Color Scheme

Chapter V Mr. Questing Goes down for the Second Time

The more blatant eccentricities of the first evening were not repeated during the following days, and the household at Wai-ata-tapu settled down to something like a normal routine. The Colonel fatigued himself to exhaustion with Home Guard exercises. His wife and daughter, overtaxed by the new standard they had set themselves, laboured incessantly in the house, Gaunt, following Dr. Ackrington’s instructions, sat at stated hours in the Springs, took short walks, and began to work steadily on his book. Dikon filed old letters and programmes which had to be winnowed for use in the autobiography. Gaunt dictated for two hours every morning and evening, and expected Dikon’s shorthand notes to be translated into typescript before they began work on the following day. Dr. Ackrington dealt austerely in his own room with the problems of comparative anatomy. On Wednesday he announced that he was going away for a week, and, when Mrs. Claire said gently that she hoped there was nothing the matter, replied that they would all be better if they were dead, and drove away. Colly, who had been a signaller in the 1914 war, recovered from the surprise of Simon’s first advance, and spent a good deal of time in the cabin helping him with his Morse. Simon’s attitude to Gaunt was one of morose suspicion. As far as possible he avoided encounters, but on the rare occasions when they met, his behaviour was remarkable. He was not content to remain altogether silent, but would suddenly roar out strange inquiries and statements. He asked Gaunt whether he reckoned the theatre did any good in the world, and, when Gaunt replied with some heat that he did, inquired the price of seats. On receiving this information he said instantly that a poor family could live for a week on the price of a stall and that there ought to be a flat charge all over the house. Gaunt’s book had gone badly that morning and his leg was painful. He became irritable and a ridiculous argument took place.

“It’s selfishness that’s at the bottom of it,” Simon shouted. “The actors ought to have smaller wages, see? What I reckon, the thing ought to be run for the good of everybody. Smaller wages all round.”

“Including the stage staff? The workmen?” asked Gaunt.

“They all ought to get the same.”

“Then I couldn’t afford to keep your friend Colly.”

“I reckon he’s wasting his time anyway,” said Simon, and Gaunt walked away in a rage.

Evidently Simon confided this conversation to Colly, who considered it necessary to apologize for his new friend.

“You don’t want to pay too much attention to him, sir,” Colly said, as he massaged his employer’s leg that evening. “He’s a nice young chap. Just a touch on the red side. He’s a bit funny. It’s Mr. Questing that’s upset his apple-cart, reely.”

“He’s an idiotic cub,” said Gaunt. “What’s Questing got to do with the price of stalls?”

“He’s been talking big business, sir. Young Simon thinks he’s lent a good bit to the Colonel on this show. He thinks the Colonel can’t pay up and Mr. Questing’s going to shut down on them and run the place on his pat. Young Simon’s that disgusted he’s taken a scunner on anything that looks like smart business.”

“Yes, but —”

“He’s funny. I had it out with him. He told me what he’d been saying to you, and I said he’d acted very silly. ‘I’ve been with my gentleman for ten years,’ I told him, ‘and there’s not much we don’t know about the show business. I seen him when he was a small-part actor playing a couple-of-coughs-and-a-spit in stock,’ I said, ‘and believe you me he’s worked for it. He may be a star now,’ I said, ‘and he may be getting the big money, but how long’ll it last?’ ”

“What the hell did you mean by that?”

“We’re not as young as we was, sir, are we? ‘You don’t want to talk silly,’ I said. ‘Questing’s one thing and my gentleman’s another.’ But no. ‘You’re no better than a flunkey,’ he says. ‘You’re demeaning yourself.’ I straightened him up about that. ‘There’s none of the blooming valley about me,’ I says, ‘I’m a dresser and make-up, and what I do on the side is done by me own choice. I’m in the game with my gentleman.’ ‘It’s greed for money,’ he howls, ‘that’s ruining the world. Big business started this war,’ he says, ‘and when we’ve won it us chaps that did the fighting are going to have a say in the way things are run. The Questings’ll be wiped right off the slate.’ That’s the way he talks, you see, sir. Mind, I feel sorry for him. He’s got the idea that his dad and ma are going to just about conk out over this business and to his way of thinking Questing’s as good as a murderer. He says Smith knows something about Questing and that’s why he had to jump for it when the train came. You’ve had fifteen minutes on them muscles and that’ll do you.”

