“I’m making nothing out of it,” says Mark. “I d-d-don’t get paid.”
“What?” says Mr. Spillane.
“None of us does,” says Mark.
“Ummmm!” says Mr. Spillane.
We waited and didn’t say a word. The old gentleman didn’t say a word, either, for quite a while; then he grunted ferocious-like again, and says:
“Where else are you going?”
We told him the names of the other firms, and then he turned around to his desk and began working at some papers just as if we weren’t there. I thought it was a funny sort of thing to do, and it made me mad. He had a right to refuse to do what we wanted, but he didn’t have any right to treat us like that. I started to get up, but Mark looked at me and winked and shook his head. So I sat back.
It was twenty minutes before Mr. Spillane paid any more attention to us. By that time other men had come in and there was a pile of mail on his desk. He looked that over and then turned around.
“Come on,” he said, reaching for his hat.
We followed him without any idea where he was going. He made us get into his electric and drove us across town. There he stopped at a big building and we got out. It was The Wolverine Novelties Company, another of our wholesalers. He went right in and pushed past a clerk that wanted to know what he wanted, and into a private office where a fat man was sitting at a desk.