Текст книги "The Luminaries"

Автор книги: Eleanor Catton

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‘You were in the valley?’ said Balfour. ‘You were there when he died?’

‘I was setting a trap for kereru,’ said Tauwhare. ‘Do you know kereru?’

‘Some kind of bird, is it?’

‘Yes—very tasty. Good for stewing.’

‘All right.’

Balfour’s derby hat had begun to drip. He took it off and banged it against his leg. Already his suit had darkened from grey to a sodden charcoal. His shirt had become translucent, showing through it the pink of his skin.

‘I set the trap before nightfall, to catch the birds in the morning,’ Tauwhare said. ‘From the ridge you can see Crosbie’s house—from above. That night four men went in.’

‘Four?’ said Balfour, replacing his hat. ‘You don’t mean three—one man on a black stallion, very tall; two other men with him, shorter, both on bay mares? That’s Alistair Lauderback—and Jock, and Augustus. The men who found his body, you know—who alerted the police.’

‘I saw three men on horseback, yes,’ said Tauwhare, nodding slowly. ‘But before they arrived, I saw one man on foot.’

‘One man alone—well! You’re all right, aren’t you, Ted?’ said Balfour, suddenly very excited. ‘Yes—by golly, you’re all right!’

‘I was not alarmed,’ Tauwhare continued, ‘because I did not know that Crosbie Wells died that night. I did not know he was dead until the morning.’

‘One man—entering the cottage, alone!’ said Balfour. He began to pace. ‘And before Lauderback! Before Lauderback arrives!’

‘Do you wish to know his name?’

Balfour wheeled on his foot. ‘You know who it was?’ He was almost shouting. ‘Yes, good Lord! Tell me!’

‘We will trade,’ said Tauwhare immediately. ‘I will set my price; you will counter. One pound.’

‘Trade?’ said Balfour.

‘One pound,’ said Tauwhare.

‘Hang tight,’ said Balfour. ‘You saw a man go into Wells’s cottage on the day of his death—the very day of his death, two weeks ago? You really saw somebody do that? And you know—without a shadow of a doubt—who that man was?’

‘I know the name,’ said Tauwhare. ‘I know the man. No cheating.’

‘No cheating,’ agreed Balfour. ‘But before I pay—I want to make sure that you do really know him, you see. I want to make sure you’re not taking me for a ride. Big man, was it? Very dark hair?’

Tauwhare folded his arms. ‘Fair play,’ he said. ‘No cheating.’

‘Of course it’s fair play,’ said Balfour. ‘Of course it is.’

‘We will trade. I have set my price at one pound. Now you counter.’

‘Heavy—was he heavy? Thick-set? I’m just making sure, you see. I’m making sure you’re on the level. Then I’ll start trading. You might be cheating me.’

‘One pound,’ said Tauwhare stubbornly.

‘It was Francis Carver, wasn’t it, Ted? Isn’t that right? It was Francis Carver—the sea captain? Captain Carver?’

Balfour was guessing—but it was a good guess. A wounded look passed over Tauwhare’s face, and he exhaled audibly.

‘I said no cheating,’ he said, in a tone of reproof.

‘I wasn’t cheating, Ted,’ said Balfour. ‘I just knew it already, you see. I’d only forgotten. Of course Carver made a trip up to Crosbie Wells’s cottage that day. That was him, wasn’t it—Captain Carver, the man you saw? You can tell me—it’s not a secret, because I already know.’

He searched the man’s face, making sure.

Tauwhare’s jaw was rigidly set. Under his breath he muttered, ‘Ki te tuohu koe, me maunga teitei.’

‘Well, Ted, you’ve done me a d—ned good turn here, and I won’t forget it,’ said Balfour. By now he was thoroughly saturated. ‘And you know—if I ever need something done, I’ll come to you, won’t I? And you’ll get your coin some other way.’

Tauwhare lifted his chin. ‘You need Maori,’ he said. He did not phrase it as a question. ‘You need Maori, you come to me. I do not do odd jobs. But you need language, and I will teach you many things.’

He did not mention that his skill was as a carver. He had never sold pounamu. He would not sell pounamu. For one could not put a price upon a treasure, just as one could not purchase mana, and one could not make a bargain with a god. Gold was not a treasure—this Tauwhare knew. Gold was like all capital in that it had no memory: its drift was always onward, away from the past.

‘All right—but you’ll shake, won’t you?’ Balfour seized Tauwhare’s dry hand in his wet one, and shook it vigorously. ‘There’s a good man, Ted—there’s a good man.’

