The Sphinx (18 page)

“No, she
didn’t. But she still thinks it’s going to happen.”

Gene scratched
the back of his neck. “Any clues what it might be? Or when?”

“None at all.
I’m sorry. She just said that ‘Bast de-jnands it,’ whoever Bast might be.
Someone you know?”

Gene stood up,
feeling tired and depressed. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Someone I know.”

For the next
three weeks, they continued to live at the Semple mansion in a strange
ritualistic existence that seemed to take them farther and farther away from
any kind of reality, Gene’s or Lode’s. They had all agreed that Merriam was
more secluded than Gene’s apartment in Washington, and that until they were
satisfied with Lorie’s progress toward normalcy, they ought to stay away from
the city at night. Gene still arrived for work every morning on Pennsylvania
Avenue, but Maggie and even Walter Farlowe noticed that he was increasingly
withdrawn, and there were dark circles under his eyes, as if he never slept
properly. The truth was that he never did. Every night,

Gene locked his
bride of less than a month into the small bedroom next to his, and then locked
his own door before stretching himself out on the zebra-skin, four-poster. He
kept the key to Lorie’s door around his neck on a chain, and alongside his bed,
never far from his sleeping hand, lay a 30-30 big game rifle that had been
silently given to him by Mathieu.

Lorie still
went to work at the Franco-African Bank, and quite often they met during the
day for lunch or coffee. She seemed more composed these days, although she was
sometimes inexplicably distant and remote and seemed to have her mind on
something far away and long ago. Gene frequently had to repeat himself several
times before she answered his questions.

In the evening,
if they weren’t attending a Washington party or if Gene wasn’t working too
late, the ritual was always the same. They dined by candlelight, with Mrs.
Semple usually dominating the conversation with her memoirs of Egypt and the
Soudan, and then they listened to music or watched television and eventually
retired to bed. Gene kissed Lorie goodnight at her bedroom door, then closed it
and turned the key. He always tested it to make sure it was locked properly.

He always
called, “Goodnight, Lorie. Sleep well,” through the door. And he always
listened for an answer, even though an answer never came.

Later, he would
lie in bed, staring sleeplessly at the canopy above him, and wonder if he could
hear her breathing, or scratching at the door. In the morning, around seven, he
would rise from his hours of uncomfortable dozing, and go to release her from
her nocturnal prison. She was always smiling, always beautiful, always gentle,
and as the days went by and the memory of his first horrific nights with her
began to fade away, the reality of locking her up became increasingly hard for
him to support. Only a nervous instinct deep inside him kept him true to his
nightly charade; that, and the etching of Smith’s gazelle.

Lorie never
mentioned her imprisonment and appeared to accept it as calmly and rationally
as she had accepted the fact of her own lion-like body. But this very calmness
made it more difficult for Gene to communicate with her. He began to think that
she would stay like this for ever, content to live a curious half-life as
someone who was not completely animal and not completely human.

She was booked
into the private clinic of the plastic surgeon, Dr. E. Beidermeyer; and, again,
she appeared to take the idea of forthcoming surgery placidly and quietly.
Whenever Gene tried to talk about it, and reassure her that everything would be
fine, she would simply smile and say “I know,” as if she was aware of something
in the air that was going to change everything. Mrs. Semple, too, seemed to
share Lorie’s unknown secret, and by the end of the third week, Gene felt that
he was the only man on a sinking ship who didn’t know that the hull had sprung
a leak.

One Thursday
night, as he took her up to her bedroom for the usual locking-up, he said,
“Someday soon, you’re going to forget what Ubasti ever meant. I can feel it.”

“Do you think I
will?”

“You will if
you want to. Do you really want to?”

She looked
across at him with a slightly regretful expression. Behind her, the light from
the stained-glass window seeped dimly down the wide staircase.

“Sometimes I
don’t know.”

He pushed open
the bedroom door for her. “If you want to stay the way you are, I’m not going
to force you, Lorie. But I can’t remain your husband if you do.”

She smiled at
him wanly. “Maybe we ought to take the next step now,” she said. “Maybe it
could help me change my mind.”

“What next
step?”

“Maybe you
ought to invite me into your bedroom. It’s what husbands and wives do, you
know.”

He said
nothing.

