‘I don’t think so. They brought a doctor, and he said her hips were crushed. He told me to forget about it. He said it wasn’t my fault, and even if it was, I shouldn’t admit any guilt. He said that girls like that are bound to die anyway before their time, and that the worst I’d done was hasten her finish.’

‘A sensible man,’ commented Jack. ‘Most people would have screwed you for ten dollars to keep quiet about it.’

‘Most of them did. The manager of the Madison, and the manager of the Monument, and the local officer.’

‘So it cost you a pretty penny, last night, as well as your good humour?’ asked Henry.

Collis finished his beer and asked Jimmy for a stone fence. ‘It’s made me think about myself, if that’s what you mean, and what I am, and where my money comes from.’

‘Money comes from parents,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a known biological fact.’

Collis watched absent-mindedly as Jimmy poured two ounces of bourbon into a tall, frosted glass, clattered in a spoonful of ice cubes, and then topped it up with cider. He said, without looking up at his friends, ‘This was almost the first time I’ve ever thought of a whore as a real person, I guess. When she was lying on the sidewalk, all broken and bruised like that, she wasn’t trying to do anything but survive, as all people must.’

‘I hope you’re not going to be morbid all evening,’ said Lewis. ‘If you are, then I suggest we cancel the restaurant, and forget about Leonard Street, and go to the cemetery and read the inscriptions on the gravestones until we all feel better.’

‘No, I don’t think I’m morbid,’ Collis told him with a faint smile. ‘I just think I’m taking stock of myself. I suppose my father prompted me, too, when we talked this afternoon.’

‘Does your father know about the girl?’ asked Henry.

‘No. You’re the first people I’ve mentioned it to.’

‘Then I should make sure it stays that way. To frequent the brothels is one thing, but to let it be known that you do is quite another. I quite expect that one half of the Union Club has the clap and that the other half is doing its best to contract it, but in the best society these things are always better left unsaid. And as for letting whores fall out of hotel windows … well, that does smack of uncaring libertinism, don’t you think?’

‘Henry,’ said Collis, raising his glass, ‘I drink to your sense of social delicacy. But there is one thing more.’

‘You let another whore fall out of another window?’ inquired Jack.

‘It’s bad enough dodging the slates and the bricks from the demolition work,’ put in Lewis.