The Luminaries (37 page)

‘Well then,’ Mannering said, when Ah Quee did not respond, ‘I’ll ask it the other way around, shall I? Tell me this, Johnny Quee. What was Crosbie Wells doing with four thousand pounds of Aurora gold?’

Ah Quee made a noise of confusion.
Aurora gold?
he thought. There was no Aurora gold! Aurora was a duffer claim. Mannering, of all people, knew that!

‘Stuffed into the flour canister,’ Mannering snarled. ‘Wedged into the bellows. Inside the teapot. In the meat safe. Do you
understand
me?
Four thousand pounds’ worth of pure
!’

Ah Quee was frowning: his understanding of English was very limited, but he knew ‘gold’, and he knew ‘Aurora’, and he knew ‘thousand’, and it was very plain to him that Mannering wished to recover something that was lost. He must be referring to the gold from Anna’s dresses, Ah Quee thought—the gold that he had come upon, one afternoon, lifting a flounce of her skirt and finding it heavy, mineral, weighted with stones; the gold that he had siphoned, week by week, taking out the threads, a seam at a time, while she lay sleeping atop the brick bed of this very range, the waxing half-sphere of her pregnancy rising and falling with every breath, murmuring only when the snick of his needle touched her skin. He had smelted that metal, over the weeks and months following his discovery, and he had stamped each square with the name of the claim to which he was indentured—the
Aurora
—before taking it to the camp station at Kaniere …

‘Four thousand pounds!’ Mannering shouted. (Holly began to bark.) ‘The Aurora is a bloody duffer—she’s a bloody tailing pile! I know that! Staines knows that! Aurora’s dry and always has been. You tell me the truth. Did you strike it rich on the Aurora? Did you
find a seam? Did you find a seam and retort the gold and hide it at Crosbie Wells’s cottage?
Tell
me, d—n you!
Quiet
, Holly!
Quiet
!’

It was the Aurora mine to which Ah Quee was exclusively indentured; his contract would not allow him to make a profit, except from ore lifted from that plot of land. After smelting the gold from Anna’s dresses, and inscribing each smelted block with the word
Aurora
, he had delivered the ore to the camp station to be banked and weighed. When the Aurora’s quarterly return was published in the first week of January, however, Ah Quee had discovered, to his shock, that the gold had not been banked against the claim at all. Somebody had stolen it from the camp station vault.

Mannering shoved the gun harder into Ah Quee’s temple, and again instructed him to speak, uttering several profanities too vulgar to set down here.

Ah Quee wet his lips. He did not have enough English to
articulate
a full confession; he cast about for the few English words he knew. ‘Unlucky,’ he said at last. ‘Very unlucky.’

‘D—ned right you’re unlucky,’ Mannering shouted. ‘And you’re about to become unluckier still.’ He struck Ah Quee’s cheek with the butt of his revolver, and then shoved the muzzle into his temple again, pushing the man’s head painfully to the side. ‘You had better start thinking about your luck, Johnny Quee. You had better start thinking about how to turn your luck around. I will shoot you. I will put a hole in your head, with two men to witness. I will.’

But Charlie Frost had become very agitated, and it was he who spoke. ‘You stop that,’ he said.

‘Hush up, Charlie.’

‘I won’t hush up,’ Frost said. ‘You put down that gun.’

‘Not for Africa.’

‘You’re confusing him!’

‘Rot.’

‘You are!’

‘I’m speaking the only language he can understand.’

‘You’ve got your pocketbook!’

This was very true. After a moment, as if in concession, Mannering took the revolver away from Ah Quee’s temple. But he
did not return the weapon to its holster. He paused a moment, weighing the piece in his hand, and then he raised it again, and
levelled
it—not at Ah Quee, but at Ah Sook, who, of the two men, had the better English. With the muzzle pointed directly at Ah Sook’s face, Mannering said, ‘I want to know whether the Aurora turned up a bonanza, and I want the truth. Ask him.’

Ah Sook relayed Mannering’s question to Ah Quee in Cantonese, who responded at length. The goldsmith recounted the full history of the Aurora goldmine, salted by Mannering, since purchased by Staines; he explained the reason why he had first chosen to retort his weekly earnings, and later, to inscribe the blocks with the name of the mine to which he was indentured; he assured Ah Sook that the Aurora, to the best of his knowledge, was worth nothing at all—having barely turned up pay dirt for six months. Mannering shifted from foot to foot, scowling. All the while Holly was circling the room, her mouth in a grin, her wide tail thumping. Charlie Frost put his hand down for her to lick.

