‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning he’ll do you a favour today, but he’ll expect a much bigger favour in return from you tomorrow.’

Collis had stirred his stone fence with his finger. ‘That was what I was afraid of.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘It’s very easy. I should have thought of it before. When I went around to talk to Mr Kwang, I happened to mention Walter West. You know, Hannah’s husband. I told him that Walter West was an obstacle, just like the High Sierras.’

‘So what did he say?’

‘He said not to worry, to be tranquil, and my obstacle would disappear.’

‘And?’

‘Walter West has been murdered. This afternoon, in his own shop.’

Dan McReady’s eyes widened, and then he pulled a long, long face. An exaggeration of dolour and disapproval. ‘That’s real bad news. How did he die?’

‘Choppers, I guess, or knives. Whatever they were, they were sharp as all hell. They cut his guts out without even taking the buttons off of his vest.’

‘That’s Chinky business, all right,’ Dan had said. ‘They kill people the same way they cut up their food. A white man would’ve used a gun, and just blown his head off.’

Collis had tipped back his drink. He had paused for a moment, and then held out his glass for another one. ‘It seems to me that Mr Kwang has done me a favour. Very friendly of him, wouldn’t you say? All I’m worried about now is what he expects in return.’

Dan McReady had puffed out his cheeks. ‘He’ll tell you, when the time comes. Meanwhile, if I were you, I’d count your blessings, and hope that the good Mrs West doesn’t take the intelligence too hard.’

‘I’m afraid of that, too,’ Collis had said. ‘But I’m sure she will.’

And that was why he was sitting in Hannah’s room, with the lamps unlit, while Hannah herself paced around, a handkerchief twisted between her hands, her eyes reddened from crying, and why his throat was dry from too much bourbon and too many hours of talking in a low, sympathetic voice. He was tired now, and his mind was swimming in whisky, and all he really wanted to do was to go to bed and sleep it all off. But Hannah was alive with nervous energy, questioning, questioning, and clenching her fists, and trying with frustrating and useless persistence to understand why, why, why Walter should have been sacrificed this way, and whether it was her fault, or whether it was nothing more than one of the horrors of fate — that fate which always strikes down the unlucky, and leaves the lucky unscathed.

The news had reached her before Collis. A small boy had been sent to the International with a message, and he had waited for his bit tip while she read with blurry eyes that her husband was mortally injured. She had stared at the boy after she had finished reading, and for some reason she had believed that he was the son that she and Walter had always talked about having. She had whispered, ‘Christopher,’ but the boy had simply frowned back at her through the jiggling prisms of her tears.