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this island, George. He isn’t staying at a hotel. He couldn’t have spent the last three weeks in the bush. Where is he?”
    The black man leaned back with a creak of his leather crossbelt. He wore black shorts, a short-sleeved white jacket, and knee-length white socks.
    “He has a week left on his visa. He’ll turn up then.”
    Smiling vaguely, Doxie aimed his swagger-stick at the corporal. “I want to know now.”
    The corporal agitated a palm-leaf fan and glanced out the window. A greasy odor of drying copra drifted in from the wharf outside. A street vendor chanted that his mangoes were
très-sweet,
fresh off the tree. The corporal sighed: “I can’t go out looking—”
    “All right.” Doxie allowed impatience to edge his voice. “Let’s see the book.”
    “You need authorization—”
    “Barrington.”
    “He’s in Europe.”
    “He’ll be back this week.”
    “The
madame—?
”
    “Miss Edith arrives tomorrow, if you’re concerned.” Doxie rapped his stick on the desk. “The book, George.”
    The corporal placed a black bookkeeping ledger in front of Doxie. The entry was a barren statement of a man’s existence, no more:
    NAME :    William D. Seright        ORIGIN :    Pine Valley,
    Montana, U.S.A.       AGE :    32     PURPOSE :    Recreation
    Doxie frowned; it was unusual for a single man to come to St. Patricia for recreation. Single men usually went to Barbados or Trinidad. Though the man might be wholly legitimate, Doxie knew he couldn’t risk it. Barrington was a boss who tolerated no looseness, no mysteries, no unclassified strangers. And since his marriage to Edith, he’d been particularly nervous about visitors from the States.
    “You met his plane,” said Doxie. “What did he look like?”
    “Big,” said the corporal, squinting up at the corrugated roof. “Over six feet, about two hundred pounds. Short black hair, short black beard. Fresh sunburn, so he couldn’t have been long in the islands. He had a lame leg, used an aluminum crutch strapped to his arm. He used it awkwardly, and the leg seemed to hurt him. It must have been a recent injury. He traveled light. Binoculars, one bag for his clothes, pencils and sketchpad. He was an artist.”
    “How do you know?”
    “He told me.”
    Doxie stood up, still frowning. A lame artist could perhaps wander about the island without a fixed address, but he’d certainly be noticed and remembered.
    Outside, Doxie’s steel-capped heels clattered on the sidewalk. He passed a ship-chandler’s store and heard a cultivated English voice announcing banana ship schedules. He passed a block-long warehouse, a sign with the name “Barrington” running its length. The name dominated the business street which faced the harbor:
    BARRINGTON DRY GOODS
    BARRINGTON SHIP STORES
    BARRINGTON DRUGS
    BARRINGTON CARGO LINES, LTD.
    BARRINGTON
    BARRINGTON
    BARRINGTON….
    On Doxie’s left, a dozen shallow-draft cargo schooners nosed against a wooden jetty. A ketch tugged at anchor far out in the harbor, sails furled and brightwork sparkling in the morning sun. She was named the
Edie III,
and Doxie could picture Edith at the wheel, hair blowing and tight shorts cupping her buttocks. He felt a painful tightness in his loins.
    At Barclay’s bank, a mulatto cashier inspected his book and said that no William D. Seright had cashed a check at Barclay’s.
    Inside the fan-cooled comfort of the Commonwealth Club, Doxie found four planters’ wives whose soft buttocks overflowed the dark leather seats. “We haven’t seen a strange man for six months,” said one over her gin fizz. “Why do you suppose we drink?”
    In the Beachcomber Club he talked to a charter-yacht skipper and his brown-faced wife. They’d seen no lame, bearded artist; they were sure he hadn’t taken quarters on a yacht.
    Doxie entered the glassed cubicle of the Esso station, where Hackworth listened with his hatchet face thrust forward, a lock of blue-black hair