The Sphinx by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

dinner.”
    No. Go away.
    “Look,” said
Gene. “Let’s be sensible about this, huh?” He took out his wallet, and produced
a ten-dollar bill, which he folded between his fingers and poked through the
gates. “Will you just let me in?”
    Mathieu stared
at the bill with icy, relentless eyes. Then he looked back at Gene, and there
was such intense contempt on his face that Gene withdrew the bill and tucked it
hastily and untidily back in his wallet. At that particular moment, he was
extremely glad that there was half a ton of iron gate in between him and this
mute kravmaga freak.
    “All right,”
Gene said. “If I can’t persuade you, I can’t persuade you. But will you just
take a message? Will you tell Lorie to call me? Please?”
    Mathieu looked
at him coldly for a few more moments and then turned around and walked back to
his golf cart. With a high-pitched whine, he trundled off again down the drive
and disappeared from sight behind the trees. Gene leaned against the gates and
sighed.
    He was about to
return to his car when he thought he saw something in the distance, almost
hidden by the long grass. He screwed up his eyes, and for one fleeting second
he saw Lorie, walking slowly among the trees with a big dog on a leash. She was
wearing blue slacks and a billowing white blouse, her tawny hair brushed, back
and floating in the wind.
    Gene yelled,
“Lorie! Lorie!” But she was too far away and before he could shout again she
was gone.
    He went back
and sat in his New Yorker, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and
wondering what to do next. He didn’t fancy trying to break into the Semple
estate in broad daylight. Nor did it help ringing the visitor’s bell. All he
could do now was to wait for the morning, when Maggie would hopefully have the
telephone number. Then perhaps he could get past the impassive Mathieu and talk
to Lorie herself, or at least her mother.
    He drove back
to the city, feeling disappointed, but increasingly determined. If ever he’d
faced an up-and-up challenge, this was it, and no matter what it took, he was
damned if he wasn’t going to lick it.
    Monday morning
was bright, with a slight snap of winter in the air, and Gene wore his overcoat
to work. He reached his office early, just before eight, but Maggie was even
earlier. She was sitting at her desk with a plastic cup of coffee, smoking a
cigarette and hanging on the phone.
    Gene hung up
his coat. “Who is it?” he mouthed. “Anyone I shouldn’t talk to?,’“
    Maggie put her
hand over the receiver. “It’s my secret Monday-morning lover. Keep your mouth
shut, or he’ll hear you.”
    Gene went to
his desk and flipped quickly through the stack of mail. There was a whole pile
of letters from the West Indies, and some irritating enquiries about subsidy
policy in parts of Central America. Even if he got down to it straight away,
this particular bundle was going to take him most of the morning to answer, and
he still had to finish a report on .West Indian internal affairs. He tapped a
True out its pack and lit up.
    Maggie was
saying: “Uh-huh. Okay, I gotcha. Thanks, Marvin. I owe you one.” Then she put
the phone down and came across to Gene with a self-satisfied smile. She was
wearing a neat rust-colored suit today, and not for the first time he realized
just how pretty she really was.
    “Well?” he
asked, frowning over a six-page letter on sugar production. “You look like the
cat who cornered the cream market.”
    “And why
shouldn’t I? You asked the impossible, o boss, and the impossible has been
accomplished.”
    She tore a page
from her shorthand pad and put it down in front of him. On it was written First
Bank of Franco-Africa, 1214 K Street, and under that was a telephone number.
    He picked it
up. “What’s this? Something to do with Lorie Semple?”
    “Only her
telephone number,” said Maggie smugly. “And only the address of the bank where
she works.”-
    Gene raised an
eyebrow. “She works? You mean