His tweed vest had been slashed into bloodstained tatters, and only his watch chain had been holding in a soft bulge of pale-pink intestine.

Collis had stood up. The store had suddenly become oppressively stuffy and hot. He had been sweating, and trembling like a man with chronic pneumonia. He had walked to the door, and stood there for a time looking out at the curious reality of the street outside.

He had known that there was no question of calling the police. He was living with Walter West’s wife in a situation which even the most broad-minded of investigators would regard as improper, and a first-class motive for murder. He had to leave, discreetly and unnoticed.

He had tilted the brow of his hat down so that it covered his forehead. Then, quickly, he had stepped out on to the sidewalk and closed the store behind him. He had heard the bell jangling loudly. Loud, yes. But not loud enough to rouse the dead, Collis had thought.

The sweat on his forehead had chilled as he walked north on Montgomery as far as Clay. Then he had turned right and gone mechanically downhill towards the waterfront. He had followed the waterfront as far as the old Pacific Street Wharf, oblivious to the wagons and carriages and noisy jostling of merchants and lightermen and stevedores. Then he had turned down a side alley and pushed his way into a notorious crimps’ bar called the So Cheerful. It had been stinking and crowded in there, full of sailors and drunks and cheap whores, but Collis had badly needed a drink. He had elbowed his way up to the bar, where a bald-headed negro with gold earrings had been filling up pots of steam beer, and he had asked harshly for a bourbon. The negro had set down a whole bottle of Kentucky Eagle and a glass. The men who drank at the So Cheerful didn’t generally seek their oblivion in small measures.

He had knocked back one shot, then poured himself another. A young girl with dyed black hair and cheeks rouged into bright crimson spots had pushed up close to him. She had smelled of sweat and lily of the valley. Her pale-brown Spanish-style dress had been left unlaced so that her nipples were bare. She had saucily squeezed Collis’s thigh and said: ‘Got a drink for a good girl, lover?’

Collis had stared at her. Walter West was lying cut to slivers on the floor of his store, and Collis himself, not a week ago, had damned the poor man to hell. Sweet Jesus Christ, he had thought, how little we really want those things which we pray for.

He had walked all the way to Knickerbocker Jane’s. He hadn’t known why he had felt the urge to go there, but he had headed that way, directly, and without any thought of first going to see Hannah at the International. He hadn’t yet worked out how he was going to cope with Hannah, and he had needed to talk to somebody sympathetic about his own shock at discovering Walter West’s body before trying to deal with hers. Knickerbocker Jane could give him an alibi, too, and that wasn’t an unimportant consideration, especially with the law so watchful these days.