As I had known Grayle longer than anyone present, I took it upon myself to answer.
We had first met nearly forty years ago as boys at Eton, soon drawing together in a common recognition, keenly felt and resented, that we were poorer than our fellows. My father had no business to send me there at all, but every male Stornaway always had gone to Eton, whether he could afford it or not. Grayle, the only son of a hard-drinking Gloucestershire squire, who used to beat him unmercifully, was sent to school when he grew strong enough to resist parental castigation, with an idea, I suppose, that others by force of numbers would be able to continue the beatings. We worked our way up the school together, until Grayle was withdrawn in consequence of some trouble with a tradesman's daughter in Slough, and met again at Trinity, when the scandal was half forgotten. There I remained four years and Grayle four weeks. If I ever heard the full story of his subsequent, final, cataclysmic quarrel with his father (they were separated, I know, by the stud-groom and a couple of strappers), I have forgotten the details; the result of the quarrel was that Vincent disappeared, and the next time that I saw him was several years later in New York. I had gone up there from Washington and ran unexpectedly into Grayle's arms on Fifth Avenue; he was accompanied by another Trinity man of my year—Guy Bannerman, a brilliant, shiftless Rabelaisian, whom Grayle with his startling streak of prodigal generosity had taken in hand and was prepared (as he consistently proved) to keep afloat. I remember how one of the loudest voices in the world suddenly silenced the drone of traffic by thundering,
"It's the great anomaly of modern civilisation. What are you going to do with them? Theoretically they're your equal fellow-citizens, but they don't vote, they daren't enter a white man's hotel. I can't remember for the moment whether they're actually increasing in numbers——"
Then I knew, even without sight of the square-faced, bull-necked man with the familiar grey eyes, dusty hair and capacious loose-lipped mouth, that Guy Bannerman had discovered America and was concerned to solve the negro problem. He was on his way to Klondike, where he heard that gold had been found, and he swore me impressively to secrecy.
"Half New York knows about it already," I had to warn him.
"How did they hear?" he roared.
"You've just told them."
The three of us lunched together, and I found that Grayle, too, was bound for the gold-fields. Their methods of approach were notably different, for, while Guy Bannerman informed New York City that any fool could dig for gold and I retorted that every fool would, Grayle was compiling an exhaustive list of everything that a gold-digger could need or be drugged into thinking he needed.
"One wants a pick and shovel, I suppose," Guy ventured, "and—and a pannikin." His conception of gold-digging impressed me as being literary.
"And food, drink, lights, clothes, covering, cooking-gear, medicine——" Grayle struck in ferociously. "No, we're not going to discover the North West Passage, but we're going to make these swine squeal—and the more squeals we knock out of them the better I shall be pleased. Tools, blankets—or rather, sleeping-bags. Tents. Tobacco. Mustn't forget tobacco. Bags for the gold. I suppose, if you've had a good day, you sleep with a revolver under your pillow; and stand drinks all round, which involves the worst obtainable Californian gooseberry. I'm going to supply the outfit, and they're going to dig the gold. Exploit, or be exploited. Care to come in with us, Stornaway? Anything you like to put up, you know...."