Free The Sphinx by Graham Masterton Page B

golf cart, his stony expression concealed behind
reflecting sunglasses, so that he looked as though he had two pieces of clear
blue sky instead of eyes.
    Lorie was
wearing a safari jacket and boots, and her hair was tucked up into a
wide-brimmed bush hat. She had made her eyes so that they appeared even more
luminous and enormous than ever.
    Gene opened the
door of his car for her, and she climbed in. Then he walked around to the
driving-seat, waving to Mathieu on the way.
    “Doesn’t he
like me, or something?” asked Gene, as he sat. down behind the wheel.
    “Mathieu? I
don’t think he likes or dislikes people in the normal sort of way. He just does
his job.”
    “Well, his job
obviously doesn’t include waving to your weekend date.”
    Lorie laughed.
“I can’t imagine Mathieu waving at anyone, let alone you.”
    They drove down
the winding road, through the tunnel of overhanging trees, and out onto the
main highway. Gene turned the car away from Washington and out toward Frederick.
Walter Farlowe had invited them out to his vacation home for drinks and a
barbecue, along with some of the leading professional people who had assisted
the Democratic cause with finance and moral support during the crucial stages
of the election.
    Gene’s shoulder
was. still bound up in crepe bandage, but his bite wound had almost completely
healed and the bruises on his ribs had gradually faded. When Maggie had seen
him on Monday, she had tried to persuade him to visit the doctor, but he
remembered his promise to Mrs. Semple; and insisted he was fit.
    “After all,” he
had told her, “cavemen got bitten by wild beasts, and they didn’t have a
friendly neighborhood MD to visit.”
    “Cavemen used
to die a lot,” Maggie had said sharply, and walked out of the office.
    This was Gene’s
first date with Lorie. He had called her on Wednesday evening and asked her to
come, and even though she had seemed hesitant at first, she was happy and
excited now, and he couldn’t resist glancing across the car and reveling in the
sheer sexual beauty that she radiated.
    Whatever
hang-ups she had about marriage and her mother, that wasn’t going to stop them
from having a great time at Walter’s party, and then maybe some more intimate
amusements to follow. She was a girl in a million, and if he hadn’t been trying
to play things a little cooler since his ill-fated raid on the Semple estate,
he would have told her so.
    They drove
through sunlight, shadow, and whirling leaves. Walter’s weekend place was right
out in the country, and at this time of the year it was a refreshing and
exhilarating drive.
    “You know
something?’ said Lorie. “I’m so nervous!”
    “What are you
nervous about?”
    “Us! You and
me. I’m so, excited, I don’t want any of this to end.”
    He grinned.
“Maybe it doesn’t have to.”
    But Lorie shook
her head. “One day, it will have.to. Whatever happens, however things go.”
    Gene stuck a
cigarette in his mouth and pushed in the car’s cigar lighter. “You shouldn’t be
such a pessimist,” he told her. “Try living in the present for a change,
instead of the future.”
    She looked at
him. The radio was playing “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?”
    “We have to be
warned about the future, Gene, or perhaps we won’t get out of the present
alive.”
    He lit his
cigarette. “You sound like your mother.”
    “Yes,” she
said. “I’m my mother’s child.”
    It took them an
hour to reach Walter Farlowe’s house. It was a split-level white-painted
vacation home that had been designed for him by Edward Ocean, the young and
irretrievably tacky architect. There was a pool, which was now scattered with
floating leaves, and a wide patio that overlooked a deep valley of misty
treetops and blue haze. Most of the guests were already there, and the sloping
driveway was crowded with red Mercedes and silver Sevilles. A brick barbecue was
sending up smoke signals that told of charred chops and curled-up