Collis, drinking, looked across at Wang-Pu in surprise, almost alarm. It was nearly as startling as if somebody’s pet lap dog had suddenly made an observation about the weather. Up until now, Collis had never really noticed the Chinaman at all. He had regarded him as nothing more important than Charles’s servant and buyer, and he had certainly never heard him say anything remotely sardonic. But in the early-afternoon sunshine which irradiated the steamer’s saloon, he suddenly saw Wang-Pu as a most individualistic person, a man with amusing brown eyes, a longish, northern Chinese face, and a smile which suggested a very secret camaraderie, a shared understanding of the world’s weaknesses.

‘How long have you worked for Mr Tucker?’ asked Collis.

Wang-Pu smiled. ‘Eight years, seven days a week, no vacation.’

‘You have a family?’

‘A wife, two sons, one daughter. I left them in Lianhuachi, near to the Changcheng.’

‘The Changcheng?’

‘The Great Wall. That which was built to keep barbarians like you away from civilised people like us.’

‘Do you think that people like you and people like me are so very different?’ Collis asked.

Wang-Pu shrugged. ‘We both feel pain, if that’s what you mean. I miss my family in China more than any white devil has been able to understand.’

‘Why did you leave them?’

Wang-Pu looked away, out of the dust-bloomed window, at the flat waters of Suisun Bay. ‘There was no opportunity for making money in China. My wife and family were well bred, but the harvests continually failed, and there was terrible flooding, followed by equally terrible drought, and in the end I decided to leave China and seek my fortune elsewhere. It was almost impossible for me to bear the indignity of watching my wife trying to make herself new gowns from worn-out hangings, and see my children’s arms so thin from underfeeding. I suppose you have no children, Mr Edmonds. But to hold your own child in your arms and to feel his bones through the skin, to see his eyes big and listless and hungry for food, that is a far greater pain than leaving him and working in a foreign land for money that will make him well.’

Collis didn’t answer, but sat in silence for almost a minute, his elbow resting on the table.

‘Have you ever told Charles any of this?’ asked Collis.

Wang-Pu shook his head.

‘I don’t understand why you haven’t,’ said Collis. ‘And most of all, I don’t understand why you’re telling me.’

‘Your fortune is tied up with Charles, but your fortune is greater than Charles,’ said Wang-Pu.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Collis.