But Tauwhare was still looking severely displeased, and he withdrew his hand from Balfour’s grip as soon as he was able. Balfour felt a twinge of regret. It would not do to make an enemy of the fellow—not with so much of this business yet unsolved, he thought. There was a chance that Tauwhare’s testimony might have to be called upon at a later time; there was a chance that he knew something about the relations, whatever they were, between Crosbie Wells and Francis Carver—or between those two men and Lauderback, come to think of it. Yes: it would be useful, to keep the man appeased. Balfour reached into his pocket. Surely he had something small, some token. They were fond of tokens. His fingers found a shilling and a sixpence. He pulled the sixpence out.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘You can have this, if you tell me some Maori. Just like you taught Crosbie Wells. Eh, Ted? Then we’ll have done business, just as you wanted to. All right? Then we’ll be friends. Then you won’t be able to complain.’

He pressed the silver piece into the other man’s palm. Tauwhare looked at it.

‘Now, tell me,’ said Balfour, rubbing his hands together. ‘What does … what does Hokitika mean? Hokitika. Just the one word, that’s all I’m after. And I’d call that a tidy price, by the bye—a sixpence, for a single word! I’d call that a song!’

Te Rau Tauwhare sighed. Hokitika. He knew the sense of it, but could not translate. This happened so often between the languages, English and Maori: the words of one tongue never found their exact equivalent in the other, just as there was no white man’s herb that one might perfectly exchange for puha, and no white man’s bread that exactly called to mind rewena pararoa: however close the flavour, there was always something approximated, something imagined, or something lost. Crosbie Wells had understood this. Te Rau Tauwhare taught him korero Maori without using any English at all: they used their fingers to point, and their faces to mimic, and when Te Rau said things that Crosbie Wells did not understand, he let the sounds wash over him, like prayers, until their meanings clarified, and he could see inside the word.

‘Hokitika,’ said Balfour. He wiped the rain from his face. ‘Come on, mate.’

At last Tauwhare lifted his finger and described a circle in the air. When his fingertip returned to the place from which he had begun, he jabbed his finger, sharply, to mark the place of return. But one cannot mark a place upon a circle, he thought: to mark a place upon a circle is to break it, so that it is not a circle any longer.

‘Understand it like this,’ he said, regretting that he had to speak the words in English, and approximate the noun. ‘Around. And then back again, beginning.’

The Reserve Bank was always very crowded on a Saturday at noon. Diggers stood about with their hands full of gold; the Libra-scales rattled up and down as the ore was measured and recorded; the junior bankers ran back and forth from the archives, checking claim papers, marking tax payments, and receiving fees. Along the wall that faced the street were four barred cubicles where the bankers sat; above them hung a gilt-framed chalkboard, upon which was written that week’s yield in ore, with subtotals for each district, and a grand total for the Hokitika region as a whole. Whenever a sum of raw gold was banked or bought, the chalked numbers were erased and then totalled anew—typically to a murmur of appreciation from the men in the room, and occasionally, if the total was a remarkable one, to a round of applause.

When Balfour entered the bank the attention of the crowd was focused not upon this chalkboard but upon the long table opposite, where the gold buyers, identifiable by the bright copper satchels that they wore upon their belts, inspected the raw ore for purchase. The buyer’s work was slow. He weighed each nugget in his hand, scratched and tested the metal for impurities, and examined it through a jeweller’s loupe. If the ore had been sifted, he filtered it through sieves of matting to check the flakes had not been cut with grit or gravel, and sometimes shook glistering handfuls over plates of mercury, to ensure that the metals bonded as they should. Once he declared the stuff pure and fit to be valued, the digger in question shuffled forward, and was asked to state his name. The Libra-scales were then calibrated until the arm hung parallel with the desk—and then the buyer poured the digger’s pile of gold into the left-hand tray. To the right-hand tray the buyer added cylinder weights, one by one, until finally the scales lurched, and the tray bearing the man’s fortune shuddered, and swung free.

That morning there was only one buyer present: a slick-haired magnate, wearing a pale green hunting jacket and a yellow tie—a gaudy combination, and one that might have served to mark him rather too obviously as a moneyed man, had he been doing business alone and unprotected. But the Hokitika gold escort was on hand. This small army, a uniformed infantry of ten men, presided over every sale and purchase of the colour. Later they would oversee the bullion’s transfer into an armoured van, and ensure that it was safely conveyed offshore. They stood behind the buyer, and flanked the desk at which he sat—each man armed with a .577 Snider-Enfield rifle, a massive, gleaming piece of 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 find out 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 a form 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 arrived?’

