The store was gloomy and smelled of grease, hemp, and kerosene. There were stacks of rope, hairy and pungent, that reached almost to the cream-painted ceiling, and rolls of woven wire fencing, ten cents a rod. There were double-cap steel roofing, chain pump tubing, wagon scales, and force pumps. To Collis, who had never been into a hardware store before, the emporium of Tucker & McCormick seemed to be crowded with the most extraordinary and eccentric devices, mostly constructed of drop-forged iron or dull-polished steel, with hooks and springs and valves and odd attachments whose arcane purposes could only be guessed at. He began to wonder if he would be able to understand the hardware business at all, especially when Leland remarked to Charles as they filed their way past a stack of boxes, ‘I’m running short on Hancock inspirators.’

They reached the door to the stairs, and Leland ushered them up. It was carpeted here, and there was an aroma of roasting chicken. They emerged in the hallway of a set of apartments, quite comfortably furnished with plain mahogany bureaus and upright chairs, and well equipped with jardinières and planters, from which ferns and aspidistras sprouted with all the clamorous health of a family of young children. They went through into a living-room, whose windows gave out on to a wide balcony and the dusty street below; and it was here, on a tapestry-covered davenport, that a small, big-nosed woman sat, in a gown of black watered silk with a white lace collar. Her hair was brushed flat and black on to her head, and two huge garnet earrings hung from her fleshy earlobes. Her eyes were bulbous and sorrowful. She stroked, or rather rubbed, as if it were a persistent stain on her skirts, a diminutive dachshund which sat in her lap.

Charles crossed the red-and-blue-patterned rug, took the woman’s hand, and kissed it. ‘Jane,’ he said. ‘You’re looking more radiant than ever. The siren of Sacramento.’

Collis stood by the door, his hat in his hand, and gave the woman a pursed, acknowledging smile. She reminded him quite strongly of engravings he had seen in the New York magazines of Queen Victoria, and she seemed to behave with the same imperiousness. There was no question at all in Collis’s mind that she was an unmitigated old boot. But he bowed slightly as Leland stepped forward, took her hand, and introduced Collis as ‘our new junior assistant, my angel.’

‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,’ said Jane McCormick. ‘You’ve come from the East, I presume?’

‘New York, ma’am.’

‘Hm,’ said Jane McCormick, as if New York were a rural village that was only one stage more civilised than Chicken Thief Flat, or Gouge Eye, or any other of the ramshackle mining towns that surrounded Sacramento. ‘You appear to be very sartorial for a junior assistant in a hardware store.’