With no more word than at the beginning, the old man got up, and, followed by his congregation, made ready to eat the supper: a gesture sufficed to invite the newcomer.
Afterward he wrote out and handed over a paper.
The Permanent Under-secretary
Honorable:
Pray help Mr. John Limekiller help me to help the Lord Bishop.
Yrs in Christ,
William C.A. Darien
„I trust that may do it,” said Archbishop Le Beau.
Jack thought it certainly would may. British Hidalgo was, and its people believed it was, and announced on every occasion that it was “a Christian country.” Limekiller rather thought the brief document would easily serve as neck-verse, should he commit manslaughter upon ten Turkish merchants.
But though the letter moved the Permanent Under-secretary to initial and stamp it with no more delay than it took him to do those two things and to murmur, “Certainly. Certainly. ” — lining up the supplies was another thing entirely.
Joe Jefferson, at the woodyard, said, “Well, Jock, as you come in the name of the Chorch, I won’t lahf in your face. Ahl I can do is to tell you, Impossible. We have twenty men in the bush now, cutting stick for us as fahst as can be cut. Even if you’d take it green, Jock, even if you’d take it green — no, mon, Jock. Me waiting list —”
“Pine Tree Creek?”
“Pine Tree Creek.”
And Velasquez, in his dusty warehouse at the wharf’s edge, did no more than shrug, shake his head, point. Where, usually, sacks of cement were piled almost to the ceiling, now only a scant score or so sat on the floor. “And the)' going out in the marning,” he said.
“Pine Tree Creek, I suppose.”
A deep nod. No more.
And Witherington, the White Jamaican at the hardware house, “I couldn’t give you a nail, b'y. fah me own cahfin! No corrugated iron! No pipe! No screw! Pine Tree Creek project wipe me clean, me b’y! I am waiting now for goods to come in from Kingston. And as soon as the ship comes in, you know where the goods going to go?”
“Let me guess, Mr. Witherington. Pine Tree Creek?”
Witherington’s answer was to throw up both arms and to cry, “Hallelujah!”
There hadn’t been such shortages in King Town since the War; on the other hand, there hadn’t been such prosperity since Prohibition had been repealed in the United States, bringing rum-running to an end.
However, puissant and powerful though Hector Manufacturing Company of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Sudbury, Ontario, was, there was evidently a thing or two which it didn’t know. Its compradors, flying back and forth between three countries, had assumed that the leading suppliers in a capital city, even a colonial capital city, even of a small colony, would be well-stocked with supply. Perhaps at one time this had been true. Perhaps even fifty years ago, when some of the ancient English and Scottish families had still been in business, it might have been true. But, one by one, the Depression had closed their doors. One by one they had closed up their old houses on the Foreshore, and vanished away. The declining trade in precious tropical woods — mahogany, rosewood, cedar — had shrunken the colonial purse. Levantine merchants (commonly called “Turks") had come in, and Chinese, too; Baymen had set up in business; and so had more than one or two with (to employ the American expression) “Spanish surnames.” The old order changeth — right? And, so, suddenly, did the old order of the weather.
In the whole of the nineteenth century, only two hurricanes had struck British Hidalgo. In the past thirty years, it had been struck by five. And after one’s stock had been washed away once. twice. three times. one feels a certain hesitancy in building it up again.
It might, indeed, it certainly would have been possible to have set up warehouses in the Out-District capital of St. Frances of the Mountains, thirty miles from the coast: and to have filled orders from there in less than a day. But no one did that. No one at all did that. Perhaps the idea of the cost of shipping goods sixty miles did not appeal. Perhaps. Ah, well. What was done, instead, was to keep on hand as small a stock as possible. And if an order for more than one had in stock was received, one of course took the order. took an advance against the full payment for the order. and then one ordered the balance of the order. From Jamaica, perhaps. From New Orleans. From Puerto Cortes, “in republican waters.” Even from London.
And when the “next few days” or “the next week or so” arrived, and no supply, what then? Well, for one thing, the customer could wait, he could bloody well wait, returning day after day to hear whatever imaginative account the local supplier chose to supply him with -
“Beeg strike in Leevah pool, sah.”
“Ahl de American ship transfer to Veet Nom, sah.”
“We cable Jahmaicah, sah. We waiting reply, sah.”
“Sah-mill break down, sah. Sending to Nicaragua fah new sah, sah.”
— not seldom the customer simply returned to wherever he had come from, never to come back — never, to his sorrow, having heard or assimilated the saying which even Cervantes had known: He who would carry the wealth of the Indies back with him, must carry the wealth of the Indies out with him.
And, in such cases, the goods ordered eventually arriving, there they were, making such a brave display as to assure the next customer that all was well.
The next customer, in this case, being the Hector Manufacturing Company of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Sudbury, Ont..
Hector had made agreements with every supplier in King Town, and had ignored every supplier in the rest of the country. Hector was being supplied, it was still being supplied, one large cargo ship could have carried off everything in every warehouse in King Town down to Pine Tree Creek. However, no large cargo ship could get closer to King Town than two miles off-shore, whence cargo was lightered in — transferred, that is, to motor-barge. And it was thus impossible for any large or even moderate-sized cargo ship to engage in the coastal trade. So Hector’s cargo came down little by little, but it came in such a steady procession that Hector had not realized what was coming next.
To whit, and for quite a while: nothing.
In the meanwhile, that was exactly what Jack Limekiller was able to aquire in King Town.
Nothing.
He came up with the notion that he might at any rate try and see if things might be any better in Port Caroline. He even had the very get-up-and-go notion that he would actually telephone Port Caroline. That is to say, Port Caroline not being a person, it could not itself be telephoned: but he would phone some of the leading merchants in that other Out-District capital.
Very little research sufficed to advise him that none of them had a telephone. Not one. Not a single one. Supposedly, if any of the leading businessmen in Port Caroline required to phone someone of an equal status in, say, King Town, he simply walked down the street to the Telephone Office, in an out-building adjacent to the Post Office, and phoned from there. Cheaper to buy milk than to keep a cow, eh, Jack?