I walked towards Leonora. Standing by the balcony were Nolan and Petit Manuel, watching Van Eyck climb from the cockpit of his glider three hundred yards away.

To Nolan I said: “Why bother to come? Don’t tell me you’re going to fly?”

Nolan leaned against the rail, hands in the pockets of his suit. “I’m

not-that’s why I’m here.”

Leonora was wearing an evening dress of peacock feathers that lay around her legs in an immense train. The hundreds of eyes gleamed in the electric air before the storm, sheathing her body in their blue flames.

“Miss Chanel, the clouds are like madmen,” I apologised. “There’s a storm on its way.”

She looked up at me with unsettled eyes. “Don’t you people expect to take risks?” She gestured at the storm-nimbus that swirled over our heads. “For clouds like these I need a Michelangelo of the sky… What about Nolan? Is he too frightened as well?”

As she shouted his name, Nolan stared at her, then turned his back to us. The light over Lagoon West had changed. Half the lake was covered by a dim pall.

There was a tug on my sleeve. Petit Manuel looked up at me with his crafty child’s eyes. “Raymond, I can go. Let me take the glider.”

“Manuel, for God’s sate. You’ll kill…”

He darted between the gilt chairs. Leonora frowned as he plucked her wrist.

“Miss Chanel…” His loose mouth formed an encouraging smile. “I’ll sculpt for you. Right now, a big storm-cloud, eh?”

She stared down at him, half-repelled by this eager hunchback ogling her beside the hundred eyes of her peacock train. Van Eyck was limping back to the beach from his wrecked glider. I guessed that in some strange way Manuel was pitting himself against Van Eyck.

Leonora grimaced, as if swallowing some poisonous phlegm. “Major Parker, tell him to-” She glanced at the dark cloud boiling over the mesa like the effluvium of some black-hearted volcano. “Wait! Let’s see what the little cripple can do!” She turned on Manuel with an over-bright smile. “Go on, then. Let’s see you sculpt a whirlwind!”