The pavements were thronged with Christmas shoppers, and the street was alive with traffic flowing between the borders of parked cars, utilities, and horse buggies. Miners sagged against the veranda posts, weighted with parcels bestowed on them by their wives. Women gossiped in small parties, and their children tugged at their skirts in frantic demands for ices and toys.

Crome met and nodded to Luke Pavier, the Superintendent’s son and reporter on the staff of theBarrier Miner. He met, and did not salute because he did not know him, Jimmy the Screwsman arrayed in tussore silk and a white panama hat.

From a jeweller’s shop issued Dr John Hoadly, who was large and young and damnably energetic.

“Day, Bill! Nothing to do?”

Sergeant Crome widened his mouth, pushed his felt hat to the back of his head, and then drew it forward to ride on an even keel.

“You’d be astonished at the work I get through while you squander your ill-gotten fees. How’s the wife and the baby?”

“Fine, Bill, fine. Just bought her an opal pendant and the kid a gold christening cup. Be up the pole this Christmas, with the wife in hospital, but it’ll be worth it. The boy’s a beaut.”

“Naming him?”

“John. Wife insists.”

The doctor’s happiness lightened Crome’s mood, and the sergeant smiled. “Nice work, Jack, but don’t be a mug,” he added seriously. “Make sure little John has a mate. An only child is a lost soul-I know…”

A slight man wearing a white drill tunic and black trousers appeared, grasped the doctor by the arm, and regarded Sergeant Crome with black eyes tinted with indignation. He shouted:

“Acustomair! In mycafee! He stand, he bend backovair one of my tables. He fall andbreakitda table-smashoh. I go to him. I ask him ‘What the hell?’ He say nothing, nothing at all. He is dead.”

“Your job, Doctor,” Crome said.