The daily Alaskan., 1907-01-18
eeesaaoeseseeoeseoeoeeee
A Woman Collector
SOOsssssossoSoSeSssssesSSO
IOriginalI

said the retired hardware dealer, anu we didn't get on from the start. 1 had q good trade and was obliged 10 be on the road most of tue time. This left the buying to my partner. The trouble was that he wasn't any kind Of buyer. If q salesman came along with d cock and bull story about sick wife and dozen or so starving children Shinn would buy bill of goods of him whether VIC wanted them or not. Tue consequence was that cv- cry time I came in I found the stock growing in spite of my efforts to re- duce it.
 Well. the result of it all was that weeping drummcrs finally succeeded in turning the store into q junk shop, and WI had to quit. Shinn. as he should have done, offered to stand the loss, giving I'D all inc capital he'd put in. acknowledging that the outcome had been entirely his fault. If l could have closed up at once his money would have been just enough to square Us, with no loss tO me, but inc very day we closed along comes a one leg gcd commercial traveller he called him selr-cousumptivc. whcCzing through one lung. and Shinm had td order S5OO bill of him. We closed the order out at about 6O cents on the dollar. making a deficiency of SlS7.42. This Shinn agreed to pay aS soon he was able.
 ''Shinu was a bachelor and removed from his rooms in an apartment house to little Shanty sent man around to collect his indebtedness, but he came back empty handed. I sent another with orders to he more persistent, and he came hack. reporting that the door had been slammed in his face. l used to see Shinu occasionally on the street. He looked morosc and shabby One day 1 saw him give q quarter to a beg gar. That made he mad. If he had money tu give such nuiSanceS he had 1t to pay his honest debts. l hired a reg ular fighting collector and sent him round lu Shiuu'S Shanty. He came back with his head bandaged up, a black eye and Swcllcd lip. to say nothing of the loss of suit Of clothes.
 "I hired several men in succession to 20 and get into the house and stay there till Shinn came down with the funds. The first one that came back reported he'd been thrown out, the sec oud shared the same fate and the third and the fourth and SD on likewise,
 Then 1t occurred to me that I'd send a woman You see. man cant fight a woman. and there never was woman vet that couldn't get the better Of a man if she wanted to. There was no womau'S collecting agency in the town, so 1 told several friends of mine that Td give half thc debt to any woman who'd collect it.
 About a month after making the announcement St young, goo: looking woman came To see me and said she'd heard wanted a debt collected of Percy Shiun. She didn't look like business waman ar au but l concluded to ,ry her. So gave her an order for the money and started her out.
 ''It was 9 o'clock when she left me, aud waited with a good deal of anX- icty to learn how Shinn would meet this urw enemy. | expected her back in about an hour Four o'clock came, but no collector -j. 6. :. and she didn't show up. In fact, she didn't show up that night nor the next day nor the next nor the next. A week passed, and began to think Shun had murdered her. Funny, wasn't It? Ey- cry man I'd sent had come back after having bccu thrown out; the only wO- man I'd sent didn't come back at all.
 Then 'rancled maybe the woman had collected the money or part of it and gone off with il. Al the same time it occurred To me that 1 had stUpidly omitted to take her address. l con cluded to notify the police and started out lb Nb N'l. bNl lllbu@Al I VI NtANE sA look on the way at Shinn's house. So I went roundabout way and brought up opposite tue shuuty. Somehow 1t didn't look so tumbledown as before. There were white holland shades in the windows anal few flowers in the yard ln front.
 "A woman came out of house near where was standing. and I asked her who lived in the house opposite. She said. Mir Shinn.' Any one with him| His wife I didn't know he was married He wasn't a short time ago. There's a story connected with it. Mir. Shinn owed some old Curmudg- con some money and sent young wo- man to collect It. She was real smart. She told him she was to get half the amount collected; that she was the On- ly support of a widowed mother and seven brothers and sisters. She gave such a pitiful picture that Shinn. who had been a long while starving himself to pay the debt and had just saved the last penny. went and got 1t and gave 1t to her. You see somebody had told her what kind of a man Shinn was She was so cut up by his lovable man. ,7ar, +Iot f S1,n tnl1 him fp Epan Fha mon.