The Sphinx (7 page)

“You’re paying
a visit? At night? With a loaded gun?”

“Maggie, you’re
just making things sound awkward. All I’m going to do is hop over the wall. The
place is enormous, they’ll never see me.”

She thought for
a moment longer, and then she stood up.

“You really
fell head over heels this time, didn’t you?”

He looked up.
“And what’s wrong with that? It’s about time there was more committed passion
in life, anyway.”

“You’re
probably right,” Maggie said. “But it depends where it’s directed, don’t you
think?”

It was a few
minutes after eleven Thursday night when he arrived outside the Semple mansion.

He was driving
a rented, dark-blue Matador, and he was dressed in a black, polo-neck sweater,
black corduroy pants, and a charcoal-gray cap pulled down over his eyes. He
carried a small canvas bag with Mace gas and anti-dog sprays, a coil of rope
around his shoulder, and a long-barreled .38 revolver tucked into his belt. He
switched off the car’s engine and sat there for four or five minutes, listening
to the soft rustle of the night.

This time, he
had driven past the main gates and followed the road that led around the high
brick wall to a point that, he hoped, was nearer the house itself, He had
parked the car in the shadow of the overhanging trees on the opposite side of
the road, and he left the keys in the ignition in case he needed to make a
quick getaway.

It was a chilly
night, and his .breath steamed as he climbed out of the car and gently clicked
the door shut behind him. Low clouds were still obscuring the moon, and he had
to blink a few times to accustom his eyes to the darkness. He listened again,
holding his breath, but the Semple estate was silent.

Quickly, he
padded across the narrow road, trod softly through the banked-up leaves against
the wall, and paused. Still no sound from the Semple place. He unwound a
knotted nylon rope from his waist, and stepped back so that he could judge the
height of the old, moss-crusted bricks.

There was an
aluminum rod tied to the end of the rope, and he hoped to toss this over the
wall and tug it back until it was firmly wedged between the metal spikes.

It took four
tries. The first time, he threw too short, and the next two shots went over but
the rod refused to catch. At last he had the rope firmly in position, and he
started to climb up it, gasping and sniffing and praying that the old rusted
spikes were strong enough to take his weight.

In three
minutes he had scrambled up to the top. He sat astride the wall, winding the
rope and catching his breath. Through the trees he could see twinkling lights
from the Semple mansion, but there was no sound at all, and no sign of the
prowling guard dogs. A freight train hooted mournfully in the distance and up
above the clouds a jet scratched its way across the night sky.

When the rope
was wound in, he positioned the aluminum rod on the other side of the spikes, and
let the rope down on the Semple side of the wall. Then he gently slithered off
the top, swinging down to the ground with his feet scraping on the brick. Once
he reached the bottom he paused again, his ears pricked up, hiding as deeply as
he could in the dart shadow of the wall and the trees.

He checked his
watch. It was a quarter after eleven. He straightened the revolver in his belt,
and began to stalk carefully through the long grass, stopping every few moments
to listen. He just hoped that if he needed to climb back up his rope in a
hurry, he could remember where it was.

It took him ten
minutes to make his way through the scrubby copse that led towards the house.

There was
still- no sign of the dogs, and he wondered if they were asleep. Maybe if he was-
quiet enough he wouldn’t wake them. He pushed his way through a tangled screen
of bushes, and found himself on the very edge of the copse, with a wide stretch
of lawn between him and the Semple mansion.

The house
itself was much larger than he had anticipated. It was brooding and morose,
with ranks of chimneys and twisting rivers of leafless creeper down every wall.
There was a verandah around the southwest corner, which was the part of the
house nearest to him, but all the windows around it seemed to be empty and
dark. Further back, on the south side, there was a stately columned porch, but
like everything else it was tangled with creeper and had a desolate, decayed
air about it. The only window that seemed to be lit was an upstairs bay on the
western side, and the drapes were drawn so tight that it was impossible to see
inside.

