"I know; I know," said Dave, whose anger over the treatment of the Hardys was already subsiding. "We are in the grip of the System. As you have said, it is kill or be killed. Still—in war they don't usually kill women and non-combatants. That is the point I'm trying to make. I've no sentiment about others who are in the game as we are. If you limit your operations to them——"
"The trouble is, you can't. They're wise. They see the bottom going, and they quit. Most of them have already moved on. A few firms, like ourselves, will stay and try to fight it out; try, at least, to close up with a clean sheet, if we must close up. But we can't wind up a business without selling the stock on hand, and to whom are we to sell it, if not to people who want it? That is what you seem to object to."
"You place me in rather an unfair light," Dave protested. "What I object to is taking the life savings of people—people of moderate circumstances, mainly—in exchange for property which we know to be worth next to nothing."
"Yet you admit that we must clean up, don't you?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"And there's no other way, Dave," said Conward, rising and placing an arm on his partner's shoulder, "I sympathize with your point of view, but, my boy, it's pure sentiment, and sentiment has no place in business. And you remember the terms of our partnership, don't you?"
Dave hesitated a few moments, as he threw his mind back over the years that had gone by since the day when Conward proposed a partnership to him. He saw again his little office where he ground out "stuff" for The Call, the littered desk and floor, the cartoons on the walls, the big shears, and the paste pot—yes, the paste pot, and the lock he had installed to protect it, and his select file of time copy, from depredation. And the smell of printer's ink; even yet, when business took Dave into a printing office, the smell of ink brought back those old, happy days. Happy days? When he worked more hours than a man should work, for less salary than a man should get; when the glorious out-of-doors called him and his soul rebelled against the despotism of fate! Yes, surely they were happy days. He smiled a moment as he thought of them; paused to dally with them on his way to an answer for Conward; then skimmed quickly down the surface of events to this present evening. More wonderful had the years been than any dream of fiction; no wizard's wand had ever worked richer magic.…
"You remember, don't you?" Conward repeated.
"Oh, about the coal?" Dave laughed. The moment of reminiscence had restored his good humour. "Yes, I suppose it was a bargain. You have held me to it pretty well."
"Let it remain a bargain to the end," said Conward. "It is the only way we can finish up."