- Frank's old boss Wyndam-Matson won't rehire Frank after the mean, hurtful things Frank said. So Frank just goes to pick up his personal tools from the factory foreman Ed McCarthy.
- But McCarthy has a plan for the two of them to go into business together. Instead of making fake antiques, they'll make real jewelry. They just need $2000 to start off (to buy some raw materials and other tools) and they can go to stores like American Artistic Handcrafts. (A-ha—it's all coming together now.)
- Frank isn't sure about this plan, so he goes to consult the I Ching. (That is a phrase you will have to get used to in this book.) Frank gets a weird result that seems to say he should go into business with Ed, but that there's some doom coming for everyone.
- McCarthy also has a plan to get the starting money from Wyndam-Matson, so everything is going well—except for that whole "doom coming for everyone" thing.
- Meanwhile, Robert Childan has a new customer in his store. This guy claims to work for a Japanese admiral on the ship Syokaku and the admiral wants to buy a lot of Civil War pistols.
- This means that Childan is going to make a lot of money, so… yay. Only this customer looks at the gun and says no deal because the gun is a fake.
- Childan calmly thinks through the possibilities: should he kill himself now or later? Because this story could ruin his rep as a dealer, so he might as well kill himself. (Also, Childan might be a little melodramatic.)
- But first Childan sends the gun off to the lab to get it tested.
- The lab says it's a fake.
- So Childan calls up his supplier Ray Calvin to yell about this forgery and get a refund.
- And then Childan checks on the Syokaku and learns that ship was sunk in the war. So the guy who claimed to be a customer totally just played Childan for some reason. Cue sad trombone. (Let this be a lesson to all of us to do our research.)