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 not business, exactly,’ Balfour said, by way of apology, knowing that Löwenthal’s holy day was a day of rest. ‘It’s not work, exactly. I just wanted to talk with you about something.’

‘It is never work, talking with you,’ Löwenthal replied generously, and then, for the fourth time, ‘But you must come in.’

At last Balfour stepped inside and closed the door. Löwenthal resumed his seat and folded his hands together. He said, ‘I have long thought that, for the Jew, the newspaper business is the perfect occupation. No edition on Sunday, you see—and so the timing of the Shabbat is perfect. I have pity for my Christian competitors. They must spend their Sunday setting type, and spreading ink, ready for Monday; they cannot rest. When you came up the path just now, that was the subject of my thinking. Yes, hang up your coat. Do sit down.’

‘I’m a Church of England man, myself,’ said Balfour—who, like many men of that religion, was made very uncomfortable by icons of faith. He eyed Löwenthal’s candle with some wariness, quite as if his host had laid out a hairshirt or a metal cilice.

‘What is on your mind, Tom?’

Benjamin Löwenthal was not at all displeased that his weekly observances had been interrupted, for his religion was of a very confident variety, and it was not in his nature to be self-doubting. He often broke his Shabbat vows in small ways, and did not chastise himself for it—for he was sensible of the difference between duty that is dreaded, and duty that comes from love; he believed in the acuity of his own perception, and felt that whenever he broke the rules, he broke them for reasons that were right. He was also (it must be admitted) rather restless, after two hours of unmitigated prayer—for Löwenthal was an energetic spirit, and could not be without external stimulation for long.

‘Listen,’ Balfour said now, placing his fingertips on the table between them. ‘I’ve just heard about Emery Staines.’

‘Ah!’ said Löwenthal, surprised. ‘Only just now? Your head has been buried in the sand, perhaps!’

‘I’ve been busy,’ said Balfour, eyeing the candle a second time—for ever since he was a boy he had not been able to sit before a candle without wanting to touch it, to sweep his index finger through the flame until it blackened, to mould the soft edges where the wax was warm, to dip his fingertip into the pool of molten heat and then withdraw it, swiftly, so that the tallow formed a yellow cap over the pad of his finger which blanched and constricted as it cooled.

‘Too busy for the news?’ said Löwenthal, teasing him.

‘I’ve got a fellow in town. A political fellow.’

‘Oh yes: the honourable Lauderback,’ said Löwenthal. He sat back in his chair. ‘Well, I hope that he is reading my paper, even if you are not! He has featured in the pages enough.’

‘Yes—featured,’ said Balfour. ‘But listen, Ben: I wanted to ask you a question. I stopped in at the bank this morning, and I heard someone’s been putting up notices in the paper. On Mr. Staines’s behalf—begging his return. Am I allowed to ask who placed them?’

‘Certainly,’ Löwenthal said. ‘A notice is a public affair—and in any case, she left a box number at the bottom of the advertisement, as you might have seen; you only have to go to the post office, and look at the boxes, and you will see her name.’

‘“She”?’

‘Yes, you’ll be surprised by this,’ said Löwenthal. ‘It was one of our ladies of the night! Will you guess which one?’

‘Lizzie? Irish Lizzie?’

‘Anna Wetherell.’

‘Anna?’ said Balfour.

‘Yes!’ said Löwenthal, now smiling broadly—for he had an insider’s sensibility, and enjoyed himself the most when he was permitted to occupy that role. ‘You wouldn’t have guessed that, would you? She came to me not two days after Mr. Staines first disappeared. I tried to persuade her to wait until more time had passed—it seemed wasteful to advertise for a man’s return when he was only two days’ gone. He might have merely walked into the gorge, I said, or ridden up the beach to the Grey. He might be back to-morrow! So I told her. But she was adamant. She told me he had not departed; he had vanished. She was very clear on that. She used those very words.’

‘Vanished,’ echoed Balfour.

‘The poor girl had been tried at the Courts that very morning,’ Löwenthal said. ‘What rotten luck she has had, this year past. She’s a dear girl, Tom—very dear.’

Balfour frowned: he did not like to be told that Anna Wetherell was a dear girl. ‘Can’t imagine it,’ he said aloud, and shook his head. ‘Can’t imagine it—the two of them. They’re as chalk and cheese.’

‘Chalk and cheese,’ echoed Löwenthal. He took pleasure in foreign idioms. ‘Who is the chalk? Staines, I suppose—because of his quarrying!’

Balfour did not seem to have heard him. ‘Did Anna give you any indication as to why she was asking after Staines? I mean—why—’

‘She was attempting to make contact with him, of course,’ Löwenthal said. ‘But that is not your question, I think.’

‘I just meant—’ But Balfour did not go on.