The Luminaries

closed it.

‘Has the Virtue been and gone already?’ Lauderback said. ‘You were expecting her last week, I think.’

There was a roaring in Balfour’s ears. He ought to have come clean about the disappearance as soon as the two men were left alone. Stupid, he shouted internally, stupid! But could he not simply tell Lauderback the truth? It had been no man’s fault that the shipping crate had disappeared—it had been an accident, a blunder of paperwork most likely—and it would show up, sooner or later, in some unlikely situation … a little battered externally perhaps, but none the worse for wear. Surely Lauderback would understand that! If he was calm and honest in making his confession—if he admitted fault—But then

Balfour’s heart gave a judder. There must be a correlation between the trunk in Lauderback’s story—the one packed with women’s dresses, that had made the trans-Tasman crossing every month for a year—and the trunk containing Lauderback’s effects, the fraudulent contract among them, that had so recently vanished from the Hokitika quay. There must be, when Balfour had never before mislaid a shipping crate, nor had one stolen, not in all his years in the business! His heart began to pound. Francis Carver had blackmailed the politician once before; perhaps he had done so for a second time! Perhaps Carver had stolen the shipping crate! The man was familiar on the Hokitika docks, after all …

Lauderback was casting his eye over the table, looking for a cold morsel; he had not noticed the change in Balfour’s demeanour, as the latter turned over this new possibility in his mind. ‘Has she been through—the Virtue?’ he repeated, without impatience.

‘No,’ said Balfour.

The room seemed to constrict around the lie.

‘Not here yet?’ said Lauderback. He found a waxy onion on the plate Jock Smith had left behind and popped it into his mouth. ‘So I beat my own clipper ship—and on horseback! I wasn’t expecting that! Nothing went belly-up at sea, I hope?’

His good humour was quite restored; he was even giddy. Such a tonic for the spirit is the promise of revenge!

‘No,’ Balfour said again.

‘She’s still in transit, you said?’

Balfour paused a fraction of a second, then he said, ‘Ay—still in transit. That’s right.’

‘Coming West from Dunedin, is she? Or up and through the Strait?’

Balfour was sweating. He watched the movement of Lauderback’s jaw as the other man chewed. In the end he chose the more protracted route. ‘Up and through.’

‘Oh well,’ Lauderback said, swallowing. ‘These things can’t be helped, I suppose. Not in the shipping business. But you’ll let me know the moment it gets here—won’t you?’

‘Ay—of course. Yes. I will.’

‘I shall look forward to it,’ said Lauderback. He hesitated. ‘I say—Tom—there’s another thing. You must understand that what I’ve told you this morning—’

‘Strictest confidence,’ Balfour blurted out. ‘Won’t tell a soul.’

‘With my campaign at the point of—’

‘No need for that.’ Balfour shook his head. ‘No need to say it. Mum’s the word.’

‘Good man.’ Lauderback pushed his chair back and slapped his knees with both hands. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Poor Jock, and poor Augustus. I have been unutterably rude.’

‘Yes—poor Jock, poor Augustus, yes,’ said Balfour, motioning with his hand that Lauderback was free to leave—but Lauderback, humming now through his teeth, was already reaching for his coat.

Thomas Balfour’s heart was beating very fast. He was unused to the awful compression that comes after a lie, when it dawns upon the liar that the lie he has uttered is one to which he is now bound; that he must now keep lying, and compound smaller lies upon the first, and be shuttered in lonely contemplation of his own mistake. Balfour would wear his falsehood as a fetter, until the shipping crate was found. He needed to do it quickly—and without Lauderback’s knowledge, let alone his help.

‘Mr. Lauderback,’ he said, ‘I think you ought to go and play the politician for a while. Go shake some hands, you know. Throw the dice. Play some bowls. Spend a night at the theatre. Leave all this aside.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll go down the wharf and ask a round of questions. What Carver’s up to, where he’s gone.’

A shadow of alarm passed over Lauderback’s face. ‘Thought you said he’d gone to Canton. Isn’t that what you said? Tea-trading?’

‘But we ought to make sure,’ Balfour said. ‘We ought to be ready.’ He was thinking about the missing shipping crate, and the new possibility that Francis Carver might have stolen it. (But what need had Carver of avenging himself twice upon Alistair Lauderback—when the first blackmail had come off without a hitch?)

‘Discreetly,’ said Lauderback. ‘Discreetly—when you ask your questions.’

‘Nothing to it,’ said Balfour. ‘The fellows know me down on Gibson Quay, and you remember I’ve done a fair patch of shipping with Godspeed. Anyway: better me than you.’

‘Yes—better,’ said Lauderback. ‘Yes. All right. You do that, then.’ He nodded.

In fact this was the very kind of delegation to which Alistair Lauderback was accustomed, as a man of means. It was not strange to him that Balfour should devote his Saturday to straightening out another man’s affairs. He did not pause to wonder whether Balfour could be risking his own reputation, by associating himself with a story of cuckoldry, blackmail, murder, and revenge, and nor did he spare a thought for how Balfour might be recompensed. He felt only relief. An invisible order had been restored: the same kind of order that ensured his boiled egg was ready every morning, and the dishes cleared away. He plumped the knot of his necktie with his fingers, and rose from the table as a man refreshed.

Lightly Balfour said, ‘And you ought to steer clear of Lydia Wells, I think. Just because—’

‘Of course, of course, of course,’ said Lauderback. He picked up his gloves with his left hand, and reached to shake Balfour’s hand with his right. ‘We’ll get the bastard, won’t we?’

Suddenly Balfour realised that Lauderback knew exactly the nature of the twinkle by which Frank Carver had him tied. He could not have explained how he arrived at this sudden realisation—but all at once, he knew.

‘Yes,’ he said, shaking Lauderback’s hand very firmly. ‘We’ll get the bastard, by and bye.’

MARS IN SAGITTARIUS

In which Cowell Devlin makes a poor first impression; Te Rau Tauwhare offers information at a price; Charlie Frost is suspicious; and we learn the crime of which Francis Carver was convicted, years ago.

When a restless spirit is commissioned, under influence, to solve a riddle for another man, his energies are, at first, readily and faithfully applied. But Thomas Balfour’s energies tended to span a very short duration, if the project to which he was assigned was not a project of his own devising. His imagination gave way to impatience, and his optimism to an extravagant breed of neglect. He seized an idea only to discard it immediately, if only for the reason that it was no longer novel to him; he started in all directions at once. This was not at all the mark of a fickle temper, but rather, of a temper that is accustomed to enthusiasm of the most genuine and curious sort, and so will accept no form of counterfeit—but it was, nevertheless, something of an impediment to progress.

Balfour was ready to rise from the table and quit the Palace Hotel when suddenly it struck him that it would be a great shame to leave a pitcher of perfectly good wine half-filled. He poured the last of it into his glass and was raising it to his lips—and then he saw, over the rim of the glass, that the clergyman at the nearby table had put aside his tract and folded his hands. He was looking at Balfour intently.