The Sphinx (19 page)

“Mrs. Semple,
you know I don’t want to do that,” Gene retorted. “Not until we’ve seen how
Lorie makes out. Maybe, after the plastic surgery...”

Mrs. Semple
sniffed disdainfully. “You’re such an American! All that matters to you is
outward appearances! As long as Lorie looks like the kind of girl you want to
be married to, then everything is perfect. But while she still has the body of
a Ubasti, you persecute her, just as every Ubasti has been persecuted for
thousands of years. And now you come out with this preposterous story about a
boy who was killed by tigers. Does it make sense? Really?”

“Gene, you must
learn to trust me. Please.” Lorie said.

Gene looked at
Mrs. Semple, and then at Lorie. He lowered his eyes, and said in a hoarse and
stubborn whisper, “I don’t know what to believe any more, Lorie, and I don’t
know who to trust I think the best thing I can do right now is leave. Then you
won’t have the burden of my suspicions any longer, and you won’t have to put up
with my neurotic behavior. You can live your life the way you want to, whether
you want to live like a lion or live like a human being. I’ve tried to help you
Lorie, and I can’t It’s beyond my capabilities.”

Lorie laid down
her napkin, pushed back her chair, and came around the table. She held out her
hands for Gene, and her face was, so loving and sympathetic that he could
hardly look at her.

“Gene,” she
said softly, “don’t you realize how much I love you? How much I need you?”

He didn’t
answer.

“Don’t you
realize that the .moment T first saw you at Henry Ness’s party I knew you were
perfect, that you were just what I’d always been looking for?”

“Lorie,” he
said tiredly, “the strain is just getting too much for me. I know you love me,
and I know that you need me. But I’m not sure I can carry that load any longer.
Not when my ..trust in you is constantly being put to the test.”

“Do you want to
believe that Lorie killed that boy?” Mrs. Semple asked.

Gene went to
the table and poured himself a glass a wine. “No, I don’t,” he replied, in a
husky voice. “It’s the last thing in the world I want to believe.”

“Then don’t,”
Mrs. Semple said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Gene drank almost
the entire glass of wine in three gulps, and wiped his mouth with the back of
his hand. “Lorie,” he said, “I’d like to hear that from you.”

“Hear what,
Gene?”

“That you
didn’t kill him. That you went out that night and killed a sheep, nothing but a
dumb sheep.”

Lorie reached
out and began to stroke the side of Gene’s brushed-back hair, staring almost
absent-mindedly into a distance that he could only guess at. Even though Gene
felt so demoralized and exhausted, he couldn’t deny that she was still warm and
sensual and extravagantly beautiful, and there was something about her that
still stirred him. Maybe he was drawn toward her by the very fright which she
aroused hi him, maybe he was transfixed, like a snowshoe rabbit, by the
hypnotic glare of a lynx. Or maybe he did, after all, really love her and want
their marriage to work in spite of every hazard and terror it held for him.

“You really
think that newspaper story could be true?” asked Lorie simply.

He reached up
and held her wrist. “Why don’t you tell me it’s not true instead of asking me?
Why don’t you just come straight out and tell me?”

“Because you
have to trust me,” said Lorie. “You have to trust my love for you or it’s no
good at all. Even if I had killed someone, would that make you Stop trusting my
love?”

“Well, I don’t
know. I guess not.”

“Then what does
it matter whether I killed that boy or not?”

Gene splashed
himself another glass of wine. “Lorie, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know
what to tell you. I can’t deny that I still feel, I don’t know, you can call it
whatever you like.

Suspicious,
mistrustful, frightened. Cowardly. I just don’t know where to go from here.”

“Gene,” Mrs.
Semple said, “yon and Lorie are at the crossroads now. You can go further, and
explore your love, and overcome all your fears. Or you can continue to treat
Lori with suspicion and alarm, and not get anywhere at all. You have to believe
her, Gene, and how can you believe in her if every mention of wild animals in
the newspapers is going to strain your relationship to the breaking point? How
can you make a marriage work if every night there is a locked door between you,
even after that locked door is no longer necessary?”

“Mrs. Semple, I
hate to remind you, but you suggested the locked door in the first place.”

