The Sphinx (4 page)

“Upward, my
boy, ever upward,” he breathed to himself, quoting the long-ago words of his
campaign agent hi Florida. He gripped two of the iron spear-shafts, pressed the
soles of both his shoes against the gate, and began to hoist himself further up
like a Fiji islander scaling a coconut tree. Panting, he reached the top. The
tricky bit was going to be climbing over the spikes themselves. There was no
foothold, and he would have to try to wedge his feet in between the uprights
and hope that they didn’t slip or, even worse, get irrevocably stuck.

He jammed his left
foot in, and carefully swung his right leg over the spikes. The gates rattled a
little under his weight. He stayed there, taking deep breaths, until he could
summon up the strength to wedge his right foot in between the shafts on the
other side and swing his left leg over.

Just then, he
heard a deep rumbling noise from the direction of the house. He froze, sweat
trickling down the sides of his face, and listened. It was probably nothing
more than distant thunder. There was a warning of electric storms overnight,
and they usually rolled into Washington from this side of the river. He gripped
the gates tighter, and prepared to hop over.

The rumbling
came again, and this time it definitely wasn’t thunder. It could have been a
motorcycle, or a jet airplane, but it definitely wasn’t thunder. He squinted
into the Semple grounds through the darkness, but a bank 6f clouds had obscured
the moon and it was impossible to make anything out but shadowy trees. The
rumbling was certainly coming from there.

Then he heard
the most frightening sound he had ever heard in his life. It was the bounding,
rustling noise of large animals running through the bushes and trees. What’s
more, they were coming his way. The Semples had set their dogs on him!

Tense and
terrified, he swung his leg back over the top of the gate. The running noise
was coming nearer, and he didn’t dare to look toward the house. He struggled to
extricate his left foot from between the spear-shafts, but because he was
off-balance it wouldn’t come out. He wrenched it as hard as he could, but it
was still stuck.

He was aware of
huge, pale shapes leaping through the oaks and the undergrowth, and the scuff
of heavy paws on gravel Then he lost his grip,- and half-slithered,
half-dropped off the gate .to the ground, twisting, his ankle and leaving: his
left shoe still wedged between the bars.

Gasping in
pain, he limped towards his car as fast as he could. Just behind him, he heard
the rattling thump and scratching of the Semple’s beasts as they reached the
gates and threw themselves up at them, snarling and growling in frustrated
aggression.

He started the
car, swung it around in a slew of gravel, and headed back down the winding hill
with screeching tires. It was only when he was back on the main highway toward
Washington that he slowed down and allowed himself to breathe normally. His
whole system felt swamped with fear and hyped with adrenalin.

He reached his
apartment in Georgetown and left the car parked in the street. It was a quiet,
old neighborhood, and he had been lucky to rent the top floor of a dark, brick
house that was set back in its own paved yard. The owner was’ a friend of his
father from the days when students wore coonskin coats and thought that Artie
Shaw was the bee’s knees. He swung open, the gate and limped on his sprained,
stockinged foot to the front door.

He switched on
all the lamps in his pale-yellow decorated sitting-room, turned on the
late-night movie with no volume, and put Mozart’s string quartets on the quad
stereo. Only then did he permit his brain to start thinking about Lorie Semple.
He splashed himself a large glass of Jack Daniels and lay back on the
gold-upholstered couch with his injured foot on the onyx coffee-table, turning
over the night’s events and trying to make something out of them that didn’t
seem ludicrous or bizarre.

There was no
question that Lorie was a fascinating girl. In normal circumstances, he would
have expected to be having dinner with her right now, with a promise of bed in
her eyes and the orchestra playing seductive music. He would at least have
expected to come away from it all with a date fixed for tomorrow. But she was
stonewalling him cold, even though she claimed that she liked him, and she was
even prepared to bite him to make herself understood.

He lit a cigarette,
and suddenly realized how sore his tongue was. He went through to the small
brown-and; black bathroom, with its serried ranks of expensive bottles of
aftershave, and switched on the light over the wash-basin mirror. Then he stuck
his tongue out and inspected it.

