‘I can do it, sure. The machines are metal. I can command metal, influence the numbers to go my way. But I won’t do it. It takes a lot out of me, and besides it is an abuse of my powers. It draws down on my credit with the Holy Spirit.’

‘C’mon, mate,’ Cavalier goaded, ‘I’d love to see you do it, even for a hundred quid. I’m a member of the Sportsman’s Club. We can go—’

Haut cut him off mid-sentence, chuckled and said, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan. I can tell you a funny story about that. I was once at the casino in Hobart on a Friday night and I was out to dinner there with half a dozen others. The bill for a big night of eating and drinking ran to well north of a thousand dollars. The night was meant to be on me. Harold Burnside was there and quietly asked me how I was going to pay. He said I should use my credit card. “No money on it,” I said. He urged me, as you are now, to gamble for it. I prayed hard—it’s exhausting—and won the amount needed playing roulette.’ Haut laughed throatily again. ‘The irony was that on the floor below me the delightful Madam Ingrid Orangey was working her way through ten thousand in chips that the house gave her to play with every Friday night!’

*

They took a cab back to Jermyn Street.

‘Want to see my new sleeping arrangements?’ Haut asked, as he unlocked the front door to the Magic club. Cavalier looked back at the smart block where Haut had had an expensive, big apartment.

‘You’re not living there?’

‘How the mighty have fallen,’ Haut said with a careless laugh. He led Cavalier down to the basement. It was dank. A thin partition separated his bedsit arrangement from a storage room. The glass squares above reverberated with footsteps.

‘It’s freezing here!’ Cavalier said, pulling up his coat collar.

‘Tell me about it! But North has been kind enough to put me up here for no rent. All I have to do is let the backpackers in at all hours. There’s a hostel on the floor above. I often close up the place.’

Haut showed Cavalier up to the front entrance. Smart-suited businessmen were walking past, half of them with a cell phone to an ear. A garbage truck trundled by noisily upturning bins and blocking traffic. It stank.

‘The dusty, dirty city …’ Cavalier began, screwing up his nose.

‘“Clancy of the Overflow”.’ Haut broke in with the line: ‘“The round eternal of the cashbook and the journal.” Banjo Paterson got that right, didn’t he?’

‘He’d only have to change the lines a bit today,’ Cavalier said, looking skyward for inspiration. ‘Perhaps … “The internet infernal of the e-book and the electronic journal” … or words to that effect.’