The Stolen Gold Affair

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The Olympic Club, San Francisco’s venerable men’s athletic and social club, was housed in a new four-story brick and masonry pile on Post and Mason streets, more or less cheek by jowl with the home of the city’s even more exclusive all-male fraternal organization, the Bohemian Club. The present clubhouse had opened in 1893 to no small amount of fanfare; the Olympic itself had been in existence for nearly forty years, the brainchild of two German brothers and fitness enthusiasts. Such prominent San Franciscans as Charles Crocker and Leland Stanford were among the Olympic’s members, as was Gentleman Jim Corbett, winner of the 1892 world heavyweight prizefighting title. Samuel Clemens, better known under his pen name Mark Twain, had been a frequent visitor during his newspapering days.

Quincannon was neither a member of the club nor a regular guest. Its various attractions — gymnastic equipment, boxing facilities, steam rooms, a large natatorium filled with salt water from a pipeline that extended all the way downtown from Ocean Beach — held no appeal for him. Neither did the sporting events such as rugby and tennis that the Olympic sponsored. Athletics were all well and good, but he kept himself in excellent physical shape by his own devices, often enough as a consequence of the cases he was called upon to investigate. And when it came to social interaction, he preferred the fellowship of friends and valued business acquaintances to that of either the cloistered rich or the sporting young.

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