"W-what could I do about it?" he gasped at length.

"Do about it!" Linkheimer cried. "Why, if I had a partner who played me
a dirty trick like that I'd kick him out of my place. There ain't a
copartnership agreement in existence that doesn't expressly say one
partner shouldn't give a bail bond without the other partner's consent."

Abe rocked to and fro in his chair.

"After all these years a feller should do a thing like that to me!" he
moaned.

Linkheimer smiled with satisfaction, and he was about to instance a
striking and wholly imaginary case of one partner ruining another by
giving a bail bond when the door leading to the cutting room in the rear
opened and Morris Perlmutter appeared. As his eyes rested on Linkheimer
they blazed with anger, and for once Morris seemed to possess a certain
dignity.

"Out," he commanded; "out from _mein_ store, you dawg, you!"

As he rushed on the startled button dealer, Abe grabbed his coat-tails
and pulled him back.

"Say, what are we here, Mawruss," he cried, "a theaytre?"

"Let him alone, Abe," Linkheimer counselled in a rather shaky voice.
"I'm pretty nearly twenty years older than he is, but I guess I could
cope with him."