‘Not at the customhouse,’ said the banker, ‘but if he made any dust, he’d have to have it counted and weighed before he left. He’s not allowed to transfer it to another province, or out of the country, without declaring it first. So he’d come here. We’d ask to take a look at the miner’s right. Then we’d make a record in this book that he was working under Otago papers, but on a Hokitika claim. There’s nothing in this book; therefore, as I said just now, we can safely assume he hasn’t prospected anywhere hereabouts. As for whether he’s prospected in Otago, I’ve no idea.’

The banker spoke with the controlled alarm of a bureaucrat who is requested to explain some mundane feature of the bureaucracy of which he is a functioning part: controlled, because an official is always comforted by proof of his own expertise, and alarmed, because the necessity for explanation seemed, in some obscure way, to undermine the system which had afforded him that expertise in the first place.

‘All right,’ said Balfour. ‘Now, there’s one more thing. I need to know whether Carver has owned shares in any mining company, or if he took out shares on a private claim.’

A flicker of doubt disturbed the banker’s mild expression. For the briefest moment, he said nothing, and again it seemed as if he were trying to think of a reason to decline Balfour’s request, to declare it unorthodox, or to press to know the reason why. He looked at Balfour with a gaze that was no less piercing for its mildness—and Balfour, who was always made uncomfortable by scrutiny, scowled very darkly. But, as before, the banker applied himself to the task demanded of his office. He wrote another note upon his ledger, blotted it, and then politely excused himself to pursue this new request.

When he returned with the shares records, however, he looked openly uneasy.

‘Francis Carver has speculated in this area,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t call it a portfolio: it’s only one claim. Looks like a private agreement. Carver takes home a return to the tune of fifty percent of the mine’s net profit every quarter.’

‘Fifty percent!’ Balfour said. ‘And only one claim—that’s confidence for you! When did he buy?’

‘Our records show the date as July 1865.’

‘That far back!’ Balfour said. (Six months ago! But that was after the sale of the Godspeed—was it not?) ‘Which claim is it? Who’s owning?’

‘The mine is called the Aurora,’ said the banker, enunciating very carefully. ‘It is owned and operated by—’

‘Emery Staines,’ Balfour finished for him, nodding his head. ‘Yes, I know the place—up Kaniere way. Why, that’s capital news. Staines is a great friend of mine. I’ll go and talk to the man myself. Thank you very much, Mr.—?’

‘Frost.’

‘Thank you very much, Mr. Frost. You’ve been extraordinarily helpful.’

But the banker was looking at Balfour with a strange expression on his face.

‘Mr. Balfour,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you haven’t heard.’

‘Something about Staines?’

‘Yes.’

Balfour stiffened. ‘He’s dead?’

‘No,’ said Frost. ‘He vanished.’

‘What? When?’

‘Two weeks ago.’

Balfour’s eyes went wide.

‘I am sorry to be the one to break the news—if you are his great friend.’

Balfour did not notice the barb of emphasis in the banker’s remark. ‘Vanished—two weeks back!’ he said. ‘And no one’s talking? Why haven’t I heard about it?’

‘I assure you that many men have been talking,’ said Frost. ‘A notice has been published in the Missing Persons column every day this week.’

‘I never read the personals,’ said Balfour.

(But of course: he had been with Lauderback, this fortnight past, facilitating introductions up and down the Coast; he had not been frequenting the Corinthian, as he habitually did in the evenings, to share a mug of beer with the other camp followers while they exchanged the local news.)

‘Perhaps he found a strike,’ he said now. ‘That could be it. Perhaps Staines found a paying seam, up in the bush somewhere, and he’s keeping it quiet—until he’s staked the ground.’

‘Perhaps,’ the banker said courteously, and would not say more.

Balfour chewed his lip. ‘Vanished!’ he said. ‘I can’t understand it!’

‘I rather wonder whether this news will be of import to your partner,’ said Frost, smoothing the open page of his ledger with his palm.

‘Who’s my partner?’ Balfour said, with some alarm—thinking that the banker was referring to Alistair Lauderback, whose name he had been careful not to use.

‘Why—Mr. Carver,’ Frost said, blinking. ‘Your prospective partner in business—as you have just informed me, sir. Mr. Carver has a joint investment with Mr. Staines. So if Mr. Staines is dead …’

He trailed off with a shrug.

