Half a dozen of the big ones, Steve, said Wally. Gee, they’re a temptation to the hand.

Then it began to dawn, the little package that was half hidden, it got his attention, he had to cover with his hand. Not that Wally Collins was dishonest, it was finding something, just that, it didn’t happen every day, Wally Collins felt in his hand the firm shape in the little package. So what did he want with oranges, what the hell oranges.

O.K., Steve, Wally said, the shilling tossed carelessly. Take ’em home to the wife. A present from a friend. See? We has our flush moments. Or you can call it nuts.

Strolling down the pavement, anywhere, Wally Collins tried with his hand the shape enclosed in the little package. Achievement started to twist his conscience. He was straight. It was the finding, Wally Collins said. He bit the wooden toothpick through. Rewards in police stations, the faces on placards, got him down. No one could say he wasn’t honest, had a placard face. He spat the wooden toothpick out.

Gee, no, he said, drawing the mucus up through his nose.

Reading an address, it lay in his hand, at a street corner, Wally experienced a wave of virtue.

Mr Elyot Standish, he read. 89. The purple ink. 89 Ebury Street.

Virtue gave Wally Collins a kick. His code was the code of the grey-haired mother, Deanna Durbin, and the Queen of England. The boys said Wally was O.K. He wasn’t mean. He’d stand the drinks, Leicester Square or West 52nd, he’d bring the money right out of his pocket, which was more than could be said of some. So that what with virtue inherent and implied, it began coming over Wally now, and feeling good, and time on his hands, it began to seem as it wasn’t so far, just a step in fact, to a hint dropped by purple ink.

Guess I’m the dope, said Wally. But what the hell.

Wally Collins sauntered. He had all time. He began to whistle a number, more than whistle, mentally transcribe into terms of the saxophone. And that got him, that and all, there was nothing like the deep bass notes of the sax, or the higher, climbing, shining ones for burning up the guts. This nightly burning of the guts was the raison d’être of Wally Collins, a brief, orgasmic almost death under the glare of chromium, more important this than sex, though appreciated too, the pursuit of skin through lingerie. But nightly the bowels rose in a sad surge of saxophones, the skin eroded by a white light, the mouth grown round and moist on a persistent note. He could feel his whole body shaped by a chord in music. His whole body writhed to burst its casing of black tailor’s cloth. It drained the sockets of his eyes. By 2 a.m. these were bone-dry.

Wally Collins was at home in crowds, the slick and gaudy places where you lived high, round about Leicester Square and Piccadilly, the Metropole at Brighton, Broadway and 52nd, or Atlantic City. He got around. Because Wally Collins was a rootless one, an amoeba in the big green pool. His grips were always only half unpacked, the ties hanging out, and a crumpled shirt or two, the photo of a girl emerging from a cloud of tulle. There was no discomfort in any of this. There was no surprise. You got an eyeful of the orchids and mink. You also saw the chairs piled afterwards, sleep sticky in the waiters’ eyes, the dirty ball of tablecloth kicked into the shadow of a palm. It was all natural and above-board, like waking with a mouth that felt like sawdust, like taking a swig from the bottle of gin. The racket was O.K. while it lasted, the drink, and the saxophone, and the faces of girls, tongued and moistened by the neon signs.