“You’ve damned nearly flayed me alive.”

“Yes,” said Colly, flinging a blanket over his victim and going into the next room to wash his hands. “He’s morbid, is young Sim. And of course Mr. Questing’s little attempts at the funny business with Miss Barbara kind of put the pot on it.”

Dikon, who had been clattering his typewriter, paused.

“What’s that?” said Gaunt, suddenly alert.

“Had you missed the funny business, sir?” said Colly from the next room. “Oh, yes. Quite a bit of trouble she has with him, I understand.”

“What did I tell you, Dikon?”

“The way I look at it,” Colly went on, appearing in the doorway with a towel, “she’s capable. No getting away from it, and you can’t get domestic labour in this country without you pay the earth, so Questing thinks he’ll do better to keep her when the old people go.”

“But damn it,” Dikon said angrily, “this is insufferable. It’s revolting.”

“That’s right, Mr. Bell. That’s what young Sim thinks. He’s worked it out. Questing’ll try putting in the fine work, making out he’ll look after the old people if she sees it in the right light. Coo! It’s a touch of the old blood-and-thunder dope isn’t it, sir? Mortgage and all. The villain still pursued her. Only the juvenile to cast, and there, as we say in The Dream, sir, is a play fitted. I used to enjoy them old pieces.”

“You talk too much, Colly,” said Gaunt mildly.

“That’s right, sir. Beg pardon, I’m sure. Associating with young Mr. Claire must have brought out the latent democracy in me soul. I tell him there’s no call to worry about his sister. ‘It’s easy seen she hates his guts,’ I said, if you’ll excuse me.”

“I’ll excuse you altogether. I’m going to work.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Colly neatly, and closed the door.

He would perhaps have been gratified if he had known how accurately his speculations about Barbara were to be realized. It was on that same evening, a Thursday, nine days before the Maori concert, that Questing decided to carry forward his hitherto tentative approach to Barbara. He chose the time when, wearing a shabby bathing dress and a raincoat, she went for her four-o’clock swim in the warm lake. Her attitude towards public bathing had been settled for her by her mother. Mrs. Claire was nearly forty when Barbara was born, and her habit of mind was Victorian. She herself had grown up in an age when one ducked furtively in the ocean, surrounded by the heavy bell of one’s braided serge. She felt apprehensive whenever she saw her daughter drop her raincoat and plunge hastily into the lake clad in the longest and most conservative garment obtainable at the Harpoon Co-operative Stores. Only once did Barbara attempt to make a change in this procedure. Stimulated by some pre-war magazine photographs of fashionable nudities on the Lido, she thought of sun-bathing, of strolling in a leisurely, even a seductive manner down to the lake, not covered by her raincoat. She showed the magazines to her mother. Mrs. Claire looked at the welter of oiled limbs, glistening lips and greased eyelids. “I know, dear,” she said turning pink. “So very common. Of course newspaper photographers would never persuade the really, really quite to be taken, so I suppose they are obliged to fall back on these people.”

“But Mummy, they’re not ‘these people’! Look, there’s…”

“Barbara darling,” said Mrs. Claire in her special voice, “some day you will understand that there are folk who move in rather loud and vulgar sets, and who may seem to be very exciting, and who I expect are all very rich. But, my dear,” Mrs. Claire had added, gently, exhibiting a photograph of an enormously obese peer in bathing shorts, supported on the one hand by a famous coryphée and on the other by a fashionable prize-fighter — “my dear, they are not Our Sort.” And she had given Barbara a bright smile and a kiss, and Barbara had stuck to her raincoat. On the occasion of his proposal, Mr. Questing, who did not care for sitting on the ground, took a camp-stool to the far end of the lake, placed it behind some manuka scrub near the diving board, and, fortified by a cigar, sat there until he spied Barbara leaving the house. He then discarded the cigar, waited until she was within a few feet of his hiding place, and stepped out to meet her.

