‘What’s your interest?’ asked Collis, a little too sharply.

Wang-Pu smiled again, as if to say that Collis was being predictably Western. ‘My interest,’ he said, ‘is also in business. If you wish to summon Chinese labourers to this task, when it reaches fruitfulness, then I shall recruit them for you, and manage them for you. I am well known on Tong Yan Gai, which is what we call Sacramento Street. I will do it in exchange for reasonable moneys, and in exchange for being part of your destiny.’

Collis felt curiously disturbed. ‘I’m not magic, you know,’ he told Wang-Pu.

Wang-Pu sipped his drink. ‘I know, Mr Edmonds. But you are one of those we call “fabled.” One of those people who are selected by fate to fulfil a certain role in the history of the world. You are a hinge, if you understand me, upon which the future of this nation will hang.’

‘I think you’re flattering me. I’m broke. I’m an apprentice merchant, that’s all.’

‘Nevertheless, you are the perfect candidate.’

‘You have an unnerving command of English, for a Chinese.’

‘You have a very dull sense of your own importance, for an aristocrat.’

Collis abruptly laughed, and Wang-Pu laughed too, a high-pitched giggle that set Collis laughing even harder. It took them all of three or four minutes to recover, and then they sat there wiping their eyes with their handkerchiefs, and still letting out occasional chuckles.

‘I never knew the Chinese had a sense of humour,’ said Collis. ‘You always struck me as dour.’

‘It isn’t a Western sense of humour,’ Wang-Pu told him. ‘But we take great pleasure in laughing.’ He wiped his eyes again, and tucked away his handkerchief. Then he took out his gold pocket watch and examined it.

‘Time for my medication,’ he said. ‘You’ll excuse me a moment, won’t you?’

‘You’re not suffering from anything serious, I hope?’ asked Collis.

‘An ulcer. I have to treat it three times a day.’

‘You take kaolin?’

Wang-Pu smiled. ‘I am Chinese, Mr Edmonds. I take the traditional Chinese cure.’

Wang-Pu opened a worn brown leather case that was lying propped against the legs of his chair. He bent over and reached inside, and produced a dark-red lacquered box, with gold paintings of Chinese trees on it. The box appeared to be ventilated with leaf-shaped air holes, and when Wang-Pu set it on the saloon table and opened the lid, Collis could see why.

Inside, the box was divided into compartments. In one compartment, there was a flat saucer of thin porcelain. In the second was a glass-stoppered bottle of dark liquid. And in the third, nestling in white cotton, were three baby mice, pink and hairless, but wriggling with life.