Limekiller!

She swum right around and, seeing Limekiller there, made some sound he could not hear, he only saw her mouth moving… for a moment. then she had disengaged herself from Dicky (Hughy — Alfy — Herb) and hot-tailed it (le mot juste, murmured a bitter little voice in Limekiller’s suddenly hot ears) either to the ladies’ room or the back door — they lay along the same passageway -

And her soldier (and anyone less-aunty-like could not have been imagined: but sure it was him she had been with ever since leaving Jack earlier that day. not, however, before collecting the twenty dollars National Currency), having first turned and gaped after her, now turned, gaping still; and, seeing Limekiller, stood facing him with his legs slightly apart and his hands at his sides: they were not yet formed into fists, but — And on his face a look mingled of sheepishness, truculence, and -

Brutal. Was the missing word. Whose? A Brutal and Licentious Soldiery: who gave a good dribbly-shit whose?

Moved by some sudden, secret, and unseemly thought, and knowing all the while that the thought was not at all a nice one; but moved; Limekiller turned on his heel and left the bar, walking very rapidly. Once inside the hotel he restrained himself from galloping up the stairs, there was the room, here was the key, the door opened, the light switched on, there was the still-rumpled bed and he was sure there had been no pillow lying in the middle of it when he had left the room and he buffetted it to one side -

Someone, and someone male, had left his signature upon the sheet.

And the ink was still wet.

The soldier did not seem to have moved in the meanwhile.

Limekiller thrust his hand deep into his right-hand pocket. Hughy (Alfy? Dickv? Herb?) flinched very slightly and prepared to assume a stance. Limekiller tossed something through the air; the soldier flinched again, ducked only slightly, but did catch it — give him that — and, forgetful for the moment of a possible sudden onslaught, glanced at it.

It was a huge oval of ornately embossed and engraved leather, one of the few surviving from the Pelican’s better days, and attached to it was the comparatively small key.

Lance-corporal Throstlethwaite or Thimblepate or whatever his name was, simply went on standing there, holding it. Not no fooking knife. Not no fooking grenade. He was, for the moment, more puzzled than fight-prone.

“You can use the same towel, too,” Limekiller said.

Turned and left.

In the street, darkness alternating with lamp-glare, he told himself, Well, what about it? She was your whore, you were her john. Business is business, no banns were read, she’s got a perfect right to. No, not in the bed he paid for; she hasn’t got-

Then he stopped and clapped one hand to his head. But what was the woman’s reason, not for what she did, but for how she did it? Why had she told him to, meet him there “at the stroke of ten,” when she intended to appear there with another man at the same stroke? It beat the be-jesus out of him to figure that out; but, as is usual in such times, after considering his heart and his pride, next he considered his purse: Fifteen dollah fah one night, fiddlesticks: Twice the same amount per diem would not have covered it all (and fifteen dollars a week was a tolerable local wage for harder work than that), beginning with. beginning with. well, never mind what it had begun with, the affair had contained no sordid matter of wages-and-hours disputes: consider the gold earrings he had bought, innocently without considering whether they were for pierced ears or not; they were, hers weren’t, she snatched them out of his palm with cries of, “Oh, for them, for them, I will have my ears pierced!” — whatever had been pierced in this petite affaire had not been Bathsheba’s ears.

What had she done with them? Sold them? Traded then for some other jewelry? Or, like what’s her name in the Bible, traded them like the mandrakes for another man? He would never know now, and, had he asked her earlier, likely not even then. “Dese women here,” someone had said, moodily, and in no joyful mood either, “even when got nutting to gain by tell lie, tell lie anyway, juss fah keep in proctice, mon.” — and his friend nodded a nod of sad experience, adding, “Ahn why dey wear dem tight frock even when so hot, mon? To mehk ah mahn w’onlv luss, mon; why.”

Well, lust, love, or lunacy, it was all new and hot and hurtful, and hateful, whore or no whore: it all hurt; only that one puzzle remained: why had she made such a precise date? in order to present him with his successor? to make the case quite plain? to prevent boring discussion? to increase her self-esteem by having two men (at least two. and who knew how big the brawl might have grown?) publicly fighting over her?