The Luminaries

there it is, anyway,’ said Mannering. ‘That’s the story. That’s when Emery arrived.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘And what?’
    ‘Well—what happened?’
    ‘You know what happened. I sold him the Aurora.’
    ‘But the claim was a duffer, you said!’
    ‘Yes,’ said Mannering.
    ‘You sold him a duffer claim!’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But he’s your friend,’ said Charlie Frost, and even as he spoke the words he regretted them. How pathetic it sounded—to reprimand a man like Mannering about
friendship
! Mannering was in the august high noon of his life. He was prosperous, and well dressed, and he owned the largest and most handsome building on Revell-street. There were gold nuggets hanging from his watch chain. He ate meat at every meal. He had known a hundred women—maybe even a thousand—maybe more. What did he care about
friends
? Frost found that he was blushing.
    Mannering studied the younger man for a moment, and then said, ‘Here’s the heart of it, Charlie. A four thousand-pound fortune —smelted, and every square of it stamped with the word
Aurora
—has turned up in a dead man’s house. We don’t know why, and we don’t know how, but we do know who, and that “who” is my old friend Quee in Kaniere. All right? This is why we have to go to Chinatown. So as to ask him a question or two.’
    Frost felt that Mannering was still concealing something from him. ‘But the fortune itself,’ he said. ‘How do you account for it? If Aurora
is
a duffer, then where did all of that gold come from? And if Aurora’s
not
a duffer, then who’s cooking the books to make her appear as if she’s worth nothing at all?’
    The magnate put his hat on. ‘All I know,’ he said, running his finger and thumb around the brim and back again, ‘is that I’ve got a score to settle. No man makes a fool of Dick Mannering more than once, and the way I see it, this johnny chink has had a jolly good try. Come along. Or are you turning yellow on me?’
    No man likes to be called a coward—and least of all, a man who is feeling downright cowardly. In a cold voice Frost said, ‘I’m not yellow in the least.’
    ‘Good,’ said Mannering. ‘No hard feelings, then. Come along.’
    Frost thrust his arms into his coat. ‘I only hope it doesn’t come to blows,’ he said.
    ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Mannering. ‘We’ll see about that. Come on, Holly—come on, girl! Giddyap! We’ve got business in the Hokitika gorge!’

    As Frost and Mannering stepped out of the Prince of Wales Opera House, tugging down their hats against the rain, Thomas Balfour was turning into Weld-street, some three blocks to the south. Balfour had spent the last hour and a half at the Deutsches Gasthaus on Camp-street, where a pile of sauerkraut, sausage, and brown gravy, a seat before an open fire, and a period of uninterrupted contemplation had helped to refocus his mind upon Alistair Lauderback’s affairs. He quit the Gasthaus refreshed, and made immediately for the office of the
West Coast Times.
    The shutters were drawn inside the box window, and the front door closed. Balfour tried the handle: it was locked. Curious, he stamped around to the rear of the building, to the small apartment where Benjamin Löwenthal, the paper’s editor lived. He listened for a moment at the door, and, hearing nothing, cautiously turned the doorknob.
    The door opened easily, and Balfour found himself face to face with Löwenthal himself, who was sitting at his table with his hands in his lap—quite as if he had been waiting for Balfour to startle him out of a trance. He stood up, in haste.
    ‘Tom,’ he said. ‘What is it? Is something wrong? Why didn’t you knock?’
    The table at which he had been seated was properly a laboratory desk, the surface of which was pocked and worn, and mottled with spilled ink and chemicals; today, however, it had been swept clean of the detritus of Löwenthal’s trade, and covered with an embroidered cloth. In the centre was a little plate upon which a fat candle was burning.
    ‘Oh,’ Balfour said. ‘Sorry, Ben. Hello, there. Sorry. Sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb your—I mean, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
    ‘But you are most welcome!’ said Löwenthal, perceiving that Balfour was not bearing ill tidings after all, but had simply dropped in for a chat. ‘Come in, out of the rain.’
    ‘Didn’t mean to break your—’
    ‘You haven’t broken anything. Come in, come in—close the door!’
    ‘It’s