Balfour narrowed his eyes. The banker seemed to be implying, however vaguely, that Carver was in some way responsible for Emery Staines’s disappearance … an implication for which he surely did not have any proof. His attitude was very clear, and yet he had not really expressed an opinion of any kind, upon which he might be faulted. The tone of his voice implied that he did not like Carver, even though his words expressed sympathy for the man’s possible loss. Balfour, feeling the cowardice of this equivocation, almost became angry—but then he remembered that he was shamming. He was not going into business with Carver, and need not take his part in an argument against him.

But then young Frost smothered a smile, and Balfour saw, with a sudden rush of indignation, that, in fact, the younger man was mocking him. Frost had not believed his false story for a moment! He knew that Balfour was not going into business with Carver; he knew that this falsehood had been fabricated to mask some other purpose—and then he added the insult of diminishment to the injury of exposure, by finding Balfour amusing! It rankled Balfour to be second-guessed, but it rankled him still more to be ridiculed, especially by a man whose days were spent in a three-foot-square cubicle, signing cheques in another man’s name. (This last was Lauderback’s phrase, half-remembered from earlier that morning; it came to Balfour’s mind as his own.) Suddenly angry, he leaned forward and curled his hands around the bars of the grille.

‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘You listen. I’m no more going into business with Carver than you are. I think the man’s a thug and a crook and all the rest of it. I’m up against him, d—n it. I’ve got to get a twinkle on him: something I can use.’

‘What is a twinkle?’ the banker asked.

‘It’s stupid—never mind it,’ Balfour snapped. ‘The point is that I’m looking to round him up. Give him over to the law. I think he skimmed a fair fortune out of some other fellow’s claim. Thousands. But it’s only a hunch, and I need hard evidence. I need a place to start. All right? That investment story I gave you just now was a bunch of guff. Cock and bull.’ He glared at the banker through the bars of the grille. ‘What?’ he said after a moment. ‘What, then?’

‘Nothing at all,’ said Frost. He squared the papers on his desk, and gave a cryptic, tight-lipped smile. ‘Your business is your own. I wish you only luck, Mr. Balfour.’

The news about Emery Staines had rattled Balfour severely. Shipping crates and blackmail was one thing, he thought, but a person disappearing was quite another. That was a sombre business. Emery Staines was a good digger, and much too young to die.

Outside the courthouse Balfour stood and breathed heavily for a moment. The small crowd outside the bank had dispersed to their luncheon, and the Maori man was gone. The rain had thinned to a persistent drizzle. Balfour cast his eye up and down the street, somewhat at a loss for where next to go. He felt excessively dejected. Vanished, he thought. But one did not simply vanish! The boy could only have been murdered. There was no other explanation for it—if he had not been seen for two weeks.

Emery Staines was easily the richest man south of the black sands. He owned more than a dozen claims, several of which had shafts that descended to depths of thirty feet, at least. Balfour, who admired Staines exceedingly, would have guessed his age at three-or four-and-twenty—not so young as to be unworthy of his luck, and not so old as to suggest that he might have acquired it by some less than honest means. In fact such a suggestion had never crossed Balfour’s mind. Staines had been gifted with a thoroughly good-natured beauty, the kind that is earnest and hopeful without ever declaring itself to be so; in temper he was affable, optimistic, and delightfully quick. Even to think him dead was hateful. To think him murdered was worse.

Just then the Wesleyan chapel bell struck half past twelve, releasing a flurry of birds: they burst out of the makeshift belfry and scattered, dark against the sky. Balfour turned his face to the sound, feeling as he did so a sudden ache in his temple. His senses were turning from dull to sharp—the effect of the spirits he had consumed that morning—and the responsibilities of his situation had begun to weigh heavy upon him. He no longer felt inclined to ask questions on Lauderback’s behalf.

He wrapped his coat around his body, turned on his heel, and began walking towards the Hokitika spit—a place that was, for him, a habitual refuge. It was his pleasure to stand on the sand in foul weather, clutch his coat across his body, and look out past the clustered masts of the ships at anchor, swaying en masse, impelled variously by the river’s rushing current, the surf, and the wind—the howling Tasman wind, that stripped the bark from the trees at the beachfront, and bent the scrub to crippled forms. Balfour enjoyed the fierce indifference of a storm. He liked lonely places, because he never really felt alone.

