The Luminaries

George-street , where she set up shop in a corner of the dining room, and offered to tell the fortunes of diggers and travellers newly arrived. Her sole customer, that afternoon, had been a golden-haired boy in a felt cap who, as it turned out, had also arrived on the steamer
Fortunate Wind
. He was a voluble subject, and seemed both delighted and fascinated by Mrs. Wells’s affinity for the arcane; his enthusiasm was flattering, and inclined her to be generous with her prognostications . By the time his natal chart was drawn, his past and present canvassed, and his future foretold, it was coming on four o’clock.
    She looked up to see Francis Carver striding across the dining room towards her.
    ‘Edward,’ she said, to the golden-haired boy, ‘be a darling, would you, and ask the waiter to wrap up a pie with a hot-water crust? Tell him to put it on my account; I’ll take it home for my dinner.’
    The boy obliged.
    ‘I’ve just had some good news,’ said Carver, when the boy was gone.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Lauderback’s on his way.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Lydia Wells.
    ‘He must have seen the shipping receipt from Danforth at long last. I hear from Billy Bruce that he’s bought his passage on the
Active
, sailing out of Akaroa. He arrives on the twelfth of May, and he sends an advance message that
Godspeed
is not to depart until then.’
    ‘Three weeks away.’
    ‘We’ve got him, Greenway. Like a fish in a trap, we’ve got him.’
    ‘Poor Mr. Lauderback,’ said Mrs. Wells, vaguely.
    ‘You might step over to the naval club this week and make an offer to the boys. A free night of craps, or double the jackpot, or a girl with every spin of the wheel. Something to tempt Raxworthy away from the ship that night, so that I can get a chance to get at Lauderback alone.’
    ‘I will go to the club in the morning,’ said Mrs. Wells. She began to tidy her books and charts away. ‘Poor Mr. Lauderback,’ she said again.
    ‘He made his own bed,’ said Carver, watching her.
    ‘Yes, he did; but you and I warmed the sheets for him.’
    ‘Don’t feel sorry for a coward,’ said Carver. ‘Least of all a coward with money to spare.’
    ‘I pity him.’
    ‘Why? Because of the bastard? I’d sooner feel sorry for the bastard . Lauderback’s had nothing but good luck from start to finish. He’s a made man.’
    ‘He is; and yet he is pitiable,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘He is so ashamed, Francis. Of Crosbie, of his father, of himself. I cannot help but feel pity for a man who is ashamed.’
    ‘No chance of Wells turning up unexpectedly, is there?’
    ‘You talk as if he and I were intimates,’ snapped Mrs. Wells. ‘I can’t answer for him; I certainly can’t control his every move.’
    ‘How long since he was last in town?’
    ‘Months.’
    ‘Does he write before he comes home?’
    ‘Good Lord,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘No, he doesn’t write.’
    ‘Is there any way you can make sure he keeps away? It wouldn’t do for him to come face to face with Lauderback—not at the eleventh hour.’
    ‘A drink will always tempt him—whatever the hour.’
    Carver grinned. ‘Send him a mixed crate in the post? Set him up with a tally at the Diggers Arms?’
    ‘That, in fact, is a rather good idea.’ She saw the boy coming back from the kitchens with the pie wrapped in paper, and rose from the table. ‘I must be getting back now. I shall call on you tomorrow .’
    ‘I’ll be waiting,’ Carver said.
    ‘Thank you, Edward,’ said Mrs. Wells to the boy, taking the pie. ‘And goodbye. I could wish good fortune upon you, but that would be a waste of a wish, would it not?’
    The boy laughed.
    Carver was smiling too. ‘Did you tell his fortune, then?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘He is to become excessively rich.’
    ‘Is he, now? Like all the rest?’
    ‘Not like all the rest,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘
Exceptionally
rich. Goodbye, Francis.’
    ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ said Carver.
    ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Wells,’ said the boy.
    She swept from the room, and the two men gazed after her. When she was gone Carver tilted his head at the boy. ‘Your name’s Edward?’
    ‘Actually—no, it isn’t,’ said the boy, looking a little shamefaced. ‘I made the choice to travel incognito, as you might say. My father always told me, when it comes to whores and fortune tellers, never give your real name.’
    Carver nodded. ‘That’s sense.’
    ‘I don’t know about the whores part,’ the boy went on. ‘It