What was it the tramp had told him? A sure way to make a few bob. Piccadilly Circus at six o’clock in the morning, always full of people dying for a smoke. Many’s the time if I’d had a packet of cigarettes on me I could have made enough to eat for two or three days. Give you sixpence, a shilling, for a cigarette some of them. More if you had the heart to ask for it. That was why he had saved his cigarettes, an intact packet of ten. He got them out and looked at them hungrily in the seedy moonlight. A smoke now would do him the world of good. Help pass the time. Just one: sell the rest. Sixpence each for nine, that was four and six. No. Keep the lot. Then get enough for a day’s food and another packet of ten. Keep alive till a decent job came up. Came up where? Daren’t go to the Labour Exchange. Steer clear of any­thing that involved officialdom, registration, all that stuff. Some­where, it was someone’s business to find him, to pull him in for the drug business. He would have to wait and let something good happen to him. I’m sorry you’ve come down to this, Lumley. Don’t worry about me. I can make friends and influence people. And I’m big. I let them influence me in return. Just watch this dial, time the speed in the lower gears. Just clean these windows. A perfectly honest profession. Harry Dogson. Do you know this man? He’s harmless. Not like me. Let me be your father. I’m cold, Rosa, Veronica, come closer. Sticky newspaper. You’re a good bloke, we like you. We were just talking about you when you came in. A good bloke, partner, Mr. Froulish will read to us from his novel, Mr. Froulish will make friends with us and influence us, have you been sending me a lot of damn fool telegrams? No, I’m too cold for that, I’m a good bloke, it’s time you told me what you did for a living, it’s time, it’s time.

Somehow it was five, then half-past, then six. Daylight. He walked through the windy streets to Piccadilly Circus. Men in overcoats loafing about. Not many girls: the girls were all off the streets by now. The men had nowhere to go. The drink inside them had worn off, leaving only a sour feeling in the stomach. He knew how they felt. The lowest ebb. Mouth like an Arab’s armpit. What’s wrong with Arabs anyway? They were doing better than he was, they were sitting under date palms in the warm sun. But then it was probably night where they lived, and cold, too. He felt sorry for the Arabs. They must have some­thing pretty badly wrong with them if their armpits felt like his mouth.