As he slithered down the muddy bank to the quay, the wind suddenly dropped. Smiling, Balfour peered into the mist. The rain had stolen all chance of a reflection from the wide mouth of the river, and the water was as grey and opaque as a pewter plate. The bucking masts had slowed their motion when the wind died away; Balfour watched them, calmed by their weighty roll, back and forth, back and forth. He waited until they were almost still before moving on.

The quay curved around the mouth of the river to meet the spit, a narrow finger of sand that was battered on one side by the white surf of the open ocean, and lapped on the other by the confused wash of the river, its waters mingled now with salt, and stripped of gold. Here, on the calm side of the spit, a short wharf projected from the quay. Balfour stepped down onto it, landing with a flat sole, and the structure shuddered beneath his weight. Two stevedores, quite as sodden as he was, were sitting on the wharf some twenty feet away; they started at the jolt, and turned.

‘All right, chaps,’ said Balfour.

‘All right, Tom.’

One was carrying a brass-capped boathook; he had been using it to swipe at the gulls, which were diving for their supper on the rocks below, and now he resumed this idle purpose. The other was keeping score.

Balfour strolled up behind them, and for a time nobody spoke. They watched the moored vessels pitch back and forth, and squinted out, through the rain.

‘You know what the trouble is?’ Balfour said presently. ‘Down here, any man can make himself over. Make himself new. What’s an alias, anyway? What’s in a name? Pick it up as you pick up a nugget. Call this one Wells—this one Carver—’

One of the stevedores glanced around. ‘You got a quarrel with Francis Carver?’

‘No, no.’ Balfour shook his head.

‘Quarrel with a man called Wells?’

Balfour sighed. ‘No—there hasn’t been a quarrel,’ he said. ‘I’m wanting to find out a thing or two, that’s all. But quiet—on the sly.’

The gull returned; the stevedore swiped again, and missed.

‘Foul-hooked through his wing, nearly,’ said the second man. ‘That’s five.’

Balfour saw that they had dropped a square of biscuit on the gravel below.

The stevedore who had spoken first nodded his head at Balfour and said, ‘Are you wanting to chase up Carver, or chase up the other one?’

‘Neither,’ Balfour said. ‘Never mind. Never mind. I’ve got no quarrel with Francis Carver—you remember that.’

‘I’ll remember,’ said the stevedore, and then, ‘I say, though: if you’re wanting dirt—and on the sly—you ought to ask the gaoler.’

Balfour was watching the gull circle closer. ‘The gaoler? Shepard? Why?’

‘Why? Because Carver did time under Shepard,’ said the stevedore. ‘On Cockatoo Island, for all of ten years. Carver dug the dry dock there—convict labour—with Shepard looking on. If you’re wanting dirt on Carver, I’d make a bet that Gov. Shepard is the man to dig it up.’

‘At Cockatoo?’ Balfour said with interest. ‘I didn’t know Shepard was a sergeant at Cockatoo.’

‘He was. And then the very year after Carver gets his leave, Shepard gets a transfer to New Zealand—and follows him! How’s that for bad luck?’

‘The worst,’ agreed his fellow.

‘How do you know this?’ Balfour said.

The stevedore was addressing his mate. ‘That’s a face I’d never want to see again—my gaoler, day in and day out, for ten years—and then, as soon as I’m free—’

‘How do you know this?’ Balfour persisted.

‘I apprenticed on the dockyards there,’ the stevedore said. ‘Hey, now—that’s a corker!’

For he had struck the gull across the back with his stick.

‘You don’t happen to know what Carver was booked for—do you, lad?’

‘Trafficking,’ the stevedore said immediately.

‘Trafficking what?’

‘Opium.’

‘What—into China? Or out?’

‘Couldn’t tell you.’

‘Who booked him, though? Not the Crown.’

The stevedore thought about this, and then shrugged. ‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘I thought it was something to do with opium. But maybe that was just something I heard.’

Presently Balfour bid them both goodbye, and moved on along the spit. As soon as he was well alone, he planted his feet apart, thrust his hands into his pockets, and looked out over the white roar of the ocean—past the screw jacks and greased rollers, past the wooden lighthouse at the spit’s far end, past the dark hulks of the ships that had foundered on the bar.

‘See, now!’ he muttered to himself. ‘That’s something—that’s something, all right! Carver must be the man’s real name! He can’t be using an alias—not in Hokitika, under the gaoler’s own nose—when he served time beneath the man, in a penitentiary!’ Balfour slicked his moustache with his finger and thumb. ‘Here’s the rub, though. What in heaven’s name provoked him to make the claim—with proof in writing, to boot—that his name was Francis Wells?’