The seams of the mattress on all four sides, both top and bottom, had been opened with a knife wide enough to permit a hand.

"I had to open it to put in some bug powder," Rufus said. "We been bothered with the bugs. But all it needs is sewing up a little and it'll look like new."

The Jew wasn't listening. He was sticking his arm through the openings and probing the padding with his fingers. With an enraged gesture, he wheeled it over to the floor and probed the other side. His face was a study in frustration.

"The deal's off," he choked in a furious voice. His sallow skin had turned the dull purple of a ripe fig.

"What the hell's the matter with you!" Rufus shouted, his eyes bugging in matching fury. "You think I'm going to sell you a mattress if there was any money hidden in it?"

"It's risky, too risky," the Jew said, half cowed by Rufus's threatening attitude. "If money has been stolen, I won't touch it."

"What risk is you taking?" Rufus kept raving. "You don't never take no risk. It's me takes all the risks. The way you cover yourself up with all kinds of legal tetches, all of Congress couldn't get nothing on you."

The Jew gave in. "All right, all right. We don't have to fight. I just like to do my own looking, whether I find anything or not."

"Hell, you think you're going to find a bale of money in every mattress that you buy," Rufus said scornfully.

It was rumored in Harlem that twenty years ago the Jew had found thirty-five thousand dollars in cash hidden in a mattress he had bought for 75? from a flea-bag hotel room in which an old white beggar had died.

Rufus kept on needling. "Us colored folks ain't got no money to hide. You Jews got it all."

The Jew was finished with it. "All right, drop it, boy. Twenty-seven fifty for what's in here, okay?"

"That's just what I mean," Rufus said. "My old lady paid two hundred seventy-five for this set less than a month ago."