‘No nugget,’ Ah Sook translated, when Ah Quee was done. ‘No bonanza. Ah Quee say Aurora is duffer claim.’

‘Then he’s a God-d—ned liar,’ Mannering said.

‘Dick!’ said Frost. ‘You said yourself that the Aurora’s a duffer!’

‘Of course it is!’ shouted Mannering. ‘So where in hell did all that gold come from—all of it smelted by
this
filthy heathen—and in
this
very room? Is he in league with Crosbie Wells? Ask him!’

He shook his pistol at Ah Sook, who said, after confirming the answer with Ah Quee, ‘He not know Crosbie Wells.’

Ah Sook could easily have shared his own intelligence with Mannering—the intelligence that had brought him to Ah Quee’s hut that very afternoon, seeking the other man’s advice—but he did not approve of Mannering’s interrogative technique, and he felt that the magnate did not deserve a helpful answer.

‘What about Staines, then?’ said Mannering to Ah Sook. His fury was acquiring a desperate edge. ‘What about Emery Staines? Aha: you know
that
name, don’t you, Johnny Quee—of course you do! Go on: where is
he
?’

This question was relayed from Ah Sook to Ah Quee, as before.

‘He not know,’ said Ah Sook again, when Ah Quee was done.

Mannering exploded with annoyance. ‘He not know? He not know? He not know a lot of things, Johnny Sook, wouldn’t you say?’

‘He won’t answer if you ask him like that!’ Frost cried.

‘You hush, Charlie.’

‘I won’t hush!’

‘This isn’t your business, d—n it. You’re getting in the way.’

‘It’ll be my business if any blood gets spilled,’ Frost said. ‘Put down your gun.’

But Mannering only thrust it once again at Ah Sook. ‘Well?’ he snarled. ‘And you can wipe that stupid look off your face, or I’ll wipe it off for you. I’m asking
you
, now—not him, not Johnny Quee. I’m asking
you
, Sook. What do
you
know about Staines?’

Ah Quee’s eyes were moving back and forth between them.

‘Mr. Staines very nice man,’ said Ah Sook pleasantly.

‘Nice man, is he? Care to say where the nice man might have disappeared to?’

‘He leave,’ said Ah Sook.

‘Did he, now?’ Mannering said. ‘Just upped his sticks, did he? Left all his claims behind? Walked out on everyone he knows?’

‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook. ‘It was in the paper.’

‘Tell me why,’ said Mannering. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘I not know,’ said Ah Sook.

‘You are playing a very stupid hand—both of you,’ said Mannering. ‘I’ll ask you one last time, and I’ll spell it out slowly, so you understand. A very large fortune has recently come into play. Hidden in a dead man’s house. All of it—every last flake of it—had been smelted and stamped with the word
Aurora
. That’s the
signature
of my old friend Quee here and if he denies it he can rot in hell. Now, what I want to know is this. Did that gold really come from the Aurora, or did it not? You ask him that. Yes or no.’

Ah Sook put this question to Ah Quee, who decided, given the gravity of the circumstances, to respond with the truth. Yes, he had found a bonanza, and no, it had not come from the Aurora, though when he smelted the gold he had stamped it with the goldmine’s
name, in order to ensure that the profits, at least in part, would return to him. He explained that, strange as it sounded, he had found the gold on Anna Wetherell’s person, sewn into the seams of her gown. He had first discovered it nearly six months ago, and had deduced, after some thought, that Anna must be trafficking the metal on behalf of someone else. He knew that Anna Wetherell was Mannering’s girl; he also knew that Mannering had falsified his own financial records before. It was reasonable to conclude,
therefore
, that Mannering was using Anna Wetherell as a method of transporting gold out of the gorge, in order to evade duty at the bank.

‘What’s he saying?’ said Mannering. ‘What’s his answer?’

‘He’s telling a frightfully long story,’ said Frost.

He was—and it was Ah Sook’s turn to be enthralled. Anna Wetherell had been concealing a
bonanza
? Anna, whom Mannering would not permit to carry even a purse upon her person, for fear of thieves? He could not believe it!

Ah Quee continued.

