The Sphinx (23 page)

“I cannot let
you,” said M. Semple, with no expression.

“You’ll have to
try and stop me.”

“I can stop
you. I am an expert in kravmaga. I was trained by the Israelis in the Middle
East.”

“M. Semple, you
don’t understand. If I call the cops, we can get you out of here, and have
Lorie and your “Wife put away.”

M. Semple shook
his head. “You Americans are all the same. Cops and robbers! You don’t
understand the; carnage that would happen. And what about me, anyway? I am as
much to blame for those boys’ death as they are. What do they call it?
Accessory to murder. I am an accessory.”

“M. Semple, I’m
going.”

“Don’t try, Mr.
Keffler. You will only die a worse death. Better to let it happen easily and
quickly. They will catch you long before you reach the gates. And anyway, the
lion will be on his way, too, from the circus.”

Gene paused.
“Lion?” he said, uneasily.

“That is
correct. Last night, my wife dragged the trail from the circus to the house.
Tonight is the chosen night for the lion-mating. It has to be early, you see,
because the circus changed its plans.”

Gene suddenly
remembered Mrs. Semple at dinner. ‘‘Stay for one more week,” she had said.

“Give Lorie
seven more days. Then you’ll discover just how much things have changed.”

‘In that case,
the sooner I get out of this place, the better.”

He opened the
door. For a moment, M. Semple sat on the end of his bed motionless, but as Gene
tried to step through the door, he lashed out with astonishing-swiftness with
his right leg and slammed the door shut.,

Gene backed
off. He clenched his fists and assumed the boxing pose they had taught him at
school. M. Semple moved cautiously around him, watching him with eyes that
didn’t even give away the fact that he was alive.

“Come on, M.
Semple,” said Gene. “You and me together, we can beat them. Why fight between
ourselves?”

M. Semple shook
his head. “Because you are no match for a lion, that is why. I know where the
odds are stacked. I am sorry, Mr. Keiller, but you cannot go.”

Gene ducked
forward but M. Semple hit him a flat-handed chop on the side of the head that
made his ears ling. He staggered, but managed to stay on his feet, and dodged
behind one of the armchairs. They were both panting now, and they feinted and
weaved, their eyes fixed on each other, their muscles tense.

With a
fast-moving heave, Gene pushed the armchair forward into M. Semple’s shins, and
then threw himself against the back of it with all his weight. M. Semple was
forced back for a moment, and that moment was enough for Gene to whip open the
door and dive into the darkness of the scullery.

M. Semple
tossed the armchair aside as if it weighed as little as a pillow, and he came
hurtling after Gene so fast that Gene hardly had tune to turn around and face
him in the confines of the tiny room.

“You make a
mistake,” panted M. Semple. “You cannot escape. I am sorry, but no way.”

He lashed out a
kick that hit Gene right in the stomach. Gene folded up, winded and hurt, and
pitched on his shoulder to the floor. He landed almost on top of the rifle.

“Now, then, Mr.
Keiller, please get up,” said M. Semple. “Please make it easy. Any more noise
will waken the she-lions.”

Gene knelt
there, gasping to get some air back in his lungs. Then his hand touched the
rifle in the darkness. He reached for the trigger, and then paused for a few
seconds, still fighting for breath, until he could sense that M. Semple had
relaxed.

He was going to
have to be quick. Incredibly quick. He was going to have to do this so fast and
accurate that M. Semple wouldn’t even realize what was happening.

He
counted–five, four, three, two, one–and then he bunched his muscles and swung
the rifle up to M. Semple’s face, so that the muzzle was only an inch away from
his eyes. He pulled the trigger.

It was only a
blank, but there was a blast of powder and cardboard packing that blinded M.
Semple in a deafening report. The Frenchman fell backwards with a hoarse
scream, and lay twitching on the floor with his hands over his eyes.

“Aaaahhhhhh, mes yeux, mes yeux .,. ecu secours, mes yeux...”

Gene dropped
the rifle with a noisy clatter and pushed his way out of the scullery. He knew
it was wrong to leave M. Semple like that, but his she-lions would find him
soon enough. Right now, the most urgent priority was to get out of the Semple
estate as fast as possible.

