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boat, old chap . And I wonder if the Mammoth hasn’t absconded entirely.”
    He didn’t mention that he had received that morning a letter from his foster-father, expressing disappointment at Arthur’s impecuniousness and fecklessness, and scolding him for his refusal to apply himself to any manly profession. The old man himself had lost a £500 investment in the Annapolis , wrecked in harbour at St. Katharine’s, and expected no pity for this, but nor did he plan to throw good money after bad. He said that it was madness for Arthur to think of marriage, his prospects being so utterly, disgracefully bleak.
    “Well, then,” Josephine said, taking his arm. “We shall simply have to find a new system.”
    *   *   *
     
    At the end of March, Arthur went to pay one last visit to the Mammoth ’s offices. He found the door locked and the windows shuttered. Nobody answered his knocking. Nobody had answered his letters for weeks. He pried open the letter-box and shouted into the void.
    It was drizzling, and he still had no umbrella. He stumbled for refuge into the closest pub, the Moon & Star. Inside it was empty and dark, low-ceilinged. There was a terrible reek of stale tobacco. The man at the bar nodded to him in vague recognition. Arthur couldn’t remember his name—big fellow, bald, Tom or John or something of the sort. No doubt Arthur was the last of the Mammoth folk who would ever enter the man’s establishment. The storm had been a bad business all round, and it kept getting worse.
    They shared a gloomy drink. There was an old newspaper on the bar, and Arthur pored in silence over the employment advertisements—God, could he contemplate teaching? Would Josephine be a teacher’s wife, out in the country? The thought of a roomful of schoolboys made him order another drink.
    “Impossible,” he said.
    “Hmm?”
    “Oh—nothing.”
    “As you like, sir.”
    He pushed the newspaper away. The landlord picked it up.
    A story about the late Duke’s funeral caught the landlord’s attention. A photograph showed the stately procession: the long thin coffin on the great black gun-carriage, the cavalry in their snow-white plumes, and Her Majesty’s black and windowless coach.
    “Empty, of course.” The landlord pointed with a stubby finger at the coffin.
    “Empty?”
    “You haven’t heard? Being a journalist, sir, I would have thought you’d have heard. Everyone says—there was a few fellows in here saying it just the other day; said they heard it from His Lordship’s own servant—there never was a body, sir. He burned, poor sod.”
    “Burned?”
    “Oh, it happens, sir! It happens more than you’d think. Spontaneous combustion , they call it. Sometimes a fellow’s just minding his own business and whoosh , or he takes a lady’s hand or puts on his hat too fast, and up in flames he goes. It’s been proved by science. Could happen to any of us, just like that, one day—who knows. Like lightning, if you get my meaning, sir.”
    “ Whoosh. Well. Certainly a theory.”
    “They say”—the landlord warmed to his theme—“it happens more often these days. Sunspots, or the influence of the stars—”
    Bells interrupted. It was five o’clock, and Arthur had an appointment. “God,” he said. “Sorry. Stars, eh? Must run.” He drained his drink and hurried out into the rain.

 
     
     
    THE
    SECOND
    DEGREE
    { The Modern Age }

 
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    Josephine stepped out of her office into the rain. She opened her umbrella, checked her watch, and sighed. Mr Borel nodded to her through the shop window and she waved to him. She stretched; she’d been typing all day and had a half-dozen little aches to show for it. Then she hurried to catch the bus across town, to an address on Blythe Street, in Kensington, a large and handsome house with lilies in the window. By the time she arrived, the rain had stopped but the sky was darkening. Arthur was there, waiting in the street for her, red-faced