The House of Torchy Part 30

"Take it or leave it," snaps Belcher.

"Sure now," says she, "you know I can't afford to give----"

"Then get out!" orders Belcher.

At which Vee swings open the door of the cage, brushes past me, and faces him with her eyes snappin'.

"Pig!" says she explosive.

"Wha-a-a-at!" gasps Belcher, gawpin' at her.

"I--I beg pardon," says Vee. "I shouldn't have said that, even if it was so."

"You--you're discharged, you!" roars Belcher.

"Isn't that nice?" says Vee, reachin' for her hat and coat. "Then I can go home with my husband, I suppose. And if I have earned any of that princely salary--five dollars a week, it was to be, wasn't it?--well, you may credit it to my account: Mrs. Richard Tabor Ballard, you know.

Come, Torchy."

Say, I always did suspect there was mighty few things Vee was afraid of, but I never thought she had so much clear grit stowed away in her system. For to sail past Belcher the way he looked then took a heap of nerve, believe me. But before he can get that thick tongue of his limbered up we're outside, with Vee snuggled up m.u.f.flin' the giggles against my coat sleeve.

"Oh, it's been such a lark, Torchy!" says she. "I've pa.s.sed as Miss Hemmingway for six days, and I don't believe more than three or four persons have suspected. Thank goodness, Belcher wasn't one of them. For I've learned--oh, such a lot!"

"Let's start at the beginning," says I. "Why did you do it at all?"

"Because the committee was so ready to believe the whoppers he told,"

says Vee. "And they wanted to disband the League, especially that Mrs.

Norton Plummer, whose husband is a lawyer. She was almost disagreeable about it. Truly. 'But, my dear,' she said to me, 'one can't act merely on rumor and prejudice. If we had a few facts or figures it might be different.' And you know that sour smile of hers. Well! That's why I did it. I asked them to give me ten days. And now----"

Vee finishes by squeezin' my arm.

"But how'd you come to break in so prompt?" I asks. "Did you mesmerize Belcher?"

"I bought up his cashier--paid her to report that she was ill," says Vee. "Then I smoothed back my hair, put on this old black dress, and went begging for the job. That's when I began to know Mr. Belcher. He's quite a different person when he is hiring a cashier from the one you see talking to customers. Really, I've never been looked at that way before--as if I were some sort of insect. But when he found I would work cheap, and could get Mrs. Robert Ellins to go on my bond if I should turn out a thief, he took me on.

"Getting up so early was a bit hard, and eating a cold luncheon harder still; but worst of all was having to hear him growl and snap at the clerks. Oh, he's perfectly horrid. I don't see how they stand it. Of course, I had my share. 'Miss Blockhead' was his pet name for me."

"Huh!" says I, grittin' my teeth.

"Meaning that you'd like to tell Belcher a few things yourself?" asks Vee. "Well, you needn't. I'd no right to be there, for one thing. And, for another, this is my own particular affair. I know what I am going to do to Mr. Belcher; at least, what I'm going to try to do. Anyway, I shall have some figures to put before our committee Monday. Then we shall see."

Yep, she had the goods on him. I helped her straighten out the evidence: copies of commission-house bills showin' what he had paid for stuff, and duplicates of sales-slips givin' the retail prices he got. And say, all he was stickin' on was from thirty to sixty per cent. profit.

He didn't always wait for the wholesaler to start the boostin', either.

Vee points out where he has jacked up the price three times on the same shipment--just as the spell took him. He'd be readin' away in his _Morgen Blatherskite_, and all of a sudden he'd jump out of his chair.

I'm no expert on provision prices, but some of them items had me bug-eyed.

"Why," says I, "it looks like this Belcher party meant to discourage eatin' altogether. Couldn't do better if he was runnin' a dinin'-car."

"It's robbery, that's what it is," says Vee. "And when you think that his chief victims are such helpless people as the Burkes and the Walters--well, it's little less than criminal."

"It's a rough deal," I admits, "but one that's bein' pulled in the best circles. War profits are what everybody seems to be out after these days, and I don't see how you're going to stop it."

