The bar was small, clean, and quiet; he had been there once before; why had he not come again? Before trying to think why, he turned to the barkeep, who had himself turned into a waiter and was even now waiting for the order, and declared for “A chaparita of —” he hesitated naming his poison and it was now named for him. (“Of Governor Morgan,” said the new-found host, specifying the by-far-the-best local rum.) “Thank you, sir,” saidjack. “- and an entire lime,” saidjack, “plus the tallest glass in the house, and all the ice not needed to keep the snapper fresh.” This harmless play, with its implication that The Spyglass was a fishing-boat without a “wet-well,” was received with good humor on the part of the waiter, the young woman whose Christian name certainly ended in — ita, her companion, coming more and more clearly into focus by the moment: and even from the shadow corner was now heard a chuckle with which Limekiller felt familiar: one thing at a time, however.
Just then, thank God, and not before time, either, the penny dropped. He pretended it had already done so. “Well, Superintendent,” he said, (he hoped) smoothly. “Nice to be in your company in some capacity other than that of a malefactor — not that that wasn’t as nice as it could possibly have been, I hasten to add.”
Clement Edward Alfred Cumberbatch, one of H.M.’s Superintendents of Police, waved his long brown hand. “A mere detail, Mr. Limekiller. Only a formality. Dismiss it from your mind forever. - Besides: I am off duty now.”
Limekiller was swiftly recruiting his health from the tallest, iciest, lime-iest, rum-iest glass in the house when a voice from the shadow corner said, “I am off duty now, too. But then, as you all know, I am always off duty.”
Miss — ita greeted this with a sound something like, “Tchuh!”, a sound much used by the women of British Hidalgo; but the Superintendent swept it and its implications away. “On the contrary. Professor, in my opinion you are always on duty, because you are always adding to our stock of knowledge.”
“Professor!” Limekiller exclaimed. “How did you get here so soon? I swear I never saw you by the Swing Bridge —” Instantly he said this, something insistently desired to remind him that he had seen someone else by the Swing Bridge, even less expectedly; but no time was allowed for reflection, introspection, or, possibly even —
“Never use the Bridge,” the Professor said; this was not an advice to others, it was a statement of personal preference. “I left right after you did, but I went down Shipwright Lane and hailed the ferry.”
“The, uh, ferry?”
Limekiller had not known there was a ferry, either by way of Shipwright Lane or anywhere else in King Town; in the Out- Districts: yes: a few several of them, some larger than others but all of them winched across the rivers by very hard labor; and all highly visible. “What ferry?”
The dark bar-parlor was becoming clearer now; there on the walls were the Inevitable Powers, side by side. sider by sider on the local walls than they usually ever were in real life: The Queen’s Own Majesty, in a long gown decorated with some sort of Order, and what Limekiller (having seen it, even, a million times in Canada, let alone British Hidalgo) thought of as The Royal Simper. this, on the Queen, not her gown. and, wearing a shortsleeved shirt open at the neck, and a cheerful grin, the Honorable Llewellyn Gonzaga MacBride, the Queen’s Chief Minister: hereabouts. The Spyglass’s walls were even more loyal than most: there was also a fairly new photograph of Sir Joshua Cummings, the Royal Governor, looking tickled pink in his official bicorn hat with dodo feathers or whatever the hell thev were — and if that were not enough, there was even an old, old, very old photograph of De W'old King, several kings or so ago, wearing an admiral’s uniform, a beard, and a look of such glassy-eyed rectitude and flexible stupidity as made Limekiller’s heart swell with loyalty to the House of Windsor and all its works. but perhaps this was only the rum.
“Grandy Smith ferry,” said Miss — ita, barely able to conceal her scorn at the ignorance of Bathsheba’s bondsman.
Limekiller still looking blank, it was explained to him that there was a Mrs. Widow Smith, who held, by grandfather (or perhaps great-grandfather) clause and/or other immemorial usage dating from such time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary (in King Town, say, around 1936), the right to row of pole passengers across the First (or, Belinda) River in a small boat, from Shipwright Lane on one side to Humble’s Wharf on the other; and to exact for this service the immense fare of five cents: “One simply stands as near the shore as possible without sinking into the ooze, and shouts and wigwags; after a while she trots out of her cottage and waves her apron, and at this point a young girl, aged about twelve, appears in the boat and takes one across. Mrs. Smith has innumerable descendants, all of whom seem to be young girls aged about twelve. Strong ones. — Sad scene back there at the Pelican, eh Limekiller?”
“Sad?“ Limekiller.
“Tchuh!” — Miss — ita.
“What was that?” — Superintendent Cumberbatch. Informed that that was “tormenting little Will Wiggins again,” the Superintendent gave a sigh, and shook his head. “Bad scene, eh, Mr. Limekiller?”
„Bad?“ I think it was absolutely- the worst scene I have ever witnessed. Worse, in fact, than the one which brought me before vou. that time.”
That time. Early on in his stay in the country, Jack, merely relaxing on a bench in what was officially named Queen Adelaide Triangle, but seldom called anything but Jack-ass Junction since donkey-carts had once gathered there to ply for hire (allegedly they had been banned because Lady Stoniecroft, the long-ago Governor’s wife, had suffered extreme shock at the sight of seeing one or more of the animals in that state of extreme good health for which the jack-ass is famous… or was, when the jack-ass was more numerous, and, hence, more often seen, flaccid, retracted, or Otherwise) — merely relaxing on a bench, shared by someone of whom he had noticed nothing more than a tendency towards narcolepsy; Jack had been frightened almost to the point of falling off the bench when the bench’s fellow-passenger had suddenly jerked awake and simultaneously began (a) to utter hideous screams, and (b) to fall upon Limekiller with blows and kicks too uncoordinated not to be easily resisted; they had both been almost immediately trotted off to “gaol” by a pair of police constables: hence Jack’s first interview with the Superintendent.
“Of course Mr. Limekiller was released at once. ‘Almost at once well, it might be so, my dear Mr. John; it took a bit of time to draw up the Report; you don’t mind, I’m sure… As for the other chap, poor chap, we simply tidied him up and put him on the Great Westerner truck with instructions to the driver not to let him off before Gangalong Grove, where his proper home was, he had people there to take care of him. odd affliction, is it not so, Professor, suffering from nightmares in the day-time?”
Professor Brolly (Jack, sipping rum and lime and melted ice- water, had a sudden vision of the Professor seated in the tiny wherry and being ferried across with his umbrella carefully opened and covering his head; imperturbably his own master in whatever craft) said, “The ephialtes may attack at noon as well as midnight.” He brushed his bushy moustachioes up with a single finger, right- side, left-side.