“Gene,” she
told him, touching his arm, “we can’t get any place if we carry on like this. I
don’t mind it, I don’t mind you locking me in. I know how you feel. But bur
marriage isn’t even a marriage yet, not properly, and how can we ever make it
one if we don’t try?”

He turned away,
embarrassed.

“You loved me
enough to stay with me, and try to make it work,” she said. “Couldn’t you show
me how you love me with your body?”

He looked back
at her, and tried to read what she was thinking in her eyes. They were as green
and impenetrable as always.

“If I let you
in,” he said hoarsely, “I have no guarantees that you won’t...”

“No,” she said,
“you haven’t.”

He looked down
at the key in his hand. Did it really mean the difference between survival and
death, or was he going through this whole absurd business- to satisfy his own
exaggerated neuroses? After all, Lorie hadn’t tried to kill him before, when
they were sharing the four-poster bed. All she’d done was go out and slaughter
a sheep. And, as she’d pointed out herself, what made roasting that sheep and serving
it up on a plate any more moral than eating it raw? He was still standing
there, undecided and hesitant, when Mathieu came trudging up the stairs,
stony-faced and silent. He saw them hi the corridor, and paused.

“Goodnight,
Mathieu,” Lorie said, hi a way that was an obvious dismissal. But Mathieu
stayed where he was, his scarred hand on the banister rail, and made no attempt
to go.

“Well, Gene,”
said Lorie, with a quick smile, “perhaps some other night.”

Gene looked at
her questioningly, and then at Mathieu. Whatever silent communion had taken
place between them, it had persuaded Lorie pretty promptly to change her mind
about visiting his bedroom. She kissed him a fleeting goodnight, and then went
inside and closed her own door. Mathieu watched as Gene put the key hi the lock
and turned it. Then, apparently satisfied, he continued on his way down the
landing.

“Mathieu,”
called Gene. The mute stopped, his broad back as impassive as his face.

“Mathieu, is
something going to happen here? Something I don’t know about?”

Mathieu didn’t
move. Gene couldn’t be sure if he was taking his time in answering, or waiting
to be asked something else.

He walked
around and faced the chauffeur, looking as intently as he could into those
blank, suspicious eyes.

“You warned me
once, didn’t you?” he asked him, “When you mentioned Smith’s gazelle, that was
a warning. But that isn’t everything, is it? There’s something more. There’s
something more to do with Bast”

“Bast?” croaked
the mute, squeezing the word from his larynx. Then he shook his head. But he
reached out and held Gene’s wrist, and said, in the same ghostly whisper, “Sons
of Bast... sons...”

“Sons of Bast?
What do you mean?”

Mathieu tried
to breathe out some words’, but his vocal strength was gone. Instead, in a grotesque
attempt to explain, he dragged back his face with his hands into a hideous
mask, and bared his teeth. Gene recoiled, and said, “That’s the sons of Bast?
That’s What they look like?”

Mathieu nodded.
He was about to try and explain further, when they heard the clicking of heels
on the “wooden staircase. It was Mrs. Semple, coming up to bed. Mathieu waved
his hands as if he were wiping the images of his dumb-show out of the air, and
went quickly off into the darkness.

Gene was still
standing there when Mrs. Semple appeared.

“Hello, Gene,”
she said, in her contralto voice. “Is Lorie hi bed now?”

He nodded.
“Tucked in and locked up.”

She came over
and laid her hand sympathetically on his shoulder. He smelled that musky aroma
of hers, and he could even feel her sharp fingernails through his shirt. Her
eyes twinkled just like her circular diamond earrings.

“You mustn’t
worry, you know,” she purred. “Quite soon, everything will be wonderful. You’d
be surprised how much a Ubasti woman respects her mate.”

He ran his hand
tiredly through his hair. “Well, I hope so, Mrs. Semple. To tell you the truth,
I don’t know how much more of this I can stand.”

“You love her,
don’t you? And you know that she loves you?”

“Sure.”

“Well, let that
be your guiding light, Gene. Let that inspire you in those dark moments when
you doubt yourself.”

He looked at
her hard. He couldn’t quite make up his mind whether she was speaking sincerely
or .not. But her face was as passive and serious, and he decided that she must
be.

“All right,
Mrs. Semple,” he said softly. “HI try.”

