They walked across the dust of Front Street to the carriage and climbed aboard. Wang-Pu snapped the whip at the horse’s ears, and they turned and trotted south towards K Street. The afternoon sun shone through the spokes of the wheels, and through the rustling leaves of the elders and bitter cherries.

‘Mr Jones has been asking after you, too,’ said Wang-Pu.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘He says he wants to go to Washington in February, and that he’s booked your tickets on the California already.’

‘That’s presumptuous of him,’ remarked Collis.

‘Maybe,’ said Wang-Pu.

Collis turned and looked at him. ‘Why only maybe? What do you know about this that I don’t?’

Wang-Pu looked back at him blandly. ‘If you must know, I heard from a Chinese friend of mine in San Francisco. He wrote me about a certain warehouse fire on Davis Street, not so many days ago. I have the letter here, in my pocket. I wish you could read Pekingese, because the letter is full of very subtle implications. One of the characters has the unusual meaning: “that which was already consumed was consumed again”.’

Collis pursed his lips, but then relaxed and smiled. ‘It seems nobody can keep a secret from you.’

Wang-Pu snapped the whip. ‘Secrets are the stock in trade of the Chinese people,’ he said. ‘We deal in secrets the way you deal in gunpowder and nails.’

‘So you told Theodore Jones that I was probably back in business?’

Wang-Pu nodded. ‘I gave him to understand that if you had been prepared to take advantage of Mr Teach by arranging to sell him your burned blankets, and then to burn them a second time, to conceal the fact of their first burning, then your interest in building the Pacific railroad must be almost as strong as his. If not stronger.’

‘So he bought the tickets to Washington on your recommendation?’ asked Collis.

‘You could say that.’

Collis thought for a moment. ‘What’s your interest in this? Really?’

Wang-Pu was climbing down from the carriage and readjusting the slightly jaunty angle of his hat. ‘My interest, Mr Edmonds? Only in fulfilling those things which have already been foretold.’

‘What’s been foretold? That Theodore Jones would drag me off to Washington because some interfering Chinaman told him it might be a good idea?’

‘You mustn’t take offence,’ said Wang-Pu. ‘Everything that happens is predicted. I consulted three fortune-tellers. All were in accord.’

‘What did they tell you? To look out for a New York greenhorn in a silk hat?’

Wang-Pu was silhouetted against the setting sun. Its rays burned from his left shoulder like a dazzling epaulette. His figure was slight and lean, and his head was that almond-shaped oval of the northern Chinese.