The
success was that of his Universal Thrift Club. This device, by which
members after subscribing one pound in weekly instalments could at once
get two pounds' worth of goods at nearly any large shop in the district,
appealed with enormous force to the democracy of the Five Towns. There
was no need whatever for Denry to spend money on advertising. The first
members of the club did all the advertising and made no charge for doing
it. A stream of people anxious to deposit money with Denry in exchange
for a card never ceased to flow Into his little office in St Luke's
Square. The stream, indeed, constantly thickened. It was a wonderful
invention, the Universal Thrift Club. And Denry ought to have been
happy, especially as his beard was growing strongly and evenly, and
giving him the desired air of a man of wisdom and stability. But he was
not happy. And the reason was that the popularity of the Thrift Club
necessitated much book-keeping, which he hated.
He was an adventurer, in the old honest sense, and no clerk. And he
found himself obliged not merely to buy large books of account, but to
fill them with figures; and to do addition sums from page to page; and
to fill up hundreds of cards; and to write out lists of shops, and to
have long interviews with printers whose proofs made him dream of
lunatic asylums; and to reckon innumerable piles of small coins; and to
assist his small office-boy in the great task of licking envelopes and
stamps.
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