‘What do you suppose so?’ asked Collis, confused.

‘I suppose that I might tell you what has befallen Mr Browne. Why don’t you come inside for the moment?’

‘Thank you,’ said Collis.

The door was opened, and Collis was conducted into the hallway by a very tall, spidery man in a dusty black frock coat and a green satin vest that looked as if it had been used for polishing silver. The house smelled unusually musty, and there was another smell in the air, too, like carbolic arnica salve. A medical smell. A smell of sickrooms and fever.

‘My name is Whitworth,’ said the spidery man, leading Collis through to the living-room. ‘It is my allotted task to take care of Mr Browne.’

‘Is he unwell?’ asked Collis.

Mr Whitworth hesitated and stared at Collis with moist blue eyes.

‘You could say that,’ he remarked, after considerable thought. ‘You could certainly say that.’

The sight of Henry Browne caught Collis completely by surprise. Henry was sitting in the middle of his living-room in a wheelchair, draped in a grey blanket. His head was on one side, and he appeared to be asleep. The room was still the same as Collis remembered it — with the cut-glass decanters and the pipe rack and the oil paintings of gun dogs flushing out wild turkey — yet none of the decanters or the tobacco jars appeared to have been used for a very long time. There was a thin film of dust on everything except for the small table that stood beside Henry Browne’s chair, a table that was crowded with medicine bottles, syringes, pill packets, eyedroppers, and jars of ointment.

‘Henry?’ said Collis softly. The name fell unnoticed in the twilit room, like a bird settling on a telegraph wire.

‘He can probably hear you, but I’m afraid his ability to answer is — well, limited,’ said Mr Whitworth.

Collis circled slowly around his friend’s chair, and gradually realised the horror of what had happened to him. The side of his face which he kept turned away from the door was almost completely missing. There was no cheek; only bare teeth protruding form a gnarled red confusion of flesh. The right eye was milky and sightless, and bulged from its socket. There was no hair on that side of his head, and his ear was nothing but a scrap of gristle.

Mr Whitworth watched Collis carefully. Then he opened a small oval box, took out a pinch of snuff, and thrust it deep into his left nostril.

‘The tragedies of war,’ he said, in his sharp, off-key voice.

Collis said nothing. All he could do was stand staring at the grotesque ruin that had once been his drinking partner and friend. He remembered running with him that night through the Bowery. He remembered moments of hilarity and fun and mischief. He remembered Henry Browne.