I was twenty-seven, and I worked as a clerk for a mining broker’s office in San Francisco.
I had no money, no prospects, and nobody.
One afternoon I went out sailing, and the current carried the boat out to sea.
It was dark by the time a ship picked me up, and I was put ashore in London with a few cents in my pocket.
For days I walked the streets, and I was hungry.
One day I passed a house where two elderly gentlemen sat at the window.
One of them leaned out and called me in.
In the room they asked me who I was, where I had come from, and what I could do.
I told them. I was poor, and I was honest.
One of the gentlemen handed me an envelope and told me not to open it until I had left.
I went out into the street and opened the envelope.
Inside was a bank note: one million pounds.
My legs shook. I turned back to ask what it meant, but the door of the house was already shut.
I went into a restaurant and ate, because I was hungry.
When the time came to pay, I brought out the bank note.
The waiter looked at it, went white, and ran to fetch the owner.
The owner looked at it too, and then said I need not pay now. Any time. At my convenience.
After that the same thing happened everywhere: at the tailor’s, at the hotel, in the shops.
Nobody could change the note, and nobody wanted to; everybody gave me credit.
Within a few days London was full of the news that an odd millionaire was walking about the city.
The American ambassador invited me to dinner, and there I met Portia.
Portia was clever, and she laughed at me, which I liked.
Meanwhile my friend Lloyd Hastings was trying to sell a mining share that nobody would buy.
He said: all this needs is your name. Let me say that you know me.
I allowed it. The shares sold at once, and we both did well out of it.
At the end of the month I went back to that house and handed over the bank note.
The two gentlemen looked at it, and I saw in their faces that they had won their wager.
It turned out they had wagered on this: whether a stranger in London could last a month with a million pounds in his pocket and never change it.
And Portia was in that room too: it turned out she was the daughter of one of the gentlemen.
I was not angry. I laughed instead, because without the note I had nothing, and now I have everything.
I kept the bank note. It is framed, and it hangs on the wall.
