He sat at his desk and for a time did not move. The confidential papers lay on the desk before him, the three telegrams, two of which required a reply. He swung the chair—which was new and had a clever, if occasionally unnerving, swivel feature—around to face the window, and from this vantage point he observed the currawongs in the plane trees outside and the constant stream of officials and parliamentary staff at the rear of Macquarie Street who moved from one wing of Parliament House to the other, from the dining room to the stables and into the kitchens and back again. So much bustle! Such important work! And this on a day parliament was not in session.

He sat up. Where had Verity been going at such an hour, in such a hurry—and in so clandestine a way?

For it was clandestine.

He stood. The currawongs, sensing his presence, flew off.

What secret could she have from him?

A knock at the door and the face of his secretary interrupted these unsettling thoughts.

‘Mr Judd is here, Mr Dunlevy. Shall I send him in or are you occupied just now?’

Mr Dunlevy was ‘occupied’ standing at the window, though his secretary’s question contained no hint of irony.

‘Yes, yes, by all means. Send him in,’ said Alasdair, waving the secretary away and resuming his seat, which chose that moment to swivel away, leaving him stranded in undignified mid-air.

Everett Judd, whom Alasdair had last seen standing with some solemnity amid the chaos that was the immediate aftermath of the incident at last night’s reception, carried his cadaverous frame into the small office with apparent difficulty and eased himself into a chair. Judd had been tall once, not so very long ago in fact, vibrant and vital, a man with energy, passion and a love of politics that had carried them all along in his wake. But the man seated before him was diminished, a widower whose wife of forty years had died, and the passion, the energy, was spent.

‘You have seen the newspaper, Dunlevy?’ said Judd, dispensing with any preliminaries. His voice was quite flat and devoid of emotion, as one for whom emotion, feelings, have run their course and he has no further use for them.

‘The report of last night’s intruder? Yes, of course.’

‘That, yes, and the incident at Granville,’ said Judd, shifting himself in the chair as if his bones distressed him.

‘The break-in at the signal box? Yes, I saw. What of it?’

‘It means some person or band of persons out there is so intent on derailing the Federation they would derail a train to do it.’

Alasdair laughed. Somehow he had not anticipated this. ‘Hardly that, Judd! Another deranged and disgruntled soul who has lost his position and whose wife has left him and who seeks comfort in a bottle of gin.’