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He paused in his narrative to give me one of those knowing, piercing looks of his. This was still another Hammerstein: he was the accomplished actor awaiting applause for securing such an extensive and undeserved line of credit from so unexpected a source.

“Does that,” he asked, “explain to you how I could pull his leg?”

The impresario did not then go into bankruptcy. A few of us combined and lent him the money. My activities in Harlem also included the purchase of two solid blocks of lots.

In 1887 Ehrich and I bought from Oswald Ottendorfer the entire block bounded by Lenox and Mount Morris avenues and One Hundred and Twentieth and One Hundred and Twenty-first streets. I induced the Ottendorfers to split the transaction and content themselves with our buying the Lenox Avenue front outright and their giving us an option on the Mount Morris front. This option was sold for $10,000 profit, to Walter and Frank Kilpatrick, and our total profits, which we divided in May, 1887, were $43,424.10. I always remembered the numbers because of the sequence, 43, 42, 41.