Mr American. George Fraser MacDonald

I’ll get you the money, but … well, let’s see …” He scribbled hastily, calculating. “Fifty by ten by a hundred … holy smoke, there’s enough to fill a suitcase, supposing you could lift it – it’ll weigh about half a ton!”

      “Not nearly,” said Mr Franklin, rising. “When shall I call back for it?”

      He left a bewildered and vaguely alarmed American Express office behind him, and there was close re-examination of the credentials he had presented, and anxious consultation between the two officials.

      “Could we stall him and cable New York?” wondered the deputy.

      “No point,” said the manager. “They can’t tell us anything we don’t know already. There’s his letter, with McCall’s signature on it – and I know McCall’s fist like I know my own. He’s given us his thumbprint, and it checks; his description fits, he has the numbers right … New York couldn’t add a damned thing short of a reference from Teddy Roosevelt.”

      “But – gold?”

      “Why not? If you’re as rich as this bird – hell, he’s probably Carnegie’s nephew. Get me Coutts’, will you?”

      And such is the efficiency of the admirable American Express organization that when Mr Franklin returned shortly after eleven o’clock he found waiting for him four heavy leather handbags, their flaps open to reveal a tight-packed mass of dull gold coin in each, a manager in a state of bursting curiosity, a deputy still full of dark suspicions, and two burly civilians in hard hats. These, the manager explained, were ex-police officers who would escort Mr Franklin and his treasure to … wherever he wished to go.

      “Oh, they won’t be necessary,” said Mr Franklin. He handled a few coins from one of the bags, nodded, and replaced them. “If you could have a cab called, though, perhaps they’d be good enough to put the bags aboard.” And while the goggling deputy called a cab, Mr Franklin signed the receipt, and watched the burly pair hefting out the bags with some difficulty, while the manager drummed his fingers.

      “Mr Franklin,” he said solemnly. “Are you absolutely sure you know what you’re doing? I mean – well, dammit all, sir – that’s no way to treat money!”

      Mr Franklin looked at him. “I know exactly how to treat money,” he said. “And I know what I’m doing. Do you?”

      “How’s that? Do I – ?” The manager took a deep breath. “Yes, Mr Franklin, I do,” he said with some dignity. He thought of the letter, the proofs … I hope to God I do, he thought.

      “That’s fine then,” said Mr Franklin. “I’m obliged to you, sir; you’ve been most helpful.”

      Boarding his taxi, he waited until the ex-policemen and the nervously hovering deputy had reluctantly retired, and only gave the driver his destination when the cab was under way. But it was not an address: merely a street corner a half-mile away. There he swung his four bags out on to the pavement, paid off the taxi, waited until it had disappeared, hailed a passing hansom, reloaded his precious cargo, and drove to the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit. (It is a sad reflection on human nature that the taxi he had dismissed returned immediately to the American Express Company office, as the deputy had privately instructed the driver to do, and there was momentary blind panic when it was understood that Mr Franklin had disappeared with quarter of a million dollars’ worth of ready money, no one knew whither. There was frantic re-examination of the credentials, and the manager finally concluded that they were as watertight as he had originally supposed. Even so, he re-examined them several times during the course of the day, and the deputy did not sleep well for a week.)

      At the Safe Deposit the well-respected manager, Mr Evans, personally rented to Mr Franklin a private strong room for five guineas per annum. For an additional guinea he was given one of the company’s reliable safes, into which the bags were packed; the safe was then man-handled into the strong-room, securely locked, and Mr Franklin presented with the key.

      After such an important morning’s work he might have been forgiven for relaxing and basking in the reflection of treasure stored up upon earth, but he showed no such inclination. After a brisk bite at a public house he was afoot again by noon, to the biggest estate agent’s he could find; the senior partner, whom he asked to see in person, was engaged, and Mr Franklin spent the time of waiting in acquainting himself with the town and country properties advertised on the office walls.

