A woman out walking with her husband and her dog showed Edge where Avery-Simms lived. He drove through the double gates and parked the car near the foot of the steps. A woman in an apron and cap came out on the verandah.

  “You want somebody?” she called down to him.

  Edge went up the steps. “I’m looking for Avery-Simms,” he said.

  “Who is the body?”

  “Edge. Shannon Edge.”

  She went inside and came back and told him to follow her. John Wendell Avery-Simms sat in his study wiping a gun with an oil rag.

  “Mr. Edge,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you. Sit down.”

  Edge sat down. “So you’ve been expecting me,” he said. “How nice.”

  Avery-Simms put down the rag. He pointed the gun at Edge. Edge stopped breathing. His lips tightened as he stared into the muzzle of the gun. He watched Avery-Simms’s finger take up the pressure on the trigger. Avery-Simms put the gun down and laughed.

  “Empty,” he said. “I made some inquires about you. You’re not with the police. That leaves two other possibilities. You’re either a troublemaker or an undercover person. I think it is the latter.”

  Avery-Simms leaned back and regarded Edge thoughtfully. He was a big man, with a pink face and washed-out blue eyes. His iron-grey hair, brushed high in front, and parted on the right, curled gracefully above his ears and ended just where his collar began. His accent was fake British.

  “Strange,” Edge said. You don’t look dumb to me.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry about the gun. I heard you were good. I wanted to see your reaction.”

  “How did you know I was coming to see you?”

  “Mary Powson. We’ve been friends for a long time. I hear that you are interested in the Columbus Club.”

  “I want to ask some questions,” Edge said. “Trouble is there’s no one around to answer them. The secretary has disappeared, and so have the records. And as soon as you mention the name, people freeze over like a Canadian winter.”

  Avery-Simms drew a box of cigars towards him. He selected one and lit it with a gold plated lighter. He pushed the box towards Edge. Edge shook his head. Avery-Simms closed the box and pushed it to one side.

  “I don’t see why they should. From what George tells me, the club does a little music, plays a little bridge and sometimes takes its members on what it calls cultural tours. If not exactly uplifting, at least quite harmless.”

  “Harmless clubs just don’t go underground,” Edge said.

  “Perhaps the thing just died,” Avery-Simms said. “Clubs have died before.”

  “What is George doing in New York?”

  Avery-Simms studied the tip of his cigar. “I hope he is on holiday,” he said thoughtfully.

  “What do you mean hope?”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. George is a good son. Always responsible and all that, but since he became involved with this Prometheus X nut, he’s been a changed man.” He raised his eyes to Edge’s. “You know this Prometheus character?” he asked. Edge said he didn’t.

  “He’s a menace,” Avery-Simms continued. “Calls himself a socialist. I think he’s a Communist. He holds rallies calling for the downfall of the system. An end to capitalism. He has the rabble all excited. Frankly I don’t see how the government can allow that type of behaviour, but it is a free country, I suppose. George has become infected with his philosophy, I’m afraid,” Avery-Simms said sadly. “He refers to me as a member of the exploiting class, who grinds the faces of the poor into the ground.”

  Avery-Simms’s cigar had gone out. He lit it again. “George left for New York suddenly, about six months ago,” he said. “Said he wanted a holiday. Well at least he’s away from that nut and all that talk of reform.”

  “Have you heard from him since he left?”

  “No. But I wish I had.”

  Edge looked around the study. It was a big comfortable room with heavy, expensive furniture and curtains that reached to the floor.

  “Do you agree with your son about being one of those that exploits the poor?”

  Avery-Simms smiled, the nice quiet smile of a man who was being perfectly frank.

  “I do not,” he said quietly. “I am not the grandson of a plantation owner. My people arrived in Barbados over 300 years ago. We were transported from England as indentured labourers. You see, we backed the wrong side at Sedgemoor and lost ourselves the duchy that had been in the family since anybody could remember. After my ancestor served his time at the plantation, he joined a boat that used to bring salt-fish from Halifax. Later he bought his own boat and traded up and down the islands.”