He ran through
the kitchen, and banged open the door into the hallway with both hands. The
front door was only three steps away on his right. Three bolts, one heavy lock,
and then he would be free. He slammed the kitchen door behind him and hurried
across the tiled floor.

The first bolt
shot back easily. The second was a little more stiff. But it was while he was
wrestling to free it that he thought he heard something behind him. A rumbling
noise, low and menacing. A scratching of long nails on bare wood.

He turned
around. A few yards away, the stairs rose upwards towards the stained-glass
window.

Halfway down
the stairs, lithe, terrifying and pale in the gloom, and naked and pale and,
poised on all fours like the lion-people they were, he saw Lorie and Mrs.
Semple. Their tawny hair was wild, and their eyes were as glinting and cold as
the lion he had seen at the circus. Their “lips were pulled back in a snarl of
surprise and Vicious anger.

Step by step,
they loped head-first down the stairs, and padded across the hallway toward
him; growling and tossing their heads. Their teeth were yellow and curved and
sharp, and he knew then that there was nothing human or forgiving about them
.at all.

He banged back
the second and third bolts and turned the key in a split-second surge of fear
and adrenalin. The she-lions saw what he was doing. Lorie bounded toward him
faster, and then launched herself into a snarling leap.

Gene rolled
himself to one side, and Lorie landed heavily on the floor like a cat, her
nails scratching and sliding on the tiles. Gene wrenched open the door, and
pushed his way out into the night, tearing his sweater on the door key. He
closed his eyes and ran away from the house, up the gravel drive, faster than
he’d ever run before.

He heard the
loping sound of the two Ubasti women behind him, as they ran easily and swiftly
in pursuit The gates were still a hundred and fifty yards away, and he knew
that he wasn’t going to make it. They were too strong and too fast, and they
were bred to kill.

His legs pumped
up and down, and the breath hit his lungs in scorching gasps. The oak trees
along the driveway joggled past his vision like a blur of cinema v6rit£. Ahead
of him, as he rounded the corner hi the drive, he could see the tall iron
gates, and he hoped and prayed to God that there was some way to get them open.

It wasn’t long,
though, before he saw a pale shape flickering alongside of him behind the rows
of oaks,

One of the
she-lions had caught up, and was running level. She would only have to cut
across now, and his escape would be diverted, and closed off. Not far behind
him, he heard the other one’s bare hands and feet beating out a four-legged
rhythm on the gravel, and he could hear the beast-woman’s breath coming closer
and closer.

Desperately, he
tried to run through the long grass and through the oaks and make his way
toward the place, where he had scaled the wall in his first search for Lorie.
Perhaps, with a shadow of luck, the rope he had used would still be there. He
knew that he couldn’t run for very much longer, and if he miscalculated, and
reached the wall at the wrong point, he was going to be finished.

He leaped and
jumped through tangles of briars and tree-roots, and ran and ran across the
open lawns. To his left, the pale shape of the she-lion was still almost level,
and now he could see the other one running to his right. They were hunting him
down in just the way that lionesses hunt zebra and antelope in the African,
bush. While he was trying to get away from them by calculating the best place
to go, they were tracking him down by instinct.

He knew that he
wasn’t going to make the wall. He was heaving for breath, and his legs were
leaden and stumbling and didn’t seem to cooperate at all. The lawn he was
running across went upward in a long gentle slope, a very gentle slope, but
enough to drag him to a standstill. He was staggering by the time he got
anywhere near the trees, and the die-lions were running in faster and faster to
catch him.

There was a
sound like paws bounding through leaves. He lifted his arm to protect himself.
Then Lorie leaped at him, from the left, and her weight dropped him straight to
the leafy ground, rolling him over and pinning him helplessly against the roots
of a tree.

He closed his
eyes. He waited for the jaws to bite into him. He could hear Lorie panting and
slavering saliva, and he could feel the pressure of her body on top of him, and
there was that rank lion-like smell around.

Tentatively, he
opened his eyes and looked up. Lorie saw him, and shifted away. She crouched a
little way off, watching him with her beautiful and animal face, and purring
deeply. Her mother came running through the trees and joined her, and together
they sat staring at him, so remote and leonine that it was hard for him to
think that they had ever been people. He had danced with this girl, taken her
to parties, talked with her, laughed with her, and yet here she was, naked and
wild in a November wood, guarding him with a hostile stare and bared teeth.

