"At Seldon, at least," he said to me, with a sigh, as he stepped
into his Pullman, "I shall be safe from that impostor!"
And indeed, as soon as he had begun to tire a little of counting
up his hundreds of brace per diem, he found a trifling piece of
financial work cut ready to his hand, which amply distracted his
mind for the moment from Colonel Clay, his accomplices, and his
villainies.
Sir Charles, I ought to say, had secured during that summer a very
advantageous option in a part of Africa on the Transvaal frontier,
rumoured to be auriferous. Now, whether it was auriferous or not
before, the mere fact that Charles had secured some claim on it
naturally made it so; for no man had ever the genuine Midas-touch
to a greater degree than Charles Vandrift: whatever he handles turns
at once to gold, if not to diamonds. Therefore, as soon as my
brother-in-law had obtained this option from the native vendor (a
most respected chief, by name Montsioa), and promoted a company
of his own to develop it, his great rival in that region, Lord
Craig-Ellachie (formerly Sir David Alexander Granton), immediately
secured a similar option of an adjacent track, the larger part of
which had pretty much the same geological conditions as that covered
by Sir Charles's right of pre-emption.
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