"Do you mean to told me there ain't no such person, which he is buying goods for a concern, called Kelly?" he demanded.
Max nodded.
"Then that loafer just fools away his time every afternoon," Gembitz said in choking tones; "and, after all I done for him, he——"
"What's the matter, popper?" Max cried, for Gembitz's lips had suddenly grown purple, and, even as Max reached forward to aid him, he lurched from his chair on to the floor.
Half an hour later Samuel Gembitz was undergoing the entirely novel experience of riding uptown in a taxicab, accompanied by a young physician who had been procured from the medical department of an insurance company across the street.
"Say, lookyhere," Sam protested as they assisted him into the cab, "this ain't necessary at all!"
"No, I know it isn't," the doctor agreed, in his best imitation of an old practitioner's jocular manner. He was, in fact, a very young practitioner and was genuinely alarmed at Samuel's condition, which he attributed to arteriosclerosis and not to gefüllte Rinderbrust. "But, just the same," he concluded, "it is just as well to keep as quiet as possible for the present."
Sam nodded and lay back wearily in the leather seat of the taxicab while it threaded its way through the traffic of lower Fifth Avenue. Only once did he appear to take an interest in his surroundings, and that was when the taxicab halted at the end of a long line of traffic opposite the débris of a new building.
"What's going on here?" he asked faintly.
"It's pretty nearly finished," the doctor replied. "Weldon, Jones & Company, of Minneapolis, are going to open a New York store."