“Well, well, well,” said Mr. Questing. “Look who’s here! How’s the young lady?”

Barbara clawed the raincoat about her and said she was very well.

“That’s fine,” said Mr. Questing. “Feeling good, eh? That’s the great little lass.” He laughed boisterously and manoeuvred in an agile manner in order to place himself between Barbara and the diving board. “What’s your hurry?” he asked merrily. “Plenty of time for the bathing-beauty stuff. What say we have a wee chin-wag, You, Me, & Co., uh?”

Barbara eyed him with dismay. What new and odious development was this? Since the extraordinary scene on the evening of Smith’s accident, she had not encountered Questing alone and was almost unaware of the angry undercurrents which ran strongly through the normal course of life at Wai-ata-tapu. For Barbara was carried along the headier stream of infatuation. She was bemused with calf-love, an infant disease which, caught late, is doubly virulent. Since that first meeting in the dusk, she had not seen much of Gaunt. She was so grateful for her brief rapture and, upon consideration, so doubtful of its endurance, that she made no attempt to bring about a second encounter. It was enough to see him at long intervals, and receive his greeting. Of Questing she had thought hardly at all, and his appearance at the lake surprised as much as it dismayed her.

“What do you want to see me about, Mr. Questing?”

“Well now, I seem to have the idea there’s quite a lot I’d like to talk to Miss Babs about. All sorts of things,” said Mr. Questing, dropping his voice to a fruity croon. “All sorts of things.”

“But — would you mind — you see I’m just going to…”

“What’s the big hurry?” urged Mr. Questing, in his best synthetic American. “Wait a bit, wait a bit. The lake won’t get cold. You ought to do some sun-bathing. You’d look good if you bronzed, Babs. Snappy.”

“I’m afraid I really can’t…”

“Look,” said Mr. Questing with emphasis. “I said I wanted to talk to you and what I meant was I wanted to talk to you. You’ve no call to act as if I’d made certain suggestions. What’s the idea of all this shrinking stuff? Mind, I like it in moderation. It’s old-world. Up to a point it pleases a man, but after that it’s irritating and right now’s the place where you want to forget it. We all know you’re the pure-minded type by this time, girlie. Let it go at that.”

Barbara gaped at him. “There’s a camp-stool behind that bush,” he continued. “Come and sit on it. I’ll say this better if I keep on my feet. Be sensible, now. You’re going to enjoy this, I hope. It’s a great little proposition when viewed in the correct light.” Barbara looked back at the house. Her mother appeared hurrying along the verandah. She did not glance up, but at any moment she might do so and the picture of her daughter, tête-à-tête with Mr. Questing instead of swimming in the lake, would certainly disturb her. Yet Mr. Questing stood between Barbara and the lake and, if she tried to dodge him, might attempt to restrain her. Better get the extraordinary interview over as inconspicuously as possible. She walked round the manuka bush and sat on the stool; Mr. Questing followed. He stood over her smelling of soap, cigars and scented cachous.

“That’s fine and dandy,” he said. “Have a cigarette. No? O.K. Now, listen, honey, I’m a practical man and I like to come straight to the point, never mind whether it’s business or pleasure and you might call this a bit of both. I got a proposition to put up which I think is going to interest you a whole lot, but first of all we’ll clear the air of misunderstandings. Now I don’t just know how far you’re wise to the position between me and your dad.”

He paused, and Barbara, full of apprehension, hurriedly collected her thoughts. “Nothing!” she murmured. “I know nothing. Father doesn’t discuss business with us.”

“Doesn’t he, now? Is that the case? Very Old-World in his notions, isn’t he? Well, now, we don’t expect the ladies to take a great deal of interest in business so I won’t trouble you with a lot of detail. Just the broad outline,” said Mr. Questing making an appropriate gesture, “so’s you’ll get the idea. Now, you might put it this way, you might say that your dad’s under an obligation to me.”

