With a smile of appreciation at the gentle joke, the newcomer handed over a straw boater sporting a Cambridge-blue grosgrain ribbon around the crown readily enough, but he confidently overruled Ambrose, who was attempting to steer him towards a chair near the door. He elected, oddly, to seat himself right next to the tramp. Ah well . . . as in the Roman baths of old, a visit to the barber’s shop was a social occasion for some. Men came in for the chat, the gossip. In his trade, Stan had heard all sorts of secrets and scandals. Some of the raciest, he’d invented himself. He’d seen contacts made, friendships develop, quarrels break out. He’d heard his own stories told back to him within the hour as the “gospel truth.” Nothing could surprise him. But the new bloke appeared not to be seeking conversation. He sat quietly, monosyllabic in his responses to Ambrose’s overtures, allowing him to lather him up for a shave of what looked to be an already immaculate face.

Unconcerned, Stan worked away on his own client with the cutthroat, stretching the skin expertly this way and that to whisk away every scrap of stubble.

It happened so swiftly, Stan could never untangle the series of moves that led to the appalling tableau now startling him into speechless rigidity.

In midshave, with the sinuous speed of an adder striking from the bracken, Dickie had snatched the razor from him, whipped aside the towels, shot from his chair and elbowed Ambrose out of the way. While Ambrose sat reeling on the floor clutching his left ear, the tramp was now standing menacingly over the customer with the blade of the razor glinting through a lather of soap exactly at the point where Stan had always been taught that the jugular vein lay throbbing.

Stan breathed in wheezily, unable even to shout a warning as the blade sank below the foam and moved in a delicate slicing movement across the skin. A trickle of blood oozed up and spread out to marble the shaving foam with red streaks under the horrified eyes gazing into the mirror.

“Be still! Be very still!” the tramp hissed, quite unnecessarily as the realisation that he was a tenth of an inch from death had paralysed his victim.

“Dickie! What the hell!” Stan found his voice and yelled. “Put the soddin’ razor down, you berk! It’s fresh-stropped! Sharp as hell! One slip and you could do some serious damage—”

“Damage? He should be so lucky! It’s destruction I’ve got in mind. Unless I get a straight answer to my question from this chancer.”