  Avery-Simms crushed his cigar in the ashtray on the desk.

  “My companies employ over three thousand people,” he said. “And I treat them all well. It is hard work that put us where we are today, that is why it hurts me so to hear my son call me one of the exploiting class.”

  Edge stood up. “I won’t take any more of your time,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Avery-Simms followed him to the door. “I wish I could tell you more,” he said.

  A car swung through the gate and came up the driveway. A woman got out and came up the steps.

  “Did you have your dinner dear?” she said as she came on. “Sorry I’m late, but the meeting dragged on so. I honestly don’t know why Beverley doesn’t do something about all the bitching and cackling that goes on.”

  She looked up and saw Edge. “It’s all right dear,” Avery-Simms said. “Mr. Edge was just leaving.”

  “Goodnight, Mrs. Avery-Simms,” Edge said as he went by. Constance Avery-Simms didn’t answer. Her eyes went right through him.

  Edge put the car in the garage. He unlocked the door and went inside. The housekeeper had been in. She had cooked dolphin and breadfruit and left it in the oven. Edge poured a rum and coconut water, and took it with him into the shower. He ate supper. He was listening to Wagner’s ‘Gotterdammerung’ and thinking about Avery-Simms when the phone rang. It was Hervey.

  “Shelley Hardcastle called,” he said. “She’s meeting her brother at the Lilly Pad at one o’clock.”

  Edge looked at his watch. It was eleven.

  “I’ll be there,” he said.

  Edge parked the car in the lot behind the Lilly Pad, and went around the front. The man at the door took fifteen dollars from him. The club was constructed around an open courtyard. The open side faced the sea. Three stunted coconut trees at the end of the courtyard stirred lazily in the breeze.

  Edge found an empty table. A waiter came. He ordered a rum and coconut water. On the bandstand, under the flashing lights, six gaunt young men were screaming their way through a recent calypso hit. Edge sipped his drink. The singing stopped and now there was only the thumping of the bass and the drums. The tourists were bumping, grinding and having a good time as they twirled under the stars. They had come to Barbados for a good time, and by God they were going to have one even if it killed them. Edge finished his drink and ordered another. He checked his phone. He sipped his drink and watched the ladies on the dance floor as the band played in the background. Edge went to the bar.

  “I’m meeting a lady here,” he said. “But I haven’t seen her. I thought perhaps she might have left a message. My name is Edge.”

  The barman tapped his forehead. “Lemme see,” he said. “Yes a lady did phone. That’s right, Miss Hardcastle. Said you’re to wait here for her.”

  Edge thanked him and went back to his table. A tall woman came and stood over the table.

  “I was afraid I missed you,” she said. “Shelley asked me to keep you here until she gets back.”

  Edge pulled out a chair and she sat down.

  “I’m Veronica,” she said. “My friends call me Ronnie.”

  “Hello, Ronnie,” Edge said. “I’m Shannon Edge.”

  “I know,” Ronnie said. “Shelley told me. I hope she comes, I need a ride home.”

  “Known Shelley long?”

  “We went to the same school,” Ronnie said. “But I know Charles better.”

  Ronnie was a tall, big-chested girl with a wig and heavy make-up. The waiter came back. She ordered scotch and soda.

  “If Shelley doesn’t come I’m going to need a ride home,” she said.

  “I’ll give you a ride home if she doesn’t come,” Edge said.

  The music stopped. The lights went down and there was only moonlight falling softly across the dance-floor. A voice spoke out of the shadows. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s limbo time.” A drum rolled, light and slow at first, then heavy and quick, until it seemed just one continuous roll. The drumming stopped. A blue light stabbed from a coconut tree on to the dance floor. Into the glow leaped three figures, a man and two women. The drumming started again. Another light splashed across the floor from the opposite side.

