“All the balance have combined,” Whipple groaned.
“Who?—what?—how combined?” Fred asked, wondering if his old friend was not actually losing his reason.
“Why, all the other retailers have formed a pool to beat Thorp, and in doing it they have knifed me. They have formed a combine to buy their stuff in St. Louis and New York in order to get car-load rates. They had a caucus last night in the rear end of Thompson & White's shebang, and the last one signed up. They don't buy a thing from us—the man who spends a nickel at this house loses his membership. They are a lot of sneaking curs, to pull me down and stamp on me just because that scamp's upset business, but they done it. The thing will spread all over the State, and I'll be laughed at as a doddering old idiot. Folks like nothing better than to see a successful man get it in the neck.
“As I passed along the street just now they slunk away from their doors, so I couldn't see 'em laugh. They call themselves 'wholesale men' now, and say they are going to oust me and Thorp both—make us count cross-ties out of town. I've had insults in my time, but being yoked with that skunk is a dose I can't swallow. I'm beat, and beat bad. If there was a loophole to crawl out at—if I could take one single step to defend myself—I'd give away half I've accumulated to be able to do it. My money paid for two-thirds of the Belgian-block pavement around the park; I gave more than half that was subscribed to the girls' school-building, and paid, entire, for the wall round the graveyard, to say nothing of what I put in the fire company, and new engines at the gas-works. I done those things, boys, for the town they live in, and yet they can drag my name in the mire and throw mud and slime on me.”
He turned suddenly and left them, striding on to his desk in the adjoining room.
“Poor old fellow!” Dick said. “Nothing on earth could have cut his pride more.”
“If he could only hit back in some substantial way,” Walton reflected, aloud. “Think of some plan, Dick.”
“Think of nothing!” the younger man said, gloomily. “Of all things on earth, I never could have dreamt of those fellows combining that way.”
A moment later a postman came in with a bundle of letters and handed them to Fred.
“Looks like they are getting you fellows in the nine hole at last,” he said, with a laugh. “Every grocer on the street is putting out a big sign. One of them has got a picture of the old man with a handkerchief to his eyes standing in a store without a single customer, while all the crowd is headed for another place.”