He could not forget his earlier grievance with Dick Mannering, for it was explicitly by Mannering’s hand that he was now forced to remain indentured to a duffer claim. Here was a chance both to get his revenge, and earn his freedom. Ah Quee began inviting Anna Wetherell back to his hut each week, always when she was addled with opium, for upon leaving Ah Sook’s hut she was always very sleepy and stupid; most often she fell asleep within moments after her arrival, lulled by the heat of Ah Quee’s stove. This suited Ah Quee. Once Anna was arranged comfortably upon the brick bed of his stove, he took her dress apart with a needle and thread. He replaced the tiny nuggets around her hem with leaden makeweights, so that she would not notice the sudden lightness of the fabric when she woke; if she stirred in her sleep, he held a cup of strong liquor to her lips, and encouraged her to drink it down.

Ah Quee tried to describe how the gold had been hidden in the flounces of Anna’s gowns, but with Mannering’s arm still around his body, he could not supplement his description with gestures, and therefore turned to metaphor in order to describe how the metal
had been sewn into her corset and around her bustle—‘like a suit of armour,’ he said, and Ah Sook, who was always pleased by poetic expressions, smiled. Anna had four dresses in all, Ah Quee said, each containing, in his estimation, roughly a thousand pounds’ worth of pure ore. Ah Quee worked until each dress was empty, smelting every last flake of the dust into his signature blocks, and inscribing each one with the name of the claim to which he was bound—quite as though he had come upon it honestly, and legally, in the gravel pit of the Aurora. For a time, he added, he was very happy: once his surety had been repaid, he could return to Kwangchow at last, and as a wealthy man.

‘Well?’ Mannering said to Ah Sook, stamping his foot with
impatience
. ‘What’s the story? What’s he saying?’

But Ah Sook had forgotten his role as translator. He was gazing at Ah Quee in wonderment. The story was incredible to him! Thousands of pounds … Anna had been concealing
thousands
of pounds about her person, for months! That was a fortune large enough to retire a dozen men, if not more, in luxury. Anna might have purchased the entire beachfront with that kind of sum … and even then, she would have money to spare! But where was that
fortune
now?

In the next moment Ah Sook understood.

‘
Sei
qin
,’ he breathed. So the fortune that Ah Quee had lifted from Anna’s dresses had ended up, by some caprice or
misdirection
, in the possession of the hermit, Crosbie Wells. But what was this misdirection in aid of—and who was to blame?

‘Speak English!’ Mannering shouted. ‘Speak
English
, d—n you!’

Suddenly very excited, Ah Sook asked Ah Quee how the fortune might have come to end up hidden in Wells’s cottage. Ah Quee replied, bitterly, that he did not know. He had never heard the name Crosbie Wells before that afternoon. As far as he knew, the last person to touch the retorted fortune was the Aurora’s current owner, Emery Staines—and Staines, of course, was nowhere to be found. Ah Quee explained that it was Staines who took the Aurora’s returns from the camp station to the Reserve Bank at the end of every month—a duty that had plainly not been carried out.

‘All I’m hearing is noise and nonsense,’ said Mannering. ‘If you don’t tell me what it’s all about, Johnny Sook—I’m telling you—’

‘They’ve finished talking,’ said Frost. ‘Just wait.’

Ah Sook was frowning. Did Emery Staines really steal from his own vault, only to stash the smelted fortune in a hermit’s cottage, twelve miles away? Where was the method in that? Why would Staines steal his own fortune, only to gift it to another man?

‘I’ll give you the count of five,’ Mannering said. His face was purple. ‘Five!’

Ah Sook looked at Mannering at last, and sighed.

‘Four!’

‘I tell you,’ Ah Sook said, holding up his palms. But what a lot there was to tell … and how few words he possessed, to contain the explanation! He thought for a moment, trying to remember the English word for ‘armour’, in order to preserve the poetic metaphor that Ah Quee had used. At last he cleared his throat, and said,

‘Bonanza not from Aurora. Anna wear secret armoury, made of gold. Quee Long find secret gold armoury that Anna wear. Quee Long try to bank armoury gold as Aurora gold. Then Staines thief from Quee Long.’

Dick Mannering, naturally enough, misunderstood this.

‘So the bonanza wasn’t from anywhere in the Aurora,’ he repeated. ‘Emery made a strike somewhere—but he kept it secret—until Quee here discovered it. Then Quee tried to bank Emery’s gold against the Aurora, so Mr. Staines took it back.’

That
was confounding! Ah Sook began talking rapidly to Ah Quee in Cantonese—which Mannering, evidently, interpreted as a sign of assent. ‘Where is Mr. Staines now?’ he demanded. ‘Stop with your other questions. Ask him that. Where is Mr. Staines now?’