You have a mortgage of twenty thousand on your property, which mortgage belongs to yourself, and is kept in Ehrenthal's office.

I will persuade Pinkus to leave you the ten thousand, and will add another ten if you make over that mortgage to my friend." The baron listened.

"Perhaps you do not know," rejoined he, with much severity, "that I have already made over that deed of mortgage to Ehrenthal." "Forgive me, gracious sir, you have not; there has been no legal surrender of it made." "But my written promise has been given," said the baron.
Veitel shrugged again.

"If you promised Ehrenthal a mortgage, why should it be this very one of all others?
But what need of a mortgage to Ehrenthal at all?
This year you will receive your capital from the Polish estate, and then you can pay him off in hard cash.

Till then, just leave the mortgage quietly in his hands; no one need know that you have surrendered it to us.