Lloyd Wintle said lugubriously, ‘I heard of a scheme for taking railroad locomotives over the High Sierras by hot-air balloon, with platforms hung beneath for the freight. I heard of another scheme for harnessing teams of moles, and digging right under the mountains altogether. Pretty crack-brained, huh? But those are the kind of schemes people come up with, and they come asking us for finance. Five thousand moles, all harnessed up, can you picture it?’

Collis took out a cheroot and lit it. ‘You want a corned-beef sandwich?’ Charles asked, but Collis shook his head.

Arthur Teach put down his empty bourbon glass. ‘Charles gave you a pretty high recommendation, Mr Edmonds. I can call you Collis, can’t I? But I just think you ought to know that some of the airy-fairy ideas you Easterners might have about the West, well, they’re not strictly justified. We’ve learned to look after ourselves out here, and if we spend our money wildly on occasions, it’s simply because we choose to, and not because we’ve been cajoled into supporting some hare-brained project or other.’

Lloyd Wintle nodded sadly. ‘Some fellow came out here and said he’d thought up a way to send the human voice along a telegraph wire. Can you picture that? Thirty-five thousand dollars he wanted, for experiments. The human voice! By wire!’

Collis dropped his gaze. Beneath his grey frock coat, Lloyd Wintle’s pants hung around his long legs in folds as elaborate and self-conscious as Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of drapery.

‘We’re interested in you,’ Arthur Teach said, ‘and whatever you do, because Charles says you’re an interesting fellow. But I believe it’s only fair to warn you that you’re going to need more than dreams to make your fortune out here, and more than a couple of lucky games of faro. You’re going to need substance. You look up on Rincon Hill, at South Park. Now there’s substance. And substance comes from having what the people here really need, and what they’ll pay for. Do you know something? There’s a shipload of blankets coming in on Thursday next, on the Aria. Thousands and thousands of pure wool blankets. And who do you think’s going to be down on the dock, waiting for that ship, and waiting to buy up every single blanket she’s carrying, even though it’s still summer? Me. That’s who. Because in a month it’s going to be fall, and in another month it’s going to be winter, and suddenly the folks of San Francisco are going to start feeling the cold and looking out for blankets. And who do you think is going to be the proud and profitable possessor of every blanket in town? Well, you guessed it, and that’s what I mean by substance. Don’t deal in dreams, Collis. Deal in substance. You got me?’