‘Well, you are in a grave mood,’ said Senator Stride. ‘But won’t you come in and take a drink? A brandy, to warm you up? I don’t drink myself, as you know, but I’ll sip a fruit cup with you.’

Collis hesitated, but Alice took his arm and smiled. ‘Of course you’ll have a drink, won’t you? It would be so nice if you and father could make everything up.’

‘Very well,’ said Collis. ‘I have a friend with me, too, Mr Theodore Jones.’

Senator Stride gave a warm smile. ‘I know.’

‘You know?’

‘I don’t stay alive and well in Washington by going around with my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears,’ said the Senator. ‘I know what you’ve been up to, and why you’re here, and I’ve been waiting for this opportunity to chew the fat with you.’

‘Theodore?’ Collis called.

Theodore blinked up at him from the street. ‘Damned cape won’t work,’ he said. ‘Tried to fix it every damned way.’

Collis went down and took Theodore’s arm, and led him up to the porch. ‘The Senator wants to talk about railroads,’ Collis explained. ‘Do you think you’re sober enough to remember your finance, and your engineering, and your topographical surveys?’

‘Off by heart,’ assented Theodore. ‘Every nitpicking detail. Off by heart.’

‘All right, then,’ said Senator Stride. ‘You’d better come in.’

Alice said good night in the gloomy hallway. She kissed Collis’s cheek like a little beaky bird, and ran upstairs. Senator Stride led Collis and Theodore through to his library, where the sullen remains of a log fire burned in a marble fireplace as impersonal and impressive as the Parthenon, and where bald-eyed busts of Socrates and Tertullian stood on shelves lined with books on politics, history, horse breeding, and music. There was a worn leather settee by the fire, and an unruly collection of armchairs, and a ginger tomcat lay on the rug with an expression of disgruntled hedonism, as it tried to bask in the dying warmth of the logs. A piano stood in the far corner, scattered with sheet music. Senator Stride went across, raised the lid, and played a few bars of music that Collis didn’t recognise.

‘The opening of Anton Eberl’s symphony in E-flat,’ said the Senator, with a dry smile. ‘Eberl was a close pal of Mozart, and if you ask me he could have been a damned sight better. But that’s the way things go, isn’t it, Mr Edmonds? The people with the real talent are always overshadowed by the people with the style.’

Theodore sat down in one of the armchairs and tried to focus his eyes by stretching them sideways with his fingertips, like a Chinese.

‘You mean the good people always get themselves trodden under,’ said Collis.