‘Missed it, did you?’ said Simon complacently. ‘And there you were sitting where you might have touched him. What beats me is why he did it. D’you reckon he’s got it so much on his mind he’s acting kind of automatically?’

‘If I had the faintest idea what you were talking about, I might attempt to answer you.’

‘Aren’t you conscious yet? I was sitting in here trying to dope things out when I heard it. I snooped round to the corner. All through the hooey Gaunt and Falls were spilling about Shakespeare or someone. It was the same in every detail.’

‘For pity’s sake, what was the same in every detail?’

‘The tapping. A long one repeated three times. Dah, dah, dah. Then five short dits. Then three shorts. Then the whole works repeated. The flashes from the cliff all over again. So what have you?’

They stared at each other. ‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ said Dikon. ‘Why? Why? Why?’

‘Search me.’

‘Coincidence?’

‘The odds against coincidence are long enough to make you dizzy. No, I reckon I’m right. It’s habit. He’s had to memorize it and he’s gone over and over it in his mind before he shot the works on Thursday night…’

‘Hold on. Hold on. Whose habit?’

‘Aw hell,’ said Simon disgustedly. ‘You’re dopey. Who the heck are we talking about?’

‘We’re talking about two different people,’ said Dikon excitedly. ‘Questing had picked up that pipe just before you came on the scene. It wasn’t Questing who tapped out your blasted signal. It was Mr Septimus Falls.’

Chapter 8
Concert

The telephone at Wai-ata-tapu was on a party line. The Claires’ tradesmen used it, and occasionally weekend trippers who rang up to give notice of their arrival. Otherwise, until Gaunt and Dikon came, it was seldom heard. The result of housing a celebrity, however, had begun to work out very much as Mr Questing had predicted. During the first weekend, quite a spate of visitors had arrived, ostensibly for thermal divertissements, actually, so it very soon transpired, with the object of getting a close-up view of Geoffrey Gaunt. These visitors, with an air of studied nonchalance, walked up and down the verandah, delayed over their tea, and attempted to pump Huia as to the whereabouts of the celebrity. The hardier among them came provided with autograph books which passed, by way of Barbara, from Huia to Dikon and thence to Gaunt, who, to the astonishment of Mrs Claire, cheerfully signed every one of them. He kept to his room, however, until the last of the visitors, trying not to look baffled, had lost patience and gone home. Once, but only once, Mr Questing had succeeded in luring him on to the verandah, and on Gaunt’s discovering what he was up to had been treated to such a blast of temperament as sent him back into the house nervously biting his fingers.