Chapter 14

The next day, one of the first telephone calls I got was from the publisher of the Shanghai American. His was also a startup, and he was having trouble filling his pages with local news that would interest the American business community. They were the people he was aiming for as readers, and, by extension, their employees.

We had a long and interesting conversation. He wanted to know just what and who I was fronting for in Shanghai, and was I a serious businessman. There had been way too many people, not all of them Americans, who had shown up with grand business ideas, but who had departed for America as soon as they could promote enough money for the ticket home. He wanted to make sure that I was not one of that sort.

I assured him as best I could that I was representing some hard-headed business men of New York City who were planning to open up a new shipping line as soon as I told them that I had control of the pirate situation. I told him of the successful encounters with pirates that I had so far, plus my success in Europe, and gave him the names of the ships and the captains whom I had saved. He could check those references with my blessings.

I explained what I had done so far in protecting the ships from pirates, and I said that I had several ideas for extending that scheme to give even greater protection to the ship, passengers, and freight.

He wanted to know where I was from, so I told him about Texas and fighting Comanches. I just mentioned my early interest in poker without going into detail. I was not sure how the locals felt about gambling, I did not yet know about Macau, so I thought that I had better not say much about that.

Anyway, the conversation lasted over an hour, and he promised to send a reporter around to interview me as soon as he could get one free. I figured that really meant “as soon as he could hire one.” That was the last I heard from newspapers for over a week, so I started worrying about other more pressing matters.

The next call I got was from the real estate broker about seeing the house he had found for me. I set that up for two days hence, and made a note to alert Hoi about it.

Hoi, with his usual efficiency, had found several potential secretaries, all of them Chinese. Well, I certainly was not going to argue about race, especially since the job was mostly to answer the telephone, and I had heard about how women did that job so well. Besides, who better to speak to a Chinese caller than one fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese. In this area, there was not much call for Wu.

I spent the morning interviewing the applicants, three women and one man. The man struck me as being too belligerent for what I needed, so the contest was quickly reduced to the three women. After a lengthy conversation in English with each of the women, I chose Liu Suwan. Her main attribute was the fact that she had some previous experience as a part-timer as a telephone answerer, so very little training would be required. Furthermore, she could start tomorrow. I hired her immediately.

One of Liu Suwan’s first jobs was going to be ordering a telephone extension installed in the next room so that she would have her own office with her own telephone. Having a private office really kicked her status up several notches, and she fairly floated out of my office after the interview. Right then, I planned to swap offices with Suwan so that her office opened off the corridor and mine opened off her office. That made no difference to her status and gave me a bit more privacy.

Just before I was ready to quit for the day, I got a call from the office of the publisher of the Shanghai American newspaper to arrange for a time for a reporter to stop by. I set that for right after lunch the day after tomorrow. That was acceptable, and it was nice to scratch another chore off the list.

The trip to see the house was a real shock! My God, this was a mansion! Hoi did not seem to be as amazed as I was. The house was empty of people, but not of furnishings. The current owner had died, and his widow wanted to dump the property so that she could move back to Philadelphia and live “in style.” There were no children interested in the place, and a couple of probing questions revealed that this mansion was what Hoi had in mind when he described the kind of property that I had wanted.

I was ushered inside, and I was as impressed when I saw the inside as I was when I saw the outside. Anyway, the house had a master’s suite, several rooms for children, an office wing, a spacious ballroom with the associated banquet room, servants’ quarters, a tremendous kitchen and store rooms, and I was swamped by then and kind of disconnected mentally. Hell, this mansion was suitable for an emperor, at least as a summer cottage. On top of all that, it was centrally located and already had its own telephones.

The most fantastic part of the whole deal was that I could afford it! Hoi was giving me a harder sales pitch than was the broker, and, between the two, I finally gave in. I agreed to take the property at a price that would probably have bought half of the state of Texas, and the funny thing was, that was finally when I realized just how much of a fortune I had between my own money and the allowance that AGTC had provided.

Anyway, Hoi said that he could have a complete staff, both for the office and for the home by the middle of next week. I guess that was when I went crazy and said for Hoi to take care of the details and I would sign whatever he needed from me to finalize the deal. Hoi grinned from ear to ear, and so did the real estate broker. At this point, I was dazed by the whole thing and took a cab back to my apartment to lie down.

That afternoon I had a dream in which Grandpa appeared and congratulated me. He also said, “See, I told you that poker would cover you for life!”

I found plenty to keep me occupied until the time came for me to meet with the newspaper reporter. I still did not know the name of the reporter from the Shanghai American who was scheduled to talk to me, so I was not sure what to tell Suwan, who was also acting at my receptionist. All she knew was that a reporter was due to show up at around 2:00 PM, and that I would see him immediately.

I was working on my latest cable report to George Holmes in New York City. Mostly, this was a report so far on my new house. I would tell him about the meeting with the reporter from the newspaper after I had a chance to talk to him.

Right on the dot at 2:00 PM, there was a knock on my office door. I acknowledged it immediately, and I was surprised and shocked to my core when Suwan opened the door and announced that the reporter was here to see me. Dammit, the reporter was a woman! I was torn between feeling insulted because the reporter was a woman and impressed at how good looking she was. The reporter was introduced as Elizabeth Martin.

Okay, this was 1898, and there had already been some famous women newspaper reporters, but they normally never handled anything but society news and that sort of thing. However, Elizabeth Martin was such a good looking woman that my hormones would not let me send her away.

Of course I stood up when she was introduced to me, and I was especially courteous as I had her seated across from my desk. I apologized for the lack of comfort in the chair she was using, but there were none better in the room. We were served tea by Suwan, and that was a surprise for me, but I later found out that such was the standard way to open a business conversation in China. Personally, I thought it was a good idea.

We talked about some trivial matters until we had finished the tea, but I found out some interesting things about Elizabeth Martin. Elizabeth, please call me Liz, was the daughter of the publisher of the Shanghai American, and really wanted to be a newspaper reporter. This was not just a lark for her, but a career. Okay, I could appreciate that, so I was quickly over being insulted by a woman reporter.