Collis gave him a long, serious look. ‘In Panama,’ he said huskily, ‘I prayed in a cathedral for somebody’s life, and that life was saved. But I’ve had a hand in two deaths now, a girl in New York, and now Gordon Jarvis, and I’m just wondering if God hasn’t decided it’s time I was judged.’

‘Come on, you’re just feeling tired, and upset. You didn’t kill Gordon Jarvis. Gordon Jarvis wasn’t anything more than a victim of his own life.’

‘No, you’re wrong. He was a victim of my life. The same way everybody else is. The same way I am, too.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Dan McReady. He glanced back at the circle of firemen.

‘I wish I could make it clearer. I wish I understood it myself.’ The wind began to rise, and the fog listlessly stirred. Collis’s dark curls were ruffled as if someone had run their fingers through his hair. ‘I feel as if I were standing on the footplate of some kind of terrible train,’ he said. ‘It’s running faster and faster, and no matter what I do I can’t stop it, even when it knocks people down.’

Dan McReady took out a crumpled cigarette. ‘That, my friend, is called fate. Everybody’s riding one type of train or another. Some of them are slow, and rusty, and stop at every damned crossing on the way. Others are shiny and fly down the line like hot shit. But believe you me, and I’ve found this out for myself, they all wind up at the same old station. And whichever way they go, fast or slow, plain or fancy, most folks find the ride ain’t hardly worth the price.’

Collis squeezed his eyes shut to try to restore some moisture under his lids. He said, ‘You don’t happen to want to fight this duel instead of me, do you?’

They parted on the corner of Montgomery and California. Dan McReady was going back to his boarding-house on Stockton, to change his shirt and shave. He promised to collect Collis outside the International Hotel a little after six o’clock, so that they could ride out to Lake Merced in good time for the duel. ‘Don’t drink anything,’ he warned, ‘and don’t try to go to sleep. Just take yourself a quick, cold bath, and put on some fresh linen. It’s easier to shoot straight in clean drawers. Don’t ask me why.’

Collis watched him walk off into the darkness. An upstairs window across the street was still lit, and someone was playing the viola, so sadly and sweetly that you could have imagined the love of his or her life had just been lost. Collis waited on the corner for a while, then started walking doggedly north towards the International, and an early breakfast.