Gene skirted
along the southern side of the house, almost as far as the gravel drive that
came from the main gateway. Every now and then he stopped to listen for dogs,
but the whole estate was buried deep in darkness and silence. At one time, he
thought he heard a faint crackling of leaves and twigs, but when he paused to
catch the sound more distinctly, he realized it was probably just a bird in the
upper branches of the oaks.

None of the
windows on the south side were lit, so he went back to the edge of the copse
and surveyed the west side again. There was a strong creeper which grew from
the end of the verandah and twisted its way quite close to the lighted window.
Gene reckoned that if he climbed up there, he could probably get his footing on
the narrow gutter that extended tinder the window from the verandah roof and
get a glimpse through a small crack in the drapes. The thought that he might
see Lorie made his heart pound.

Ducking low, he
ran across the open lawn until he reached the verandah. He waited awhile and
then went up the verandah’s four wooden steps, taking care not to tread on the
empty frames of abandoned deckchairs and the pieces of a garden swing. He
walked softly along the whole length of the verandah, concealed in shadow,
until he reached the end of it, where the trunk of the creeper grew.

Again, he
listened. He thought he could hear faint voices and the sound of music, but
that was all. The low, gray clouds still blotted out the moon, although a faint
luminescence illuminated the lawns and distinguished the copse as a dark sea
that rustled and washed around it.

Gene perched
himself up on the verandah railing, and reached around to test the strength of
the creeper. Years ago, someone had nailed it pretty firmly to the wall, and he
guessed it would probably take his weight He hung on to it with one hand, and
then swung himself around and held on to it with both. There was a lurching
noise as some of the dry branches gave way, but the main branch seemed to hold.

Breathing with
tense, suppressed gasps, he reached up for higher branches and began to scale
the creeper like a ladder. At a height of about ten or twelve feet, almost
level with the verandah roof, he paused once more and listened for sound of the
dogs. He heard a low, erratic, rumbling noise, but he guessed it was a distant
airplane turning toward Dulles.

At last he was
able to reach out his left foot and cautiously test the guttering. Further
along it was rusted through, but from the verandah roof to the bay window it
looked as if it was reasonably intact. He pressed on it with more weight, and
then decided to try his luck and stand on it with both feet with his full 192
pounds. The lighted window was now only two or three feet away, and he could
hear voices more distinctly and the creak of floorboards as someone walked
around in the room.

It happened at the very instant he was stepping on to the
guttering. There was a loud, hair-raising snarl, and something immensely
powerful and heavy leaped up at him from the ground and tore him bodily down
from the creeper. His fingers and face were lacerated as the beast’s weight
dragged him straight through branches and leaves and brought him to the grass
with a back-bruising thump. Then the thing rolled on top of him, slavering and
snarling and tearing at him with vicious claws. Gene smelled a rank animal odor
that was anything but dog, and he screamed in desperation, as his sweater was
ripped from his arms, and guzzling jaws bit into his shoulder muscle to tug the
flesh away, from his collar bone.

G
ene opened his eyes. It was obviously morning. He was lying in a
narrow brass bed in a small upstairs room with floral wallpaper. A watery
sunlight was falling across the room and touching the top of a walnut
chiffonier, on which, from where he lay, he could see a wooden camel with a
decorated saddle, and a black-and-white photograph in a silver frame of a woman
who could have been Lorie’s grandmother.

His shoulder
was stiff and throbbed with suppressed pain. When he turned his head, he saw
that it was tightly bandaged. There were dark brown marks on the bandage that
probably were dried blood. He coughed and realized that his ribs were bruised,
too.

For an hour or
so he drifted into sleep and out again. It occurred to him during one of his
waking moments that he was probably under sedation. He had strange nightmares
about pale and ferocious beasts with claws, and he woke up one time shouting.

Around
mid-morning, the door of his room opened. He moved his head, and through blurry
eyes he saw a tall woman standing there. He thought for one moment it was
Lorie, but then he saw that this woman was older, and more dignified. She was
wearing a dove-gray dress, and her silver hair was elaborately coiffed and
covered with a pearl-studded hairnet. She had a magnificent figure for a woman
in her mid-fifties, with big heavy breasts and a slender waist. He suddenly
remembered Maggie’s words about une grande
poltr’me
.
This, evidently, was Lorie’s mother.

