The Shop With No Sales

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 615, 18 March 1929, Page 4

The Shop With No Sales

T HAVE met him —the shopkeeper who does not wish to sell his goods! True, he has a shop front, with shutters, and a sign over the door. True, also, that certain articles are placed on view in the window. But he was never known to take one out. It is all an elaborate hoax devised to hoodwink the unwary. The shop stands in a quiet street. Its windows in process of time have taken on a greenish tint, through which it is difficult to distinguish the articles beyond. For many days I had abjectly flattened my nose against the pane, but without avail. The little porcelain lady, poised so daintily amid the dusty bric-a-brac, -was with jealous care placed just beyond reach of my prying eye. One day I took a momentous decision, and with thumping heart pushed open the inhospitable door, whose oaken timbers looked ready to resist an invasion. Shouldering my way in through spindle-legged Sheraton tables and giant jars of porcelain, I could dimly perceive the shapes of quaint and fascinating objects emerging from the gloom. A piece of brass in the shape of some writhing monster, a luminous gazing-ball of shimmering rainbow tints, and a little green bottle with a winking light in its opaque depths leapt to meet my eyes. A moment I gazed unchidden, ere I was surprised by a flank attack from the inner sanctum. It was the old shopkeeper who, like a spider darting out from its hidden lair, pounced upon the hold intruder. He was a monstrous and terrifying old man with a great nose and craggy brows from under which his sharp, suspicious eyes shot out glances *of scarce-concealed hatred and mistrust. He spoke no word, but it seemed to me he made a menacing lunge toward me with his huge, misshapen frame. It was enough that I could read the indignant question in his lowering brow and piercing gaze. Ignominiously, without waiting t.o make known my errand, I fled. Sometimes I think that at nights, after the shutters are up, he must gloat over his treasures, counting them, to see that each one is in its place. And perhaps he laughs to himself in secret to think how he has sold us, who imagine he wishes to part with any of his beloved antiques.