Chapter Six

Charles was already waiting for him at the Auction Lunch when he arrived, and waved to him over the crowd of stovepipe hats, which dipped and bobbed like the black funnels of a harbourful of steamships. The saloon was packed to the door, and almost deafeningly noisy with laughter and shouting and the earnest midday conversation of San Francisco’s businessmen. A broad-faced whiskered man in a high silk hat and a formal suit gave Collis a nod of welcome as he came in; and as Collis elbowed his way towards the counter where Charles and his friends were waiting, he was surprised to see that another man in a high silk hat was serving the drinks and slicing up the corned beef and pickles behind the bar.

‘Very nobby waiters they have here,’ he remarked to Charles, as he shook his hand.

‘Aha,’ said Charles, ‘there’s a story behind that. But first meet my friends. This is Lloyd Wintle, the president of the Western Bank; and this is Arthur Teach, of Pacific Securities. Arthur claims he’s a full-blooded descendant of Blackbeard the Pirate, which may or may not be.’

Collis extended his hand, first to Lloyd Wintle and then to Arthur Teach. Wintle was willowy and tall, with a nose that overhung his face like a flag overhanging a parade ground on a sultry day. His eyes were pale, and emphatically underlined with bags, and his hat appeared to lean at an unusual angle. But Collis had the impression from his handshake that he was determined, and competent to a degree, and rich, whereas Teach, who was far broader, and more whiskery, and who looked as if he could ravish somebody else’s wife and chop logs at the same time, was poorer, and hungrier, and politically more radical.

‘Nice to meet you, Mr Edmonds,’ Lloyd Wintle said, with a noticeable Michigan accent, that particular articulation of flattened vowels from the back of the throat. ‘Charles has been saying you’re interested in railroads, and in cards. Understand you shot a dealer’s hat to pieces last night, at the Eagle Saloon.’

Collis shrugged. ‘I’m more interested in railroads than I am in shooting hats to pieces.’

‘You sure you’re not still suffering from isthmusitis?’ said Arthur Teach. ‘Most of the railroad fanatics we meet around here are trying to redress a bad experience at Panama.’

The silk-hatted man behind the bar raised an eyebrow to Collis, as if to ask him what he wanted, and Collis asked, ‘Can you mix a stone fence?’

The man nodded, and reached behind him to the shelves of liquor to bring down a bottle of bourbon and a jug of sweet cider.