The Luminaries

the most modern design. It took a cartridge as long as a man’s index finger, and could blow a fellow’s head to bloody dust. Balfour had admired the Snider-Enfield when the model was first shipped in, but seeing ten armed men in this enclosed space gave him an anxious premonition . The room was so crowded he doubted any one guard could find the room to raise his weapon to his shoulder, let alone discharge a round.
    He shouldered his way through the diggers to the bankers’ cubicles. Most of the men in the room were present as spectators only, and so parted to admit him; it was in very little time at all, therefore , that Balfour found himself at a barred cubicle, facing a young man in a striped vest and a neatly pinned cravat.
    ‘Good morning.’
    ‘I’m wanting to know if a man named Francis Carver has ever taken out a miner’s right in New Zealand,’ Balfour said. He removed his hat and slicked back his wet hair, an action without a perceptible benefit, for the palm of his hand was very wet also.
    ‘Francis Carver—Captain Carver?’
    ‘That’s the man,’ said Balfour.
    ‘I am obliged to ask who you are, and why you are requesting this information.’
    The banker spoke without affect, and in a mild tone of voice.
    ‘The man owns a ship, and I’m in the shipping trade,’ Balfour said smoothly, replacing his hat. ‘Tom Balfour’s my name. I’m looking to set up a side venture of a kind—tea-trading, back and forth from Canton. Just canvassing the idea at this point. I want to findout a bit more about Carver before I make any offers of business. Where his money’s spread. Whether he’s ever been bankrupted. That kind of thing.’
    ‘Surely you could just ask Mr. Carver yourself,’ replied the banker, speaking in the same inoffensive tone, so that the remark did not come off as rude, but, merely, as pleasantly offhand. He might have been passing a broken wagon in the street, and observing, quite affably, that there was a very simple way to mend the axle.
    Balfour explained that Carver was at sea, and could not be contacted .
    The banker seemed unsatisfied with this explanation. He considered Balfour, and put his finger against his lower lip. Evidently, however, he could not conjure a further objection that might give him reason to decline to pursue Balfour’s request. He nodded, pulled his ledger towards him, and wrote a note in a thin, precise script. He then blotted his page (a little unnecessarily, Balfour thought, for the ledger remained open) and dried the nib of his pen with a square of soft leather. ‘Wait here, please,’ he said. He disappeared through a low doorway, beyond which lay an antechamber of some kind, and soon returned carrying a large folder, bound in leather and marked on its spine with the letter
C
.
    Balfour drummed his fingers as the banker untied the clasp upon the folder and opened it. He scrutinised the young man through the bars of the grille.
    What a contrast this young man posed to the Maori in the street! They were rough contemporaries in age, but where Tauwhare had been muscled, tense, and proud, this fellow was languid, even catlike : he moved with a kind of casual luxury, as though he saw no need to spend his strength on swiftness, and nor did he see any reason to conserve it. He was lean in body. His hair was brown in hue, long, and curly at the tips; he wore it tied in a ribbon at the nape of his neck, in the fashion of a whaler. His face was broad and his eyes spaced widely; his lips were full, his teeth very crooked, and his nose rather large. These features conspired to form an expression that was both honest and nonchalant—and nonchalance is aform of elegance, when it demands much, and declines to reveal its source. Balfour considered him a very elegant young man.
    ‘Here,’ the banker said at last, pointing. ‘You see—Carswell, here, and then Cassidy. Your man’s not here.’
    ‘So Francis Carver doesn’t own a miner’s right.’
    ‘Not in Canterbury, no.’ He shut the folder with a soft thud.
    ‘What about an Otago certificate?’
    ‘I’m afraid you will have to go to Dunedin for that.’
    This was a dead end. In Lauderback’s story the gold in the crate had hailed (allegedly, of course) from Dunstan, which was an Otago field.
    ‘You don’t keep records of Otago men?’ Balfour asked, disappointed .
    ‘No.’
    ‘What if he came in on Otago papers? Would there be a record at the customhouse—from when he first