They turned right, tripping over someone who was lying drunk and asleep on a heap of rubbish. A coarse voice yelled: ‘Wake a man up in his bed, would you? Wake a man up in his bed?’ but they were running towards the lights of the Bowery now, and all of a sudden they were out of the alley and pushing their way through the crowds that swarmed along the warm sidewalks outside the theatres and the bars and the novelty saloons.

‘We can slow down now,’ panted Henry. ‘They won’t attack us here. Not with the Bowery b’hoys around.’

They slowed to a walk, bruised and filthy and still gasping for breath. Behind them, the two pugs emerged from the alley and followed them for a short way, but then, thwarted, they turned off at Stanton Street and were lost in the darkness. Collis and Henry kept walking uptown, making their way as inconspicuously as they could through the parading crowds of hard young men in red shirts and elaborate cravats, with flouncy young bonneted women on their arms. Collis looked firmly ahead of him, avoiding the hostile and curious stares that followed them along the sidewalk, for these were the Bowery b’hoys and girls, and they were just as inclined to and capable of pasting intruders like Collis and Henry as the two Chatham Square bruisers.

At last they found a cab, with the driver asleep on the box. Henry shook the man awake, and he agreed to take them up to the Union Club. They both felt like a stiff drink and a brush-up before they retired for the night.

Inside the cab, lighting a cigarette, Henry said hoarsely, ‘That was no fun. What have you been up to, to make a couple of thugs like that so furious?’

Collis was still shaking. He looked across at Henry, whose face was hidden in curling smoke and the shadows of the carriage, and shook his head.

‘I don’t know. It seems to me that heaven has decided to single me out for some singularly unpleasant punishment. Like Job.’

‘How odd,’ said Henry. ‘Let’s just hope you don’t get boils on your bottom.’

Chapter Three

His father’s fury, the following morning at breakfast, was worse than boils. The coffee grew cold in the silver urn, the scrambled eggs went stiff and dark yellow, and the toast curled up in despair. Ida, at one end of the table, sat mute with shock, her face white and stiff as a meringue. Maude, sitting opposite Collis, pulled such a variety of disgusted and disapproving faces that in happier circumstances he would have had to laugh.