I opened my eyes. He was watching me steadily, his sober face removing any possibility that he was intending to be funny.
‘How are you on guts?’ he asked.
‘Fresh out.’
He sighed deeply. ‘That figures.’
‘Walt...’ I began.
‘It struck me first last night, on the mountain. You were sure anxious about Chrysalis, but you didn’t give a goddam about falling off the top yourself. It made me freeze just to watch you leading him along that ledge... and you came back as calm as if it had been your own yard.’
He was apologizing, in his indirect way, for his startling appearance on the path.
‘Walt,’ I said, half smiling. ‘Will you go get me something for a headache?’
Chapter Eleven
Eunice, Lynnie, Sam Kitchens, and stud groom Chub Lodovski leaned in a row on the rail of the stallions’ paddock at Midway and watched Chrysalis eat Kentucky grass with opinions varying from Lodovski’s enthusiasm to Eunice’s resignation.
The half-a-million pounds’ worth looked none the worse for his trip up the Tetons. Better than on the ranch, as Sam Kitchens had removed all the Wyoming dust from his coat on the journey back, and the bay hide shone with glittering good health in the sunshine. There wasn’t, Lodovski assured me, the slightest chance of his going missing again.
Batteries of photographers and pressmen had come and gone: the stallion had been ‘found’ straying on the land of a friend of Dave Teller’s about thirty miles from where he had disappeared. All the excitement was over.
I walked back to Dave’s house with Eunice and Lynnie, and Eunice poured me a drink which was four-fifths whisky and one-fifth ice.
‘Who put you through what meat grinder?’ she said. ‘You look like a honeymoon couple on the tenth night.’
Sam Hengelman had driven into Midway with Chrysalis at lunchtime (Tuesday). I had flown to New York with Walt the day before, and had just backtracked to Lexington, in time to catch the tail end of Eunice interviewing the press. Several of that hard bitten fraternity had tottered out past me with pole-axed expressions and Lynnie had been halfway through a fit of giggles.
I made inroads into the hefty drink.
‘I could do with a good long sleep,’ I admitted. ‘If you could give me a bed? Or there’s the motel...’
‘Stay here,’ Eunice said abruptly. ‘Of course you’re staying here.’
I looked from her to Lynnie. I couldn’t stay in the house with one alone: perfectly proper with both. Silly.
‘Thanks, then. And I must call Dave, in England.’
Dave, still in hospital, sounded incredulous.
‘I heard it on a news flash, not half an hour ago,’ he said. ‘Chrysalis just plain turned up.’
‘He sure did,’ I said dryly.
‘Where had he been?’
‘It’s a long story,’ I said, ‘and wires have ears. But the expenses stand right now at somewhere near six thousand three hundred dollars. Is that enough for you, or do you want to go on for some answers?’
‘To what questions, fella?’ He sounded uncertain.
‘To why Chrysalis was hi-jacked, and why you fell in the river. And another thing: do you want Allyx back?’
‘For God’s sake... do you know where he is?’
‘No. But maybe I could find him. However, if I do, and we get as positive an identification as on Chrysalis, the insurance money on Allyx will have to be repaid to Buttress Life. That will be the equivalent of buying him all over again. He’s three years older now, and you’ll have lost three crops of foals. He may not be a good proposition for you or your syndicate any more. In which case you might prefer not to have him found. It’s up to you.’
‘Jeez,’ he said.
‘Will you think it over, and call back?’ I suggested. ‘Your wife and Lynnie are filling me up with food and drinks, and I guess I’ll be staying here tonight. But if you want me to go on, will you clear it with Keeble? I’m due back at my desk at nine AM next Monday morning, and I might not make it.’
‘Sure,’ he said, somewhat weakly, and I handed the receiver to Eunice.
‘How’s it going, honey?’ she said, and I took a good swallow, put my head back on the chair, and listened to her long-married-wifely conversation with my eyes shut.
‘Don’t ask me how he did it, Dave, I don’t know. All I know is he rang from New York yesterday afternoon and asked me for the name of any close friend of ours who was influential and respected, preferably high up in horsebreeding circles, and whose word would be taken as gospel by the press. So, after a rake around I said I guessed Jeff Roots fitted the bill; and lo and behold Chrysalis turned up on Jeff’s land this morning... Yeah, the horse is as good as new; wherever he’s been they’ve treated him right... Look, Dave, surely enough’s enough? I heard what Gene said about finding Allyx. Well, don’t do it. We need Allyx like a dose of clap. And your boy here is no goddam Hercules, a puff of wind would knock him off, the way he’s come back... Lynnie’s fine, sure. We’re taking a trip tomorrow out to California. I’ll measure up the curtains for the new place, things like that, and Lynnie can have some days on the beach and maybe try some surfing with those de Vesey boys. So look, why don’t we take Gene with us, huh?... Sure, I’ve made reservations at The Vacationer in Santa Barbara... they’re bound to have another room...’
I listened to her plans with disappointment. If I wanted to laze anywhere, it was right where I was, on the Midway Farm. By the peaceful pool in the quiet green garden, sleeping, drinking, and looking at Lynnie.
Eunice put down the receiver, and we had dinner, and late in the evening Dave rang through again.
‘Gene?’ he said. ‘Now listen, fella. Apart from curiosity, is there any good reason for finding those answers you talked about?’
‘Forestalling repetition,’ I said promptly.
‘No more stolen stallions and no more attacks on me?’
‘That’s right.’
There was a pause.
‘I’ll buy the answers, then,’ he said. ‘If you can get them. And as for Allyx... if you think there’s any chance of finding him alive and vigorous, then I guess I’m morally obliged to give you the go-ahead. I’d have to syndicate him all over again, of course. He’ll be twelve now. That would give him only about six to eight more years of high potency... But his get from before his disappearance are winning all over Europe. Business-wise I’m not too happy about those three lost years. But blood-wise, it would be criminal not to try to get him back.’
All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘What you spent on finding Chrysalis is less than his fee for covering a single mare. You’ve a free hand again for Allyx.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘Sim Keeble says you’ve got seven days’ extension of leave. Something about it being due to you anyway, from a week you were entitled to at Christmas and didn’t take.’
‘I’d forgotten about that.’
‘I guess I could fix it with him for more, if the extra week isn’t enough.’
‘If I haven’t finished by then I’ll have failed anyway, and might as well go home.’
‘Oh.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘Very well, we’ll leave it like that for the present.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Eunice didn’t seem to think you looked too well.’
‘The boy on the punt who knocked you out did the same thing for me.’
‘Gene!’ His voice was shocked.
‘Yeah. Don’t tell my boss I’m that incompetent. Though come to think of it, he knows.’
He laughed. ‘When you find that boy again give him a one-two from both of us.’
‘Sure,’ I said. But I’d been taught my job by cerebral people who didn’t reckon a screener would ever have to fight for his life, and by the time I proved them wrong I was too old to become expert at boxing or judo, even if I’d liked the idea, which I didn’t. I had learnt instead to shoot straight, and the Luger had in the past three years extricated me unharmed from two sticky situations. But in a stand up hand-to-hand affair with that young bull Matt Clive I would be a five hundred to one loser, and ‘giving him a one-two from both of us’ in any physical sense was a very dim possibility indeed.