock in trade and fixtures of failing shopkeepers, not once had he been obliged to turn over his purchases to the host of clamouring creditors.
"My skirts I keep it clean," he explained to Philip Borrochson, whose retail jewellery business had proved a losing venture and was, therefore, being acquired by Mr. Wolfson at five hundred dollars less than its actual value, "and if I got an idee you was out to do somebody—myself or anybody else—I wouldn't have nothing to do with you, Mr. Borrochson."
The conversation took place in the business premises of Mr. Borrochson, a small, poorly-stocked store on Third Avenue, one Sunday morning in January, which is always a precarious month in the jewellery trade.
"If it should be the last word what I ever told it you, Mr. Wolfson," Borrochson declared, "I ain't got even a piece of wrapping-paper on memorandum. Everything in my stock is a straight purchase at sixty and ninety days. You can take my word for it."
Mr. Wolfson nodded.
"When I close the deal to buy the place, Borrochson," he said, "I'll take more as your word for it. You got a writing from me just now, and I'll get a writing from you. I'll take your affidavit, the same what Henry D. Feldman draws it in every case when I buy stores. There ain't never no mistakes in them affidavits, neither, Borrochson, otherwise the party what makes it is got ten years to wait before he makes another one."