“Of course I
did. But it wasn’t to keep Lorie imprisoned. I trust her. The door was locked
to make you feel more secure, so that you would stay and get to know Lorie
better.”

There was a
long, difficult silence. Then Gene said,

“Mrs. Semple,
are you saying that Lorie doesn’t need to be locked in? That .if I ask her, she
won’t go out nights anymore?”

Mrs. Semple
nodded. “It’s all a question of trust.”

“But before,
that night when she went out, she said she’d had to kill that sheep to save my
life, so that she’d wouldn’t be tempted to tear me to shreds.”

“Gene, just as
you are adapting to Lorie, Lorie is adapting to you. And anyway, things have
changed.”

“What do you
mean, changed?”

Mrs. Semple
looked at him with her green, lambent; eyes. “Stay for one more week. Give
Lorie seven more days. Then you’ll discover just how much things have changed.”

Gene turned to
Lorie. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve lost your appetite for raw flesh? You
don’t need fresh blood anymore? Is that it? Are you really adapting that much?”

“Trust me,
Gene,” Lorie said. “I beg you.”

Gene attempted
a grin. He was feeling as fragmented and unreal as a smashed mirror. “How about
that?” He said uneasily. “I come home full of terrible accusations, and we end
up closer than ever.”

“The Ubasti are
used to terrible accusations, Gene,” Mrs. Semple said. “They are also among the
fiercest and strongest lovers that the world has ever known. Perhaps love is
nourished by persecution.”

Gene paused,
his eyes on the table. He knew that he didn’t have to stay. But if he didn’t,
what was he going to do? He had invested so much effort and stamina into making
their relationship work that leaving it now was just as grisly a prospect as
carrying on. If it did work, if they did make together, what a-rare and
fantastic couple they could be! He could think of her now, making her entrance
at Washington society parties on his arm, in her low-cut gown and her
glittering diamonds. That’s Gene Keiller, the up-and-coming young State
Department executive, and that’s the gorgeous and mysterious lion-lady he
managed to tame.

In the polished
wax of the table, his own face peered Wearily up at him. He took a deep breath.

“All right,
Mrs. Semple,” he said. “I’ll stay, at least for a week.”

Lorie smiled,
with obvious relief and said, “Thank you, Gene. I won’t let you down.”

He took her
hand, and gently squeezed it. “I guess you’re right about trust. I’ve got to
learn to believe in you.”

“Don’t rush
it,” said Mrs. Semple. “Keep Lorie’s door locked as” long as you want. The
night that you leave it open, then we’ll know that you’ve come to us
trustingly, and that you really want to be a member of the family.”

Gene lit a
cigarette, and didn’t see the quick, intensive glance that passed between
mother and daughter. Nor did he see Mathieu standing- silently at the door,
watching them all through a half-inch crack with his usual stony face.

He was
exhausted that night, and they went to bed early. On the landing he gave Lorie
a parting kiss before locking the door, and stood there holding her hand for a
few moments, trying to shape the words in his mind that would tell her he still
loved her, that she still turned him on, but that someplace deep at the back of
his mind was the instinctive fear that once he relaxed his guard, something
would go wrong and she would attack him.

“You must think
I’m the most suspicious bastard on. God’s earth,” he told her.

She shook her
head. “I don’t think that.”

“Well, I would
if I were you. I don’t know how you’ve stood this relationship so long.”

“I’ve told you,
Gene. I need you.”

He leaned back
against the oak paneling of the corridor and rubbed his eyes. “Terrific husband
I turned out to be.”

She put her arm
around his shoulder and kissed him. Then she held him very close, staring into
his eyes.

“You’ve been
wonderful, Gene. Most men would have left by now.”

“I still
don’t... trust you, though, do I?”

“You will.”

He kissed her
back. She still kept her lips closed, but her lips were soft and moist enough
to arouse him.

“That change
your mother was talking about. Do you. know what she means?”

Lorie nodded.

“And you can’t
tell me what it is?”

“Not yet. The
tune isn’t right yet”

“Soon.”

She nodded
again. “Very soon, darling. Sooner than you think.”

