The Luminaries

in virtue was indentured to a less adaptable master than optimism. The benefit of the doubt, to take the common phrase, was a haphazard gift, and Nilssen was too proud of his intellect to surrender the power of hypothesis. In his mind a protective glaze had been applied to the crystal forms of high abstraction: he loved to regard them, and to wonder at their shine, but he had never thought to take them down from their carved and oaken mantel, so to speak, and feel them, supple in his hands. He had concluded that Pritchard was in love simply because it was pleasant to deliberate the point, examine the specimen, and then return to the beliefs he had possessed all along: that Pritchard was a queer fish; that Anna was a lost cause; and that one ought never undertake to love a whore.
    ‘Yes, well,’ Pritchard was saying, ‘they’re furious about it, you know. The yellow chap who operates the den at Kaniere—Ah Sook is his name—he went to Tom Balfour, after the whore took ill—very upset, you understand. He told Tom he wanted to look over my shipping records, check the last case that had come in on my account.’
    ‘Why not just come to you direct?’ Nilssen asked.
    Pritchard shrugged. ‘Thought I was up to something, I suppose,’ he said.
    ‘He thought you poisoned her—on purpose?’
    ‘Yes.’ Pritchard looked away again.
    ‘Well, and what did Tom say?’ Nilssen said, to prompt him.
    ‘He showed Ah Sook my records. Proved I’m clean.’
    ‘Your record’s clean?’
    ‘Yes,’ Pritchard said shortly.
    Nilssen saw that he had caused his guest offence, and felt an ugly flash of pleasure. He was beginning to resent the implication that they would be equally implicated as conspirators, if (or when) the possible murder of Emery Staines came to light: it seemed to him that Pritchard was considerably more embroiled in this mess than he was. Nilssen had nothing to do with opium, and wanted nothingto do with it. The drug was a poison, a scourge, and it made a fool of men.
    ‘Listen,’ Pritchard said, placing his finger on the desktop, ‘you need to get this Quee chap to talk with you. I’d do it myself if I could—I’ve tried the den, but Sook won’t have a bar of me. Quee’s all right. He’s decent. Ask him about the pile—whether it’s his gold, and if it is, why it turned up on Wells’s estate. You can go this afternoon. ’
    It rankled Nilssen to be ordered about in this way. ‘I don’t see why you can’t talk to Quee yourself, if your beef is with the other fellow.’
    ‘I’m under the hammer. Call it laying low.’
    Nilssen called it something rather different in his mind. Aloud he said, ‘What on earth would induce a johnny chink to speak to me?’—taking refuge, finally, in petulance. He pushed the yellow bill away from him.
    ‘At least you’re neutral,’ Pritchard said. ‘You’ve given none of them cause to judge you one way or another—have you?’
    ‘The celestials?’ Nilssen sucked on his pipe; the leaf was almost ash. ‘No.’
    ‘You say it with an
Ah
in front—Ah Quee. It’s their way of saying Mister.’ Pritchard paused a moment, regarding the other man, and then he added, ‘Think of it this way. If
we
are being framed, then perhaps
he
is, too.’
    As he was speaking, there came a knock at the door: it was the clerk, bearing the message that George Shepard was in the outer office and waiting to be received.
    ‘George Shepard—the gaoler?’ Nilssen said, with some trepidation, and a swift glance at Pritchard. ‘Did he say why?’
    ‘Matter of profit, he said, mutual gains,’ the clerk replied. ‘Shall I fetch him in?’
    ‘I’ll take my leave,’ Pritchard said, standing immediately. ‘So you’ll find him—the fellow Quee? Say you will.’
    ‘All the way to Kaniere?’ Nilssen said, remembering his luncheon , and the barmaid at the Nonpareil.
    ‘It’s only an hour’s walk,’ Pritchard said. ‘But make sure you getthe right fellow: the one you’re after is a shortish chap, very thin, clean-shaven; you’ll know his cottage by the chimney that issues from the forge. I’ll wait your message,’—and he was gone.

    Nilssen’s office seemed much too small to accommodate the massive, rigid bow that George Shepard made upon his entrance. The commission merchant felt himself shrink back a little in his chair, and to compensate for this he leaped up, thrust out his hand, and cried,
    ‘Mr. Shepard—yes, yes, please. I haven’t yet had the pleasure