Brett scanned the semicircle for the pie-eyed Geoffrey. Not finding him, he approached a rather pretty dark girl and asked for his song-cycle. She disappeared round the side of the wall to fetch it. This arrangement irritated Brett, reminding him of a women’s shoe shop, where the boxes are kept out of sight and assistants trot ceaselessly to and fro in their efforts to interpret the vague demands of their customers. At least he knew exactly what he wanted.

The girl returned with his record and asked if he wished to hear it.

“No, thank you,” said Brett, drawing it from its sleeve and tilting it to the light. There were no blemishes on the silky surface. He gave it back to her. “Is Geoffrey not here?” he asked.

“No,” she said, surprised. Her face took on a slightly malignant expression. “He didn’t have to come in today.”

Geoffrey, Brett gathered, received preferential treatment which made both him and the giver unpopular. Brett thought he probably deserved to be. From what Stephanie reported of his instructive conversation, he sounded as repulsive a puppy as he looked. Brett suspected that the design behind his musical evangelism was so to impress Stephanie that he could, at a well-judged moment, trade on her wish not to be thought lacking in the sophistication, as she might imagine it, compatible with such cleverness.

Brett caught himself up; he was judging Geoffrey rashly. At least Geoffrey hadn’t smirked at Majendie’s invitation to see his collection, which was more than he could claim for himself.

He received his record, wrapped, and as he did so a swiftly smothered susurrus of excitement passed round the semicircle. Knowing that he was not the cause, he turned to look through the window to the street.

Outside Kellett’s a Solomon’s temple of a car had drawn to the kerb. A chauffeur stepped out to open the door, and a tall fat man emerged. He wore soft, mushroom-coloured clothes, a large hat reminiscent of a sombrero, and dark glasses. Brett recognised him at once; Anatole Guzmann, a cosmopolitan of bewilderingly mixed origin and stupefying wealth. He was addicted to the collection of recorded music, his list of which was reputed to be fantastically long, interesting and valuable; and his pursuit of phonographic rarities had reached the proportion of mania. This much was common knowledge; or, if not common, it could be acquired from anyone conversant with the gramophone world. What was not generally known was that Anatole Guzmann, about a year before, had figured on the fringes of a notorious European scandal, from which he was extricated only by the influence his money could command. For Brett, Guzmann would never free himself from the unsavoury miasma which seeped from the affair; but he doubted whether Kellett’s, even if they knew of it, would consider Guzmann’s money contaminated.