The Go-Getter by Peter B. Kyne

Author:Peter B. Kyne [Kyne, B. Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-937077-12-9
Publisher: Ramsey Press
Published: 2011-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

B. Cohen’s Art Shop

This was a start, so Mr. Peck limped over to the Palace Hotel and procured a telephone directory. By actual count there were nineteen B. Cohens scattered throughout the city, so before commencing to call the nineteen, Bill Peck borrowed the city directory from the hotel clerk and scanned it for the particular B. Cohen who owned the art shop. His search availed him nothing. B. Cohen was listed as an art dealer at the address where the blue vase reposed in the show window. That was all.

“I suppose he’s a commuter,” Mr. Peck concluded, and at once proceeded to procure directories of the adjacent cities of Berkeley, Oakland and Alameda. They were not available, so in despair he changed a dollar into five cent pieces, sought a telephone booth and commenced calling up all the B. Cohens in San Francisco. Of the nineteen, four did not answer, three were temporarily disconnected, six replied in Yiddish, five were not the B. Cohen he sought, and one swore he was Irish and that his name was spelled Cohan and pronounced with an accent on both syllables.

The B. Cohens resident in Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, San Rafael, Sausalito, Mill Valley, San Mateo, Redwood City and Palo Alto were next telephoned to, and when this long and expensive task was done, Ex-Private Bill Peck emerged from the telephone booth wringing wet with perspiration and as irritable as a clucking hen. Once outside the hotel he raised his haggard face to heaven and dumbly queried of the Almighty what He meant by saving him from quick death on the field of honor only to condemn him to be talked to death by B. Cohens in civil life.

It was now six o’clock. Suddenly Peck had an inspiration. Was the name spelled Cohen, Cohan, Cohn, Kohn or Coen?

“If I have to take a Jewish census again tonight I’ll die,” he told himself desperately, and went back to the art shop.

The sign read: B. COHN’S ART SHOP.

“I wish I knew a bootlegger’s joint,” poor Peck complained. “I’m pretty far gone and a little wood alcohol couldn’t hurt me much now. Why, I could have sworn that name was spelled with an E. It seems to me I noted that particularly.”

He went back to the hotel telephone booth and commenced calling up all the B. Cohns in town. There were eight of them and six of them were out, one was maudlin with liquor and the other was very deaf and shouted unintelligibly.

“Peace hath its barbarities no less than war,” Mr. Peck sighed. He changed a twenty-dollar bill into nickels, dimes and quarters, returned to the hot, ill-smelling telephone booth and proceeded to lay down a barrage of telephone calls to the B. Cohns of all towns of any importance contiguous to San Francisco Bay. And he was lucky. On the sixth call he located the particular B. Cohn in San Rafael, only to be informed by Mr. Cohn’s cook that Mr. Cohn was dining at the home of a Mr.

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