You might indeed, Barbara thought, as Mr. Questing’s only too lucid explanation rolled on. It seemed that five years ago when he first came to Wai-ata-tapu to ease himself of lumbago, he had lent Colonel Claire a thousand pounds, at a low rate of interest, taking the hostel and springs as security. Colonel Claire was behind with the interest and the principal was now due. Mr. Questing clothed the bare bones of his narrative in a vestment of playful hints and nudges. He wasn’t, he said, a hard man. He didn’t want to make it too solid for the old Colonel, not he. “But just the same — ” Cliché followed cliché, business continued to be business, and more and more dubious grew the development of his theme until at last even poor Barbara began to understand him.

“No!” she cried out at last. “Oh, no! I couldn’t. Please don’t!”

“Wait a bit, now. Don’t act as if I’m not making a straight offer. Don’t get me all wrong. I’m asking you to marry me, Babs.”

“Yes, I know, but I can’t possibly. Please!”

“Don’t run away with the idea it’s just a business deal. It’s not.” Mr, Questing’s voice actually faltered and if Barbara had been less frantically distracted she might have noticed that he had changed colour. “To tell you the truth I’ve fallen for you, kid,” he continued appallingly. “I don’t know why, I’m sure. I like ’em snappy and kind of wise as a general rule and if you’ll pardon my candour you’re sloppy in your dress and, boy, are you simple! Maybe that’s exactly why I’ve fallen. Now don’t interrupt me. I’m not dizzy yet and I know you’re not that way about me. I don’t say I’d have asked you if I hadn’t got a big idea you’d run this joint damn well when I showed you how. I don’t say I haven’t put you on the spot where it’s going to be hard to say no. I have. I knew where I could get in the fine work, seeing how your old folks are placed, and I got it in. I’ll use it all right. But listen, little girl” — Mr. Questing on a sudden note of fervour breathed out his final cliché — “I want you,” he said hoarsely.

To Barbara the whole speech had sounded nightmarish. She quite failed to realize that Mr. Questing thought on these standardized lines and spoke his commonplaces from a full heart. It was the first experience of its kind that she had endured, and he seemed to her a terrible figure, half-threatening, half-amorous. When she forced herself to look up and saw him in his smooth pale suit, himself pale, slightly obese and glistening, and found his eyes fixed rather greedily upon hers, her panic mounted to its climax, and she thought: “I shan’t like to refuse. I must get away.” She noticed that his expensive watch-chain was heaving up and down in an agitated rhythm about two feet away from her nose. She sprang to her feet and, as if she had released a spring in Mr. Questing, he flung his arms about her. During the following moments the thing she was most conscious of was his stertorous breathing. She brought her elbows together and shoved with her forearms against his waistcoat. At the same time she dodged the face which thrust forward repeatedly at hers. She thought: “This is frightful. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I’m hating this.” Mr. Questing muttered excitedly: “Now, now, now,” and they tramped to and fro. Barbara tripped over the camp-stool and rapped her shin. She gave a little yelp of pain. And upon this scene came Simon and Dikon.

Gaunt had announced that he would do no work after all and Dikon, released from duty, decided to go for a walk in the direction of the Peak. He had an idea that he would like to see for himself the level crossing and the bridge where Smith had his escape from the train. He found Simon and asked him to point out the short cut to the Peak road. Simon, most unexpectedly, offered to go with him. They set out together along the path that ran past the springs and lake. They had not gone far before they heard a confused trampling and a sharp cry. Without a word but on a single impulse, they ran forward together and Barbara was discovered in Mr. Questing’s arms.

Dikon was an over-civilized young man. He belonged to a generation whose attitude of mind was industriously ironic. He could accept scenes that arose out of crises of the nerves, they were a commonplace of the circle into which his association with Gaunt had introduced him. It was inconceivable that any young woman of those circles would be unable to cope with the advances of a Mr. Questing or, for a matter of that, fail to lunch and dine off such an attempt when she had dealt with it. Dikon’s normal reaction to Barbara’s terror would perhaps have been a feeling of incredulous embarrassment. After all they were within a few hundred yards of the house in broad daylight. It was up to her to cope. He could never have predicted the impulse of pure anger that flooded through him, and he had time actually to feel astonished at himself. It was not until afterwards that he recognized the complementary emotion which arose when Barbara ran to her brother. Dikon realized then that he himself was a lay figure and felt a twinge of regret that it was so.

