Yes! He had once owned a newspaper--in Alaska.

Incidentally, it was the farthest-north publication in the world.
Alaska! The reporter pricked up his ears.

He managed to elicit the fact that Mr.Gray had operated mines and built railroads there; that he had been forced into the newspaper game merely to protect his interests from the depredations of a gang of political grafters, and that it had been a sensational fight while it lasted.

This item was duly jotted down in the reportorial memory.
Alaska was a hard country, quite so, but nothing like Mexico during the revolution.

Mexican sugar and mahogany, it transpired, had occupied Mr.
Gray's attention for a time, as had Argentine cattle, Yucatan hennequin, and an engineering enterprise in Bolivia, not to mention other investments closer to home.
Once the speaker had become reconciled to the distasteful necessity of talking about himself, he suggested an adjournment to his rooms, where he would perhaps suffer less embarrassment by reason of his unavoidable use of the personal pronoun.
Gray noted the effect upon his visitor of the Governor's suite and soon had the young man at ease, with a Corona between his teeth.