The Luminaries

parlour, and came to the door to latch it in Mrs. Wells’s wake.
    ‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Wells,’ she said, her hand on the frame. ‘Good afternoon, Ah Sook.’
    They descended the steps to the street, where they parted ways: Ah Sook to the south, towards the river, and Lydia Wells to the north. After several steps Mrs. Wells cast a look over her shoulder, as if to appraise the building from the street, and Anna hurriedly moved to close the door.
    She kept her hand upon the knob, however, and did not turn it; after a moment she opened it again, very quietly and carefully, and put her eye to the crack. Lydia was walking swiftly now; she had not turned, as Anna had expected she might, to pursue Ah Sook, and demand a private audience with him. Anna pulled the door open a little wider. Would she double back? Surely that was why she had left so abruptly—to talk in private with the man she so very plainly recognised! But presently Ah Sook rounded the corner on Gibson Quay and disappeared, and Lydia Wells, at almost the same moment, stepped over the ditch at the side of the road, and mounted the steps of—Anna squinted—which establishment? A two-storeyed building—beside Tiegreen’s Hardware and Supply. One of the saloons, perhaps? Evidently there was someone on the porch, for Lydia Wells lingered for a moment, exchanging words, before she opened the door of the establishment, and disappeared inside—and as the door swung to, Anna caught a flash of pale blue paint, and recognised the building. So Lydia Wells had gone to pay a
social
call. But upon whom? Anna shook her head in wonderment . Well, she thought, whoever it was, he was not a common digger by any measure. He must be a man of some consequence, for he was lodging at the Palace Hotel.

SATURN IN LIBRA
    In which Harald Nilssen reneges upon a contract; the holy book is opened; Cowell Devlin is confounded; and George Shepard forms a plan.
    Harald Nilssen had just brewed and steeped his four-o’clock pot of tea, and was sitting down to a plate of sugared biscuits and a book, when he received a summons in the penny post. It was from George Shepard, and marked ‘urgent’, though the gaoler did not specify a reason why. Doubtless it concerned some detail of infinitesimal consequence , Nilssen thought, with irritation: some piece of gravel in the gaol-house foundation, some drop of coffee on the gaol-house plans. Sighing, he fitted a quilted cosy around his teapot, exchanged his jersey for a jacket, and reached for his stick. It was jolly bad form to bother a man on a Sunday afternoon. Why, he had been working six days out of seven. He deserved a day of rest, without George Shepard plaguing him for receipts, or wage records, or quotes on salvage. The penny post was an added insult—for Shepard could not even trouble himself to walk the five short blocks from the Police Camp to Gibson Quay; instead he insisted that Nilssen come to
him
, as a servant to a liege! Nilssen was in a very bad temper as he locked the door of his office behind him, and strode off down Revell-street with his hat set at an angle and his coat-tails flared.
    At the Police Camp Mrs. George answered the door. She directed Nilssen, with a very sorry aspect, into the dining room, and then fled before Nilssen could speak any words of politeness, pulling the doorso firmly closed behind her that the calico wall gave a shudder, and Nilssen had the fleeting sensation of being at sea.
    The gaoler was sitting at the head of the table, where he was making short work of a cold meal composed of jellied meats, various cold puddings of homogenous consistency, and a dense bread of some dark, large-crumbed kind. He held himself very straight as he stacked his fork, and did not offer Nilssen a chair.
    ‘So,’ he said, when the door had closed, and he had swallowed his mouthful. ‘You told somebody about our agreement; you broke your word. Whom did you tell?’
    ‘What?’ said Nilssen.
    Shepard repeated his question; Nilssen, after a pause, repeated his bewilderment, at a slightly higher pitch.
    Shepard’s expression was cold. ‘Do not lie to me, Mr. Nilssen. Alistair Lauderback is to publish a letter in the
Times
to-morrow morning, lambasting my character. He claims that a percentage of the fortune discovered on Crosbie Wells’s estate was invested in the Hokitika gaol-house. I do not know how he came upon this information , and I wish to know. At once.’
    Nilssen faltered. How was it possible