Evelyn glanced at Robert, but he was still looking at Wellington, his expression intense, as though he were trying to look through the skin and bone down into Wellington’s brain. Evelyn said, “How many of us will be going?”
“Just the two of you,” Wellington said, but she kept looking at Robert, who finally did meet her eyes. He answered her unspoken question with a helpless shake of his head; no, there was nothing to be done about it. But his regretful expression almost made up for it.’
Wellington was saying, “We can’t afford to have Bradford see a familiar face in Paris. We don’t want him questioning anything.”
Robert said, “I might be able to get over for a day or two.”
Wellington frowned at him, strongly disapproving, but then shrugged and said, “I suppose it’s possible. If everyone exercises a good deal of care.”
“In any case,” Robert said, “we have a week before you go.”
“And someone might come up with a better idea before then,” she said.
Was that pessimism he was covering? “Let’s hope so,” he said.
iii
Wednesday night she saw the light flickering in the woods. It was nearly one o’clock, she was on the way home from Robert’s place, and shortly after she’d passed the gate on the private road she caught a glimpse of the light out of the corner of her eye, far away to the right through the woods.
She stopped the car at once, astonished at the idea of a light off there at this hour, but when she looked for it it was gone. She backed the car slowly, searching for it, and all at once there it was again, so pale and small as to be the reflection of a reflection. Moonlight glinting from a piece of glass? No, it wasn’t that kind of light, it was definitely electric illumination, a light bulb or flashlight.
And now it was gone again, it just winked out. She stayed where she was a minute or two longer, but it was gone for good.
What could it have been? Some guard of Wellington’s, maybe, sparingly using a flashlight to pick his way through the woods. Or perhaps someone from the other side?
She drove on to the house, frowning over the light, and it figured in her dreams after she went to sleep. In the morning, she went down to the stables and took out Jester and went riding off into the area where she’d seen the light, just to see if there was anything there.
The lost town was up this way, in the middle of the woods, the place where she’d brought Robert the first time they’d gone riding together. Now, failing to find anything to explain the light in the area where she thought she’d seen it, she followed an impulse and rode on through the woods toward the site of the town.
She was nearly to it, Jester moving at a comfortable walk through the woods, when a man dressed as a hunter, and with a rifle tucked under his arm, appeared from behind a tree and called, “Excuse me, Miss.”
Evelyn stopped, and frowned at him. He was a stocky man, perhaps forty, with a blue shadow of beard on a heavy jaw. His red hunting cap and red-and-black hunting jacket seemed vaguely frivolous on him. There was no feeling of menace in any way; in fact, she only felt from him the natural irritation of a landowner meeting a trespasser; the reverse of the facts. She said, “What do you want?”
“I’m lost, Miss. Could you—”
“You certainly are. This is private property.” She pointed off to the left. “If you go that way, you’ll come to a dirt road. The public land is on the other side of it.”
Instead of thanking her, or moving off, he looked up and said, “Are you Mrs. Canby?”
She still thought of him as only a trespasser. “Yes, I am.”
“Well, Ma’am, I work for Mr. Lockridge, and the thing—”
“For Bradford Lockridge?” She knew he was lying, of course.
But he said, “No, Ma’am. For Mr. Wellington Lockridge. We’re putting up a little construction back up in here, and—”
“Construction? What kind of construction?”
“I’d rather Mr. Lockridge told you about that, Ma’am.”
“Well, I’ll just see it for myself,” she said, but before she could move he’d grabbed Jester’s reins and was holding them, and for the first time she realized just how cold his eyes were. He said, “My orders are to keep everyone away, Ma’am. If Mr. Lockridge tells me to make an exception in your case, I’ll be happy to let you through.”
“And if I go through anyway?”
“No, Ma’am.”
“What will you do? Shoot me?”
“I think it would be better if you’d talk to Mr. Lockridge first, Ma’am, before doing anything.”
Looking down at him where he was standing beside Jester, holding the reins clasped in one large hand, she believed that he would stop her from going any farther, no matter who she was, no matter what the situation, no matter how extreme his actions had to become. “I’ll talk to him,” she said threateningly. “You can believe I’ll talk to him. Let go of my horse.”
He released the reins at once, and stepped back. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I have to do what I’m told.”
A hundred angry answers rose to her mind, but she knew none of them would penetrate that closed cold face of his, so she harshly spun Jester around and rode back to the house.
She didn’t know whether it was all right to use the phones in the house now or not, and at the moment she didn’t care. She was furious, and she wanted to get to Wellington before her fury cooled.
He had given her a phone number where he could usually be reached in Washington, and had told her to expect to have to let it ring for a while. She did, and at last a woman came on, identifying herself only by announcing the last four digits of the number Evelyn had dialed. Evelyn asked for Wellington, was asked to hold on, and waited over three minutes by her watch before Wellington’s voice suddenly said in her ear, “I understand someone was rude to you.”
How did he know about it so soon? But this time his ubiquitousness was itself a source of annoyance and only fired the flames. “He certainly was! And what’s going on up there anyway, what are you doing that you can’t—”
“Are you calling from home?”
“Yes! And I don’t care! To be treated like that on my own property—”
“Evelyn, I understand, and I apologize. My man should have handled it differently. The fact is, we need a more secure base of operations than the one we took over from those other people. You know the ones I mean?”
His circumspection reminded her that she too should be circumspect, which cut at once into her anger. She shouldn’t have used this phone, and that awareness removed the purity of self-righteousness from her rage; she answered only, “Yes, I know who you mean.”
“All right. We’re building something more stable, in a better location. But the people working on it, naturally, aren’t completely in our confidence. That’s why it would be better if you didn’t talk to them. Do you follow me?”
“Yes, I follow you. But if you wanted to avoid that sort of thing, why not tell me about it? Why let me stumble on it, and cause a big scene?”
“Yes, that was a mistake on my part. You have to understand how remote this all is from my usual type of activity. A family situation is naturally more open and — I don’t know how to say it — less professional than what I’m used to. But I tell you what. That man will apologize to you, and as soon as—”