The bulkiest of the group, in personality as in size, the Elderly Sage made a theatrical spectacle of his settling-in at the small table, to the accompaniment of much harumphing and muttering, flapping of cloak sleeves, scraping of chairs, sticks clattering to the ground either side of him, and mysterious parcels wrapped in string and brown paper being placed alongside adjacent tables - to the annoyance of other would-be customers. In the little space that was left, his satraps and minions, the Antipodean with the grizzly beard and the cowled and cloak-enfolded Nestorian Monk, attempted to squeeze alongside him.

The Trappist surrendered himself to the inevitable, and, palm down, discreetly passed a bank-note to mollify the waitress before ordering the customary beverages, as she arrived to remonstrate over the disturbance. Guildford slowly returned to its provincial sobriety, and conversation at the adjacent tables was restored.

“You mean he has vanished?” enquired the Trappist concerning their Western colleague, about whose health and whereabouts he had politely been enquiring.

“Off the face of the earth!” thundered the Sage, accompanied by animated grunts and noddings of the head from his two companions. “The last we heard of it there was this cock and bull story about a trip to … the Orient,” he spluttered, sending flakes of foam from his cappuccino flying across the pavement. “Since then, not a whisper. Neither sight nor sound of him. And to cap it all, there is this nonsense with our beloved salon and instrument of debate. A thoroughly tasteless make-over, if you ask me, about which none of us were consulted!”

He paused, to catch his breath, with heart-beat and blood pressure rising to dangerously high levels. He emptied some pills of a luminous green colour into his beverage, where they partially dissolved with considerable hissing and emissions of noxious vapour, and only with some difficulty managed to swallow the remnants of them.

“But we know he’s there,” said the Antipodean, eyeing them each cunningly over the brim of his raised and upturned mug.

“Oh yes,” continued the Sage. “From behind the scenes, he continues to make his presence, or should I say absence, felt. When we have tried to lure him into the open with our traps primed with the usual bait of inconsequentiality, there is an occasional twitch from this or that thread to another. In short,” he snorted, “we are being made to feel like theological marionettes, whose strings are being pulled according to the arbitrary whim of some theological puppet-master!”

His final phrase was accompanied by much further frenetic nodding of the heads from the Antipodean and Nestorian, strangely perpetuating the impression of remotely controlled theatricality.

“However,” said the Sage, his complexion now moderating from bright puce to the merely incandescent, his voice diminishing to a stage whisper, and with a conspiratorial glance all around and over his shoulder, “The situation is possibly far more serious than I have suggested. In short, we are beginning to suspect that this unwonted withdrawal from human intercourse, this loss of mirth, this foregoing of all custom of exercise . . .”

“Yes, yes!” said the Trappist impatiently, fearing the onset of a relapse into bardic reverie.

“… is truly a cover for something much more serious!” the Sage continued, completing the interrupted allusion. He pulled his cloak slightly more tightly around him, lowered his head, and turned his gaze intently to each of his companions in turn. His voice was reduced to a scarcely audible whisper. “There are dark forces at work. The age of theological innocence may well be over. Each of us has felt it. As if a shadow had passed over our graves.”

The Sage leaned back, and waited to observe the effect his words might have on the three. The Nestorian sank deeper within the folds of his theological gown. The fiery beard of the Antipodean bristled with more than usual menace. The Trappist looked around desperately for some means of escape, for some reason he could conveniently conjure to excuse himself from the table, but no words came to mind.

A gust of cold wind disturbed the late afternoon sunshine in Swan Lane, rattling the parasols, as if to the tune of some macabre dance of death. There was an extended hiatus, as each of the companions waited to see who would be the first to break the eery silence that had descended upon them.

“