He started, and ran to the corner. Ivan was gone. There was no sign of him, up or down the road. Without hesitation Beddoes crossed to the opposite pavement, flanked by the railings and trees he’d seen from a distance. He refused to give way to panic, though his heart was hammering; as yet there was occasion only to abuse himself as a triple cloth-head. Ivan couldn’t have gone far in those few seconds. Perhaps he was in one of the houses, calling on a friend. The windows were all dark. The row seemed deserted. Beddoes peered through the railings into the spreading trees on his right. He jumped. It seemed to him for a second that he was standing on the brow of a steep hill, from the invisible foot of which rose many-storeyed tenements, layer upon layer of lighted windows. Then he understood. The hill brow was a sloping bank; what he took for a void of darkness was a strip of motionless water; and the tenements reaching from the depths were the reflected backs of tall houses perched on the treeless opposite bank. Now that he looked closely he could see, so still and mirror-like was the inky surface, that in what he’d thought were lower storeys the curtains and lamps were all hanging upside down. This must be part of the canal. Which canal? The Regent? The Grand Junction? Nightingale lived near a canal. Nightingale—what could he say to him? I was watching some kids in a cart. He walked on. The bank was so steep that the trees revolved in the corner of his sight as he passed them, willows with enormous sprawling limbs. A cat, the third, a black one shot suddenly through a gap in the eroded railings. Beddoes stopped. That wasn’t the only movement. What was the matter with the lower storeys? The bright window squares were wavering, stretching and contracting. There was no wind. Something had dropped or fallen.

“Ivan!”