The Safety Pin by J.S. Fletcher

Shelmore was not the first man to whom Mellapont had made this declaration of future policy. Mellapont had already made it, even more emphatically, to John Hackdale, and Hackdale had thought about it a good deal before he went to sleep and again as soon as he awoke. All the same, Hackdale went to his work at Champernowne's next morning as if nothing unusual had occurred since his leaving it at five o'clock the previous afternoon. Nominally under-manager, with an under-manager's salary, he was in reality the mainspring of a big industrial machine.

For so small a town, Champernowne's was a big store, doing a big business. That business had all developed to its present state of commercial prosperity through the energy of Mrs. Champernowne, whom everybody knew to be a very remarkable woman. Nobody in Southernstowe, however, knew who Mrs. Champernowne really was. Twenty years before, she had suddenly appeared in the city, and before anybody knew what she was doing, had bought up a decaying, though old-fashioned draper's business, pulled the out-of-date premises to pieces, built a first class modern store, and surrounded herself with a small army of capable assistants.