Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

So all Flem needed now was to find out exactly what was going on up that alley that was that discreet and that profitable, setting his spies—not that Grover Winbush would a needed anybody calling hisself a respectable spy with pride in his profession to ketch him, since any little child hired with a icecream cone would a done for that—to watch who come and went around that corner; until sooner or later, and likely sooner than later, one turned up that Flem could handle. Likely a good deal sooner than later; even spread over four counties like that business was, there wasn’t many among the set Montgomery Ward drawed his clientele from that hadn’t at least offered to put his name onto a piece of paper to Flem at forty or fifty percent of three or four dollars, so that Flem could say to him: “About thatere little note of yourn. I’d like to hold the bank offen you myself, but I aint only vice-president of it, and I cant do nothing with Manfred de Spain.”

Or maybe it was Grover hisself that Flem caught, catching Grover hisself in the active flesh on that second or third time which was the absolute outside for Grover to slip outen that alley without somebody ketching him, long in fact before them two fellers robbing Uncle Willy Christian’s store exposed him by rifling that prescription desk in plain sight of half Jefferson evidently going home from the late picture show except that couldn’t nobody locate Grover to tell him about it. Anyway, Flem caught somebody he could squeeze enough to find out jest what Montgomery Ward was selling behind that door. So now all Flem had to do was move in on that industry too, move Montgomery Ward outen it or move it out from under Montgomery Ward the same way he had been grazing on up through Jefferson ever since he eased me and Grover Winbush outen that café we thought we owned back there when I never had no more sense neither than to believe I could tangle with Flem.

Only, a banker now, a vice-president, not to mention being the third man, after the Negro that fired the furnace and the preacher hisself, inside the Baptist Church ever Sunday morning, and the rest of his career in Jefferson doomed to respectability like a feller in his Sunday suit trying to run through a field of cuckleburs and beggarlice, naturally Flem not only couldn’t show in it, it couldn’t even have no connection with the word Snopes. So as far as Jefferson was concerned the Atelier Monty would be closed out, cleaned up and struck off the commercial register forevermore and the business moved into another alley that hadn’t never heard of it before and under a management that, if possible, couldn’t even spell Snopes. Or likely, if Flem had any sense, clean to another town in Montgomery Ward’s old d on ict, where it would be clean outen Grover Cleveland’s reach until at least next summer when he taken his next two weeks’ vacation.

So all Montgomery Ward had to do, all he could do in fact, was jest to wait until Flem decided the moment was ripe to usurp him outen his a-teelyer or usurp that a-teelyer out from under him, whichever Flem seen fittest. Likely Montgomery Ward had at least one moment or two of regretful musing that his business wasn’t the kind where he could a held some kind of a quick fire sale before Flem would have time to hear about it. But his stock in trade being such a nebulous quantity that it never had no existence except during the moment when the customer was actively buying and consuming it, the only thing he could a sold would be his capital investment itself, which would not only be contrary to all the economic laws, he wouldn’t even have no nebulous stock in trade to sell to nobody during whatever time he would have left before Flem foreclosed him, which might be weeks or even months yet. So all he could do was to apply whatever methods and means of speed-up and increased turnover was available while waiting for Flem to move, naturally speculating on jest what method Flem would finally use—whether Flem had done found some kind of handle or crowbar in his, Montgomery Ward’s, own past to prize him out, or maybe would do something as crude and unimaginative as jest offering him money for it.