‘Awful rot, some of these yarns,’ Colonel Claire continued, casually picking up his novel. ‘This thing I’ve been dipping into, now. Blood-and-thunder stuff. Ridiculous.’
‘I am a little troubled in my mind. Disturbing rumours have reached me …’
‘Oh?’ Colonel Claire, still with an air of absent-mindedness, flipped over a page.
‘… about proposals that have been made in regard to native reserves. You have been a good friend to our people, Colonel …’
‘Not at all,’ Colonel Claire murmured abstractedly, and felt for his reading glasses. ‘Always very pleased …’ He found his spectacles, put them on and, still casually, laid the book on his knee.
‘Since you have been at Wai-ata-tapu, there have been friendly relations between your family and my hapu. We should not care to see anyone else here.’
‘Very nice of you.’ Colonel Claire was now frankly reading, but he continued to wear a social smile. He contrived to suggest that he merely looked at the book because after all one must look at something. Old Rua’s magnificent voice rolled on. The Maori people are never in a hurry, and in his almost forgotten generation a gentleman led up to the true matter of an official call through a series of polite approaches. Rua’s approval of his host was based on an event twelve years old. The Claires arrived at Wai-ata-tapu during a particularly virulent epidemic of influenza. Over at Rua’s village there were many deaths. The Harpoon health authorities, led by the irate and overworked Dr Tonks, had fallen foul of the Maori people in matters of hygiene, and a dangerous deadlock had been reached. Rua, who normally exercised an iron authority, was himself too ill to control his hapu. Funeral ceremonies lasting for days, punctuated with long-drawn-out wails of greeting and lamentation, songs of death and interminable after-burial feasts maintained native conditions in a community lashed by a European scourge. Rua’s people became frightened, truculent and obstructive, and the health authorities could do nothing. Upon this scene came the Claires. Mrs Claire instantly translated the whole affair into terms of an English village, offered their newly built house as an emergency hospital and herself undertook the nursing, with Rua as her first patient. Colonel Claire, whose absence of mind had inoculated him against the arrogance of Anglo-Indianism, and who by his very simplicity had fluked his way into a sort of understanding of native peoples, paid a visit to the settlement, arranged matters with Rua, and was accepted by the Maori people as a rangitira, a person of breeding. He and his wife professed neither extreme liking nor antipathy for the Maori people, who nevertheless found something recognisable and admirable in both of them. The war had brought them closer together. The Colonel commanded the local Home Guard and had brought many of Rua’s older men into his division. Rua considered that he owed his life to his pakeha friends, and, though he thought them funny, loved them. It did not offend him, therefore, when Colonel Claire furtively read a novel under his very nose. He rumbled on magnificently with his story, in amiable competition with Texas Rangers and six-shooter blondes.
‘… there has been enough trouble in the past. The Peak is a native reserve and we do not care for trespassers. He has been seen by a certain rascal coming down the western flank with a sack on his shoulders. At first he was friendly with this no-good young fellow, Eru Saul, who is a bad pakeha and a bad Maori. Now they have quarrelled and their quarrel concerns my great-granddaughter Huia, who is a foolish girl but much too good for either of them. And Eru tells my grandson Rangi, and my grandson tells me, that Mr Questing is behaving dishonestly on the Peak. Because he is your guest we have said nothing, but now I find him talking to some silly young fellows amongst our people and putting a lot of bad ideas into their heads. Now that makes me very angry,’ said Rua, and his eyes flashed. ‘I do not like my young people to be taught to cheapen the culture of their race. It has been bad enough with Mr Herbert Smith, who buys whisky for them and teaches them to make pigs of themselves. He is no good. But even he comes to me to warn me of this Questing.’
The Colonel’s novel dropped with a loud slap. His eyebrows climbed his forehead, his eyes and mouth opened. He turned pale.
‘Hey?’ he said. ‘Questing? What about Questing?’
‘You have not been listening, Colonel,’ said Rua, rather crossly.
‘Yes, I have, only I didn’t catch everything. I’m getting deaf.’
‘I am sorry. I have been telling you that Mr Questing has been looking for curios on the Peak and boasting that in a little while Wai-ata-tapu will be his property. I have to come to ask you in confidence if this is true.’
‘What’s all this about Questing?’ demanded Dr Ackrington, appearing at the doorway in his dressing-gown. ‘’Evening, Rua. How are you?’
‘It began by being about Gaunt and a concert party,’ said the Colonel unhappily. ‘It’s only just turned into something in confidence about Questing.’
‘Well, if it’s in confidence, why the devil did you call me? There seems to be conspiracy in this house to deny my sciatica thermal treatment.’
‘I wanted to ask you if you thought Gaunt would like to go to a concert. Rua’s people have very kindly offered …’
‘How the devil do I know? Ask young Bell. Very nice of you, Rua, I must say.’
‘And then Rua began to talk about Questing and the Peak.’
‘Why don’t you call him Quisling and be done with it?’ Dr Ackrington demanded loudly. ‘It’s what he is, by God.’
‘James! I really must insist – You have no shred of evidence.’
‘Haven’t I? Haven’t I? Very well. Wait and see.’
Rua stood up. ‘If it is not troubling you too much,’ he said, ‘perhaps you would ask Mr Gaunt’s secretary …?’
‘Yes, yes,’ the Colonel agreed hurriedly. ‘Of course. Wait a minute, will you?’
He stumbled out of the room, and they heard him thump along the verandah towards Geoffrey Gaunt’s quarters.
Rua’s old eyes were very bright and cunning as he looked at Dr Ackrington, but he did not speak.
‘So he’s been trespassing, has he?’ asked Dr Ackrington venomously. ‘I could have told you that when the Hippolyte was torpedoed.’
Rua made a brusque movement with his wrinkled hands but still he did not speak.
‘He does it by night sometimes, doesn’t he?’ Dr Ackrington went on. ‘Doesn’t he go up by night, with a flash lamp? Good God, my dear fellow, I’ve seen it myself. Curios be damned.’
‘Somehow,’ Rua said mildly, ‘I have never been able to enjoy spy stories. They always seem to me to be incredible.’
‘Indeed!’ Dr Ackrington rejoined acidly. ‘So this country, alone in the English-speaking world, stands immune from the activities of enemy agents. And why, pray? Do you think the enemy is frightened of us? Amazing complacency!’
‘But he has been seen digging.’
‘Do you imagine he would be seen semaphoring? Of course he digs. No doubt he robs your ancestors’ graves. No doubt he will have some infamous booty to exhibit when he is brought to book.’
Rua pinched his lower lip and became very solemn. ‘I have felt many regrets,’ he said, ‘for the old age which compelled me to watch my grandsons and great-grandsons set out to war without me. But if you are right, there is still work in Ao-tea-roa for an old warrior.’ He chuckled, and Dr Ackrington looked apprehensively at him.
‘I have been indiscreet,’ he said. ‘Keep this under your hat, Rua. A word too soon and we shan’t get him. I may tell you I have taken steps. But, see here. There’s a certain amount of cover on the Peak. If your young people haven’t altogether lost the art of their forebears –’
‘We