Guarding him,
that’s what they were doing. He understood that now. They weren’t going to kill
him because he was their prize sacrifice, their human offering to the godly son
of Bast who was soon going to arrive to mate with Lorie. They would never dare
to devour him. He was Lorie’s chance to become a proud mother in the tradition
of the Ubasti descent.

Gene lifted
himself up a little. “Lorie?” he said, in a coaxing voice. “Can you hear me?”

Lorie tossed
her head like a lion tossing away irritating flies, and said nothing.

“Listen,
Lorie,” said Gene, “you have to believe that you can’t do this. The cops are on
their way. I promise you that. I called the cops just now and they’re coming.
If they catch you, Lorie, you’re going to go to prison for a long, long time.
No lion-babies for you, Lorie. If you don’t let me free now, they’ll lock you
up and they’ll take your baby away from you, and probably drown it.”

Lorie bared her
teeth again, but he wasn’t at all sure if she’d understood. He sat up a few
inches more, and both she-lions snarled together and moved threateningly toward
him. He raised his hands to show that he wasn’t going to take any more liberties,
and they retreated.

Gene tried to
make himself as comfortable as he could. The son of Bast, the lion from the
circus, must be expected soon, otherwise they wouldn’t be waiting here so
patiently. He wondered how the lion was going to get out of its cage. Maybe
Mrs. Semple had already fixed the lock or maybe the beast was just going to
burst its way straight through the wooden walls. He Wished he had a cigarette.
Even men condemned to hang can have a last cigarette.

It. was cold
and still out in the grounds of the Semple estate, but neither of the two
lion-women seemed to feel chilled. They sat quietly and placidly side by side,
their heads lifted to catch any sound of Lorie’s approaching mate.

“Lorie” urged
Gene, for a second time. “Let me go, Lorie. That’s all you have to do. Give me
a half-hour start. I won’t tell a soul about you and your mother, I promise.
You can have your lion without me, can’t you? Why involve me?”

Lorie stared at
him with her green, intense eyes, but she still didn’t answer. Mrs. Semple
twitched her head uneasily, as if she was worried that the lion from the circus
wouldn’t show. It had to be touch and go for a beast like that to break out of
its cage and run through the suburbs of Merriam without being spotted by police
or circus folk. Gene squinted down at his watch and saw it was almost two.

By two-thirty,
he was stiff and cramped. The night sky was clouding over, and a soft breeze
was rising. Gene started to cough, and tried to shift himself yet again on the
bony tree-roots, but Mrs. Semple turned to him and bared her fangs so
threateningly that he froze, and stayed where he was.

Then they heard
it. The soft, heavy sound of an animal leaping over the wall. The quick running
of paws through leaves. Lorie stiffened, and turned her head, and Mrs. Semple
rose up on to her hands and feet, and started pacing in a nervous
figure-of-eight.

There was a
rumbling roar. Gene twisted his head around, and there it was. The magnificent
son of Bast It looked even bigger than it had in the cage, and it came stalking
across toward them with pride and dignity and a rippling movement that spoke of
unstoppable muscular strength.

Gene had seen
plenty of photographs of circus people and unwary safari-park visitors being
mauled by lions, and he had always wondered why they never broke free and ran
away. When he saw the sheer size of this fully grown male lion, h&
understood why.

The lion
stopped, and looked slowly around the clearing where they were gathered. It
roared once, and to Gene’s horror, Lorie roared back, in a strained, baying,
on-heat kind of bitch-lion’s voice. The lion raised its nose, and Gene saw its
black nostrils dilate as it sniffed out Lorie’s mating-scent.

Lorie clawed
and fretted at the ground. She was grinding her teeth, and her whole body was
tense with sexual arousal. The lion paced slowly around her, sniffing
cautiously at her hak and her body and between her legs. Mrs. Semple stayed
away, lying down in the tangled grass with her head lifted, and Gene was pretty
sure that if he tried to make a break for it, she’d be straight after him.