A man with his back to Quinn began shouting and gesturing angrily.

Waechter, who was herding his company away, turned for a moment to look at the shouting man. He frowned as he tried to take in what the man was saying. Presumably there was some difficulty with the language. Quinn couldn’t be sure, but he thought he made out the word ‘Parasites!’ followed by something which could have been: ‘Without me, you’re nothing!’

Waechter dismissed the heckler with an impatient shake of his head and a dark look towards Porrick. The latter took this as a cue to step forward and confront the shouting man. There was something about his manner, a weary brusqueness, that suggested to Quinn that this was not their first encounter.

The crowd had greeted the outburst with nervous hilarity, neutralizing any danger through ridicule. Quinn, however, was gripped by the same ominous sensation that had come over him earlier, the sense that this incident too had something to do with him personally; that dark events were moving towards some kind of climax.

Waechter hurried his actors inside, to be followed in by Porrick and his wife, together with Lord Dunwich, and Harry and Jane Lennox, who presumably were in some way connected with the party of film people. A wider entourage followed behind them.

At the removal of the film people, the man stopped shouting and turned disconsolately away, pushing against the tide of the crowd, who were now forming a queue to be admitted.

As soon as he turned, and Quinn got a clear view of his face, the premonitory feelings that Quinn had experienced earlier were fulfilled. It was the man he had seen in the Tube train compartment.

Quinn observed that the man was wearing the same leather gloves as before. Had he subconsciously noted the gloves already? That would explain the curious dream-like sense of inevitability he had experienced when he saw the man’s face.

Quinn felt a strange conflict of emotions. He wanted to detain and challenge the man. But some fierce and almost threatening glint he had caught in the other’s eye deterred him. It seemed that he held in his gaze a secret, inexplicably pertinent to Quinn, and which it would not profit Quinn at all to discover.

The man knew that he had been seen. He held Quinn’s gaze for long enough to suggest that this did not unduly concern him, that he almost welcomed it. At last he turned and pushed his way through the square. Any thought Quinn might have had of following him was forgotten by the excited return of Macadam and Inchball.

‘’E’s here, guv! We seen ’im, ain’t we, Mac!’

For a moment, Quinn thought Inchball was referring to the same man. He frowned in confusion.

‘’Artmann, guv! ’E was with them film people. Went in with them. Looks like ’e knows Waechter! You was righ’, guv!’

Quinn nodded calmly. ‘Very well. Inchball, you watch the front. Macadam, go round to the back. There must be a rear exit. I want a man in place to tail him whichever way he comes out. And whatever you do, don’t let him know that he’s being followed. I shall go inside to watch the film. If Hartmann does have some connection with Waechter, as it now seems likely, then it would be as well for us to familiarize ourselves with what kind of a man Herr Waechter is. This film of his would be a good place to start.’

He looked up at the trees in the centre of the square. The lights in the branches seemed brighter now. But that was merely a function of the darkness thickening around them.

SIXTEEN

As the lights went out inside the auditorium, bubbles of excitement seemed to float in the darkness. Voices rose to an urgent clamour. It was as if each member of the audience was rushing to get out the single most important thing they would ever say, which had for some reason occurred to them at this inappropriate moment. Then, everyone ran out of words at the same time. Silence hung momentarily above them. Quinn thought he heard a short hiss, like liquid being squirted from a number of atomizers. The air was suddenly pleasantly scented. He felt himself relax. He sensed an easing in the expectant tension all around him.

The band began to play. Because this was a gala occasion, the management of the theatre had evidently supplemented the usual pianist with some string players and a percussionist. The violins came in with a highly charged romantic overture. The darkness seemed to throb and quiver, as if a spasm of emotion had passed through it. Then all at once it burst into shimmering life.

A pair of enormous eyelids opened slowly. Two equally enormous eyes stared out at him. At him, at him alone. That was certainly what Quinn felt. Every other man in the auditorium must have felt the same.

For these were the eyes of a woman. And their gaze was one of desire. What man would not wish to think himself the subject of that gaze?

He knew immediately that they were the eyes of the woman he had seen outside the theatre. Eloise. They held the same magnetic power. But something had changed about them, and not just their scale. In the flesh, her eyes had been warm and engaging. They had possessed a human empathy that reached out to whomever they settled upon. Their gaze was inclusive and generous.

Enlarged and isolated from the rest of her features, the eyes became self-possessed and steely. Yes, they desired the unseen object they gazed upon. But this desire was something fierce, dangerous, frightening. It was a desire in which there would be no room for compromise. The gaze of those gigantic eyes demanded everything. And promised nothing in return. It was a gaze that threatened to possess its object, like a demonic force. A gaze that would take you over and make you forget yourself. It would transform you into something you had never imagined you could be. It would never let you go.

The small, sympathetic, very human personality that had charmed the crowd outside the theatre was nowhere to be seen.

The eyes blinked. The viewpoint receded slightly, to show the whole of the face. And now some of that humanity came back into the eyes. The fierceness of the gaze was given a context, and seemed more comprehensible. What defined the gaze, he understood now, was despair. There was a frailty in her expression that the eyes alone had not communicated, a potent combination of vulnerability and defiance.

A hand came sharply into shot, slapping her across the left cheek. The percussionist threw out a perfectly timed snare-shot.

The audience gasped.

The camera closed in again on her eyes. They flared with indignation and then softened into something more recriminatory, regretful even. The music corresponded to these modulations.

At no time was there fear in those eyes.

Then, at last, the camera angle shifted to show the man who was both the recipient of her gaze and her assailant.

Quinn recognized the mournful-faced actor who had been with Eloise outside. But he too had been transformed by the alchemical processes of kinematography. In front of the theatre, he had appeared to be simply a more intense example of humanity, but the same in type as those around him. Somewhat livelier in the fluidity of his expressions, but possessing a self-deprecating jokiness that was comparable to Eloise’s blatant generosity of spirit. His face was fascinating, compelling even. But he did not appear to be a different category of being all together.

Paradoxically, devoid of colour and reduced in its dimensions, his image became something far more than the man it represented. Dressed in a white dress uniform, he became the embodiment of every dark and difficult male emotion. (The music from the band rather overstated this, striking up a heavy, melodramatic motif.)

One sensed every aspect of his potential – for love, for violence, for rage, for self-annihilation and forgiveness. And one understood immediately the meaning of that slap, which was not the same as to condone it.