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Ah Sook was just about to a
‘Come out of there, you rotten chink! You come out of there and stand up like a man!’
Ah Sook’s eyes found Ah Quee’s. Who? he asked silently, and Ah Quee pinched his mouth to indicate distaste: Ma
In the next moment the hessian curtain was wrenched aside, and Ma
He strode into the cabin—rather less threateningly than he would have liked, for the stud was very low, and he was obliged to stoop—and caught Ah Quee around his body with one strong arm. He placed the muzzle of his Smith & Wesson against the man’s temple, and at once Ah Quee became very still.
‘All right,’ Ma
For a moment Ah Quee did not move at all. Then he shook his head—minutely, for he was conscious of the muzzle’s pressure against his skull. He did not know a man named Crosbie Wells, beyond what Ah Sook had just narrated to him, which was simply that the man had been a hermit, had lived in the Arahura Valley, and had recently died. Behind Ma
‘Well then,’ Ma
Ah Quee made a noise of confusion. Aurora gold? he thought. There was no Aurora gold! Aurora was a duffer claim. Ma
‘Stuffed into the flour canister,’ Ma
Ah Quee was frowning: his understanding of English was very limited, but he knew ‘gold’, and he knew ‘Aurora’, and he knew ‘thousand’, and it was very plain to him that Ma
‘Four thousand pounds!’ Ma
It was the Aurora mine to which Ah Quee was exclusively indentured; his contract would not allow him to make a profit, except from ore lifted from that plot of land. After smelting the gold from A
Ma
Ah Quee wet his lips. He did not have enough English to articulate a full confession; he cast about for the few English words he knew. ‘Unlucky,’ he said at last. ‘Very unlucky.’
‘D—ned right you’re unlucky,’ Ma
But Charlie Frost had become very agitated, and it was he who spoke. ‘You stop that,’ he said.
‘Hush up, Charlie.’
‘I won’t hush up,’ Frost said. ‘You put down that gun.’
‘Not for Africa.’
‘You’re confusing him!’
‘Rot.’
‘You are!’
‘I’m speaking the only language he can understand.’
‘You’ve got your pocketbook!’
This was very true. After a moment, as if in concession, Ma
Ah Sook relayed Ma
‘No nugget,’ Ah Sook translated, when Ah Quee was done. ‘No bonanza. Ah Quee say Aurora is duffer claim.’
‘Then he’s a God-d—ned liar,’ Ma
‘Dick!’ said Frost. ‘You said yourself that the Aurora’s a duffer!’
‘Of course it is!’ shouted Ma
He shook his pistol at Ah Sook, who said, after confirming the answer with Ah Quee, ‘He not know Crosbie Wells.’
Ah Sook could easily have shared his own intelligence with Ma
‘What about Staines, then?’ said Ma
This question was relayed from Ah Sook to Ah Quee, as before.
‘He not know,’ said Ah Sook again, when Ah Quee was done.
Ma