‘Well, I …’
‘That’s fine,’ said Mr Questing, jamming a flat pale thumb against a bell-push. ‘Great work! Sit down.’
Dikon sat sedately on a small chair, crossed his legs, joined his hands, and looked attentively over his glasses at Mr Questing.
‘How’s the Big Man?’ Mr Questing asked.
‘Mr Gaunt? Not very well, I’m afraid.’
‘So I understand. So I understand. Well, now, Mr Bell, I had hoped for a word with him, but I’ve got an idea that a little chat with you will be very very satisfactory. What’ll you have?’
Dikon refused a drink. Mr Questing ordered whisky and soda. ‘Yes,’ said Mr Questing with a heartiness that suggested a complete understanding between them. ‘Yes. That’s fine. Well now, Mr Bell, I’m going to tell you, flat out, that I think I’m in a position to help you. Now!’
‘I see,’ said Dikon, ‘that you come from Wai-ata-tapu Springs.’
‘That is the case. Yes. Yes, I’m going to be quite frank with you, Mr Bell. I’m going to tell you that not only do I come from the Springs, but I’ve got a very considerable interest in the Springs.’
‘Do you mean that you own the place? I thought a Colonel and Mrs Claire …’
‘Well, now, Mr Bell, shall we just take things as they come? I’m going to bring you right into my confidence about the Springs. The Springs mean a lot to me.’
‘Financially?’ asked Dikon mildly. ‘Therapeutically? Or sentimentally?’
Mr Questing, who had looked restlessly at Dikon’s tie, shoes and hands, now took a furtive glance at his face.
‘Don’t make it too hot,’ he said merrily.
With a rapid movement suggestive of sleight-of-hand he produced from an inner pocket a sheaf of pamphlets which he laid before Dikon. ‘Read these at your leisure. May I suggest that you bring them to Mr Gaunt’s notice?’
‘Look here, Mr Questing,’ said Dikon briskly, ‘would you mind, awfully, if we came to the point? You’ve evidently discovered that we’ve heard about this place. You’ve come to recommend it. That’s very kind of you, but I gather your motive isn’t purely altruistic. You’ve spoken of frankness so perhaps you won’t object to my asking again if you’ve a financial interest in Wai-ata-tapu.’
Mr Questing laughed uproariously and said that he saw they understood each other. His conversation became thick with hints and evasions. After a minute or two Dikon saw that he himself was being offered some sort of inducement. Mr Questing told him repeatedly that he would be looked after, that he would have every cause for personal gratification if Geoffrey Gaunt decided to take the cure. It was not by any means the first scene of its kind. Dikon was mildly entertained, and, while he listened to Mr Questing, turned over the pamphlets. The medical recommendations seemed very good. A set of rooms – Mr Questing called it a suite – would be theirs. Mr Questing would see to it that the rooms were refurnished. Dikon’s eyebrows went up, and Mr Questing, becoming very confidential, said that he believed in doing things in a big way. He was not, he said, going to pretend that he didn’t recognise the value of such a guest to the Springs. Dikon distrusted him more with every phrase he uttered, but he began to think that if such enormous efforts were to be made, Gaunt should be tolerably comfortable at Wai-ata-tapu. He put out a feeler.
‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that there is a resident doctor.’
He was surprised to see Mr Questing change colour. ‘Dr Tonks,’ Questing said, ‘doesn’t actually reside at the Springs, Mr Bell. He’s at Harpoon. Only a few minutes by road. A very, very fine doctor.’
‘I meant Dr James Ackrington.’
Mr Questing did not answer immediately. He offered Dikon a cigarette, lit one himself and rang the bell again.
‘Dr Ackrington,’ Dikon repeated.
‘Oh, yes. Ye-es. The old doctor. Quite a character.’
‘Doesn’t he live at the hostel?’
‘That is correct. Yes. That is the case. The old doctor’s retired now, I understand.’
‘He’s something of an authority on muscular and nervous complaints, isn’t he?’
‘Is that so?’ said Mr Questing. ‘Well, well, well. The old doctor, eh? Quite a character. Well, now, Mr Bell, I’ve a little suggestion to make. I’ve been wondering if you’d be interested in a wee trip to the Springs. I’m driving back there tomorrow. It’s a six hours’ run and I’d be very very delighted to take you with me. Of course the suite won’t be poshed up by then. You’ll see us in the raw, sir, but any suggestions you cared to make …’
‘Do you live there, Mr Questing?’
‘You can’t keep me away from the Springs for long,’ cried Mr Questing evasively. ‘Now about this suggestion of mine …’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Dikon thoughtfully. He rose to his feet and held out his hand. ‘I’ll tell Mr Gaunt about it. Thank you so much.’
Mr Questing wrung his hand excruciatingly.
‘Goodbye,’ said Dikon politely.
‘I’m staying here tonight, Mr Bell, and I’ll be right on the spot if …’
‘Oh, yes. Perfectly splendid. Goodbye.’
He returned to his employer.
III
Late on the afternoon of Saturday the eighteenth, old Rua Te Kahu sat on the crest of a hill that rose in an unbroken curve above his native village. The hill formed a natural barrier between the Maori reserve lands and the thermal resort of Wai-ata-tapu Springs where the Claires lived. From where he sat Rua looked down to his right upon the sulphur-corroded roof of the Claires’ house, and to his left upon the smaller hip-roofs of his own people’s dwelling houses and shacks. From each side of the hill rose plumes of steam, for the native pa was built near its own thermal pools. Rua, therefore, sat in a place that became him well. Behind his head, and softened by wreaths of steam, was the shape of Rangi’s Peak. At his feet, in the warm friable soil, grew manuka scrub.
He was an extremely old man, exactly how old he did not choose to say; but his father, a chief of the Te Rarawa tribe, had set his mark to the Treaty of Waitangi, not many years before Rua, his youngest child, was born. Rua’s grandfather, Rewi, a chieftain and a cannibal, was a neolithic man. To find his European counterpart, one would look back beyond the dawn of civilisation. Rua himself had witnessed the full impact of the white man’s ways upon a people living in a stone age. He had in turn been warrior, editor of a native newspaper, and member of Parliament. In his extreme age he had sloughed his European habits and returned to his own sub-tribe and to a way of life that was an echo in a minor key of his earliest youth.
‘My great-great-grandfather is a hundred,’ bragged little Hoani Smith at the Harpoon primary school. ‘He is the oldest man in New Zealand. He is nearly as old as God. Hu!’
Rua was dressed in a shabby suit. About his shoulders he wore a blanket, for nowadays he felt the cold. Sartorially he was rather disreputable, but for all that he had about him an air of greatness. His head was magnificent, long and shapely. His nose was a formidable beak, his lips thin and uncompromising. His eyes still held their brilliance. He was a patrician, and looked down the long lines of his ancestry until they met in one of the canoes of the first Polynesian sea rovers. One would have said that his descent must have been free from the coarsening of Melanesian blood. But for his colour, a light brown, he looked for all the world like a Jacobite patriot’s notion of a Highland chieftain.
Every evening he climbed to the top of the hill and smoked a pipe, beginning his slow ascent