Ah Sook considered pursuing Carver at a safe distance, but decided against it: he did not wish to force a reunion with the man until he was prepared for such an event. At present he was unarmed, and he guessed that Carver had at least a knife about his person, and possibly also a firearm of some kind: it would be folly to accost him when at a disadvantage. Instead Ah Sook set off in pursuit of the Maori man—who was on his way back to the Arahura Valley to build a bird trap, having purchased from the Hokitika Dry Goods several yards of strong fishing line, and a small loaf of hardtack to crumble into bait.
Ah Sook caught up with him in the next block, and caught his sleeve. He begged to know the import of the man’s conversation with Carver, and produced a coin to show that he would pay for the information if necessary. Te Rau Tauwhare looked at him inscrutably for a moment, and then shrugged, took the coin, and gave his explanation.
Many months prior to the present day, Tauwhare said, Francis Carver had offered him a monetary reward for any news of a man named Crosbie Wells. Soon after this offer was made, Carver returned to Dunedin, and Tauwhare to Greymouth; the two men did not cross paths again. But as chance would have it, Tauwhare did then meet the very man for whom Carver was searching, and Crosbie Wells had since become his very good friend. Mr. Wells, Tauwhare added, lived in the Arahura Valley; he was a former prospector, and had given his life over, more recently, to the project of building a mill.
(Tauwhare spoke slowly, and with much gesticulation; he was evidently well used to communicating with his hands and his expressions, and paused after every clause to make sure that he was accurately understood. Ah Sook found that he could understand his meaning very clearly, though English was neither man’s native tongue. He whispered the names to himself: Arahura Valley, Te Rau Tauwhare, Crosbie Wells.)
Tauwhare explained that he had not seen Carver again until that very morning—the morning of the 14th of January. He had spied Carver upon the Hokitika waterfront less than half an hour before, and, remembering the offer the captain had made many months ago, he saw an opportunity to make an easy profit. He approached Carver and announced that he could offer news of Crosbie Wells at a price, if Carver’s offer was still valid—which, evidently, it was. They agreed upon the fee (two shillings) and once the coins were in his hand, Tauwhare told the other man where Crosbie Wells was living.
Ah Sook, in what he had understood of Tauwhare’s narrative, had discovered nothing that was of immediate use to him; however, he thanked the man very courteously for his information, and bid him goodbye. He then returned to Kaniere—where he found Anna Wetherell sitting in a patch of sunshine beyond his front door, waiting for him. Feeling suddenly tender towards her (any reminder of the troubles of his past life tended to furnish Ah Sook with a wealth of redemptive feeling about his present) he made her a present of a fresh half-ounce, cut from the new block of resin that he had purchased from Pritchard that morning. She wrapped the gift in a square of cheesecloth, and stuck it into the band of her hat. Ah Sook then lit his lamp, and they lay down together, waking only when the air began to cool with the coming of the dusk, whereupon Anna took her leave of him, and Ah Sook turned his mind to supper.
The goldsmith Ah Quee, to whom this was being narrated at a great pace, found that his impression of his guest was rapidly changing. Ah Quee had never cherished a very great regard for Ah Sook, who was clothed always in the conjured shadows of his reeking smoke, who shunned the company of other men, who squandered his meagre profits at the gambling house, where he rolled his dice in silence, and spat with little grace upon the floor. Perceiving Ah Sook now, however, Ah Quee felt that he had been mistaken, to repudiate the hatter’s character so completely. The man who sat before him now seemed—what? Virtuous? Principled? The words were not quite right. His speech was ardent, and there was a sweetness to this ardour, almost a naïvety. Ah Quee realised, to his surprise, that he did not at all dislike him. He was flattered that Ah Sook had sought his company—and his confidence—that afternoon, and this pleasure disposed him to be sympathetic; what was more, he had not yet guessed the purpose of the other man’s visit, and therefore was very much enthralled in his tale. He had forgotten, for the moment, his disapproval of the other man’s trade, and the sickly smell of the smoke, which he had brought with him, on his clothing, in his hair.
Ah Sook had paused to eat a mouthful of curd. He praised the dish a second time, and then resumed his tale.
On the night of the 14th of January, directly following Francis Carver’s rendezvous with Crosbie Wells, Godspeed weighed anchor—a fact about which Ah Sook would remain ignorant for some days. He remained in Kaniere, where he was occupied with planning the logistics of his impending crime. He had a keen sense of ceremony, and he desired very much that Carver’s death should happen in the proper way; however, he did not possess a pistol, and to his knowledge nor did any one of his compatriots. He would have to purchase one, discreetly, and learn to use it on his own. He had just spent the sum total of his dust upon the opium he had purchased from Pritchard’s emporium, and he had no more money at his disposal. Ought he to ask one of his fellows for a loan? He was pondering this problem when there came another unexpected tiding from Hokitika: Anna Wetherell had tried, and failed, to end her life.
Ah Sook was very distressed by this intelligence—though he found, upon reflection, that he did not believe it to be true. He decided instead that Pritchard’s latest shipment of opium must have been poisoned. Anna’s constitution was well accustomed to the drug, and a fraction of an ounce was hardly enough to cause her to lose consciousness for many hours, such that she could not be revived. Ah Sook returned to Hokitika the following morning and requested an immediate interview with Pritchard’s shipping agent, Thomas Balfour.
It so happened that this morning (the 16th of January) was the very morning that Balfour discovered that the shipping crate containing Alistair Lauderback’s personal effects had disappeared from the Hokitika waterfront; as a consequence of this, the shipping agent was curt, and very much distracted. Yes, Balfour Shipping had Pritchard’s contract; Balfour had little to do with the cargo itself, however. Perhaps Ah Sook might do better to contact Pritchard’s supplier, who was a rather brutish-seeming man, thick-set, with a scarred cheek and a gruff nature. His name was Francis Carver. Was Ah Sook at all acquainted with this man?
Ah Sook controlled his shock as best he could. He asked how long Carver and Pritchard had been partners in business. Balfour replied that he did not know, but since Carver had been an infrequent face in Hokitika since the spring of the previous year, he imagined that the two men had conducted their relationship for at least that long. It was strange, Balfour went on, that Ah Sook had never encountered Carver, if they were known to one another! (For such was very obvious, from the expression on Ah Sook’s face.) But perhaps not that strange, seeing as Carver so seldom ventured inland, and Ah Sook so seldom ventured into town. Was Carver known to him from his years in Canton? Yes? Well, in that case, it was certainly a shame that they had missed each other! Yes, missed each other: Mr. Carver had recently set sail. Two days ago, in fact. What a pity! For the man had most likely sailed for Canton, in which case he was not likely to return to Hokitika for some time.
Ah Sook had reached this point in his narrative when the kettle began to boil. Ah Quee lifted it down from the range and poured the water over their tea, to steep. Ah Sook paused, watching the tea leaves float to the bottom of his bowl and gather there. After a long moment, he resumed.
Taking Balfour’s supposition—that Carver had left Hokitika for Canton, and would not return for some months—as the truth, Ah Sook again returned to Kaniere to ponder his next move. He knew from the Maori man, Tauwhare, that Francis Carver had been seeking news of a man named Crosbie Wells just prior to his departure. Perhaps he could contact this Crosbie Wells himself, and question him. He remembered, from his brief conversation with Tauwhare, that Wells lived in the Arahura Valley, some few miles upriver from the coast. He journeyed there, and discovered, to his even greater disappointment, that the cottage was empty: the hermit was dead.