Page:Barr--Stranleighs millions.djvu/19

Rh what's wrong with the cutlery industry? Aren't the boys buying pocket-knives as they did when I was a youth?"

"For the first few years," said Mrs. Bendale, "we prospered even more than we could have hoped. My husband is an indefatigable worker and an honest and a trustworthy man. Some time ago the accountant valued our shop as a going concern at five thousand pounds, but that was before Richard Brassard came."

"Ah, who is Richard Brassard?"

Don't you know Brassard?" she asked in open-eyed astonishment that this rising giant of the commercial world, who had so long overshadowed her own life, should be unfamiliar to anyone. To her mind Brassard was the one undisputable fact in the universe.

"I never even heard of him," said Stranleigh.

"He was a shopman in the grocery business of Kempt and Company, who failed about ten years ago. He had either saved money or induced some capitalist to back him, but, be that as it may, he bought the business at the bankruptcy sale. He prospered from the first, and soon acquired the drapery establishment next door. He is said to be a hard man, and quite ruthless, who beats his competitors to their knees and then buys all they possess at his own price. No one seems able to stand against him. Some have tried, and those he has crushed. The tradesmen who accept his first