After he had finished, there was a long pause. Then everybody began to talk at once. Then—
Sneed: Well, suppose we shall have to inform the lawyers, but don't see what they can do about it. Deed was executed whilst the old fellow was alive and has nothing to do with any question of the estate.
D.C. Pike: I quite agree with you. Unofficially, of course. Officially, all I am to do is to make my report. The child? Why, yes, of course I know her. She is an outside child of my brother Harrison, who died even before the late Mr. Pike died. The late Mr. Pike seemed rather fond of her. The late Mr. Pike did, I believe, always give something to the child's old woman to keep her in clothes and find her food. As we ourselves have sometimes done, as best we could. But of course this will make a difference.
Sneed: As it should. As it should. He had put you big chaps to school and helped you make your own way in the world, but this was a mere babe. Do you suppose that he knew that such an estate was bound to be involved in litigation and that was why he tried to help the child with all this . . . this treasure business?
Marín: Mis-tah Pike, he ahlways give ah lahf ahn he say, nobody gweyn molest he treasure, seguro, no, becahs he di set such watchies roun ah-bote eet as no mahn adventure fi trifle wid day.
May: I can't help feeling that it's someone's cue to say, "This all seems highly irregular."
Roberts, Chief Clerk (softly but firmly): Oh, no, Miss. The Stamp Tax was paid according to regulations, Miss. Everything seems in regular order, Miss.
Watchies. A "watchie" was a watchman, sometimes registered as a private constable, thus giving him . . . Jack was not sure exactly what it gave him: except a certain status. But it was obvious that this was not what "the late Mr. Pike" had had in mind.
Finally, the District Commissioner said, "Well, well. Tomorrow is another day.—Richardson's Mahogany Lines! Who would have thought to look there? Nobody! It took eighty years after Richardson cut down all the mahogany before it was worthwhile for anybody to go that side again. And . . . how long since the late Mr. Pike cut down the last of the 'new' mahogany? Ten to fifteen years ago. So it would be sixty-five to seventy-five years before anybody would have gone that side again. Even to look. Whatever we may find there would not have been stumbled upon before then, we may be sure. Well, Well.
"Sergeant Bickerstaff, please take these gentlemen's and ladies' statements. Meanwhile, perhaps we can have some further cups of tea. . . ."
Taking the statement, that action so dearly beloved of police officials wherever the Union Jack flies or has flown, went full smoothly. That is, until the moment (Limekiller later realized it was inevitable, but he had not been waiting for it, then), the moment when Sgt. Bickerstaff looked up, raised his pen, asked, "And what made you go and seek for this Indian jar, sir, which gave the clue to this alleged treasure, Mr. Limekiller? That is, in other words, how did you come to know that it was there?"
Limekiller started to speak. Fell silent beyond possibility of speech. But not Captain Sneed.
"He knew that it was there because Old Pike had dreamed it to him that it was there," said Captain Sneed.
Bickerstaff gave a deep nod, raised his pen. Set it down. Lifted it up. Looked at Jack. "This is the case, Mr. Limekiller, sir?"
Jack said, "Yes, it is." He had, so suddenly, realized it to be so.
"Doubt" was not the word for the emotion on the police-sergeant's face. "Perplexity," it was. He looked at his superior, the District Commissioner, but the District Commissioner had nothing to advise. It has been said by scholars that the Byzantine Empire was kept alive by its bureaucracy. Chief Clerk Roberts cleared his throat. In the tones of one dictating a routine turn of phrase, he produced the magic words.
" 'Acting upon information received,' " he said, " 'I went to the region called Crocodile Cove, accompanied by,' and so carry on from there, Sergeant Bickerstaff," he said.
In life, if not in literature, there is always anticlimax. By rights—by dramatic right, that is—they should all have gone somewhere and talked it all over. Talked it all out. And so tied up all the loose ends. But in fact there was nowhere for them all to go and do this. The police were finished when the statement was finished. District Officer Pike, who had had a long, hard day, did not suggest further cups of tea. Tía Sani's was closed. The Emerging Nation Bar and Club was closed, and in the other clubs and bars local usage and common custom held that the presence of "ladies" was contra-indicated: so did common sense.
Wherever Captain Sneed lived, Captain Sneed was clearly not about to offer open house. "Exhausted," he said. And looked it. "Come along, ladies, I will walk along with you as far as the Guest House. Limekiller. Tomorrow."
What should Limekiller do? Carry them off to his landing at the Grand Arawack? Hospitality at Government Guest House, that relic of days when visitors, gaunt and sore from mule transport, would arrive at an even smaller St. Michael's, hospitality there was reported to be of a limited nature; but surely it was better than a place where the urinals were tied up in brown paper and string?(—Not that they'd use them anyway, the thought occurred.)
May said, "Well, if you get sick again, yell like Hell for us."
Felix said, reaching out her slender hand, whose every freckle he had come to know and love, she said, "Will you be all right, Jack?" Will you be all right, Jack? Not, mind you, You'll be all right, Jack. It was enough. (And if it wasn't, this was not the time and place to say what would be.)
"I'll be all right," he assured her.
But, back on his absurdly sheeted bed, more than slightly fearful of falling asleep at all, the river, the moment he closed his eyes, the river began to unfold before him, mile after beautiful and haunted mile. But this was a fairly familiar effect of fatigue. He had known it to happen with the roads and the wheatfields, in the Prairie Provinces.
It was on awakening to the familiar cockeling chorus of, I make the sun to rise! that he realized that he had not dreamed at all.
St. Michael's did not have a single bank; and, what was more—or less—it did not have a single lawyer. Attorneys for the Estate (alerted perhaps by the telephone's phantom relay) arrived early. But they did not arrive early enough . . . early enough to delay the digging. By the time the first lawyeriferous automobile came spinning to a stop before the local courthouse, the expedition was already on its way. The attorney for the Estate requested a delay, the attorneys for the several groups of claimants requested a delay. But the Estate's local agent had already given a consent, and the magistrate declined to set it aside. He did not, however, forbid them to attend.
Also in attendance was one old woman and one small girl. Limekiller thought that both of them looked familiar. And he was right. One was the same old woman who had urged him in out of the "fever rain." The other was the child who had urged him to see "the beauty harse" and had next day made the meager purchases in Mikeloglu's shop . . . whom the merchant had addressed as "Bet-ty me gyel," and urged her (with questionable humor) not to forget him when she was rich.
The crocodile stayed unvexed in his lair beneath the roots of the old Garobo Tree, though, seemingly, half the dragons along the river had dived to alert him.
To walk five hundred feet, as a start, is no great feat if one is in reasonable health. To cut and hack and ax and slash one's way through bush whose clearings require to be cleared twice a year if they are not to vanish: this is something else. However, the first hundred feet proved to be the hardest (and hard enough to eliminate all but the hardiest of the lawyers). At the end of that first line they found their second marker: a lichen-studded rock growing right out of the primal bones of the earth. From there on, the task was easier. Clearly, though "the late Mr. Pike" had not intended it to be impossible, he had intended it to be difficult.