There were more crashes and creaks from the warehouse. Through the skeletal sides, Collis could see bundles of blankets burning, stack upon stack of finest English wool bedding. He looked up at the sky. The sparks were rushing up into the foggy night air and whirling around in a triumphant celebration of success. He just hoped he was going to stay around long enough to enjoy it.

‘Pretty good, huh?’ Dan McReady said.

‘I guess so. I never saw a fire like this before. It’s kind of depressing.’

‘What’s depressing about it? Nobody loses, and the firemen have a good time.’

‘Arthur Teach loses.’ Collis felt his face flush with heat, a consequence not only of the blazing fire nearby but of a sudden sharp remorse for what he was doing.

‘Sure,’ Dan McReady said, tugging at the brim of his hat. ‘But Teach should have been more cautious. Revenge may be sweet, but it generally comes expensive.’

‘Have you paid off Gordon Jarvis yet?’ Collis asked.

‘Not yet. He’s supposed to be meeting us here.’

The steam pumpers were spraying the warehouse with veil after veil of water, and in ten minutes the fire had been reduced to a few sulky flickers. A party of volunteers had chopped their way in through the side gate, and were now happily tearing down a low shed which connected the warehouse to the shipping office next door. Collis asked Dan McReady, ‘I suppose he’s all right?’

Dan McReady gave a quick shake of his head. ‘He’s the best in the business. That’s why I used him. He was transported to New South Wales in the first place for arson. He burned down a music hall in East London with seventy people in it, and they were goddam lucky they weren’t all toasted in their seats.’

‘That doesn’t mean he hasn’t made a mistake this time.’

‘Listen,’ said Dan McReady, sounding testy. ‘You got what you wanted, didn’t you? Twenty-thousand dollars and your blankets burned for good?’

‘Sure, but—’

‘Gordon’s all right,’ Dan McReady put in. ‘He probably had to get out the back way, and skirt around. He’ll be here.’

They waited on the corner for nearly twenty minutes. Three o’clock struck. The engine company had doused the flames, and now the streets were thick with billowing, acrid smoke. There wasn’t much left of Parkinson’s warehouse but charred uprights and blackened ash. The firemen trod through the wreckage with their brass helmets dulled by heat and water, swinging their axes at anything that still smoked, and coughing. One of them was whistling Stephen Massett’s railroad song, ‘Clear the Way’.

‘Men of thought be up and stirring, night and day!’