“Aw dikkon, Mr. Alleyn!” said Wade.

“What did you say?”

“Haven’t you heard that one, sir? I suppose it’s N.Z. digger slang. ‘Dikkon.’ It’s the same as if you’d say ‘Come off it.’ Hangover from the first world war, they reckon.”

“On Gallipoli? You were in the second show, were you, Wade?”

“Too right. Saw it through from start to finish.”

“What ages ago it seems. And is.”

Passing Sergeant Packer, who was on duty at the stage-door, they strolled back to the office, talking returned soldier’s shop.

“What do you think, Mr. Alleyn? If there’s another war will the young chaps come at it, same as we did, thinking it’s great? And get the same jolt? What do you reckon?”

“I’m afraid to speculate,” said Alleyn.

“Same here. And yet you know I often think: well, it was bloody but it wasn’t too bad. As long as you didn’t think too much it wasn’t too bad. There was a kind of feeling among the chaps that was all right. Know what I mean?”

“I do. One has to take that into account. The pacifists won’t succeed until they do. You can’t overstate the stupidity and squalid frightfulness, but equally you must recognise that there was a sort of — what? — a sort of emotional compensation; comradeship, I suppose, though it’s an ill-used word.”

“I often wonder if crooks feel the same.”

“That’s a thought.”

“Know what I mean?” continued Wade, encouraged. “As if they kind of forgot they were crooks and anti-social, and got a kick out of being all together on the same old game.”

“I should think it was quite likely. All the same they’re a hopeless lot — the rank and file. Not much honour among thieves in my experience. Don’t you agree? That’s why homicide cases are specialised work, Wade. We’re not dealing with the class we’ve been trained to understand.”

“Too right. Look at this case, now.”

“Yes. Look at the damn’ thing. We’re wandering, Wade. We’ll have to get back to business. Come into the office and look at this plan. Have a cigarette.”

“Thanks, I don’t mind,” said Wade, taking one. They went into the office, more than ever subfusc in the late afternoon light, with dust already lying thick on Alfred Meyer’s old desk, and last night’s fire dead in the grate. Wade switched on the lamp and Alleyn walked over to the plan on the wall.

“Taking another look at the old lay-out, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Yes. I’ve got together a sort of theory about the case,” said Alleyn, with his usual air of diffidence. “If I may, I’ll go over it with you. It’s the result of this rather wholesale elimination of suspects. You’ll probably find a gap in it as wide as a church door. I’d be not altogether sorry if you did.”

“Well, sir, let’s have it.”

“Right you are. It begins about five minutes after the final curtain last night.”

Wade glanced up at Alleyn who still stood with his hands in his pockets contemplating the plan.

“How about taking the easy chair, sir?” asked Wade. “You’ll be seeing that thing in your sleep.”

“I dare say I shall. You see my whole theory is based on this plan. Come over here and I’ll tell you why.”

Wade got up and joined him. Alleyn pointed a long finger at the plan and began to explain.

Chapter XXII

FOURTH APPEARANCE OF THE TIKI

When Alleyn got back to the hotel he found Dr. Te Pokiha waiting for him.

“Had you forgotten that you were to dine with me this evening, Mr. Alleyn?”

“My dear Te Pokiha, no, I hadn’t forgotten, but I had no idea it was so late. Please forgive me. I do hope you haven’t been waiting very long.”

“I’ve only just arrived. Don’t worry, we’ve plenty of time.”

“Then if I may rush up and change—?”

“If you want to. Not a dinner-jacket, please. We shall be alone.”

“Right. I shan’t be five minutes.”

He was as good as his word. They had a cocktail together and then took the road in Te Pokiha’s car.

“We take the north-east road towards Mount Ruapehu,” said Te Pokiha. “I expect you are tired of hearing about our mountains and thermal districts. I am afraid New Zealanders are too eager to thrust these wonders at visitors, and to demand admiration.”

“I should like very much indeed to hear a Maori speak of them.”

“Really? You mean a real Maori — not a pakeha-Maori?”

“Yes.”

“We, too, are strangers in New Zealand, you know. We have only been here for about thirty generations. We brought our culture with us and applied it to the things we found here. Our religion too, and our science, if we may be allowed to call it science.”

Alleyn looked at the magnificent head. Te Pokiha was a pale Maori, straight-nosed, not very full-lipped. He might have been a Greek or an Egyptian. There was an aristocratic flavour about him, a complete absence of anything vulgar or tentative in his voice or his movements. His speech, gravely formal, carefully phrased, suited him and did not seem at all pedantic or affected.

“Where did you come from?” asked Alleyn.

“From Polynesia, and before that perhaps from Easter Island. Perhaps from South East Asia. The tohunga and rangitira say that in the beginning it was from Assyria, but I think the pakeha anthopologists do not follow us there. Our teaching was not given to everybody. Only the learned and noble classes were permitted to know the history of their race. It was learnt orally and through the medium of the carvings and hieroglyphics. My grandfather was a deeply-instructed rangitira and I learned much from him. He was a survival of the old order and his kind will not be seen much longer.”

“Do you regret the passing of the old order?”

“In some ways. I have a kind of pride of race — shall we say a savage pride? The pakeha has altered everything, of course. We have been unable to survive intact the fierce white light of his civilisation. In trying to follow his example we have forgotten many of our own customs and have been unable wisely to assimilate all of his. Hygiene and eugenics for example. We have become spiritually and physically obese. That is only my own view. Most of my people are well content, but I see the passing of the old things with a kind of nostalgia. The pakeha give their children Maori Christian names because they sound pretty. They call their ships and their houses by Maori names. It is perhaps a charming compliment, but to me it seems a little strange. We have become a side-show in the tourist bureau — our dances — our art — everything.”

“Such as the little green tiki? I understand what you mean.”

“Ah — the tiki.”

He paused and Alleyn had the impression that he had been going to say more about the tiki but had stopped himself. It was growing dark. Te Pokiha’s head was silhouetted against a background of green hills and very dark blue mountains.

“To the north are Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe,” he said. “My grandfather would have told you that the volcanic fires of Ngauruhoe were caused by the youngest son of the Earth Mother who lay deep underground with her child at her breast. The fire was given him for comfort by Rakahore, the rock-god.”

They drove on in silence until the mountains were black against the fading sky.

“My house is not very far off now,” said Te Pokiha quietly. And in a minute or two they crossed a clanking cattle-stop and plunged into a dark tunnel where the head-lights shone on the stems of tree-ferns.

“I like the smell of the bush,” said Alleyn.

“Yes? Do you know I once did a very foolish thing. It was when I was at the House — my first year at Oxford, and my first year in England. I became very homesick and wrote in my letters of my homesickness. I said that I longed for the smell of burning bush-wood and begged them to send me some. So my father sent me a case of logs. It was a very expensive business as you may imagine, but I burnt them in my fireplace at the House and the smoke of Te-Ika-a-Maui hung over the famous Dreaming Spires.” He burst out laughing. “Ridiculous, wasn’t it?”