“I’ve talked this thing over with my lawyer, and I know what I can do and what I c-can’t. I can keep possession of this store till twelve o’clock to-night if I want to. So, if you want to have your f-foreclosure to-day just hold your horses till I get through talkin’.”
The officer scowled a bit and then grinned and said to go ahead with the celebration.
“Mr. Smalley didn’t borrow this f-five hundred dollars from Mr. Skip. But what does Mr. Skip do? He sneaks around and finds out about it, and b-buys up the mortgage so he can use it to put the Bazar out of business. He knew there wasn’t room for his store and this one in Wicksville, so he started in to git rid of us. He’s been m-mean and underhanded from the start. He tried to get our credit cut off with the wholesale houses, and whatever he could d-do to hurt us he’s gone ahead and done it.”
Skip stood and scowled and wabbled his nose back and forth, but he didn’t say a word.
Mark went on: “We had to m-make money for Mr. Smalley in the hospital, and we had to keep the business running. That took all we could make. So if we paid this chattel mortgage up we’d have to get the money some other way.
“Well, folks, it happened that Mr. Skip didn’t know how long he’d last here, so he didn’t t-take a lease of the store he’s in. We found that out. Then, folks, we went and got a lease of it ourselves. We could ’a’ kicked Skip out of it, but we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to p-pay off the mortgage.”
He stopped and looked down at Skip and grinned. Folks all looked at Skip, too. He was white, he was so mad, and if all the folks hadn’t been there I don’t know what he’d have done, but he didn’t dare wiggle. Mark started in again.
“We wanted Skip to pay himself the f-five hundred dollars. That’s what we wanted. Right there, folks, he paid part of it. We made him p-pay two hundred dollars to stay in his store. He didn’t know he was payin’ it to us, but he was.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a bundle of bills. “There’s the very identical money he paid us. Two hundred d-dollars of it.... There, Mr. Skip, is t-two hundred dollars on account. It’s from you to yourself.” And Mark tossed the money down to the officer. I thought Skip would choke.
“But that wasn’t enough,” says Mark. “There was three hundred dollars more. It seemed like we couldn’t raise that much, but this week we arranged to have Mr. Skip p-pay that to himself, too. We did it this way: over in Sunfield was a man named Hoffer who had a f-f-five-and-ten-cent store. He wanted to sell cheap. We knew about it and we fixed it so Skip heard about it, too. He started over to buy. We started the same day—and we beat him there. But we didn’t have any m-m-money to buy with. That’s where Skip came in handy again. We went to Mr. Hoffer and got him to give us an option on his stock at nine hundred d-dollars. Then we went to a lawyer to handle it for us. Skip came to see the lawyer, not knowin’ we had anything to do with it, and the lawyer sold him the stock we had bought at nine hundred dollars for twelve hundred and twenty-five dollars—givin’ us a p-p-profit of three hundred d-dollars and payin’ our lawyer for his services. Perty kind of Skip, wasn’t it? Eh, Mr. Skip? And, Mr. Skip, there’s the three hundred dollars. The same b-bills you gave us. That squares us, Mr. Skip. You’ve p-paid yourself what we owed you and we’re much obliged. ’Tain’t every man would be so kind.” Here he tossed over the three hundred.
You should have seen Skip. He couldn’t say a word. I don’t believe he could think. He just stood and trembled, he was so furious, and waggled his nose, and his Adam’s apple went up and down like an elevator in a busy building. And the folks yelled. It wasn’t a cheer; it was a laugh. They hollered. Men and women threw back their heads and laughed like I’ve never seen folks laugh before. And the things they said to Skip! I wouldn’t have had folks poke fun at me like that for seven times five hundred dollars. Mark held up his hand.