The Luminaries

muzzle of his gun.
    The recent alteration in Lauderback’s humour had had a very injurious effect upon his friendship with Thomas Balfour. Balfour was certain that Lauderback had not told him the whole truth about his former dealings with Francis Carver and Crosbie Wells, and this exclusion left him very disinclined to pander to him. When Lauderback expressed his dissatisfaction on the subject of Westland, and sandbars, and cold-cut dinners, and disposable collars, and imitation , and German mustard, and the Premier, and bones in fish, and ostentation, and ill-made boots, and the rain, Balfour responded with less energy and admiration than he might have done but one month prior. Lauderback, to put it plainly, had lost his advantage, and both men knew this to be so. The politician was loath to admit that their friendship had cooled, however; he persisted in speaking to Balfour exactly as he always had done—that is, in a tone that was occasionally supercilious, always declamatory, and very rarely humble—and Balfour, who could be very supercilious himself if only he put his mind to the task, persisted in resenting him.
    Presently they retrieved their horses, saddled up, and set off for Kumara at a slow trot. After they had been riding for a short while, Lauderback took up the thread again.
    ‘We had talked of stopping off at Seaview together—on the return journey,’ he said. ‘To take a look at the foundations for the gaol-house.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Balfour. ‘You’ll have to tell me all about it.’
    ‘I suppose I’ll have to go alone.’
    ‘Alone—with Jock and Augustus! Alone in a party of three!’
    Lauderback shifted on his saddle, seeming very disgruntled. Presently he said, ‘What’s the gaoler’s name again—Sheffield?’
    Balfour glanced at him sharply. ‘Shepard. George Shepard.’
    ‘Shepard, yes. I wonder if he’s angling for a shot at Magistrate. He’s done very well on the Commissioner’s budget—to get everything moving so smartly. He’s done very well indeed.’
    ‘I suppose he has. Hark at
that
one!’ Balfour pointed with the end of his crop at another fern frond, more orange than the first, andfurrier. ‘What a pleasant shape it is,’ he added. ‘The motion of it—eh? As though it’s stilled in motion. There’s a thought!’
    But Lauderback was not to be distracted by the pleasant shape of ferns. ‘He’s right in the Commissioner’s pocket, of course,’ he said, still referring to George Shepard. ‘And I gather he’s the Magistrate’s old friend.’
    ‘Perhaps they’ll keep it in the family then.’
    ‘Smacks of ambition. Don’t you think? The gaol-house, I mean. His devotion to the project. His devotion to the whole affair. He’s done very well about it.’
    Lauderback, as an ambitious man, was very much the kind to be suspicious of ambition in others. Balfour, however, only snorted.
    ‘What?’ said Lauderback.
    ‘Nothing,’ said Balfour. (But it was not nothing! He detested it when a man received moral credit—however distantly—for something undeserved.)
    ‘What?’ said Lauderback again. ‘You made a noise.’
    ‘Well, tally it all up,’ Balfour said. ‘Timber for the gallows. Iron for the fencing. Stone for the foundation. Twenty navvies on a daily wage.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Commissioner’s budget my hat!’ Balfour cried. ‘That money must be coming in from another quarter—from another source! Tally it up in your head!’
    Lauderback looked across at him. ‘A private investment? Is that what you mean?’
    Balfour shrugged. He knew full well that George Shepard had funded the construction of the gaol-house with Harald Nilssen’s commission on Crosbie Wells’s estate—but he had vowed to keep the secret, at the council of the Crown Hotel, and he did not like to break his promises.
    ‘Private investment, you said?’ Lauderback persisted.
    ‘Listen,’ said Balfour. ‘I don’t want to break any oaths. I don’t want to tread on any toes. But I will say this: if you stop in at Seaview, you ought to sniff around a bit. That’s all I’m saying. Sniff around, and you might come up with something.’
    ‘Is that why you’re heading home early?’ Lauderback demanded. ‘To avoid Shepard? Is this something between the two of you?’
    ‘No!’ Balfour said. ‘No, no. I was tipped off, that’s all.’
    ‘Tipped off? By whom?’
    ‘I can’t say.’
    ‘Come on, Tom! Don’t go proud on me. What did you mean by that?’
    Balfour