Margaret came staggering into his room, struggling to remain upright as the quake continued. She was wearing nothing but her nightgown, too shocked to throw on a robe. Her face was as white as the breast of a seagull, her golden brown eyes wide with fright, and her lips trembling.

“What’s happening?” she gasped.

He reached out and pulled her against him. “An earthquake, dear sister. Nothing to fret about. It will pass. The worst is over.”

His words were quiet and calm, but she could see the nervous tension in his eyes.

“Will the house fall on us?” she asked fearfully.

“Not this house,” he said resolutely. “It’s built like the Rock of Gibraltar.”

The words were no sooner said than the great chimneys above began to topple and crash down. Fortunately, they were constructed on the outside of the house walls and collapsed outward without smashing through the roof. Most of the damage came from sections of the outer wall surrounding the house that cracked and crashed to the ground like rumbling thunder. Finally, the tremors began to taper away.

The house had stood through the worst of the earthquake and retained its structural integrity, looking as it had before except for the collapsed outer wall and three fallen chimneys. And because the inner walls were board over stone, decorated with paint or wallpaper, and the ceilings were mahogany, there were no clouds of dust from fallen plaster.

“Oh, Lord,” murmured Margaret. “What are we going to do?”

“You see to the house. Assemble the servants and see if any are injured. Then put them to work cleaning up the mess. Outwardly, act as if restoring the house was your first priority. But begin packing only those valuables and clothes that you consider essential for our flight out of the country.”

“You’re forgetting Van Dorn’s agents,” she said, looking up quickly.

“The quake will prove to be a blessing. The city is in chaos. Bell and his fellow Van Dorn detectives have more-pressing problems on their hands than keeping an eye on us.”

“What about you?” asked Margaret, pulling her nightgown tightly around her body.

“I’m going to the bank to finish cleaning out the vault of all cash. I put most of the currency in trunks yesterday. When it is all packed, Abner and I will transport the trunks in the Rolls to the warehouse and load them on my railcar for our trip across the Canadian border.”

“You make it sound easy,” she said drily.

“The simpler, the better.” He climbed from bed and headed for the bathroom. “By this time tomorrow, our curtain will ring down on San Francisco and, within a few short months, we’ll launch a new banking empire in Montreal.”

“How much do you figure we’ll have?”

“I’ve already transferred fifteen million by telegraph wire to four different Canadian banks in four different provinces,” he pointed out. “We’ll carry another four million with us in currency.”