"I mean to try to stop Belcher, anyway," says Vee, tossin' her chin up.

"You ain't got much show," says I; "but go to it."

Just how much fight there was in Vee, though, I didn't have any idea of until I saw her Monday evenin' after another meetin' of the League. It seems she'd met this Mrs. Norton Plummer on her own ground and had smeared her all over the map.

"What do you suppose she wanted to do?" demands Vee. "Pa.s.s more resolutions! Well, I told her just what I thought of that. As well pin a 'Please-keep-out' notice on your door to scare away burglars as to send resolutions to Belcher. And when I showed her what profits he was making, item by item, she hadn't another word to say. Then I proposed my plan."

"Eh?" says I. "What's it like?"

"We are going to start a store of our own," says Vee--just like that, offhand and casual.

"You are!" says I. "But--but who's goin' to run it?"

"They made me chairman of the sub-committee," says Vee. "And then I made them subscribe to a campaign fund. Five thousand. We raised it in as many minutes. And now--well, I suppose I'm in for it."

"Listens that way to me," says I.

"Then I may as well begin," says she.

And say, there's nothin' draggy about Vee when she really goes over the top. While I'm dressin' for dinner she calls up a real estate dealer and leases a vacant store in the other end of the block from Belcher's.

Between the roast and salad she uses the 'phone some more and drafts half a dozen young ladies from the Country Club set to act as relay clerks. Later on in the evenin' she rounds up Major Percy Thomson, who's been invalided home from the Quartermaster's Department on account of a game knee, and gets him to serve as buyin' agent for a week or so. Her next move is to charter a couple of three-ton motor-trucks to haul supplies out from town; and when I went to sleep she was still jottin'

things down on a pad to be attended to in the mornin'.

For two or three days nothin' much seemed to happen. The windows of that vacant store was whitened mysterious, carpenters were hammerin' away inside, and now and then a truck backed up and was unloaded. But no word was given out as to what was goin' to be sprung. Not until Friday mornin'. Then the commuters on the 8.03 was. .h.i.t bang in the eye by a whalin' big red, white, and blue sign announcin' that the W. E. L.

Supply Company was open for business.

Course, it was kind of crude compared to Belcher's. No fancy counters or showcases or window displays of cracker-boxes. And the stock was limited to staples that could be handled easy. But the price bulletins posted up outside was what made some of them gents who'd been doin' the fam'ly marketin' stop and stare. A few of 'em turned halfway to the station and dashed back to leave their orders. Goin' into town they spread the news through the train. The story of that latest bag of U-boats, which the mornin' papers all carried screamers about, was almost thrown into the discard. If I hadn't been due for a ten o'clock committee meetin' at the Corrugated, I'd have stayed out and watched the openin'. Havin' told Old Hickory about it, though, I was on hand next mornin' with a whole day's furlough.

"It ought to be our big day," says Vee.

It was. For one thing, everybody was stockin' up for over Sunday, and with the backin' of the League the Supply Company could count on about fifty good customers as a starter. Most of the ladies came themselves, rollin' up in limousines or tourin' cars and cartin' home their own stuff. Also the cottage people, who'd got wind of the big mark-down bargains, begun to come in bunches, every woman with a basket.

But they didn't swamp Vee. She'd already added to her force of young lady clerks a squad of hand-picked Boy Scouts, and it was my job to manage the youngsters.

I'd worked out the system the night before. Each one had typed price lists in his pocket, and besides that I'd put 'em through an hour's drill on weights and measures before the show started.

I don't know when it was Belcher begun to get wise and start his counter-attack; but the first time I had a chance to slip out and take a squint his way, I saw this whackin' big sign in front of his place: "Potatoes, 40 cents per peck." Which I promptly reports to Vee.

"Very well," says she; "we'll make ours thirty-five."

Inside of ten minutes we had a bulletin out twice as big as his.

"Now I guess he'll be good," says I.

But he had a sc.r.a.p or two left in him, it seems. Pretty soon he cuts the price to thirty.