He fell asleep
quickly, and dreamed of lions and tigers and ferocious jaws that snapped at his
heels. He was desperately trying to run away from a huge beast that loped after
him, tearing at his legs and his ankles. Then he was being smothered by a
suffocating pelt of fur, and he was choking. He woke up, sweating and shaking,
and it was still only two hi the morning.

He sat up in
bed. The bedroom was very dark. The window was open and a rainy wind was making
if shudder and rattle. He climbed out of bed and padded 161
“
on
bare feet across to the basin to poor himself a glass of water.

Outside
somewhere, he thought he could hear a door or window banging. When he’d gulped
down the water, and dabbed his mouth on a towel, he walked across to the window
and put his head out, to see if he could see where it was.

The night was
stormy black and the trees around the house champed like ghostly horses. Leaves
were tossed over the old rooftops of the Semple mansion, and the chimneys
howled and moaned hi vibrant complaint at the wind.

In the
darkness, Gene was sure that he could see something pale and large moving on
the wall that came out from beside his bedroom at right angles. He squinted
into the rain and the wind, trying to make out what it was. The shape was at
least thirty or forty feet up the wall, on a narrow ledge that couldn’t have
been more than six inches wide. One minute he could see it moving in a pattern
of the shadows, and the next it was gone altogether. He stayed at the window
for three or four minutes, but the rain was getting heavier, and he didn’t see
anything else.

He closed the
window and turned back into the room. In the darkness, there was a disturbed
frown on his face. Supposing, just supposing, that shape had been Lorie?
Supposing she had betrayed his trust, had gone out at night again, on the prowl
for fresh blood?

He could go
check her room. But how much would that betray his trust? If he was ever going
to believe her, he would have to accept her word.

For half an
hour, while the rain lashed against the windows of his room, he paced up and
down, trying to persuade himself that he had enough faith in Lorie not to go
next door. But all the tune he knew that he had to know for sure. If she was
going to take on the menacing form of a lioness, and go out nights, he had to
know.

He picked up
the 30-30 big-game rifle from beside the bed, and clicked a round into the
chamber. Then, wrapped in his bathrobe, he quietly opened the door of his room,
and peered out into the dark corridor. The old house creaked in the wind, and
that window was still banging somewhere, banging and banging with no one to
close it.

He stepped out
into the corridor, holding the rifle under his arm. Softly, he trod the two or
three paces to Lorie’s door. He stood there hesitantly for a moment, but he
couldn’t back down now. He lifted the key that hung round his neck on a chain,
and with infinite care and quietness, he inserted it into the lock.

The lock levers
clicked and he waited, holding his breath to hear if there was any sound from
within Lorie’s room.

He put his left
hand on the doorknob, and turned it Then he slowly pushed the door inward, and
strained his eyes to distinguish her bed, and her, if she was there, La the
gloom.

It was too dark
to distinguish anything. He waited a little longer, and then he stepped
stealthily into the bedroom, his rifle raised and one hand out hi front of him
to prevent him from bumping into any chairs or tables.

He circled the
end of Lorie’s bed, and came up close to the pillow. He leaned forward, and she
was there all right, with her tawny hair spread out on the linen, and her eyes
closed. She was breathing regularly and deeply, and her hand was raised to her
parted lips as innocently as a sleeping child.

Carefully,
cautiously, he backtracked out of the room, closed the door behind him, and
relocked it. He stood in the corridor for a while, listening to the noises of
the house, and then he went back to his bedroom, The shape he had seen on the
wall was probably nothing more than the shadow of a tree, waving in the wind.
After all, nothing human could perch on a six-inch ledge forty feet above the
ground and disappear with such grace and ease. And if Lorie was safely asleep
hi her bed...

Gene felt a
little ashamed, but he was also glad that he’d checked. From now on, he knew
that he could begin to trust Lorie and build up something between them that
wasn’t strained by fear and mistrust. He still felt concern about that night
she had come back smothered hi blood, but he told himself that any aberration
could be overcome,, any psychosis calmed, and that if he gave his trust to
Lorie with enough conviction, he could lead her out of the fierce and unnatural
life she had been living up until now, and into peace and sanity.