The Luminaries

Frost was frowning. According to the shares profile, Emery Staines had first taken over the Aurora goldmine in the late autumn of the previous year. It appeared that, some weeks after this purchase, Staines had sold fifty-percent shares to the notoriousFrancis Carver; however, immediately following
that
transaction—as this record showed—the claim had run suddenly dry. Either Aurora had become, all of a sudden, a duffer claim—worth virtually nothing—or someone was doing a very good job of making it seem that way. Frost shut the folder and stood for a moment, thinking . His gaze wandered over the crowd: the diggers in their slouch hats, the investors, the escort in their braided epaulettes. Suddenly he remembered where he had seen that name before.
    He put up a card in his cubicle to indicate that the window was closed.
    ‘You off for the day?’ a colleague asked.
    ‘I suppose I could be,’ said Frost, blinking. ‘I hadn’t thought that I might; I had intended to return after my lunch hour.’
    ‘We’ll be closed by two, and there’s no more buying today, once this lot is done,’ the other banker said. He stretched his back, and slapped his belly with both hands. ‘May as well see you Monday, Charlie.’
    ‘Well!’ Frost murmured, gazing into the crown of his hat, as though suddenly perplexed to see it in his hand. ‘That’s very kind of you. Thank you very much.’

    Dick Mannering was alone in his office when Frost knocked upon the door. At his knock, Mannering’s collie-dog burst from beneath the desk in an explosion of joyful energy; she leaped upon Frost, her tail thumping the floor, her red mouth open.
    ‘Charlie Frost!
You’re
a man I didn’t expect to see,’ Mannering exclaimed, pushing his chair back from the desk. ‘Come in, come in—and close the door. I have the feeling that whatever it is you’re about to tell me, it’s not for everyone to hear.’
    ‘Down, girl,’ said Frost to the dog, gripping her muzzle, looking into her eyes, mussing her ears—and, satisfied, she dropped back onto all fours, and trotted back to her master, where she turned, sank down, put her nose upon her paws, and watched Frost from beneath her brows, sorrowfully.
    He closed the door as he was bid. ‘How are you, Dick?’
    ‘How am I?’ Mannering spread his hands. ‘I’m curious, Charlie. Do you know that? I’m a very curious man, these days. About a whole raft of things. You know Staines hasn’t shown up—not anywhere . We even tried Holly in the gorge, though she’s not much of a bloodhound. Gave her a handkerchief to sniff at, and off she went—but then back again, with nothing. Yes, I’m a very curious man. I do hope you’ve brought a bit of news—or a bit of scandal, if news cannot be had. My word—what a fortnight it’s been! Take off your coat—yes—oh, don’t worry about the rain. It’s only water—and heaven knows we ought to be used to the stuff by now.’
    Despite this encouragement Frost was careful to hang up his coat so that it did not touch Mannering’s, and to ensure that it would not drip upon Mannering’s overshoes, which were laid out beneath the coat-rack, each fitted with a shoe tree, and shined a handsome black. Then he plucked off his hat, somewhat gingerly.
    ‘It’s a pig of a day,’ he said.
    ‘Sit down, sit down,’ said Mannering. ‘You’ll have a brandy?’
    ‘I will, if you will,’ said Frost, this being his policy in all expressions of appetite and thirst. He sat down, placing the palms of his hands upon his knees, and looked about him.
    Mannering’s office was located above the foyer of the Prince of Wales Opera House, and boasted a handsome view out over the theatre’s striped awning to Revell-street, and beyond it to the open ocean, visible between the fronts of the facing houses as a band of bluish-grey, occasionally of green, and today, through the rain, as a whitish yellow—the water having taken on the colour of the sky.
    The room had been designed as a testament to the wealth of its owner; for Mannering, in addition to managing the opera house, received income as a whoremonger, a card sharp, a shareholder, and a goldfields magnate. In all these professions he possessed a wonderful knack for profit, most especially the kind that can be made off the back of the trespasses of other men: this the room’s furnishings made abundantly clear. The walls of his office were papered, and the cabinets oiled; there was a thick Turkish rug