Limekiller!

There was a long outdrawn ahhh from the others. Then Ed Huggin said, “But Bob Blaine had both his eyes.”

Harlow stopped, picked a stone from the river bed, with dripping hand threw it in the bush. one would have said, at random. With an ugly croak, a buzzard burst up and away. Then Harlow said something, as true — and as dreadful — as it was unarguable. “He not hahv either of them, noew.”

By what misadventure and in what place Bob Blaine had lost one eye whilst alive and after decamping from his native land, no one knew: and perhaps it did not matter. He had trusted on “discretion” not to reveal his hideout, there at the site of his old bush-camp. But he had not trusted to it one hundred percent. Suppose that Limekiller were deceitfully or accidentally, to let drop the fact that a man was camping out there. A man with only one eye. What was the man’s name? John Samuel. What? — John Samuel. Ah. Then John Samuel had not, after all, died in Jamaica, according to report. Report had been known to be wrong before. John Samuel alive, then. No big thing. Nobody then would have been moved to go down there to check up. - Nobody, now, knew why Bob Blaine had returned. Perhaps he had made things too hot for himself, down in “Republican waters” — where hot water could be so very much hotter than back here. Perhaps some day a report would drift back up, and it might be a true report or it might be false or it might be a mixture of both.

As for the report, the official, Government one, on the circumstances surrounding the death or Roberto Blaine, a.k.a. Bob Blaine… as for Limekiller’s statement and the statements of the District Commissioner and the District Medical Officer and the autopsy and the photographs: why, that had all been neatly transcribed and neatly (and literally) laced with red tape, and forwarded up the coast to King Town. And as to what happened to it there —

“What do you think they will do about it, Doctor?”

Rafael’s rooms were larger, perhaps, than a bachelor needed. But they were the official quarters for the DMO, and so the DMO lived in them. The wide floors gleamed with polish. The spotless walls showed, here a shield, there a paddle, a harpoon with barbed head, the carapace of a huge turtle, a few paintings. The symmetry and conventionality of it all was slightly marred by the bookcases which were everywhere, against every wall, adjacent to desk and chairs. And all were full, crammed, overflowing.

Doctor Rafael shrugged. “Perhaps the woodlice will eat the papers,” he said. “Or the roaches, or the wee-wee-ants. The mildew. The damp. Hurricane. This is not a climate which helps preserve the history of men. I work hard to keep my own books and papers from going that way. But I am not Government, and Government lacks time and money and personnel, and. perhaps, also. Government has so many, many things pressing upon it. Perhaps, too, Government lacks interest.”

“What were those tracks, Doctor Rafael?”

Doctor Rafael shrugged.

“You do know, don’t you?”

Doctor Rafael grimaced.

“Have you seen them, or anything like them, before?”

Doctor Rafael, very slowly, very slowly, nodded.

“Well… for God’s sake. can you even give me a, well, a hint? I mean: that was a rather rotten experience for me, you know. And

The sunlight, kept at bay outside, broke in through a crack in the jalousies, sun making the scant white hair for an instant ablaze: like the brow of Moses. - Doctor Rafael got up and busied himself with the fresh lime and the sweetened lime juice and the gin and ice. He was rapt in this task, like an ancient apothecary mingling strange unguents and syrups. Then he gave one of the gimlets to his guest and from one he took a long, long pull.

“You see. I have two years to go before my retirement. The pension, well, it is not spectacular, but I have no complaint. I will be able to rest. Not for an hour, or an evening… an evening! only on my holidays, once a year, do I even have an evening all my own! — Well. You may imagine how I look forward. And I am not going to risk premature and enforced retirement by presenting Government with an impossible situation. One which wouldn’t be its fault, anyway. By insisting on impossible things. By demonstrating —”

He finished his drink. He gave Jack a long, shrewd look.

“So I have nothing more to say. about that. If they want to believe, up in King Town, that the abominable Bob Blaine was mauled by a crocodile, let them. If they prefer to make it a jaguar or even a tapir, w-hv, that is fine wath Robert Rafael, M.D., D.M.O. It might be, probably, the first time in history that anybody anywhere was, killed by a tapir, but that is not my affair. The matter is, so far as I am concerned, so far — in fact — as you and I are concerned — over.

“Do you understand?”