A Dangerous Fortune Read Online Free PDF Page B

Papa. Perhaps Micky would go home one day, but it would be as an important man in his own right, not as the younger son of Papa Miranda. Meanwhile he had to persuade his father that he was more useful here in London than he would be at home in Cordova.
    They were walking along South Carriage Drive on asunny Saturday afternoon. The park was thronged with well-dressed Londoners on foot, on horseback or in open carriages, enjoying the warm weather. But Papa was not enjoying himself. “I must have those rifles!” he muttered to himself in Spanish. He said it twice.
    Micky spoke in the same language. “You could buy them back home,” he said tentatively.
    “Two thousand of them?” Papa said. “Perhaps I could. But it would be such a big purchase that everyone would know about it.”
    So he wanted to keep it secret. Micky had no idea what Papa was up to. Paying for two thousand guns, and the ammunition to go with them, would probably take all the family’s reserves of cash. Why did Papa suddenly need so much ordnance? There had been no war in Cordova since the now legendary March of the Cowboys, when Papa had led his men across the Andes to liberate Santamaria Province from its Spanish overlords. Who were the guns for? If you added up Papa’s cowboys, relatives, placemen and hangers-on it would come to fewer than a thousand men. Papa had to be planning to recruit more. Whom would they be fighting? Papa had not volunteered the information and Micky was afraid to ask.
    Instead he said: “Anyway, you probably couldn’t get such high-quality weapons at home.”
    “That’s true,” said Papa. “The Westley-Richards is the finest rifle I’ve ever seen.”
    Micky had been able to help Papa with his choice of rifles. Micky had always been fascinated by weapons of all kinds, and he kept up with the latest technical developments. Papa needed short-barreled rifles that would not be too cumbersome for men on horseback. Micky had taken Papa to a factory in Birmingham and shown him the Westley-Richards carbine with the breech-loading action, nicknamed the Monkeytail because of its curly lever.
    “And they make them so fast,” Micky said.
    “I expected to wait six months for the guns to be manufactured. But they can do it in a few days!”
    “It’s the American machinery they use.” In the old days, when guns had been made by blacksmiths who fitted the parts together by trial and error, it would indeed have taken six months to make two thousand rifles; but modern machinery was so precise that the parts of any gun would fit any other gun of the same pattern, and a well-equipped factory could turn out hundreds of identical rifles a day, like pins.
    “And the machine that makes two hundred thousand cartridges a day!” Papa said, and he shook his head in wonderment. Then his mood switched again and he said grimly: “But how can they ask for the money before the rifles are delivered?”
    Papa knew nothing about international trade, and he had assumed the manufacturer would deliver the rifles in Cordova and accept payment there. On the contrary, the payment was required before the weapons left the Birmingham factory.
    But Papa was reluctant to ship silver coins across the Atlantic Ocean in barrels. Worse still, he could not hand over the entire family fortune before the arms were safely delivered.
    “We’ll solve this problem, Papa,” Micky said soothingly. “That’s what merchant banks are for.”
    “Go over it again,” Papa said. “I want to make sure I understand this.”
    Micky was pleased to be able to explain something to Papa. “The bank will pay the manufacturer in Birmingham. It will arrange for the guns to be shipped to Cordova, and insure them on the voyage. When they arrive, the bank will accept payment from you at their office in Cordova.”
    “But then they have to ship the silver to England.”
    “Not necessarily. They may use it to pay for a cargo of salt beef coming from Cordova to London.”
    “How