She said, “I’ve always wanted a job like that. Other girls seem to get them. I’ve never been able to.”
“This’ll probably not last longer than a couple of days, but it’s the sort of job you’re going to have.”
“Bertha will switch. She’ll get you some girl from an employment office and take me back to the mill.”
“I won’t let her. I’ll tell her that I need someone I can trust. She can get lots of girls to do typing; it might be a good idea to let her see just how hard it is to fill your place.”
She looked up at me for a minute and said, “Donald, I’ve often wondered why it is you get people boosting for you... I guess perhaps it’s because you’re so darn considerate. You—” She quit talking all at once, pushed back her chair, rushed across the office and out the door as though she’d been going to a fire.
I went on into the private office, closed the door, tilted back in a swivel chair, and put my heels up on the top of a desk that had seen lots of hard usage.
After I heard Elsie Brand return to the outer office I picked up the telephone and pushed the button that connected me with her desk.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Make a note of three names, Elsie. They’re Parker Stold, Bernard Carter, and Robert Tindle. Got them?”
“Yes. What about them?”
“If anyone of those people come in, I’m busy, and I’m going to be busy all morning. I can’t see them and I don’t want them to wait. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“If anyone else comes in, try and find out what he wants. Have him sit down and wait. Get him to give you a card if possible. Bring the card in to me.”
“That all?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” she said, and I heard her telephone click.
I had a lot of thinking to do, and I sat there in the chair, smoking and thinking, trying to figure things out so that they made sense. I wasn’t trying to solve the whole puzzle because I knew I hadn’t enough facts, but I was getting facts. I felt that if I could keep my head and not make any false steps, things would open up.
About eleven I heard the door of the outer office open and close, and the sound of voices. Elsie came in with a card. The card had a man’s name on it, nothing more.
I studied the card. “Gilbert Rich, eh? What does he look like?”
“High pressure,” she said. “Salesman of some kind. Won’t tell me what. I asked him what he wanted to see you about, and he said a sales proposition. He’s forty, and he dresses for twenty-seven. He isn’t exactly what you’d call well dressed. What he’d call a ‘nifty dresser.’ ”
“Fat?”
“No, fairly slender, getting bald on each side of his forehead. Dark hair slicked back. Black eyes, no glasses. Quick, nervous, glib. His nails are well manicured and polished. He’s had a fresh shoeshine this morning, and smells like a barbershop. Do you want to see him?”
“Yes.”
She went out, and Gilbert Rich came in. He crossed the office with quick steps to grab my hand. His manner was nervous and magnetic. He started talking as though he’d been accustomed to try and get in as many words as possible before he got thrown out.
“Doubtless, Mr. Fischler, you’ll wonder about the nature of my business. When I told your secretary it was a sales proposition, perhaps you thought that it was something I had that I wanted you to handle. As a matter of fact, it’s exactly the other way round. I want to make you a lot of money, Mr. Fischler. In order to do that, I’m going to require three minutes of your time.”
He jerked a watch out of his pocket and placed it on my desk in front of me.
“Kindly notice the time, Mr. Fischler. Keep your eyes right on that watch. As soon as my three minutes are up, tell me. That’s all I want, three minutes of your time, and in return I’ll guarantee they’ll be the most profitable three minutes you’ve spent in the last ten years.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “You’ve got three minutes.”
“Mr. Fischler, have you ever paused to think of the marvels of modern science? Don’t bother to answer, because I can see that you have. You realise, Mr. Fischler, that things we regard as everyday occurrences today are things which were scientific impossibilities a few years ago.
“Now then, Mr. Fischler, in order to show you how you are going to make money out of modern scientific developments, it’s necessary for me to turn back a page in the history of our great and glorious state. We’ll turn back, not to the days of forty-nine, but to the days which followed it, days when the state was a swarming horde of gold seekers. Men were grubbing with pick and shovel, with rockers and gold pans, taking gold out of the earth, and there was a vast amount of gold taken out, Mr. Fischler. It poured back to the money centers of the East in a steady golden stream. But there was lots of gold left.
“Up in the country around Valleydale there was a rich placer deposit. The river came roaring out of the mountain carrying gold, depositing it in a vast alluvial plane over the broad agricultural valley which opened out to receive the smiling waters of a river suddenly grown placid. Men, naked to the waist, toiled through the winter rains, through the broiling summer suns, grubbing out gold, and always more gold. Then, as the richer alluvial deposits were exhausted, they moved on down, tracing the course of the river through the geological ages, finding the top soil rich for agricultural purposes, but the gold values collected on bedrock where they had settled — and then just when they were on the verge of reaping their richest harvest, they encountered the problem of surface water. They could dig down to twenty-five feet before encountering water. They got gold almost from the grass roots, but they couldn’t get down to the rich deposits on bedrock. Bedrock at that point lay in a uniform bench at about forty-two feet below the surface.
“But I won’t detain you with sketching the details of that picture, Mr. Fischler. Doubtless, you’re familiar with it from having seen the various historical films which are masterpieces of cinematic art. We will hurry on to the edge of modern inventions. A man of vision conceived the idea of using the water, not as an enemy, but as an aid. He built a big barge, and on that he placed the machinery necessary to dredge. An endless chain of steel buckets dipped far below the surface of the water to scrape the values up from bedrock. The agricultural land was ruined, but in its place the owner received a vast royalty on the gold extracted. The entire topography of the country changed. Because of the peculiar process used in gold dredging, the silt and soil was discharged on the bottom, the rocks and boulders on the top. As a result, the rich agricultural valley became a heap of sun-bleached tailing piles.
“Years passed. The gold dredgers completed chewing up all of the profitable ground, and, as they demolished the last acre, they found themselves trapped in a rocky waste of their own fashioning. There was no further use for them. They were too bulky to dismantle and move, and, even so, there was no place for them to go. They fell into ruins as grim as the ruins of the fair land which they themselves had devastated. The barges began to leak, careened over to one side. The machinery rusted. That which could be profitably transported for junk was sold. The rest became a rusted monument to the greed of man.
“Even the dredgers had not been able to get to bedrock on all the land. In places they had been forced to leave fifteen to twenty feet of the richest pay soil on top of bedrock.
“Now then, Mr. Fischler, we come to a great dream, a golden dream, a dream which is coming true. Modern engineering has devised a means by which the land can be redredged and the boulders placed on the bottom, the silt put back on the top, so that once more the land will be fair and fertile. This has long been known. The Chamber of Commerce of Valleydale had even thought of redredging the land with modern equipment simply for the purpose of restoring it to agricultural productivity, but the process would have been too expensive. What the Chamber of Commerce didn’t realise was that there was still a vast fortune of gold lying on top of bedrock waiting for the proper person to—”