The next
morning The Washington Post carried a small story at the foot of the front page
whose headline read: “Dead Boy Attacked by Tigers?” Gene picked it up off his
desk and read through it quickly. “Police suspect that nine-year-old Andrew
Kahn, whose mutilated corpse was discovered yesterday by drainage workmen, was
attacked and killed by a large, predatory beast, like a tiger. Their theory,
which they admit is ‘a trifle difficult to credit,’ has come after an intensive
autopsy on young Andrew’s body. Although full details are being withheld, it is
understood that he was almost unrecognizable when found, and that much of his
body was missing, as if consumed or strewn about by a wild animal. There are no
reports of any creatures of the size of a tiger missing from any public or
private menageries.”

Gene laid the
paper down. Then, his face white, he went to the men’s room, and vomited his
breakfast into the basin.

Dinner that
evening was tense and solemn. Mathieu brought bowls of steak soup, and the
three of them sat in the flickering light of the candles, their eyes watchful
and alert. Lorie was wearing her low-cut gown again but her mother was dressed
hi a formal high-necked dress with a cameo pinned to the collar.

Sipping her
soup, Mrs. Semple said, “We’re all a little quiet tonight.”

Lorie gave an
uneasy grin. “It’s Gene. He’s been lost in some dark reverie of his own ever
since he got back home. Haven’t you, Gene?”

“What?”

“There you
are,” said Lorie, “You haven’t even been listening!”

“I’m sorry,”
Gene apologized. “I was someplace else.”

“Anywhere
interesting?” asked Mrs. Semple, raising a beautifully plucked eyebrow.

Gene laid down
his spoon. “It depends where you consider interesting. As a matter of fact, I
find abandoned drains just outside of Merriam pretty interesting.”

Lorie glanced
at her mother. Mrs. Semple said: “Abandoned drains? Whatever are you talking
about?”

“I guess you
could say that I’m being hysterical. It’s not so difficult when you’re tired,
and under a constant strain. But the whole thing seemed too much of a
coincidence, you know? A round peg fitted neatly into a round hole.”

“Gene, dear, I
do think you’ve been overworking,” Mrs. Semple said.

“Have I?”
retorted Gene. “Or is it you, and my newlywed wife? Maybe you’ve been
overworking?”

“I really don’t
know what you’re talking about,” said Lorie, hotly. “You’ve been in a terrible
mood all evening, and now you’re talking in ridiculous riddles. Why don’t you
make sense?”

“You didn’t see
the paper this morning?” asked Gene.

“Why should I?”

“You didn’t see
the television, either?”

“Well, no, as a
matter of fact, I didn’t”

Gene pushed
away his plate of soup and stood up. He walked around the table until he was
standing just behind Mrs. Semple, so that if she wanted to look at him she had
to twist uncomfortably around in her chair.

“In the paper
this morning they reported that the body of a nine-year-old boy had been found
in a drain near Merriam. The police said that he looked as if he’d been eaten
by wild animals.

Tigers, they
said. Something of that size.”

Lorie frowned.
“Gene,” she said, “You’re not suggesting that...”

“What else am I
supposed to suggest? What other conclusion can I possibly come to?”

“Are you trying
to tell me that Lorie killed a child? Is that it?” Mrs. Semple said.

“I’m not
telling you. I’m asking you. The facts are-there in the paper, and I’m asking
you.”

“And supposing
she says no?”

“Then I guess
I’ll have to believe her. But I won’t find it easy.”

“So you really
think she could have done it?” asked Mrs. Semple.

“I don’t know.
Perhaps she ought to tell me for herself.”

Mrs. Semple
stood up, too.

“If the answer
is not no, if the answer is yes, then what did you propose to do about it?”

“I think that’s
one of those bridges we’ll have to cross when we come to it.”

“Gene,” said
Mrs. Semple, in that vibrant contralto of hers, “you must remember that Lorie
is your wife. You owe her your love, and your trust. You can’t treat her like a
criminal We’ve all agreed to give in to your little whims, and let you lock her
in her room at night, but if we’re going to have to put up with hysterical
accusations every tune there’s an item in the newspaper that sounds as though
there were lions, or tigers, or any other kind of wild beast involved, then all
I can say is that you had better think again about your marriage, and perhaps
decide to end it”