“Mr. Keiller,”
she said, in a soft French accent “Are you awake now, Mr. Keiller?” He nodded.

“I feel lousy.
My throat’s dry.” She sat on the edge of his bed and lifted a blue glass of
mineral water. With firm hands, she raised his head for him, and he drank.
Afterwards, she patted his lips with a tissue.

“Is that
better?” she asked. “Thank you, yes.”

Mrs. Semple sat
and looked at him with quite unabashed interest.

“You were very
lucky, you know,” she said, after a moment.

“Lucky? I feel
like I’m half-dead.”

“Half-dead is
better than completely dead, Mr. Keiller. You were lucky you were so close to
the house. If you had been further away, we might not have reached you in
time.”

“Do you train
your dogs to do that?” She put her head on one side and frowned a little, as if
she couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. “To kill,” he prompted. “To
tear people apart.”

She nodded
vaguely. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose we do.”

“You suppose1?
I practically died out there!” Mrs. Semple didn’t look particularly concerned.

“You shouldn’t
really have been out there in the first place, should you, Mr. Keiller? We did
try to warn you!”

“Yes,” he said.
“I guess you’re right. But all the same, those dogs are something else. Is my
arm all light?”

“You’ll survive.
I bandaged it myself. I used to do... nursing of a kind... out in Egypt.”

Gene tried to
sit up, “All the same,” he said. “I think I’d better get to a hospital I’m
going to need tetanus and rabies jabs.”

Mrs. Semple
pressed him gently back against the bed with the palm her hand. “You’ve already
had them, Mr. Keiller. It was the first thing I did. There really is no need to
do anything but rest for a while.”

“Do you have a
phone I could use?”

“You want to
call your office?”

“Well,
naturally. I have a couple of big meetings today, and I’m going to have to cry
off.”

Mrs. Semple
smiled. “Don’t worry. We’ve already phoned your secretary and told her you’re
sick. Someone called Mark is going to stand in for you.”

Gene lay back
and looked at Mrs. Semple curiously.

-”You’re very
considerate,” he said, although it was more of a question than a compliment.

“You’re my
guest” said Mrs. Semple. “Our people-are always considerate to guests. Anyway,
Lorie has been talking about you a lot, and I’ve been most anxious to make your
acquaintance.

You’re not at
all like she said you were.”

“Oh? Am I
better, or worse?”

Mrs. Semple
smiled, almost dreamily. “Oh, you’re better, Mr. Keiller–much, much better! The
way Lorie spoke about you, anyone would have thought you were a mixture of
Quasimodo and Frankenstein’s monster. But you’re not, are you? You’re young,
and you’re rather good-looking, and you work for the State Department, too.”

Gene rubbed his
eyes. “I must say, Mrs. Semple, I haven’t been, able to figure Lorie out.”

“You like her
though, don’t you? You find her attractive?”

“Well,
sure/That’s mostly the reason I’m here.”

“I thought you
did. You... well, you talked a great deal under sedation. You mentioned Lorie
several times.”

“I hope I didn’t
say anything too basic.”

Mrs. Semple
laughed. “Don’t worry about that, Mr. Keiller. I’m a very sophisticated woman,
and I know how sexually appealing my daughter is. You did say... one or two
things.”

Gene coughed.
His ribs felt as if they’d been leaned on by elephants and even his spine was
bruised.

“Well,” he
said, “if I was too crude or anything, I’m sorry. I can’t hide the fact that I
find Lorie very attractive.”

“Why should
you? You’re obviously an impulsive sort of a man.”

He winced as he
tried to sit up. “In this case, a little too impulsive, I’m afraid.”

Mrs. Semple
leaned forward and plumped up his pillow for him. For one moment her warm body
brushed against him, and he caught the same distinctive scent that he had
smelled on Lorie.

“I think we can
happily forget about last night, Mr. Keiller,” she said gently. “After all, I
don’t think either of us would care for a fuss, and newspaper gossip, would
we?”