er
the contract, and were three hundred thousand ahead."

"But was that fair to the flour people?" I asked doubtfully.

"Fair?" retorted Talbot. "What in thunder did they put the forfeit
clause in for if it wasn't expected we might use it?"

As fast as he acquired a dollar, he invested it in a new chance, until
his interests extended from the Presidio to the waterfront of the inner
bay. These interests were strange odds and ends. He and a man with his
own given name, Talbot H. Green, had title in much of what is now
Harbour View--that is to say, they would have clear title as soon as
they had paid heavy mortgages. His shares in the Commercial Wharf lay in
the safes of a banking house, and the dollars he had raised on them were
valiantly doing duty in holding at bay a pressing debt on precariously
held waterfront equities. Talbot mentioned glibly sums that reduced even
the most successful mining to a child's game. The richest strike we had
heard rumoured never yielded the half of what our friend had tossed into
a single deal. Our own pitiful thousands were beggarly by comparison,
insignificant, not worth considering.

Of all the varied and far-extending affairs the Ward Block was the
flower. Talbot owned options, equities, properties, shares in all the
varied and numerous activities of the new city; but each and every one
of them he held subject to payments which at the present time he could
by no possibility make. Mortgages and loans had sucked every immediately
productive dollar; and those dollars that remained were locked tight
away from their owner until such time as he might gain possession of a
golden key. This did not worry him.

"They are properties that are bound to rise in value," he told us. "In
fact, they are going up every minute we sit here talking. They are
futures."

Among other pieces, Talbot had been able to buy the lot on the Plaza
where now the Ward Block was going up. He paid a percentage down, and
gave a mortgage for the rest. Now all the money he could squeeze from
all his other interests he was putting into the structure. That is why I
rather fancifully alluded to the Ward Block as the flower of all
Talbot's activities.

"Building is the one thing you have to pay cash for throughout," said
Talbot regretfully. "Labour and materials demand gold. But I see my way
clear; and a first-class, well-appointed business block in this town
right now is worth more than the United States mint. That's ca