He would have to take the money in a little box to the huge clacking hotel treasury full of comptometers that-so Larry in the Harlequin Bar upstairs had asserted-if programmed proper could be made to see right through to your very soul. And then he had an appointment. In (his breast swelled minimally) Harley Street. To your very soul, eh? He felt uneasy. But, damn it, he had done no real wrong, surely? When John Milton clocked in to do his daily stint of translation of Cromwell into Latin, had they not perhaps used to say: "All right that was, that thing you pinned up on the wall about Fairfax and the siege of Colchester. You carry on"? He, Hogg, had not pinned anything up, though, by God, one of these days-He had merely -

"My brother," John was saying, "now he work in Tangier. At Big Fat White Doggy Wog, bloody daft name for bar. Billy Gomez, everybody know him. Good on knife if trouble, ah yes, man." He made a bloodthirsty queeeeeking noise and drove a ghost-stiletto at Hogg's hidden puddings. "He say poetry, but now not. Good poetry. Spanish poetry. Gonzalo de Berceo, Juan Ruiz, Ferrant Sánchez Calavera, Jorge Manrique, Góngora-good poetry. England too fackin cold for good poetry. English man no fuego. Like bloody fish, hombre."

"I'll give you no fuego," said Hogg, incensed. "We gave you mucho bloody fuego in 1588, bastards, and we'll do it again. Garlicky sods. I'll give you no good poetry." A ruff went round his neck. He stroked a spade-beard, enditing. The sky was red with fireships. Then he saw himself in the gross reredos mirror, his cross reflection framed in foreign bottles, a decently shaven barman in glasses, going, like Mr. Holden, rapidly bald.

"We go eat now," said John. In the hotel's intestines steamed an employees' cafeteria, full of the noise of shovelled chips and heady with Daddies Sauce. A social organiser walked regularly between the tables, trying to get up table-tennis tournaments. John's empty stomach castanetted dully.