Simon behaved with more dignity than might have been expected of him. He put his arm across his sister’s shoulders and in his appalling voice said: “What’s up, Barbie?” When she did not answer he went on: “I’ll look after this. You cut along out of it.”

“Hey!” said Mr. Questing. “What’s the big idea?”

“It’s nothing, Sim. Sim, it’s all right, really.”

Simon looked over her shoulder at Dikon. “Fix her up, will you?” he said, and Dikon answered: “Yes, of course,” and wondered what was expected of him. Simon shoved her, not ungently, towards him.

“Great hopping fleas,” Mr. Questing expostulated, “what’s biting you now! There’s not a damn thing a man can do in this place without you all come milling round like magpies. You’re crazy. I try to get a little private yarn with Babs and you start howling as if it was the Rape of the What-have-you Women.”

“Go and boil your head,” said Simon. “And Barbie, you buzz off.”

“I really think you’d better,” Dikon said, realizing that his function was to remove her. She murmured something hurriedly to Simon and turned away. “All right, all right,” said Simon, “don’t you worry.” They left Simon and Questing glaring at each other in ominous silence.

Dikon followed her along the path. She started off at a great rate, with her head high, clutching her raincoat about her. They had gone some little way before he saw that her shoulders were quivering. He felt certain that all she wanted of him was to leave her to herself, but he could not make up his mind to do this. As they drew nearer to the house they saw Colonel and Mrs. Claire come out on the verandah and begin to set up their deck-chairs.

Barbara stopped short and turned. Her face was stained with tears.

“I can’t let them see,” she said.

“Come round by the other path.”

It was a track that skirted the Springs and came out near the cabins. A brushwood fence screened it from the verandah. Halfway along, Barbara faltered, sat on the bank, buried her face in her arms and cried most bitterly.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” said Dikon confusedly. “Have my handkerchief. I’ll turn my back, shall I? Or shall I?”

She took the handkerchief with a woebegone attempt at a smile. He sat beside her and put his arm round her.

“Never mind,” he said. “He’s quite preposterous. A ridiculous episode.”

“It was beastly.”

“Well, confound the fellow, anyway, for upsetting you.”

“It’s not only that. He — he — ” Barbara hesitated and then with a most dejected attempt at her trick of over-emphasis sobbed out: “He’s got a hold on us.”

“So Colly was right,” Dikon thought. “It is the old dope.”

“If only Daddy had never met him! And what Sim’s doing now, I can’t imagine. If Sim loses his temper he’s frightful. Oh dear,” said Barbara blowing her nose very loudly on Dikon’s handkerchief, “what have we all done that everything should go so hideously wrong with us? Really, it’s exactly as if we dotted scenes about the place like booby-traps for Mr. Gaunt and you. And he was so heavenly about the other time, pretending he didn’t mind.”

“It wasn’t pretence. He told the truth when he said he adored scenes. He does. He even uses them in his work. Do you remember in the Jane Eyre, when Rochester, without realizing what he did, slowly wrung the necks of Jane’s bridal flowers?”

“Of course I do,” said Barbara eagerly. “It was terrible but sort of noble.”

“He got it from a drunken dresser who flew into a rage with the star she looked after. She wrenched the heads off one of the bouquets. He never forgets things like that.”

“Oh.”

“You’re feeling a bit better now?”

“A bit. You’re very kind, aren’t you?” said Barbara rather as if she saw Dikon for the first time. “I mean, to take trouble over our frightfulness.”

“You must stop being apologetic,” Dikon said. “So far I’ve taken no trouble at all.”

“You listen nicely,” Barbara said.

“I’m almost ghoulishly discreet, if that’s any recommendation.”

“I do so wonder what Sim’s doing. Can you hear anything?”

