“It landed me as secretary to a Minister of the Crown.”
“You don’t mean a preacher?”
“No, I mean the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he put me into the diplomatic service when he found the Government was going to be defeated. I was secretary of legation at Pekin and also here in Japan.”
I filled myself another glass of champagne, and, holding it up to see the sparkles, continued jauntily:
“If I may go so far as to boast, I may say I was entrusted with several delicate missions, and I carried them through with reasonable success. I can both read and write the Japanese language, and I know a smattering of Chinese and a few dialects of the East, which have stood me in good stead more than once. To tell the truth, I was in a fair way for promotion and honor when unfortunately a relative died and left me the hundred thousand pounds that I spoke of.”
“Why unfortunately? If you had had any brains you could have made that into millions.”
“Yes, I suppose I could. I thought I was going to do it. I bought myself a yacht at Southampton and sailed for New York. To make a long story short, it was a gold mine and a matter of ten weeks which were taken up with shooting and fishing in Canada. Then I had the gold mine and the experience, while the other fellow had the cash. He was good enough to pay me a trifle for my steam yacht, which, as the advertisements say, was ‘of no further use to the owner.’”
As I sipped my champagne, the incidents I was relating seemed to recede farther and farther back and become of little consequence. In fact I felt like laughing over them, and although in sober moments I should have called the action of the man who got my money a swindle, under the influence of dry ’78 his scheme became merely a very clever exercise of wit. Mr. Hemster was looking steadily at me, and for once his cigar was almost motionless.
“Well, well,” he murmured, more to himself than to me, “I have always said the geographical position of New York gives it a tremendous advantage over Chicago. They never let the fools come West. They have always the first whack at the moneyed Englishman, and will have until we get a ship canal that will let the liners through to Chicago direct. Fleeced in ten weeks! Well, well! Go on, my son. What did you do after you’d sold your yacht?”
“I took what money I had and made for the West.”