Patrick reappears as the protagonist and viewpoint character. As a 21-year-old man, he moves from his rural hometown to seek employment in Toronto, which appears to him “as if it were land after years at sea” (53). Because of his rural roots, he feels foreign in the city even though he is a native Canadian, and he feels “new even to himself” (54).

The narrative shifts to the 1919 disappearance of Ambrose Small, a millionaire real estate tycoon. There is a brief discussion of the Bertillon identification system (the leading model before the advent of fingerprinting), which “was used to locate criminals and missing persons” based on “the measurement of certain parts of the body: the length of head, width of head, length of right ear, length of left foot, length of left middle finger, length of left forearm” (55). This will become significant as the importance of physical characteristics as markers of identity is emphasized throughout the novel.

Ambrose is described as a cunning, manipulative, and deceitful figure who dominated business interactions and was a serial adulterer. He seduced Clara Dickens, an actress and one of the novel’s heroines, and “charmed her with his variousness” (57).