The strange
thing was that the scarlet wounds were so few and far between. A normal human
bite is even and crescent-shaped, but this one consisted of only four distinct
marks. Gene touched them gently, and winced. It was almost as if he had been
bitten on the tongue by a large dog.

He stood in front of the mirror a long time, and when, the
phone rang he jumped hi nervous surprise.

I
t was Walter Farlowe, his boss. He wanted to remind Gene that
there was an eleven o’clock meeting the following day to discuss the West
Indies negotiations, and that he expected Gene’s punctual attendance. Gene said
he had everything ready, and that everything, was fine.

“Do you have a
head cold?” asked Walter.

“Do I sound as
if I do?”

“I don’t know.
You sound funny. Like your mouth is full of bread roll or something.”

“Oh, that,”
said Gene. “I bit my tongue by mistake.”

Walter
chuckled. “You bit your tongue? I wish Henry Ness would.”

“I wish Henry
would bite his whole goddamned head off.”

After putting
the phone down, Gene poured himself another drink and sat down to think some
more. All his political life, he had made his mark by being the kind of man who
finishes everything he sets out to do. Every 51e, every report, every incident
was carefully documented, detailed, and closed. Loose ends disturbed him, and
that was exactly what this business with Lorie Semple had turned out to be.
Apart from that, his pride had taken its biggest beating in twenty years. Not
only had a busty nineteen-ye.ar-old virgin bitten his tongue, but she’d set her
watchdogs on him and made him leave one of his $75 English shoes stuck in a
goddamn gate.

He groped
around for his telephone book and looked up the Semples. As he expected, they
weren’t listed. He stood there tapping his glass thoughtfully against his front
teeth for a while, and then he picked up the phone and dialed a number. After
all, he thought, it’s only just past midnight, and not many young ladies in
Washington go to bed this early to sleep.

The phone rang
ten or eleven times before it was answered. A dozy girl’s voice said, “Hello?

Who is this?”

“Maggie,” said
Gene, as brightly as he could manage. “It’s me, Gene.”

“What’s the
time?”

“Oh, I don’t
know. Around twelve I guess.”

“You don’t
know? I buy you a three-hundred-dollar Jaeger-le-Coultre and you don’t know?”

“Don’t get
sore. You weren’t asleep, were you?”

Maggie let out
a long, patient sigh. “No, Gene, I wasn’t asleep. How could any girl keep a job
as your private secretary if she ever slept? I am awake, twenty four hours of
the day. It’s just that some of the time I’m a little less awake than the rest
of the time.”

Gene listened
patiently. “Maggie,” he said. “I know this is kind of an imposition, but I was
wondering if you could do me a small favor.”

“That’s what
you always say. Gene, it’s my night off! Just for once, can’t a girl get some
of that rest that makes her beautiful?”

“Maggie, you’re
always beautiful, rested or exhausted.”

“Don’t give me
that. What do you want me to do?”

“Do you
remember a French diplomat called Jean Semple? He died about three months ago
in Canada or someplace.”

“That’s right.
He was mauled by bears on a hunting trip.”

“Well, what do
you know about his background? His family? Particularly his house?”

“Nothing at
all. Why?”

Gene picked up
the phone and walked over to the couch. On the color TV screen, some moth-eaten
monsters were rising from their graves, and a bunch of terrified people were
running away, waving their arms in the air, and mouthing silently. Mozart
continued to play calmly in the background.

“I met Semple’s
daughter tonight, ‘round at the Schirra’s. She was very mysterious, you know?
Very... what can I say? ...remote. I get the feeling there’s something strange
about her that I ought to know.”

Maggie sighed
again. “You mean, she gave you the brush-off and you want some inside dope
that’s going to assure your seductive success?”

“Oh, come on,
Maggie it’s not like that at all. She lives in this huge house outside of town,
with walls around it like Fort Knox, and there are wild dogs running around in
the grounds that could tear a man’s leg off with a single bite.”

“Maybe the
Semples have a valuable art collection or something. Did you see the house
itself?”

