“Sounds like an interesting fella,” I said.

The finnan haddie was here; it was steaming, not particularly aromatic. What the appeal of this bland fare was I couldn’t fathom; not that good a detective. I dug in.

He was studying me like a legal brief. “How much do you know about Sir Harry?”

“Just that he’s self-made-a gold miner who hit the jackpot. Obviously British.”

“No he isn’t.” Foskett’s smile was a trifle condescending. “He was born in Maine. And yet he became a British baronet….”

I looked up from my fish and cast him my own condescending smile. “Walter, you don’t need to explain how a mining magnate became a ‘Sir’-money talks in England, just like in Chicago. The only difference is the accent.”

He frowned. “If you’re going to work for Sir Harry…”

“We haven’t established that yet, Walter.”

“If you are, I think you need a little crash course in just who this remarkable man is.”

While I ate, he talked. And I admit I was soothed by the Southern inflections of the attorney, even if his admiration for his wealthy client bordered on embarrassing. In any case, the story he told-Sir Harry Oakes’ story-really was remarkable.

A loner since his middle-class upbringing in New England, Oakes dropped out of Syracuse medical school, condemning businessmen and professionals for “making money off their fellow men,” yet paradoxically possessed by an overwhelming desire to accumulate riches. How could the young idealist accumulate wealth without taking advantage of his fellows? The answer seemed to be in the news of a gold strike in the Klondike.

For fourteen obstinate years, Harry Oakes wandered a penniless prospector, from Death Valley to Australia to the Belgian Congo, with many a stop in between, in search of the instant wealth mining could bring. Along the way he learned the skills of his trade, not to mention a hard-bitten form of self-reliance.