"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. "