Collis smiled. ‘It takes a haddock to recognise one,’ he told her, and then dodged past her ferociously swung purse to run upstairs and get himself dressed.

Later that evening, he met Henry Browne in the bar of the St Nicholas Hotel. The bar was crowded with gentlemen in white ties and evening dress, like a noisy gathering of black-backed gulls, and the burble of conversation under the gilded ceiling and the glittering gas-light was of horses and money and prize boxing. Henry Browne was sitting at a table in the corner drinking whisky and draught beer, and he seemed distinctly depressed.

A waiter with a curly moustache came over to take Collis’s order, and then Collis sat back and took stock of his friend with a sympathetic smile.

‘What’s your problem?’ he asked him. ‘You look as though you bought at fifty and sold at five.’

‘Well, it’s something like that,’ said Henry. ‘I just heard that a railroad company in which I was foolish enough to invest five thousand dollars has gone very much to the wall. They didn’t even get as far as knocking in one single spike.’

‘I think everybody’s had the same trouble,’ said Collis cautiously. ‘My father lost a bit of money on a railroad in California. Well, more than a bit. Quite a few thousand, from what he tells me.’

‘If you ask me,’ said Henry, swallowing a mouthful of whisky with a sharp grimace, ‘if you ask me, these railroad fellows are better at milking money out of overenthusiastic speculators than they are at building railroads. My crowd got one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars out of the government for no more effort than closing their eyes and drawing a supposed railroad line across an inaccurate map. It was conveniently swallowed up when they went bankrupt, of course.’

‘I suppose you’re rather strapped, then.’

‘I will be for a while. Why?’

Collis shrugged. ‘Nothing special. I could have done with a loan of a thousand or so, that’s all.’

‘A thousand? What about your father?’

‘I think he’s a little — well, unnerved at the moment. He hasn’t been very free with his spare change.’

‘I could lend you a couple of hundred, if that’s any use.’

‘I’m going to need more than that just to pay off Nathan.’

‘You mean you can’t find a thirty-pounder?’

Collis nodded.

‘Oh,’ said Henry. ‘That’s embarrassing.’

‘Yes. And that isn’t all.’

‘Do you want to tell me?’ asked Henry. He took out a long Russian cigarette from a monogrammed silver case and lit it. The air was clouded with the sweet, musky aroma of Turkish and Balkan tobaccos.