n he felt
hatred of the man concretely, as he could feel thirst or hunger.

"A penny for your thoughts," Nelly bantered.

"They'd be dear at half the price," MacRae said, forcing a smile.

He was glad when those people went their way. Nelly put on a coat and
went with them. Stubby drew Jack up to his den.

"I have bought up the controlling interest in the Terminal Fish Company
since I saw you last," Stubby began abruptly. "I'm going to put up a
cold-storage plant and do what my father started to do early in the
war--give people cheaper fish for food."

"Can you make it stick," MacRae asked curiously, "with the other
wholesalers against you? Their system seems to be to get all the traffic
will bear, to boost the price to the consumer by any means they can use.
And there is the Packers' Association. They are not exactly--well,
favorable to cheap retailing of fish. Everybody seems to think the
proper caper is to tack on a cent or two a pound wherever he can."

"I know I can," Stubby declared. "The pater would have succeeded only he
trusted too much to men who didn't see it his way. Look at Cunningham--"
Stubby mentioned a fish merchant who had made a resounding splash in
matters piscatorial for a year or two, and then faded, along with his
great cheap-fish markets, into oblivion--"he made it go like a house
afire until he saw a chance to make a quick and easy clean-up by
sticking people. It can be done, all right, if a man will be satisfied
with a small profit on a big turnover. I know it."

MacRae made no comment on that. Stubby was full of his plan, eager to
talk about its possibilities.

"I wanted to do it last year," he said, "but I couldn't. I had to play
the old game--make a bunch of money and make it quick. Between you and
Gower's pig-headedness, and the rest of the cannery crowd letting me go
till it was too late to stop me, and a climbing market, I made more
money in one season than I thought was possible. I'm going to use that
money to make more money and to squash some of these damned fish
pirates. I tell you it's jolly awful. We had baked cod for lunch to-day.
That fish cost twenty cents a pound. Think of it! When the fisherman
sells it for six cents within fifty miles of us. No wonder everybody is
howling. I don't know anything about other lines of food supply, but I
can sure put my finger on a bunch of fish profiteers. And I feel like
putting my foot on them. Anyway, I've got the Terminal for a starte