“I wasn’t even
allowed past the gates. She has this kind of chaperone, called Mathieu. He’s a
mute, and he looks like Jack Palance playing Dracula. When I faintly and meekly
suggested that I might be allowed in, I was given the rebuff of the century.”

“You? Faint and
meek?”

“I can be faint
and meek when I want to. The trouble was, the whole place was off limits, no
matter what kind of line I came out with. All I want to know is, what goes on
there? I mean, Lorie Semple’s a terrific-looking girl, and believe it or not I
would like to get to know her better, but mainly I’m just curious.”

“Do you think
it could ever happen again?” Maggie asked wistfully.

“Do I think
that what could ever happen again?”

“Us. You and
me. The couple most likely to succeed. Isn’t that what they said in the
yearbook?”

“Maggie... I’m
a young man. I have my whole life ahead of me.”

“If you think
that thirty-two’s young, you ought to remember that it’s only eight years away
from forty.”

He swallowed
whiskey. “Okay, call ‘me in eight years’ time. But meanwhile, will you just do
this one favor for me?”

“What do you
want to know?”

“I want to know
the Semple telephone number. I also want to know if Lorie ever goes out, and if
she does, where she goes and how she spends her time. I would particularly like
some photographs of the Semple estate, and some background on Jean Semple’s
death. Oh, and see if you can dig up anything on Mrs. Semple, Lorie’s mother.
It seems that she’s quite a dragon in her own quiet way.”

Maggie finished
jotting down what he wanted. “How Boon do you need this, as if I didn’t know?”

“How about
tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s
Sunday.”

“That’s all
right–it won’t interfere with your regular work. I’ll be ‘round at Walter’s,
office most of the morning. Why don’t you come by with, the stuff, and I’ll
take you to lunch.”

“That a
promise?”

“God’s honor.
You think I’d tell you lies on the Sabbath?”

“No more than
usual. By the way, what are you eating?”

“Nothing. What
do you mean?”

“You sound like
you’re eating something,” she said.

He touched his
sensitive tongue. “Oh, that. No, I’m not eating anything. I just have this
troublesome mouth, ulcer, that’s all.”

“Okay, Gene.
See you tomorrow. Don’t forget, now. Lunch.”

“Bye, bye, my
darling Maggie.”

He laid down
the phone. He knew it was Insensitive to ask Maggie to look up Lorie Semple’s
background, and he felt more than a little guilty about it, but she was the
only person he knew that could do.it thoroughly, discreetly, and fast. If he
asked Mark Wellman to do it, or any of the other male members of his political
staff, he knew that the story of the bitten tongue and the lost shoe would be
buzzing around Washington in fifteen minutes flat. As it was, his name was
probably already being romantically linked with Lorie’s, and that was going to
make his investigations less than, easy.

He tried to
decide if he wanted another drink. He was beginning to feel tired and his body
was beginning to ache, and in the end he wearily undressed and took a long
shower, standing under the gushing water and thinking about Lorie Semple. In
his mind, he ran through the whole evening again, from the moment when he
stepped up to her with his hand held out, to the disturbing feel of her breast
through the thin, material of her dress.

He soaped
himself, and in soaping himself, he suddenly realized just how much Lorie
Semple turned him on.

They went to a
little French place not far from Walter Farlowe’s office, sat behind the green
glass of a bay window, and ordered steak and eggs. The place was a favorite
with political staff who were working on Sundays, and it was already crowded
when they arrived. An experienced observer could have divided the Re-publicans
from the Democrats at a glance, and seen that while the donkeys tended to sit
around the sweet trolley at the back of the room, the elephants gravitated to
the windows.

Maggie was
looking her usual fresh and wholesome self. She was a petite and pretty
brunette, with a smatter of freckles across her up tilted nose and wide brown,
eyes. She always reminded Gene of the girls who used to greet homecoming doughboys
on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t married
her years ago. They had been childhood sweethearts back in Jacksonville, and at
the age of seventeen they had become lovers and stayed entangled until they
were twenty-one.

Then Gene’s
political ambitions had called him, and Maggie had gone away to college, and
somehow the most likely love affair faltered and dwindled, and they both went
their own ways.