"Hungry, _sagt er_!" Morris retorted. "A feller makes a god of his stomach, y'understand, and his business is nothing at all. For all you care, Abe, our whole trade could fail on us, so long as you could eat. Everybody says the same thing; the feller's ----" "Do me the favour, Mawruss," Abe begged; "tell me about it afterward. All I am eating for my breakfast is one egg, so sure as you're standing there." "All right, Abe; I wouldn't keep you no longer," Morris said. "If you could got it in your heart to eat, when one of your best customers is busting up on you, go ahead." "Our best customer?" Abe cried--"Mandelberger Brothers & Company?" "_Geh weg_, you fool!" Morris exclaimed angrily. "Why should a millionaire concern like Mandelberger Brothers & Company got to fail? You talk like a lunatic." Once more Abe seized his hat. "I got enough of your nonsense, Mawruss," he said, starting for the elevator. "Wait!" Morris cried, grabbing him by the arm. "Did you ship any goods to Felix Geigermann yet?" "Felix Geigermann?" Abe repeated. "Is that the feller?" Morris nodded, and this time Abe hung up his hat and sat down heavily in the nearest chair. "Who says he's going to fail?" he asked. "Everybody says so," Morris replied; "even in the papers they got it." He handed Kleiman's paper to Abe and indicated the paragraph with a shaking forefinger. "Where does it say he is going to fail?" Abe asked after he had read it over hastily. "Where does it say it?" Morris cried. "Why, if a feller goes to work and pays three thousand dollars for a fiddle, Abe, while he only got a business rated twenty-five to thirty thousand, credit fair, ain't it as plain as the nose on your face he must got to fail?" Once more Abe read over the paragraph and then the paper fell from his hands to the floor. "Why, Mawruss," he gasped, "it says here he is paying three thousand dollars for an Amati which he had in his possession for some time. That must be the very fiddle which he is playing on with Moe Rabiner." "My _tzuris_ if it is _oder_ it ain't," Morris commented. "What difference does that make to us, Abe?" Abe's face was white and large beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead as he replied. "The difference ain't much, Mawruss," he said slowly. "Only if Felix Geigermann pays three thousand for the fiddle which he already got it and we are giving him for nothing another fiddle, which is the selfsame, identical article, Mawruss, then we are out three thousand dollars--and that's all the difference it makes to us!" For two minutes Morris regarded his partner with a glassy stare. "Do you mean to told me, Abe, that that there fiddle which you bought it from Shellak is the same identical article like Geigermann pays three thousand dollars for?" Abe nodded. "You couldn't tell the difference between 'em, Mawruss," he declared. "Even inside the label is the same--the same name and everything."