The Luminaries

quickly, and protested that it wasn’t Harald Nilssen’s fault.
    Lauderback laughed. ‘He consented! He gave his commission away!’
    ‘Shepard had him in a corner. He’s not to blame. It was an inch short of blackmail, the way it played out—really. You oughtn’t make a meal of it. You oughtn’t, for Mr. Nilssen’s sake.’
    ‘A private investment, upon the eleventh hour!’ Lauderback exclaimed. (He was not particularly interested in Harald Nilssen, whom he had met only once at the Star Hotel in Hokitika, over a month ago. Nilssen had struck him as a very provincial type, rather too accustomed to a loyal audience of three or four, and rather too garrulous when drinking; Lauderback had written him off as bore, who was self-satisfied, and would never amount to anything at all.) He stood up on his stirrups. ‘This is politics, Tom—oh, this is politics , all right! Do you know what Shepard’s trying to do? He’s trying to get the gaol-house underway before Westland gets her seat, and he’s using a private investment to spur the enterprise along. Oh-ho! I shall have something to say about
this
in the
Times
—rest assured!’
    But Balfour was not particularly assured by this, and nor did he feel inclined to rest. He protested, and after a short negotiation Lauderback agreed to leave Nilssen’s name out of it—‘Though I shan’t spare George Shepard the same courtesy,’ he added, and laughed again.
    ‘I take it you don’t fancy him as Magistrate,’ Balfour said— wondering whether Lauderback had designs upon that eminent position himself.
    ‘I don’t give two shakes about the Magistrate’s seat!’ Lauderback returned. ‘It’s the principle of the thing: that’s what I shall stand upon.’
    ‘Where’s the principle?’ Balfour said, with momentary confusion : Lauderback
did
care about the Magistrate’s seat. He had begun by mentioning it, and in a very surly humour at that.
    ‘The man’s a thief!’ Lauderback cried. ‘That money belongs to Crosbie Wells—dead
or
alive. George Shepard has no right to spend another man’s money as he pleases, and I don’t care what for!’
    Balfour was quiet. Until this moment Lauderback had never once mentioned the fortune that had been discovered in Wells’s cottage , or expressed interest in how it was to be deployed. Nor had he once mentioned the legal debacle that revolved around the widow’s claim upon her late husband’s estate. Balfour had assumed that this silence owed to the fact of Lydia Wells’s involvement, for Lauderback was still too embarrassed of his past disgraces to mention her name. But now it seemed almost as though Lauderback had leaped to Crosbie Wells’s defence. It seemed as though the issue of Crosbie Wells’s fortune was an issue about which Lauderback cherished a very raw opinion. Balfour glanced at the other man, and then away. Had Lauderback guessed that the fortune discovered in Wells’s cottage was the very same fortune by which he had been blackmailed the year before? Balfour’s interest was whetted. He decided to provoke the other man.
    ‘What does it really matter?’ he said lightly. ‘Why, most likely that fortune had already been stolen from somebody else; it certainly didn’t belong to Crosbie Wells. What’s a man like
him
doing with four thousand pounds? It’s no secret that he was a wastrel, and the step from a wastrel to a thief is short indeed.’
    ‘There’s no proof of that,’ Lauderback began, but Balfour interrupted him.
    ‘So what does it really matter, if someone steals it back after he’sdead and gone? That’s my question. Chances are it was dirty money in the first place.’
    ‘What does it
matter
?’ Lauderback exploded. ‘It’s the principle of the thing—it’s as I say: the principle of it! You do not solve a crime by committing another. Thieving from a thief—it’s still a crime, whichever way you try and dress it! Don’t be absurd.’
    So Lauderback was Crosbie Wells’s defender—and a very sore defender, by the looks of things. This was interesting.
    ‘But you are getting the almshouse you wanted,’ Balfour said—still speaking lightly, as though they were discussing something very trivial. ‘The money is not to be squandered. It is to be used for the erection of a public works.’
    ‘I don’t care whether Governor Shepard is lining his pockets or building an altar,’ Lauderback snapped. ‘That’s an excuse, that is—using the end to justify the means. I