Luckily Kaplan steamed out Mrs. Jackson’s fall outfit first. That delayed the shock only a few moments, but later he was to look back on those free minutes with cosmic longing.
He came to Mr. McElvoy’s daily suit. Nobody could accuse the neat principal of anything but the most finicking immaculacy. Yet when Kaplan got through stitching up a cuff and put his hand in a pocket to brush out the usual fluff—
“Yeow!” he yelled, snatching out his hand.
For a long while Kaplan stood shuddering, his fingers cold with revulsion. Then, cautiously, he ran his hand over the outside of the pocket. He felt only the flat shape of the lining.
“Am I maybe going out of my mind?” he muttered. “Believe me, with everything on my shoulders, and that nut besides, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Slowly he inserted the tips of his fingers into the pocket. Almost instantly something globular and clammily smooth crept into the palm of his furtively exploring hand.
Kaplan shouted in disgust, but he wouldn’t let go. Clutching the monstrosity was like holding a round, affectionate oyster that kept trying to snuggle deeper into his palm. Kaplan wouldn’t free it, though. Grimly he yanked his hand out.
Somehow it must have sensed his purpose. Before he could snatch it out of its refuge, the cold, clammy thing squeezed between his fingers with a repulsively fierce effort—
Kaplan determinedly kept fumbling around after it, until his mind began working again. He hadn’t felt any head on it, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t have teeth somewhere in its apparently featureless body. How could it eat without a mouth? So the little tailor stopped daring the disgusting beast to bite him.
He stood still for a moment, gaping down at his hand. Though it was empty, he still felt a sensation of damp coldness. From his hand he stared back to Mr. McElvoy’s suit. The pockets were perfectly flat. He couldn’t detect a single bulge.
The idea nauseated him, but he forced himself to explore all the pockets.
“Somebody,” he whispered savagely when he finished, “is all of a sudden a wise guy—only he ain’t so funny.”
He stalked, rather waddlingly, to the telephone, ripped the receiver off the hook, barked a number at the operator. Above the burr of the bell at the other end he could hear the gulp of his own angry swallowing.
“Hello,” a husky feminine voice replied. “Is that you, darling?”
“Mrs. McElvoy?” he rasped, much too loudly.
The feminine voice changed, grew defensive. “Well?”
“This is Kaplan the tailor. Mrs. McElvoy”—his rasp swelled to a violent shout—“such a rotten joke I have never seen in eighteen years I been in this business. What am I—a dope your husband should try funny stuff on?” The words began running together. “Listen, maybe I ain’t classy like you, but I got pride also. So what if I work for a living? Ain’t I—”
“Whatever are you talking about?” Mrs. McElvoy asked puzzledly.
“Your husband’s pants, that’s what! Such things he’s got in his pockets, I wouldn’t be seen dead with them!”
“Mr. McElvoy has his suits cleaned after wearing them only once,” she retorted frigidly.
“So, does that mean he can’t keep dirty things in his pockets?”
“I’m sorry you don’t care to have our trade,” Mrs. McElvoy said, obviously trying to control her anger. “Mr. Gottlieb has offered to call for them every morning. He’s also twenty-five cents cheaper. Good day!”
In reply to the bang that hurt his ear, Kaplan slammed down the receiver. The moment he turned to march off, the bell jangled. Viciously he grabbed up the receiver.
“Hello… darling?” a deep feminine voice asked.
“Mrs. McElvoy?” he roared.
For several seconds he listened to a strained, bitter silence. Then:
“IRA!” his wife shrilled in outrage.
He hung up hastily and, trembling, he went back to his pressing machine.
“Will I get it now,” he moaned. “Everything happens to me. If I don’t starve for once, so all kinds of trouble flops in my lap. First I lose my best customer—I should only have a thousand like him, I’d be on easy street—and then I make a little mistake. But go try to tell Molly I made a mistake. Married twenty years, and she acts like I was a regular lady-killer—”
Kaplan’s pressing production rose abruptly from four suits an hour to nine. But that was because no cuffs were brushed, no pockets turned inside out, no buttons stitched or replaced. He banged down the iron, slashed the suits with steam, vacuumed them hastily, batted the creases, which had to be straight the first time or not at all. He knew there would be kicks all that week, but he couldn’t do anything about it.
The door opened. Kaplan raised a white face. It wasn’t his wife, though. Fraulein, Mrs. Sampter’s refugee maid, clumped over to him and shoved a pair of pants in his hands.
“Goot morgen,” she said pleasantly. “Herr Sompter he vants zhe pockets new. You make soon, no?”
Kaplan nodded dumbly. Without thinking of the consequences, he stuffed his hand in the pocket to note the extent of the damage.
“Eee—YOW!” he howled. “What kind of customers have I got all of a sudden? Take it away, Fraulein! With crazy people I don’t want to deal!”
Fraulein’s broad face wrinkled bewilderedly. She took back the pants and ran her hands through the pockets.
“Crazy people—us? Maybe you haf got zhe temperature?”
“Such things in pockets! Phooey on practical jokers! Go away—”
“You just vait till Mrs. Sompter about this hears.” And stuffing the pants under her arm, Fraulein marched out angrily.
Despite his revulsion, it took Kaplan only a few moments to grow suspicious. One previously dignified customer might suddenly have become a practical joker, but not two. Something scared him even more than that. Fraulein had put her hands in the pockets! Apparently she had not felt anything at all.
“Who’s crazy?” Kaplan whispered frightenedly. “Me or them?”
Warily he approached the worktable. Mr. McElvoy was neat, but Mr. Rich was such a bug on cleanliness that even his dirty suits were immaculate, and his pockets never contained lint. That was the suit Kaplan edged up to.
The instant Molly opened the door she began shrieking.
“You loafer! You no-good masher! I call up to tell you I don’t feel good, so maybe I won’t have to work today. ‘Hello, darling,’ I say, so who else could it be but your own wife? No—it’s Mrs. McElvoy!”
Despite her red-eyed glare, she seemed to recognize a subtle change in him. His plump face was grave and withdrawn, hardened in the fire of spiritual conflict. Instead of claiming it was a mistake, which she had been expecting and would have pounced on, he merely turned back to his pressing machine.
She got panicky. “Ira! Ain’t you going to even say you weren’t thinking? Don’t tell me you… you love Mrs. McElvoy—”
“You know I don’t, Molly,” he replied quietly, without looking up.
Slowly she took her fists off her hips and unstraddled her firmly planted feet. She knew she was helpless against his passive resistance.
“Ira, I don’t feel so good. Is it all right if I don’t work?”
“I’ll get along somehow,” he said gently. “Stay home till you feel better, darling. I’ll manage.”
For several minutes she watched him work. He had a new method of brushing pockets. Although she realized it was new to him, he appeared to have it pat. He pulled the pockets inside out with a hooked wire, brushed them, stuffed them back with a stick of clean wood.