‘It’s sure tricky,’ put in Dan McReady.

Collis sat down. They were gathered in Andy’s cluttered office on Pine Street, a little after five in the afternoon, and outside it had begun to rain. Fat, wet drops that dribbled down the windows like the tears of saints.

Andy, in a peppery-coloured suit, was chewing a bulky cud of tobacco. Dan McReady looked more formal than usual, in a striped serge suit. He picked at his cuticles nervously and cleared his throat from time to time. It was plain that neither he nor Andy was particularly enthusiastic about Collis’s plan.

‘We’re talking about pressure,’ Collis said. ‘Laurence Melford will only react if it looks as though his family’s being threatened, or his livelihood. And since there isn’t any possible way we can threaten his livelihood, we have to go for his daughter.’

‘I hope you realise he’s going to nail your heart to the front doors of the Melford Building if anything goes wrong,’ said Andy. ‘And mine too, if he finds out I’ve been helping you.’

‘I’m lucky,’ said Dan McReady. ‘I don’t have a heart.’

‘Listen,’ Collis explained, ‘the single most important factor is that whatever he thinks of me, Laurence Melford trusts me with his children’s welfare. After that duel with Grant, he sent me a letter thanking me for firing into the air. I could have blown Grant’s head off, and the law would have supported me. He knows that. But he thinks I’m a humanitarian, and that I wouldn’t harm anybody unless it was in self-defence.’

‘Is that true?’ asked Andy sharply.

‘True enough,’ said Collis. ‘True enough to carry us through this particular ploy, in any case.’

Andy spat brown tobacco juice into the brass spittoon beside his desk.

Dan McReady said, ‘I still think he’s bound to find out it’s us. I mean, who else would do it — and for what motive?’

‘Anybody would do it,’ said Collis. ‘And for the same reason, too. For money.’

‘Well, I think it’s a hell of a risk,’ said Andy. ‘And I for one don’t fancy hanging by my neck from any second-storey balconies just for the sake of a railroad.’

Collis stood up. ‘You don’t want any part of it, then?’ he asked Andy.

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Andy. ‘I just said it’s crazy.’

Collis smiled. ‘That’s all right, then. Welcome to the gang.’

Dan McReady let out a short, dry laugh.

Chapter Twelve

During the afternoon, while Hannah was resting, Collis took a cab south on Kearny, across Market, and then south again on Third Street and up the lower slope of Rincon Hill to South Park. He was nervous, and he constantly drummed his fingers on the sill of the carriage’s window. The afternoon was cloudy, and it looked as if it could rain.