"Now, Mr. Noblestone, I am ready for you," Feder cried, but his summons fell on deaf ears, for Noblestone was in quick pursuit of the vanishing Perlmutter. Noblestone overtook him at the corner and touched his elbow. "How do you do, Mr. Perlmutter!" he exclaimed. Perlmutter stopped short and wheeled around. "Huh?" he said. "This is Mr. Sol Perlmutter, ain't it?" Noblestone asked. "No, it ain't," Perlmutter replied. "My name is Morris Perlmutter, and the pair of real gold eye-glasses which you just picked up and would let me have as a bargain for fifty cents, ain't no use to me neither." "I ain't picked up no eye-glasses," Noblestone said. "No?" Morris Perlmutter rejoined. "Well, I don't want to buy no blue white diamond ring neither, y'understand, so if it's all the same to you I got business to attend to." "So do I," Noblestone went on, "and this is what it is. Also my name is there too." He showed Morris a card, which read as follows: ______________________________________________________ | | | TELEPHONE CONNECTION REAL ESTATE & INSURANCE | | IN ALL ITS BRANCHES | | | | PHILIP NOBLESTONE | | BUSINESS BROKER | | | | G E T A | | P A R T N E R | | | | 594 EAST HOUSTON STREET NEW YORK | |______________________________________________________| "Don't discount them good accounts, Mr. Perlmutter," he added, "it ain't necessary." "Who told you I want to discount some accounts?" Morris asked. "If I see a feller in a dentist's chair," Noblestone answered, "I don't need to be told he's got the toothache already." After this Morris was easily persuaded to accept Noblestone's invitation to drink a cup of coffee, and they retired immediately to a neighboring bakery and lunch room. "Yes, Mr. Noblestone," Morris said, consulting the card. "I give you right about Feder. That feller is worser as a dentist. He's a bloodsucker. Fifteen hundred dollars gilt-edged accounts I offer him as security for twelve hundred, and when I get through with paying DeWitt C. Feinholtz, his son-in-law, what is the bank's lawyer, there wouldn't be enough left from that twelve hundred dollars to pay off my operators." "That's the way it is when a feller's short of money," Noblestone said. "Now, if you would got it a partner with backing, y'understand, you wouldn't never got to be short again."