‘So, you’re going to shoot me,’ said Collis. He was trying to speak in a normal voice, but somehow his words came out high and unbalanced, as if he were being strangled with rawhide. He became abruptly and uncomfortably aware of the details of the hotel room all around him — the damp-stained wallpaper, the dusty plants, the unpolished coal scuttle in the fireplace — and he thought, I shall die here.

Senator Stride held his revolver steady for almost a minute. Then he lowered it. Collis still watched him warily in case he changed his mind and lifted it again.

‘I should shoot you,’ Senator Stride told him, in a regretful tone. ‘This is war, after all, and I would be quite within my rights. But I won’t. There doesn’t seem to be much honour in it.’

‘Honour?’ asked Collis.

‘That’s right,’ said Senator Stride. ‘It was a quality on which the Confederacy was founded, and which I hope it will always retain. Courtesy, bravery, and honour. The marks of a gentleman.’

There was a tight little pause, and then Senator Stride walked past both Collis and Representative Watkins, opened the door, and went out on to the landing. Before either of them could prevent it, he stopped at the top of the stairs, aimed the pistol at his own face, and fired. There was a deafening bang, which made Collis’s ears sing. Then the Senator turned, collapsed, and tumbled ignominiously head over heels all the way down to the second-storey landing. A cloud of blue smoke hung above the upstairs bannister, and the wallpaper was sprayed with a feathery pattern of blood.

Representative Watkins’s teeth were chattering. ‘I must leave,’ he said. ‘Good God, they mustn’t find me here.’

Collis gripped his arm, so savagely tight that he squeaked. ‘You won’t forget the Railroad Act, will you, Congressman?’

Representative Watkins took a deep breath, and then said, ‘Very well. You can take it that my objections have been withdrawn. Yes, and those of my friends. And may your soul rot in hell.’

He was about to dash off when Collis gripped his arm again. ‘The gold, Congressman? Since you don’t have any expenses anymore, with Senator Stride dead, you don’t need the gold.’

The Congressman looked down at his portmanteau. Grudgingly, he handed it over. ‘When you’ve taken the money out, send the portmanteau back to my office,’ he said. ‘It was a present from my late wife.’

‘I’m sure she would have been proud of you,’ said Collis. ‘This money is going back to Senator Stride’s daughter. It won’t bring her father back, but then it won’t bring mine back, either.’

‘I’ve got to go,’ said Representative Watkins.

Collis watched the fat man hurrying down the stairs. Hotel guests were already coming out of their rooms to see what had happened, and Watkins had to push his way past them with his hat raised so that nobody would recognise him. Washington was a small city, and its politicians were well known.