  The three dancers set up the limbo pole in the centre of the floor, with the bar three feet off the floor. The drumming filled the room, with the drummer repeating the identical patterns each time, and the audience growing quieter and tighter and sitting forward in their chairs.

  Edge glanced at Ronnie. She hadn’t touched her drink. She sat hunched forward in her chair with her lips parted. The voice spoke again out of the shadows. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a human limbo.”

  The dancers leaped and whirled. The first woman danced up to the bar and leaned back from the waist and inched forward under the bar without raising her feet off the floor. The other dancers followed. The audience applauded.

  The bar came down about six inches. The man followed the two women under the bar. The bar came down another foot. The women produced three bottles. The man touched a match to them and the oil soaked stoppers caught fire. The women put two torches down on the other side of the limbo bar and gave the other to the man. He put it on his forehead and danced with it around the floor. He danced up to the bar. He bent back from the knees and touched the back of his head three times on the ground. The flame from the torch bent and flickered as the breeze from the sea leaned against it. With the bottle still on his forehead, the man began inching his way under the bar. Edge watched the heaving breasts and the flashing ebony legs and suddenly, he was in a jungle clearing with the drumming coming out of the shadows and the taste of fear and tension in the air. He shook his head and he was back in a Barbados nightclub watching a floor show.

  The man was almost past the bar. Only his shoulders and head remained on the other side. Flame leaped suddenly along the entire length of the bar as the torch touched the bar. A woman screamed. Chairs scraped. The moment of panic passed. The audience watched the oil soaked cloth which had been wrapped around the bar, burning.

  The tempo of the drumming changed, becoming slower, more plaintive. The man put out the fire on the bar. He spread a cloth on the ground. The two women lay down on their backs about four feet apart. The man placed the limbo bar across their breasts. Edge heard the people near him suck their breath in through their teeth. All that is missing now, is the chanting of the priests and the wailing of the women, Edge thought. Suddenly, he felt angry. What they were seeing was once a secret and sacred ritual connected with fertility and thanksgiving and the organic integrity of the commonwealth. Now, on the other side of the ocean, it had become a circus attraction with tourists paying pennies to see it.

  Nobody moved in the entire audience. There was no sound but the wail of the drum. At a table near Edge, a waiter set down his tray and sat with the guests.

  The drumming grew softer. The dancer was moving now as if his body had forgotten its bones. He bent backwards slowly and his back was almost on the ground and he eased himself forward inch by careful inch. He got his legs through, and his torso. The arms came up to steady him and the knees came up, and only his head remained on the other side of the bar. Edge waited for the man to fall backwards. In fact by any standards he ought to have fallen over long before this, but still he moved until his head too passed under the bar. He came upright. He leaped into the air. The women got up. The drumming stopped. The lights came on. Edge heard a sigh wash like a wave over the audience.

  Ronnie picked up her glass and emptied it in one gulp.

  “That thing’s scary,” she said.

  Edge smiled. He wasn’t listening, he was thinking about Shelley Hardcastle.

  “Care for another drink?” he asked.

  Ronnie shook her head. The music started again. A few couples went on to the floor, then the leader of the band said good night and the people started leaving.

  “Where is she? I hope nothing’s happened to Shelley,” Ronnie said.

  “Let’s give her another 10 minutes,” Edge said.

  “I’m going to call her cell to see what’s going on,” said Ronnie.

  Ronnie phoned Shelley but there was no answer. She left a message, smiled uncomfortably at Edge and put the phone back in her purse. Twenty minutes later she still hadn’t come.

  “I’ll give you a ride home,” Edge said.

  The Volkswagen was the only car left in the parking lot. Ronnie stopped to light a cigarette. Two men came out from behind the car and the warning light that had been flickering in Edge’s mind ever since Ronnie came and sat with him suddenly glowed bright red. The moonlight picked up the flash of the knives in the men’s hands.

  “He isn’t carrying a gun,” Ronnie said. “And we have the night to ourselves, so do a real good job.”