In the week that followed, Ah Sook followed the story of the Wells fortune very closely—believing, not unreasonably, that the hermit’s death was in some way related to Carver’s departure. This project had consumed him for nigh on eight days—until that very morning, in fact, the 27th of January, when he had made two discoveries that had surprised him very much indeed.
Ah Sook was just about to announce the reason for his visit when a pistol-crack rent the air—he started in shock—and there came shouting from the clearing beyond Ah Quee’s door.
‘Come out of there, you rotten chink! You come out of there and stand up like a man!’
Ah Sook’s eyes found Ah Quee’s. Who? he asked silently, and Ah Quee pinched his mouth to indicate distaste: Mannering. But his eyes were fearful.
In the next moment the hessian curtain was wrenched aside, and Mannering filled the doorway. He had his pistol in his hand. ‘Sitting around the forge, are you—scheming, are you? Both of you in it together? I’d have thought better of you, Johnny Sook! To dirty yourself in muck such as this! Yellow peril—by God!’
He strode into the cabin—rather less threateningly than he would have liked, for the stud was very low, and he was obliged to stoop—and caught Ah Quee around his body with one strong arm. He placed the muzzle of his Smith & Wesson against the man’s temple, and at once Ah Quee became very still.
‘All right,’ Mannering said. ‘I’m listening. What’s your business with Crosbie Wells?’
For a moment Ah Quee did not move at all. Then he shook his head—minutely, for he was conscious of the muzzle’s pressure against his skull. He did not know a man named Crosbie Wells, beyond what Ah Sook had just narrated to him, which was simply that the man had been a hermit, had lived in the Arahura Valley, and had recently died. Behind Mannering a white-faced Charlie Frost slipped into the room—and then, moments later, the collie-dog Holly bounded in behind him. Her coat was very wet. She trotted the perimeter of the small room, panting gloriously, and uttered several hoarse barks that nobody bothered to hush.
‘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!’