“We’ve came rather far away from them to hear anything. Unless, of course, they begin to scream in each other’s faces. What would you expect to hear? Dull thuds?”

“I don’t know. Listen!”

“Well,” said Dikon after a pause, “that was a dull thud. Do you suppose that Mr. Questing has been felled to the ground for the second time in a fortnight?”

“I’m afraid Sim’s hit him.”

“I’m afraid so too,” Dikon agreed. “Look.”

From where they sat they could see the patch of manuka scrub. Mr. Questing appeared, nursing his face in his handkerchief. He came slowly along the main path and as he drew nearer they saw that his handkerchief was dappled red. “A dong on the nose, by gum,” said Dikon. When he arrived at the intersection, Mr. Questing paused.

“I’m going — He’ll see me. I can’t—” Barbara began, but she was too late. Mr. Questing had already seen them. He advanced a short way down the side path and, still holding his handkerchief to his nose, addressed them from some considerable distance.

“Look at this,” he shouted. “Is it a swell set-up, or is it? I like to do things in a refined way and here’s what I get for it. What’s the matter with the crowd around here? Ask a lady to marry you and somebody hauls off and half kills you. I’m going to clean this dump right up. Pardon me, Mr. Bell, for intruding personal affairs.”

“Not at all, Mr. Questing,” said Dikon politely.

Mr. Questing unguardedly removed his handkerchief and three large red blobs fell on his shirt front. “Blast!” he said violently and stanched his nose again. “Listen, Babs,” he continued through the handkerchief. “If you feel like changing your mind, I won’t say the offer’s closed, but if you want to do anything you’ll need to make it snappy. I’m going to pack them up, the whole crowd of them. I’ll give the Colonel till the end of the month and then out. And, by God, if I’d got a witness I’d charge your tough young brother with assault. By God, I would. I’m fed up. I’m in pain and I’m fed up.” He goggled at Dikon over the handkerchief. “Apologizing once again, old man,” said Mr. Questing, “and assuring you that you’ll very shortly see a big change for the better in the management of this bloody dump. So long, for now.”

Long after the events recorded in this tale were ended, Dikon, looking back at the first fortnight at Wai-ata-tapu, would reflect that they had suffered collectively from intermittent emotional hiccoughs. For long intervals the daily routine would be uninterrupted and then, when he wondered if they had settled down, they would be convulsed and embarrassed by yet another common spasm. Not that he ever believed, after Mr. Questing’s outburst, that there was much hope of the Claires settling back into their old way of life. It seemed to Dikon that Mr. Questing had been out for blood. A marked increase in Colonel Claire’s vagueness, together with an air of bewildered misery, suggested that he had been faced with an ultimatum. Dikon had come upon Mrs. Claire on her knees before an old trunk, shaking her head over Edwardian photographs and aimlessly arranging them in heaps. When she saw him she murmured something about clinging to one’s household gods wherever one went. Barbara, who had taken to confiding in Dikon, told him that she had sworn Simon to secrecy over the incident by the lake, but that Questing had been closeted with her father for half an hour, still wearing his blood-stained shirt, and had no doubt given the Colonel his own version of the affray. Dikon had described the scene by the lake to Gaunt, and half-way through the recital, wished he had left it alone. Gaunt was surprisingly interested. “It really is most intriguing,” he said, rubbing his delicate hands together. “I was right about the girl, you see. She has got something. I’m never mistaken. She’s incredibly gauche, she talks like a madwoman, and she grimaces like a monkey. That’s simply because she’s raw, uncertain of herself. It’s the bone one should look at. Show me good bone, and a pair of eyes, give me a free hand, and I’ll create beauty. She’s roused the unspeakable Questing, you see.”

“But Questing has his eye on the place.”

“Nobody, my dear Dikon, for the sake of seven squalid mud puddles is going to marry a woman who doesn’t attract him. No, no, the girl’s got something. I’ve been talking to her. Studying her. I tell you I’m never mistaken. You remember that understudy child at the Unicorn? I saw there was something in her. I told the management. She’s never looked back. It’s a flair one has. I could…” Gaunt paused, and took his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “It would be rather fun to try,” he said.