      There was to be had, he noted, in the reasonably fashionable area of Cadogan Square, S.W.1, a Gentleman’s Apartment comprising a Full Ground Floor; Mr Franklin stood absorbed by the catalogue of luxury – the fitments and furnishings by Liberty, the crockery by Doulton with which the kitchen and pantry were stocked, the fine master-bedroom with its private dressing-room and bathroom, the cosy panelled study, the opulent drawing-room with its Afghan carpeting and French chandelier, the elegant breakfast-room with furniture by Chippendale, the spare bedroom and second bathroom, the servants” room at the back, the excellent storage space, the polished cedar floors, the embossed wallpaper, the newly-installed silent flush toilets from Stoke-on-Trent, the electric lighting throughout at 1,000 candlepower for a penny, the patent boiler ensuring constant hot water … and all for the moderate sum of £200, a mere thousand dollars, per annum …

       … Twelve cents a night for twelve square feet of Yancy’s shack in the Tonopah diggings and a place at the communal table, bring your own grub. fifteen cents if your space was against the wall – old Davis had rated a wall space, being over sixty, with Franklin on his unguarded side so that Yancy’s clientele couldn’t come creeping in the night to untie the blanket lashed around the old boy’s ankles and remove the precious poke from beneath it. One thing about London, S.W.1, you probably didn’t need to sleep with your goods tied to your legs. Twenty-seven cents a night all told, more than they could afford, but the old fellow’s chest couldn’t take the weather any longer; just a week in the mud under the tarpaulins would have curled him up for keeps – and even if it hadn’t, it would have left him unfit to dig on the ledges. And life without the ability to dig his stint wouldn’t have been worth living to Davis – “Hell, boy, I’m just an old gopher; ‘less I’m grubbin’ up the dirt I feel all deprived like. I shifted so much shit offn Mother Earth, she’s got a permanent tilt. Seen ’em all – Comstock, Australie, Cripple Creek, Sierra Madre, Klondyke – ten thousand dollars Jocky Patterson an ‘ me took into Dawson City, nuggets an ‘ dust, an ‘ the little bastard lost the whole dam ‘ pile in a stud game while I was drunk. Never did touch liquor since, ’cept for medicinal purposes…” And his old croaking voice had trailed into sleep, gradually murmuring into gentle snores in Yancy’s mouldy, flea-ridden, sweat-stinking shack, packed with scratching bodies, wet and filthy, and the Mex came slithering like a rattler, eyes glinting in the moonlight from the window, hand out towards old Davis’s blanket until Franklin’s Remington was thrust into his face, the muzzle resting on the olive cheek, and the eyes widened in terror, with gasping breath as the hammer clicked back: “Si, si … campadre!” Si, si, campadre, your greasy dago ass, stir a finger and I’ll blow your black head off! Vamos! Twelve cents a night for the privilege of lying awake against verminous thieves while old Davis babbled in his sleep in that leaky shed under the Big Smokies – and fifty dollars a night at the Bella Union after they came down singing together from the mountains with their saddle-bags plump with silver, soaking off the grime of months in their own private bath-tub, with French champagne being poured over old Davis’s matted grey locks by a squealing twenty-dollar whore, and the waiter feeding the old rascal cream cakes as he wallowed in the tub, yelling at the girls to get in beside him ’cos he was the richest son-of-a-rich-bitch and he was going to blow the whole danged pile in one riotous night and die in the morning, see if he wasn’t, and Franklin sitting on the tin trunk that held their goods, the Remingtons handy beneath his jacket and an eye on the waiters and bar-flies and raddled strumpets who abetted old Davis’s hooting celebrations and drunken staggerings – the wreckage of their private room had cost them a mint in damages, on top of the fifty-dollar rent for that single carousing night … Two hundred pounds a year in Cadogan Square, cheaper than the Bella Union, dearer than Nancy’s, and with silent flush toilets from Stoke-on-Trent thrown in …

      “A