The Luminaries

deal taller and larger than he. Balfour crossed the street. He was already raising his arm to flag the other down when he recognised Devlin’s companion: it was the Maori man with whom he had also spoken, earlier that day, and to whom he had also been rather unforgivably rude.
    ‘Hi there,’ he called. ‘Reverend Devlin. Would you believe it! The very man I was looking to find! Hello, Ted: I’m glad to see you again, too.’
    Tauwhare did not offer a greeting; Devlin, however, smiled. ‘I see that you have found out my surname,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I still do not know yours.’
    Balfour thrust out his hand. ‘Tom Balfour,’ he said, beaming, and they shook hands. ‘Yes: I went to see Ben Löwenthal, over at the
Times
, and we had some words about you. Matter of fact I’ve been trying to track you down these past few hours. To ask you something.’
    ‘Then our meeting is doubly fortuitous,’ said Devlin.
    ‘It’s a question about Emery Staines,’ Balfour said, interrupting him. ‘I hear you’ve been asking after him, you see. Wanting to know who placed that notice in the paper, advertising his return. Ben told me that you’d been by. I’m wanting to know why you’re asking after him—Staines, I mean—and what’s your connexion to the man.’
    Cowell Devlin hesitated. The truth, of course, was that Emery Staines was one of the three names written upon the deed of gift that he had taken from the ash-drawer of Crosbie Wells’s range, the day after the hermit’s death. He had not showed that deed to anyone, however, and he had resolved not to do so, until he knew a little more about the people it concerned. Ought he to lie to Balfour? He did not like to utter falsehoods, but perhaps he could tell a partial truth. He bit his lip.
    Balfour had perceived the chaplain’s hesitation, and had mistaken it for reproof. He put up his hands. ‘Hark at me,’ he exclaimed, ‘asking questions in the street—and in the weather—when we’re getting wetter all the time! Look here. How about we share a meal together? Something hot. There’s no sense in talking out of doors—not when there are warm hotels on either side of us, and good cheer to be had.’
    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 ofthe 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