With a sensation of panic, Dikon said: “To try what, sir?”

“Dikon, shall I make Barbara Claire a present? What was the name of the dress shop we noticed in Auckland? Near the hotel? Quite good? You must remember. A ridiculous name.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Sarah Snappe! Of course. Barbara shall have a new dress for this Maori concert on Saturday. Black, of course. It must be terribly simple. You can write at once. No, perhaps you should go to Harpoon and telephone, and they must put it on tomorrow’s train. There was a dress in the window, woollen with a dusting of steel stars. Really quite good. It would fit her. And ask them to be kind and find shoes and gloves for us. If possible, stockings. You can get the size somehow. And underclothes, for God’s sake. One can imagine what hers are like. I shall indulge myself in this, Dikon. And we must take her to a hairdresser and stand over him. I shall make her up. If Sarah Snappe doesn’t believe you’re my secretary you can ring up the hotel and do it through them.” Gaunt beamed at his secretary. “What a child I am, after all, Dikon, aren’t I? I mean this is going to give me such real pleasure.”

Dikon said in a voice of ice: “But it’s quite impossible, sir.”

“What the devil do you mean!”

“There’s no parity between Barbara Claire and an understudy at the Unicorn.”

“I should damn well say there wasn’t. The other little person had quite a lot to start with. She was merely incredibly vulgar.”

“Which Barbara Claire is not,” said Dikon. He looked at his employer, noted his air of peevish complacency and went on steadily. “Honestly, sir, the Claires would never understand. You know what they’re like. A comparative stranger to offer their daughter clothes!”

“Why the hell not?”

“It just isn’t done in their world.”

“You’ve become maddeningly class-conscious all of a sudden, my good Dikon. What is their world, pray?”

“Shall we say proudly poor, sir?”

“The suspicious-genteel, you mean. The incredibly, the insultingly stupid bourgeoisie who read offence in a kindly impulse. You wish me to understand that these people would try to snub me, don’t you?”

“I think they would be very polite,” Dikon said, and tried not to sound priggish, “but it would, in effect, be a snub. I’m sure they would understand that your impulse was a kind one.”

Gaunt’s face had bleached. Dikon, who knew the danger signals, wondered in a panic if he was about to lose his job. Gaunt walked to the door and looked out. With his back still turned to his secretary he said: “You will go into Harpoon and give the order over the telephone. The bill is to be sent to me, and the parcel to be addressed to Miss Claire. Wait a moment.” He went to his desk and wrote on a slip of paper. “Ask them to write out this message and put it in the parcel. No signature, of course. You will go at once, if you please.”

“Very well, sir,” said Dikon.

Filled with the liveliest misgivings he went out to the car. Simon was in the garage. Gaunt had been granted a traveller’s petrol license and Simon had offered to keep the magnificent car in order. Gloating secretly, he would spend hours over slight adjustments; cleaning, listening, peering.

“I still reckon we might advance the spark a bit,” he said without looking at Dikon.

“I’m going into Harpoon,” said Dikon. “Would you care to come?”

“I don’t mind.”

Dikon had learnt to recognize this form of acceptance. “Jump in then,” he said. “You can drive.”

“I won’t come at that.”

“Why not?”

“She’s not my bus. Not my place to drive her.”

“Don’t be an ass. I’ve got a free hand and I’m asking you. You can check up the engine better if you’re driving, can’t you?”

He saw desire and defensiveness struggling together in Simon. “Get on with it,” he said and sat firmly in the passenger’s place.

They drove round the house and up the abominable drive. Dikon glanced at Simon and was touched by his look of inward happiness. He drove delicately and with assurance.

“Running well, isn’t she?” asked Dikon.

