The Money Mill
Summary
A subterranean vein of ore, first a promise, then a curse, gapes like a chthonic mouth beneath the boots of Gregory Drake—prospector turned petulant demiurge—who, discovering that the lode he bartered away for a pittance now glitters with unspent millions, detonates the shaft in a sulphur-tinged tantrum, entombing both the rock and the memory of Helen Ogden’s father. The explosion’s echo ricochets across continents, catapulting Helen from soot-fogged foothills to Manhattan’s chromium canyons where her inherited millions flutter around her like carrion birds in tuxedos. Amid the clatter of elevated trains and the phosphorescent haze of Bowery arc lights, she is courted by brokers who smell dividends in her perfume and by philanthropists who smell salvation in her purse. Enter Dr. Granger, part physician, part urban shepherd, who drags her through tenement corridors where children chew crusts of air for supper; there she buys a tarnished pin from Jack Burton, a hunger-rigid journalist reduced to queuing for bread. One good turn deserves another, and soon Jack has a press badge and a front-row seat to his own longing. Yet every moonlit rooftop confession curdles on the tongue when he remembers the gilded chasm between her bankbook and his pockets. Meanwhile Richard Drake, velvet-gloved shark and son of the vanished saboteur, peddles a mirage of 40-percent dividends from a marble-walled bucket shop; his returning father, forged anew by jungle heat and forged documents, rewrites the deed to the mine so that Helen wakes up dispossessed. Stripped of dividends but flush with indignation, she descends into the stenographic trenches of the “Money Mill,” a clattering sweatshop of ticker-tape and testosterone, to claw back what was never for sale. In that crucible of carbon paper and coded whispers she learns that love, like ore, is only refined under pressure; when the final ledger slams shut, she and Jack stand not on opposite banks of capital but on common ground wrested back from the swindlers, their marriage a quiet revolution sanctioned by the good doctor who once taught her that charity begins where ownership ends.
Synopsis
Having sold his share in a mine, Gregory Drake blows it up in pique when it turns out to be good, and disappears, leaving Helen Ogden sole owner, as her father was killed in the mine. Later, in New York, Helen is much sought because of her money. Dr. Granger, a worker among the poor, induces her to see his "family," as he calls the many in want. Helen becomes interested and is loved by the poor for her good deeds among them. She buys a pin from Jack Burton on the bread line. Later Dr. Granger secures him employment as a reporter. Jack loves Helen, and she begins to feel affection for him, but he realizes that her money stands between them. Richard Drake, Gregory's son, is operating a get-rich-quick investment scheme in New York when his father turns up. By changing the names on the old sales document Gregory has reserved, the swindlers are able to steal the mine from Helen. She feels that now she and Jack are on a plane, but Dr. Granger convinces her that they must both work to recover the mine. This Helen does by becoming a stenographer at the "Money Mill" and after many adventures she and Jack are united through Dr. Granger.
