An African Millionaire

This is a collection of a series of twelve adventures or episodes that first appeared in the Strand Magazine in 1896-97, then in book form in 1897. They are stories about Sit Charles Vandrift, a millionaire owner of diamond mines in Africa, and his secretary, Seymour Wentworth – who is also his brother-in-law. Vandrift is constantly set upon by a man known as Colonel Clay – a man of incredible wit and remarkable disguises. In tale after tale, he manages to hide his identity behind a marvelous makeup job and take advantage of Vandrift in one scam or another. “As his surname indicates, Colonel Clay is a man of clay, readily transformed into any number of undetectable disguises so that he can better torment and fleece ...Vandrift.” In essence, Clay is the hero of these stories. He is the Robin Hood of scam, and has latched onto Vandrift as a remora to a shark or a tapeworm to a human. Together they form a symbiotic relationship that drives each story forward. The tales were very popular at the time, but I think that the author shot himself in the foot. He left himself nowhere to go. How many scams with the same characters can one think of and still hold the reader’s interest? What makes these tales important, however, is that the crook is the hero of the story. These are the first tales where this is the case – preceeding Raffles by several years. Of course, the plot twist is common today, but at the time, this was an innovation. In these stories, even the police seem to be on Clay’s side. They are amazed at his boldness and ingenuity. The tales are entertaining, and historically important in the crime genre.