The man stretched out a short arm, and they shook hands.

‘I heard you talking on the wharf, asking after Andy Hunt,’ he said. ‘My name’s Charles Tucker. I own a store out in Sacramento. Andy Hunt and me, we’re good friends. I’m here buying foodstuffs today, and hardware. I must say I like your style, mister.’

‘My name’s Collis Edmonds, out of New York,’ said Collis.

‘That’s right. Andy talked about you. Said you stayed with some lady who was sick of the yellow jack. Did she peg out?’

‘No, no, she survived it,’ Collis told him. ‘I guess it couldn’t have been too bad an attack. I didn’t catch it myself, either.’

‘Well, so I see,’ said Charles Tucker, returning his brown derby hat to his gingery head. He suddenly looked somewhere over Collis’s shoulder and yelled, in a high rasping voice: ‘Wang-Pu! Make sure you collar all of that linen they’ve got aboard! I don’t want no ifs and buts! The whole goddam shebang!’

Collis turned around. He couldn’t see anyone in the scrum of the wharf that Charles Tucker could have been yelling to, but his voice had been so penetrating that Wang-Pu could have heard him from down in the California’s lower hold.

‘You look to be a gentleman,’ he remarked to Collis, turning back as if nothing had happened. ‘How are you fixed for capital?’

‘Very poorly, I’m afraid. My appearance is about all I have. My father’s bank went down the drain last month, and I had a couple of gambling debts outstanding. Not to mention a rather awkward problem with a young lady of ill repute.’

‘Well, don’t you worry about none of that,’ said Charles. ‘Put all that behind you. There isn’t a body in this whole city who hasn’t left some embarrassing little heap of squat behind in the East. The main thing is that you’re a gentleman; and as long as you’re prepared to play on that fact, you’ll get along fine.’

‘That was about the meat of what Andrew told me on the ship,’ said Collis.

‘It was sound advice,’ said Charles. ‘Do you want a cigar? I’m just trying to think what you should do now, how you should get yourself started. Gambling, you said? Are you a gambling man?’

‘I have been known to stake a bet or so.’ Collis smiled.

‘How much money do you actually have?’

Collis had never been asked a question like that before, so bluntly. He hesitated, almost stammered, and then said, ‘Well — about a hundred and fifty. Maybe a few cents less. Why?’