“She’s a trimmer,” said Simon. As the car gathered speed on the main road he lost his customary air of mulishness and gained a kind of authority. Bent on dismissing the scene with Gaunt from his thoughts, Dikon lured Simon into talking about his own affairs, his impatience to get into uniform, his struggles with Morse, his passionate absorption with the war in the air. Dikon thought how young Simon would have seemed among English youth of his own age and how vulnerable. “I’m coming on with the old dah-dah-dit, though,” Simon said. “I’ve made my own practice transmitter. It’s got a corker fulcrum, too. I’m not so hot at receiving yet, but I can get quite a bit of the stuff on the short wave. Nearly all code, of course, but some of it’s straight English. Gosh, I wish they’d pull me in. It’s a blooming nark the way they keep you hanging about.”

“They’ll miss you on the place.”

“We won’t be on the place much longer, don’t you worry. Questing’ll look after that. By cripey, I sometimes wonder if it’s a fair pop, me going away when that bloke’s hanging round.” They drove on in silence for a time and then, without warning, Simon burst into a spate of bewildered protest and fury. It was difficult to follow the progress of his ideas: Questing’s infamy, the Colonel’s unworldliness, Barbara’s virtue, the indignation of the Maori people, and the infamy of big business and vested interests were inextricably mixed together in his discourse. Presently, however, a new theme appeared. “Uncle James,” said Simon, “reckons the curio business is all a blind. He reckons Questing’s an enemy agent.”

Dikon made a faint incredulous noise. “Well he might be,” said Simon combatively. “Why not? You don’t kid yourself they haven’t got agents in New Zealand, do you?”

“Somehow he doesn’t strike me as the type — ”

“They don’t knock round wearing masks and looking tough,” Simon pointed out with an unexpected touch of his uncle’s acerbity.

“I know, I know. It’s only that one hears such a lot of palpable nonsense about spies that the whole idea is suspect. Like arrow poison in a detective story. Why does Dr. Ackrington think — ”

“I don’t get the strength of it myself. He wouldn’t say much. Only dropped hints that we needn’t be so sure Questing’d kick Dad ofï the place. Were you in this country when the Hippolyte was torpedoed?”

“No. We heard about it, of course. It was a submarine, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. The Hippolyte put out from Harpoon at night. She went down in sight of land. Uncle James reckoned at the time that the raider got the tip from someone on shore.”

“Questing?” said Dikon, and tried very hard to keep the note of scepticism from his voice.

“Yeah, Questing. Uncle James dopes it out that it’s been Questing’s idea to get this place on his own ever since he lent Dad the money. He reckons he’s been acting as an agent for years and that he’ll use the Springs as his headquarters with bogus patients and as likely as not a secret transmitting station.”

“Oh, Lord!”

“Well, anyway he’s acted pretty crook, hasn’t he? I don’t think it’s so funny. And if the old dead-beats at Home hadn’t been too tired to take notice, perhaps we wouldn’t have been looking so silly now,” Simon added vindictively. “Chaps like Questing ought to be cleaned right up, I reckon. Out of it altogether. What’d they do with them in Russia? Look here,” Simdn continued, “I’ll tell you something. The night before the Hippolyte went down there was a light flashing on the Peak. Some of the chaps over at the Kainga, Eru and Rewi Te Kahu and that gang, had gone out in a boat from Harpoon and they said they saw it. Uncle James has seen it since. Everybody knows there’s a reinforcement sailing any time now. What’s Questing doing, where does he go half the time? He’s messing round on the Peak isn’t he? Why did he try to put Bert Smith under the train?” Dikon attempted to speak and was firmly talked down. “Accident my foot,” said Simon. “He ought to be charged with attempted murder. The police round here seem to think they amount to something, I reckon they don’t know they’re born.”

“Well,” Dikon said mildly, “what action do you propose to take?”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic,” Simon roared out. “If you want to know what I’m going to do I’ll tell you. I’m going to stay up at nights. If Questing goes out I’ll slip after him and I’ll watch the Peak. My Morse’ll be good enough for what he does. It’ll be in code, of course, but if it’s Morse he’s using I’ll spot it. You bet I will, and by gum I’ll go to the station at Harpoon and if they won’t pull him in on that I’ll charge him with attempted murder.”

“And if they don’t care for that either?”

“I’ll do something,” said Simon. “I’ll do something.”