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Riassunto di La valigia da un milione di dollari
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Readers who love locked-room puzzles, clever women who out-think the professionals, and a hunt that races between a big city and a blossoming orchard town in the years after the Great War.
Che cos’è questo libro
The Million-Dollar Suitcase is a detective novel by Alice MacGowan and Perry Newberry, set in San Francisco and a small orchard town in California in 1920. It was written in the years just after the Great War, and the war hangs over every chapter. The hero comes home restless, with money and a taste for risk. The book gives you two locked-room puzzles, a hunt for a missing fortune, and a quick-moving style of short chapters and sharp talk.
The story is told by Jerry Boyne, an older detective who heads the Bankers' Security Agency. A teller named Edward Clayte has vanished from a locked apartment with nearly a million dollars belonging to the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank. Boyne's new employer is Worth Gilbert, a young captain who buys the missing suitcase sight unseen. Neither man can get a description of the thief that means anything.
Into their hunt comes Barbara Wallace, a bookkeeper who was once a famous child prodigy and who now hates her old tricks. She works only from facts and never from guesses. Her reasoning leads from a San Francisco rooftop to a bolted study in Santa Ysobel, where a death brings the whole case closer to Worth himself. Let us begin in the bank directors' room, where the trouble first lands.
In questo riassunto
- 1A Teller and a Suitcase VanishFree
- 2Worth Gilbert Buys the Loss
- 3Barbara Wallace Takes the Description
- 4The Room, the Roof and the Hidden Plug
- 5A Hidden Suitcase and a Gambler Gone
- 6A Shadow in the Bolted Study
- 7Seven Lost Days and a Son in Peril
- 8What the Story Is Really About
- 9How the Book Is Told
Punto chiave 1 di 9
A Teller and a Suitcase Vanish
The story opens on a Saturday in San Francisco, a few years after the Great War. In the directors' room of the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank, twelve frightened men sit around a long table with the blinds drawn. Jerry Boyne, head of the Bankers' Security Agency, tells the story himself, and he begins by reporting to them. A paying teller named Edward Clayte has left at closing time with a brown suitcase full of money and securities.
Boyne followed him fast. A desk clerk at the St. Dunstan apartments on Nob Hill saw Clayte carry the suitcase to the elevator, and a woman tacking carpet on the seventh floor saw him enter his room. Then the trail stops. Boyne found three windows fastened with burglarproof locks, a door on a spring lock, and a tidy room with no Clayte and no suitcase. The directors insist that a man cannot melt into the air, and Boyne has no answer.
President Whipple has the loss counted at a side table. It comes to almost a million dollars, and the bond on Clayte covers only fifteen thousand. A bank cannot risk even a whisper of trouble in a shaky market, so the men agree to keep the matter quiet. Their lawyer, A. G. Cummings, would rather bring in the police and even suggests the stockholders cover the loss among themselves.
Into this nervous room walks Worth Gilbert, a tall young captain just home from France. His father has just taken over a large block of the bank's stock, and that is why Whipple wants him there. Old Dykeman, the eldest director, snaps at him. Worth answers that he is here now and staying, and he takes a chair as if it were his own. Boyne has known him since he was a boy and loves him like a son.
Then Boyne asks for a description of Clayte, and the room falls apart. His hair is mousy, or lighter, or darker. His eyes are blue, gray or brown. Cashier Knapp has worked beside him for eight years and cannot say whether he smoked. Nobody can name a friend, a relative or a girl. Boyne's agency keeps a photograph of every bank employee except this one, and Whipple at last calls the man a shadow.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Questions about La valigia da un milione di dollari
What is The Million-Dollar Suitcase about?
It follows a bank teller who vanishes from a locked apartment with nearly a million dollars. A young captain buys the missing suitcase, a detective hunts the thief, and a gifted young woman solves the clues, which draw them to a death in an orchard town.
Who is Barbara Wallace in the book?
Barbara is a bookkeeper who was once a child prodigy trained by her psychologist father. She remembers everything she sees, works only from facts, and hates being treated as a stunt. Her reasoning drives the investigation.
Why is the suitcase worth eight hundred thousand dollars?
The bank's directors are afraid of a run on the bank, so they sell Worth Gilbert the missing suitcase and its contents for less than the loss. He wants the thrill of the gamble and the chance to recover the whole sum.
When is the novel set and is it a true story?
It is fiction, set in 1920 in San Francisco and a California orchard town just after the Great War. The banking panic, the returning soldiers and the festival scenes are drawn from the period, but the crime is invented.
Is The Million-Dollar Suitcase easy to follow?
It moves along through short chapters, lively talk and a narrator who explains each clue as he finds it. The puzzles are laid out fairly, so you can try to solve them alongside Barbara and Boyne.