Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

With this unconvincing reassurance Dikon had to be content. They said good night and he went to bed.

At twenty minutes past twelve on that same night a ship was torpedoed in the Tasman Sea six miles north-west of Harpoon Inlet. She was the same ship that Simon, from his eyrie of Friday night, had watched loading in the harbour. Later, they were to learn that she was the Hokianga , outward bound from New Zealand with a cargo of bullion for the United States of America. It was a very still night, warm, with a light breeze off the sea, and many Harpoon people said afterwards that they heard the explosion. The news was brought to Wai-ata-tapu the following morning by Huia, who rushed in with her eyes rolling and poured it out. Most of the crew was saved, she said, and had been landed at Harpoon. The Hokianga had not yet gone to the bottom, and from the Peak it was possible, through field-glasses, to see her bows pointed despairingly at the skies.

Simon plunged into Dikon’s room, full of angry triumph, and doubly convinced of Questing’s guilt. He was all for leaping on his bicycle and pedalling furiously into Harpoon. In his own words he proposed to stir up the dead-beats at the police station, and the local army headquarters. “If I’d gone yesterday like I wanted to, it wouldn’t have happened. By cripey, I’ve let him get away with it. That was your big idea, Bell, and I hope you’re tickled to death the way it’s worked out.” Dikon tried to point out that even if the authorities at Harpoon were less somnolent than Simon represented them to be, they would scarcely have been able in twelve hours to prevent the activities of an enemy submarine.

“They might have stopped the ship,” cried Simon.

“On your story that you saw lights on the Peak? Yes, I know there was a definite sequence and that it was repeated. I myself believe you’re onto something, but you won’t move authority as easily as that.”

“To hell with authority!” poor Simon roared out. “I’ll go and knock Questing’s bloody block off for him.”

“Not again,” said Dikon sedately. “You really can’t continue in your battery of Questing. You know I still think you should speak to Dr. Ackrington, who, you say yourself, already suspects him.”

In the end Simon, who seemed, in spite of his aggressiveness, to place some kind of reliance on Dikon’s advice, agreed to keep away from Questing, and to tell his story to his uncle. When, however, he went to find Dr. Ackrington, it was only to discover he had already driven away in his car saying that he would probably return before lunch.

“Isn’t it a fair nark!” Simon grumbled. “What’s he think he’s doing? Precious time being wasted. To hell with him anyway, I’ll think something up for myself. Don’t you go talking, now. We don’t want everyone to know.”

“I’ll keep it under my hat,” said Dikon. “Gaunt knows, of course. I told you — ”

“Oh, hell!” said Simon disgustedly.

Gaunt came out and told Dikon he wanted to be driven to the Peak. He offered a seat in the car to anyone who would like it. “I’ve asked your sister,” he said to Simon. “Why don’t you come too?” Simon consented ungraciously. They borrowed the Colonel’s field-glasses, and set out.

It was the first time Dikon had been to Rangi’s Peak. After crossing the railway line, the road ran out to the coast and thence along a narrow neck of land, at the end of which rose the great truncated cone. So symmetrical was its form that even at close quarters the mountain seemed to be the expression of some grossly simple impulse — the impulse, one would have said, of a primordial cubist. The road ended abruptly at a gate in a barbed-wire fence. A notice, headed Native Reserve , set out a number of prohibitions. Dikon saw that it was forbidden to remove any objects found on the Peak.

They were not the first arrivals. Several cars were parked outside the fence.

“You have to walk from here,” said Simon, and glanced disparagingly at Gaunt’s shoes.

“Oh, God! Is it far?”

“ You might think so.”

Barbara cut in quickly. “Not very. It’s a good path and we can turn back if you don’t think it’s worth it.”

“So we can. Come on,” said Gaunt with an air of boyish hardihood, and Simon led the way, following the outside of the barbed-wire fence. They were moving round the flank of the Peak. The turf was springy under their feet, the air fresh with a tang in it. Some way behind them the song of a lark, a detached pin-prick of sound, tinkled above the peninsula. Soon his voice faded into thin air and was lost in the mewing of a flight of gulls who came flapping in from seawards. “I never hear those creatures,” said Gaunt, “without thinking of a B.B.C. serial.” He looked up the sloping flank of the mountain, to where its crater stood black against the brilliant sky. “And that’s where they buried their dead?”

Barbara pointed to the natural planes of ascent in the structure of the mountain. “It looks as if they had made a road up to the top,” she said, “but I don’t think they did. It’s as though the hill had been shaped for the purpose, isn’t it? They believe it was, you know. Of course they haven’t used it for ages and ages. At least, that’s what we’re told. There are stories of a secret burial up there after the pakehas came.”

“Do they never come here, nowadays?”

“Hardly at all. It’s tapu. Some of the younger ones who don’t mind so much wander about the lower slopes, but they don’t go into the bush and I’m sure they never climb to the top. Do they, Sim?”

“Too much like hard work,” Simon grunted.

“No, it’s not that, really. It’s because of the sort of place it is.”

Simon gave Dikon a gloomily significant glance. “Yeh,” he said. “Do what you like up there and nobody’s going to ask questions.”

“You refer to the infamous Questing,” said Gaunt lightly. Simon glared at him and Dikon said hurriedly: “I told you I had spoken to Mr. Gaunt of our little theory.”

“That’s right,” Simon said angrily. “So now we’ve got to gas about it in front of everybody.”

“If you mean me,” said Barbara, whom even the mention of Questing could not embarrass that morning, “I know all about what he’s supposed to do on the Peak.”

Simon stopped short. “You!” he said. “ What do you know?” Barbara didn’t answer immediately, and he said roughly: “Come on. What do you know?”

“Well, only what they’re all saying about Maori curios.”

“Oh,” said Simon. “That.” Dikon spared a moment to hope that if Simon did well in the Air Force they would not make the mistake of entrusting him with secret instructions.

“And I know Uncle James thinks it’s something worse, and…” She broke off and looked from one to another of the three men. Dikon blinked, Gaunt whistled, and Simon looked inescapably portentous. “Sim!” cried Barbara. “You’re not thinking… about this … the ship? Oh, but it couldn’t possibly… ”

“Here, you keep out of this, Barbie,” said Simon in a great hurry. “Uncle James talks a lot of hooey. You want to forget it. Come on.”

The track, curving always to the right, now mounted the crest of a low hill. The seaward horizon marched up to meet them. In three strides their whole range of vision was filled with blue. Harpoon Inlet lay behind on their left; on their right Rangi’s Peak rose from the sea in a sharp cliff. The fence followed the top of this cliff, leaving a narrow path between itself and the actual verge.

“If you want to see anything,” said Simon, “you’ll have to get up there. Do you mind heights?”

“Speaking for myself,” said Gaunt, “they inspire me with vertigo, nausea, and a strongly marked impulse towards felo-de-se . However, having come so far I refuse to turn back. That fence looks tolerably strong. I shall cling to it.” He smiled at Barbara. “If you should happen to notice the mad glint of suicide in my eye,” he said, “I wish you’d fling your arms round me and thus restore me to my nobler self.”