The Luminaries

Staines took it back.’
    That
was confounding! Ah Sook began talking rapidly to Ah Quee in Cantonese—which Mannering, evidently, interpreted as a sign of assent. ‘Where is Mr. Staines now?’ he demanded. ‘Stop with your other questions. Ask him that. Where is Mr. Staines now?’
    Obediently Ah Sook broke off, and relayed the question. This time Ah Quee responded in a tone of patent distress. He said that he had not spoken with Emery Staines since December, but he was very desirous to see him again, for it had not been until the Aurora’s quarterly return was published in early January that he had realised that he had been cheated. The fortune he had foundin Anna’s dresses had not been banked against the Aurora as he had intended it to be, and Ah Quee was certain that Mr. Staines was responsible for this error. By the time he figured this out, however , Mr. Staines had disappeared. As to where he might have disappeared to, Ah Quee had no idea.
    Ah Sook turned back to Mannering, and said, for the second time, ‘He not know.’
    ‘Did you hear that, Dick?’ said Charlie Frost, from the corner. ‘He doesn’t know.’
    Mannering ignored him. He kept his revolver levelled at Ah Sook’s face, and said, ‘You tell him that unless he plays fair with me, I’m going to kill you.’ He twitched the gun, to emphasise his point. ‘You tell him that: either Johnny Quee talks, or Johnny Sook dies. Tell him that. Tell him now.’
    Ah Sook dutifully relayed this threat to Ah Quee, who made no answer. There was a pause, in which every man seemed to be expecting one of the others to speak—and then suddenly Mannering made a lightning motion with his right hand, knocked Ah Quee forward, grabbed a fistful of his pigtail, and jerked his head violently back. His pistol was still pointed at Ah Sook. Ah Quee did not make a sound, but his eyes filled instantly with tears.
    ‘Nobody misses a Chinaman,’ Mannering said to Ah Sook. ‘In Hokitika least of all. How would your friend here explain it to the Commissioner, I wonder? “Unlucky,” he’d say. “Sook die—valley unlucky.” And what would the Commissioner say?’ Mannering gave a vicious wrench to Ah Quee’s pigtail. ‘He’d say—“Johnny Sook? He’s the hatter with the smoke, is he not? Laid out most afternoons with the dragon in his eye? Selling poisoned tar to chinks and useless whores? He’s
dead
? Well, then! Why in heaven would you assume I care?”’
    This venom was unprecedented, as Mannering and Ah Sook had always been on equable terms; but if Ah Sook was angry, or insulted, he did not show it. He gazed back at Mannering with a glassy expression, and did not blink or break his gaze. Ah Quee, whose neck was still bent backwards, so that the muscles of his throat showed against his skin, was likewise still.
    ‘Not poison,’ Ah Sook said after a moment. ‘I not poison Anna.’
    ‘I’ll tell you this,’ Mannering said. ‘You poison Anna every day.’
    ‘Dick,’ Frost said desperately. ‘This is hardly on point—’
    ‘
On point
?’ Mannering shouted. He aimed his revolver about a foot away from Ah Sook’s head and fired. There was a clap—Ah Sook cried out in shock, and flung up his arm—and then a pattering noise, as the powdered rubble ran away from the hole. ‘Here’s on point,’ Mannering shouted. ‘Anna Wetherell is laid out flat at
this
man’s filthy joint’ (he pointed the revolver at Ah Sook) ‘six days out of seven.
This
man’ (he gave Ah Quee’s scalp a furious wrench) ‘calls Staines a thief. He apparently uncovered some secret that has something to do with gold, and something to do with a bonanza. I know for a fact that Anna Wetherell was
with
Emery Staines the night he disappeared—which was
also
the night, by the way, that a bonanza showed up in a
very
peculiar location, and Anna lost her bloody mind! D—n it, Charlie, don’t tell me to talk
on point
!’
    In the next moment all four men spoke at once.
    Ah Quee said,
‘Li goh sih hai ngh wiuh—’
    Frost said, ‘If you’re so sure about the Aurora—’
    Ah Sook said,
‘Ngor moh zou chor yeh—’
    Mannering said, ‘
Somebody
gave that gold to Crosbie Wells!’
    And then from behind Charlie Frost came another voice: ‘What in all heaven is going on?’
    It was the commission merchant, Harald Nilssen. He ducked under the low lintel of the hut and looked around him, astonished. The collie-dog leaped upon him, sniffing at the hem of his jacket and his