Trouble, at the gate? She was about to blurt out a question — one that he wouldn’t have answered in any event — and stopped herself just barely in time. Let Robert talk. Let Robert talk.
Robert did, and asked a more sensible question than she would have: “Are we permitted to leave the house?”
The man had at last shifted his frame of reference, and now answered Robert directly. “Not for just a moment or two, sir. I’m waiting to be called now.”
“We’ll be in the parlor,” Robert told him, and nodded toward the room they’d just left. “That one.”
“Yes, sir.” The man did a half-salute — Evelyn nearly giggled — and hurried away.
They went back into the parlor, and Evelyn said, “I wonder what it could be.”
“Tourists, I suppose,” Robert said. “Wandered up the wrong road.”
“No, it wouldn’t be that. We get tourists from time to time, especially in the summer like this, but there’s never any trouble about them. They get turned back at the gate without the Secret Service men having to do anything. In fact, they’ve never had to do anything at all before this.”
“They wouldn’t be pulling a practice alert, would they?”
“Bradford would never stand for it.” She went over to the nearest window and looked out at the gravel drive. It was just sunset, the shadow of the sundial stretching impossibly long across the grass to the right. The window faced northward, and far away the Tuscarora and Blue mountains stood in bright sunlight against the blue sky, as though up there the clocks still read no later than three-thirty. The contrast with the shadowed wood-surrounded drive made it seem even darker here, eerily and unnaturally so.
Robert came over behind her and said, “It can’t be much of anything. No one with violent intentions would bother trying to come through the gate. You don’t have the whole estate fenced in, do you?”
“No. When Bradford was President they used to patrol all around the perimeter whenever he was here, but they don’t do that any more. There’s never been any need.”
They heard a distant phone ring, and Robert said, “There’s our reprieve now.”
“Let’s hope so,” she said, and turned around, and he was very close. They stood at the edge of something, on the brink, and then Robert took a step backward and smiled a little artificially. But he thought of kissing me, she told herself. He hadn’t done it, but he’d contemplated it.
They drifted together to the doorway, in time to see the Secret Service man hurrying up the stairs. “Going up to tell Bradford something,” Evelyn said.
“I wish they’d tell us something,” Robert said. “I admit I’m getting a little curious.”
“If only I’d been ready on time, we would have avoided all this.”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about that, and if you’d been ready when I got here we probably would have arrived at the gate just as the trouble was starting. We’re better off this way.”
“But at least we’d know what was going on.”
They heard footsteps on the stairs again, and Robert said, “Excuse me.” He stepped past her through the doorway, and intercepted the Secret Service man at the foot of the stairs. The Secret Service man was in a hurry, but Robert was insistent. Evelyn couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she saw him tap his watch at one point, and saw the Secret Service man reluctantly nod. Then he started away, and Robert called to Evelyn, “Be back in a minute,” before hurrying after him.
Why did she have the feeling she would never see him again? The world seemed suddenly darkly lit with melodrama, like summer lightning far away when the nearer air is still and silent. She would stand in this doorway while a final darkness settled on the world, the house crumbled room by room around her, starting with the farthest corner and decaying swiftly and irrevocably in this direction, and Bradford would be gone, Robert would be gone, there would be one last fading cry from Dinah, anonymous rushings just around all the corners, and finally silence. Silence. The crack/rustle of one last falling brick. Silence.
Robert came back. “It’s set, goilie,” he said. “We crash out right now.”
She laughed, though that ridiculous mood was still on her, and clung to his arm as though she expected the floor to drop away at any second. He looked at her in surprise and said, “Were you scared by all this?”
“I hate not knowing,” she said. “I just hate it.”
“Well, we’re about to find out. Bradford is coming — you know, I don’t feel right calling him Bradford, but I don’t feel right calling him Lockridge, either.”
“What did he tell you to call him?”
“Brad. But that’s impossible.” He held the front door for her, and they went out to where his elderly yellow Jaguar crouched like a sleek cat with its head nestled between its paws. It really wasn’t dark out, a slice of sun still shone red to the west, it was about as bright now as an average overcast day.
They got into the car, and as Robert drove around the circle and headed toward the gate she said, “What is Bradford going to do? You said he’s coming? Coming where?”
“To the gate, apparently. I heard our friend talking on the phone. There’s somebody up here who wants to talk to Bra — to Bradford, I’ll get used to it. The Secret Service won’t let him come to the house, so I guess Bradford’s agreed to come out to the gate. There’s something about giving him a letter or something.”
“But that’s so strange.”
“Just the word I was looking for.”
At the gate, it became stranger. The old gate guard was standing there with an incongruous — and probably useless — shotgun under his arm, and the second Secret Service man stood in the doorway of the guard shack holding in both hands what looked like some sort of machine gun, a skinny but deadly looking thing. The gate was closed. Just this side of it an empty black Chevrolet was parked off the gravel, being the car the Secret Service man had undoubtedly come here in from the house, and on the other side of the gate, also parked off the gravel, nestling against the tree trunks, was a black Mercedes-Benz limousine with a separate chauffeur’s compartment. A liveried chauffeur sat stolid at the wheel, and two indistinct figures sat in the rear of the car.
The Secret Service man made no move when the Jaguar arrived, but the gate guard came over to open the gate, calling various phrases to Evelyn all the while. He spoke heavily accented English which Evelyn could only on rare occasions decipher, and this time she only got the general idea that he meant to let her know everything was under control. In the topless Jaguar, it was impossible to avoid him, so she nodded and smiled all the time they were waiting for the gate to be fully opened.
Robert drove very slowly through, and once they were past the still chattering guard Evelyn could turn at last and look at the Mercedes-Benz, on the left, looking at it past Robert’s profile.
The chauffeur was Chinese. Both hands — gloved, in this heat — were high on the steering wheel. If it was possible to sit at attention, he was sitting at attention. He gave no sign of being aware of the yellow Jaguar grumbling by beneath his left elbow.
There were two passengers. She looked in the limousine’s side windows as they went by, having to look up because the Jaguar was so much lower, and both passengers were looking back out at her. She met their eyes, and read nothing in them, expressionless eyes in aging expressionless faces. Chinese faces.
Robert accelerated once they were past the limousine, and Evelyn twisted in her seat to look back down the straight narrow road flanked by trees, twilight now settling in, the static tableau back there, the silent limousine, the business-suited necktied man holding a machine gun in the doorway of the guard shack, the only movement being the old guard in his muddy high boots slowly closing the gates again, the shotgun drooping from the crook of his arm. Then the Jaguar nosed around a bend in the road, and tree trunks hid the view, and Evelyn faced forward again. “They were Chinese,” she said. “Chinese.”