The Luminaries

Devlin glanced at Tauwhare, who, despite his dislike of Balfour, had brightened considerably at the prospect of a meal.

Balfour coughed, and then thumped his chest with his fist, wincing. ‘I wasn’t myself this morning—out of sorts; I wasn’t myself. I’m sorry for it—and I mean to make it up—to both of you. I’ll stand us all a plate of something, and we’ll have a drink together—as friends. Come: let a man say he’s sorry, when he asks.’

The threesome was soon established at a corner table at Maxwell’s. Balfour, who was always very happy to play the role of the munificent host, ordered three bowls of clear soup, a round of bread, a fat black pudding, a hard cheese, sardines in oil, hot buttered carrots, a pot of stewed oysters, and a demijohn of stout. He had the prescience to delay any talk of Crosbie Wells or Emery Staines until both his guests were sated with food and drink, and talked instead of whaling, a subject of which all three men had a most romantic conception, and much to share. When Benjamin Löwenthal found them some three-quarters of an hour later, they were a very merry party.

‘Ben!’ cried Balfour, when he saw Löwenthal approaching. ‘But what about your Sabbath?’

He had become, for the second time that day, rather drunk.

‘Ends at starlight,’ Löwenthal said shortly. To Tauwhare he said, ‘I believe that we have not yet been introduced. I am Benjamin Löwenthal; I publish the West Coast Times.’

‘Te Rau Tauwhare,’ the Maori man replied, and shook his hand very firmly.

‘He also goes by Ted,’ said Balfour. ‘Very good friend of Crosbie Wells.’

‘Were you?’ said Löwenthal to Tauwhare.

‘His finest friend,’ said Devlin.

‘Better than brothers,’ said Balfour.

‘Well, in that case,’ said Löwenthal, ‘my business concerns all three of you.’

Benjamin Löwenthal had no authority to widen the invitation to the Crown Hotel council to include Devlin and Tauwhare. But as we have observed already, Löwenthal could be very forbidding when his ethical code was affronted, and Charlie Frost had affronted him, that afternoon, by suggesting that the Crown assembly ought to be restricted to an exclusive few. Löwenthal felt the need to rectify what he perceived to have been Frost’s moral error, and he extended the invitation to Tauwhare and Devlin now as an obscure act of reproach.

‘Capital,’ Balfour said. ‘Pull up a chair.’

Löwenthal sat down, placed the palms of his hands together, and, in a low voice, explained the purpose of the meeting that evening—to which Balfour acquiesced immediately, Tauwhare gravely, and Cowell Devlin after a long, judicious pause. The chaplain was thinking about the deed of gift that he had taken from the hermit’s stove, currently stored in his Bible, between the Old Testament and the New. He resolved to bring his Bible with him to the council that evening, and to produce the deed, if the occasion moved him, and the timing was right.

There was smoke issuing from Gascoigne’s chimney, and upon Ma

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘I have it on good information that you’re holding on to some money,’ Dick Ma

Aubert Gascoigne looked at him, then put his cigarette to his lips, inhaled, and blew a stream of smoke over Ma

‘Miss A

Gascoigne leaned against the doorframe. ‘And how did Miss A

‘Don’t play clever with me,’ Ma

Gascoigne shrugged. ‘Well, if I am holding a fortune for A

‘It does belong to me.’

‘How so?’

‘It’s a debt,’ Ma

‘A debt is a private business,’ Gascoigne said.

‘A debt can be made public very easily. How would you like it if I spread the word that you were holding on to more than a hundred pounds in pure? Let me tell you. By midnight your door would be beaten down, by dawn the thief would be fifty miles away, and by this time to-morrow, you would be dead. Why, there’d be nothing easier—when you’ve no allegiances to speak of, and you live alone.’

Gascoigne’s expression darkened. ‘I am the custodian of that gold, and I will not hand it over without Miss Wetherell’s consent.’

Ma

‘And I’m going to take that as proof of your logical inadequacy,’ Gascoigne said. ‘Good night. If A

He made to close the door, but Ma

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ he said.

Gascoigne scowled. ‘What is strange?’

‘Strange how a common whore suddenly fronts up with gold enough to pay the sum total of her obligations—and then hides that sum total beneath the bed of a man who’s been in Hokitika barely long enough to learn her name.’

‘It is excessively strange.’

‘Perhaps I ought to introduce myself.’

‘I know who you are,’ Gascoigne said. ‘And I know what you do.’

Ma

‘Yes,’ said Gascoigne coolly. ‘Those are percussion revolvers, and they can each fire six rounds in six seconds flat.’

‘Seven rounds, actually,’ said Ma

Gascoigne took another draught of his cigarette.

Ma

The Frenchman did not reply, but after a moment he crushed the end of his cigarette on the doorframe, dropped it, stepped to the side, and gestured with exaggerated courtesy for Ma

‘Who has your loyalty?’

‘I am not sure I understand the question,’ Gascoigne said. ‘You wish me to make a list of my friends?’

Ma

‘Yes,’ Gascoigne said. ‘Up to a point, of course.’ He sat down in his striped wingback armchair, but made no gesture to offer his guest a seat.

Ma

‘Well, it would depend on the situation, of course,’ Gascoigne said. ‘What kind of “something” are you talking about?’

‘Are you lying on her behalf?’

‘I agreed to conceal a pile of money on her behalf,’ Gascoigne said. ‘I hid it underneath my bed. But you already know all about that. So I suppose the answer is no.’

‘Why does she have your loyalty? Up to a point?’

Gascoigne’s wrists were limp upon the armrests; he had arranged himself casually, like a king in a throne. He explained that he had cared for A