Collis went down the creaking stairs and across to the bar, where the Spanish barkeep was polishing glasses on the sleeve of his baggy shirt. Collis asked for a stone fence, but the barkeep only stared at him, so he made do with three fingers of Old Carstairs Authentic. Then he leaned back against the bar and looked around, still feeling tired, but somehow more excited with the way his life was turning out than he had been for days. Maybe now he was in Panama he’d begun to recognise that there was no turning back, and that whatever was going to come next, he was going to have to bite the bullet and make the best of it.

At the grand piano, by the light of a tarnished candelabrum, an elderly man in a soiled straw hat and whiskers as sparse as a tomcat was playing an emotional French tune, a tune of lost loves and heartbreaks and Sunday walks on the banks of the Seine, with an unerring instinct for hitting the wrong note at the peak of each bar; meanwhile a tall man in a yellow vest was singing some other song altogether. Nobody seemed to mind, or care; here in Aspinwall on a rainy summer night, everybody had his mind on other things. There were occasional sallies of laughter, but they were short-lived and strained.

Collis had almost finished his whisky when Andrew Jackson Hunt came downstairs and walked across to the bar.

‘How do you do?’ he said, raising his hat.

‘Much better, thank you for asking,’ Collis told him. ‘I managed to get in a couple of hours’ sleep, at least.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Andrew Hunt, ‘I wish I could. The problem is, my room is right next to the goddam water closet, and every time I’m right on the edge of nodding off, somebody decides to do their party imitation of Niagara Falls.’

‘Have you seen the train outside?’ said Collis. ‘I was thinking of going across to take a closer look.’

‘Haven’t you ever seen a train before?’

‘Of course. But not this close. I always kept away from the railroad tracks in New York to keep from frightening the horses.’

Andrew beckoned the barkeep over and asked for a bourbon and a refill for Collis. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said, leaning his elbows on the bar and taking a good hard swig, which he swilled around his teeth. ‘The railroad train is where the money is, and that’s for sure. One day, somebody’s going to be smart enough to lay down a railroad all the way from San Francisco to St Louis, and that somebody’s going to make himself richer than Crease-ass.’

‘Who?’