the run from a radius of ten blocks, and Mr. Blaukopf's stock in trade punctuated the cremation of his fixtures with loud explosions at uncertain intervals. In less than half an hour the entire building was gutted, and when the firemen withdrew their apparatus Mr. Blaukopf searched in vain for his prescription books. They had resolved themselves into their original elements, and the number on the label of the bottle which Aaron carried around in his breast-pocket provided no clew to the ingredients of the medicine thus contained. 

 "That's a fine note," Aaron declared to Philip, as they surveyed the black ruins the next morning. "Now what would I do? Without that medicine I will cough my face off already." 

 He examined the label of the bottle and sighed. 

 "I suppose I could go and see that Doctor Goldenreich," he said, "and right away I am out ten dollars." 

 "Why don't you ring up Miss Meyerson over at Zaretsky & Fatkin's?" Philip suggested. 

 Aaron sighed heavily. His business relations with Greenberg & Sen had proved far from satisfactory, and it was only Philip's job and his own sense of shame that prevented him from resuming his dealings with Zaretsky & Fatkin. 

 As for Sam and Max, they missed their old customer both financially and socially. 

 "Yes, Sam," Max said the day after Blaukopf's fire, "things ain't the same around here like in former times already." 

 "If you mean in the office, Max," Sam said, "I'm glad they ain't. That's a fine bookkeeper we got it, Max, and a fine woman, too. Ain't it a shame and a disgrace for young fellers nowadays, Max, that a fine woman like Miss Meyerson is already thirty-five and should be single? My Sarah is crazy about her. Her and Sarah goes to a matinee last Saturday afternoon together and Sarah asks her to dinner to-morrow." 

 Max nodded. 

 "With some bookkeepers, Sam," he said, "you couldn't do such things. Right away they would take advantage. Miss Meyerson, that's something else again. She takes an interest in our business, Sam. Even a grouch like Aaron Pinsky she treated good." 

 "I bet yer," Sam replied. "I seen Elenbogen in the subway this morning and he tells me Aaron goes around blowing about paying a thousand dollars to a professor uptown and he gives him a medicine which cures 

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