‘They spoke in symbols, as they always do,’ Wang-Pu said. ‘But they told me that I would be the first among my people to see the gate through the distant mountains, and that in the company of a white devil, I would lead hundreds of Chinese in the building of the greatest pathway this world has ever known. They said I would touch the robes of great glory.’

‘Maybe they were good at making informed guesses. They must have known you were a friend of Theodore Jones.’

‘No, Mr Edmonds. This was years ago, when I first arrived in San Francisco. This was long before I met you, or Mr Jones, or any of the people I know now.’

Collis looked at Wang-Pu and felt as if he had never seen him before. Suddenly, strangely, this amusing Chinese servant had appeared as somebody else altogether — a man whose destiny was mysteriously linked with Collis’s own.

‘We ought to talk about this some more,’ Collis said.

‘Yes,’ said Wang-Pu, as if he knew what Collis had been thinking.

Collis looked up at the frontage of 54 K, the hardware store. ‘I guess I’d better go tell Leland and Charles that I’m back. Can we meet tomorrow?’

‘Of course. Why don’t you come around to my apartments, and I will cook you a modest Chinese dinner. Eight-treasure tomatoes, lion’s head casserole, and aromatic duck.’

‘That sounds delicious.’

‘It is the traditional cooking of Peking.’

They were standing next to each other now with unusual formality, as if they were strangers who had just been introduced. In a way, they were. They had just discovered why their utterly different lives had brought them to the same place, in the same year, and why the white of the High Sierra snow was in both of their eyes.

Collis and the McCormicks had dinner that evening at the Tuckers. They drank a toast of California Pinot Noir to their partnership, and then Charles fought with a gristly joint of beef and a blunt carving knife, while Mary passed around dishes of overcooked broccoli and watery squash. Collis told them about his visit to San Francisco, and about the hardware he’d bought, although he didn’t mention l’affaire des couvertures, as Theodore Jones was later to call the burning of the Aria’s blankets, nor did he tell them about his duel with Grant Melford. He knew now how calculating he was going to have to be to get his way with the railroad, and he wanted to keep their suspicions lulled until he was ready.

After a sad pineapple pudding, Collis at last produced the purse of gold which Dan McReady had left in the safe of the International Hotel. He held it up, shook it so that it gave that lumpy rattle peculiar to gold nuggets, and then passed it across the table to Leland.