“You put yourself in my hands, didn’t you. You’re paying for my judgment.” Vasquez’s abrupt expression of amusement took him by surprise. “Never mind — I enjoy melodrama.” Vasquez went back around the car but before he could reach the horn Mathieson saw a man appear at the corner of the house carrying a golf club.
“Ah. Homer.”
The man walked forward with a sailor’s gait, shoulders rolling and head rocking, legs bowed, moving on the balls of his feet. He was no taller or wider than Vasquez but he had the chest and biceps of a weight lifter. He had the pitted narrow face of a street thug.
Vasquez made introductions. Homer Seidell wasn’t a knuckle-crusher but his grip was authoritative. He had an odd brief smile — as if the skin around his mouth was stretched too tight.
He lifted the suitcases out of the trunk. “We’re putting you in the Ronald Colman suite. It’s the best digs in the house.” It was the voice of a much bigger man — husky but powerful.
Vasquez held the door for them. Ronny dashed inside fearlessly. The vast center-hall foyer was hung with oil landscapes but they might as well have been Gainsborough portraits; the space was darkly paneled and dominated by an enormous pewter chandelier and a sweeping rosewood staircase.
Homer Seidell said, with amusement, “Welcome to boot camp, Mr. Merle.”
3
The suite had two huge rooms connected by a bathroom whose marble decor and gold-plated plumbing reminded him of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel.
Homer Seidell deposited the luggage on ottomans and Vasquez stood in the door with a proprietary air identifying the amenities and facilities: There was a Mrs. Meuth who would look after their housekeeping needs; there was a Mr. Meuth, the groundskeeper; there was Perkins who looked after the place’s mechanical needs and had charge of the livestock.
“Perkins can help you pick out a steed for your adventures. It would be wise if you confined your riding to the valley. It should give you enough elbow room — there’s an area of some thirty square miles to explore. Perkins prefers that the horses not be taken into the foothills. You’ll understand that — it’s very rocky terrain.”
Ronny gulped. “Yes, sir, I understand.”
Vasquez turned to Jan. “It’s an ideal topography for us. This house sits on the highest spot in the valley. On horseback the boy will be able to see the house from any point, and be seen from it.”
She took his meaning. Vasquez told her, “This will be your home for a while. Settle in, make yourselves comfortable. Incidentally you’ll find quite a good film collection in the library — prints of several hundred excellent motion pictures. Mrs. Meuth can help you with the projectors. There’s also television throughout the house, of course. Meuth does the shopping, usually twice a week, and he always returns with newspapers and magazines. The swimming pool is immediately behind the house. There’s an indoor pool as well, in the north basement, but it isn’t kept heated this time of year. If you prefer golf there are three holes laid out on the west lawn. Mrs. Meuth is employed to provide cooking for whatever guests are present but she doesn’t take offense if you care to do your own from time to time. If you’d like to choose your own menus you may give Mr. Meuth a shopping list — his next scheduled trip is tomorrow morning.”
“Are we confined to the estate?”
“You’re not prisoners here, Mrs. Mathieson, but if you elect to go off on excursions I should appreciate your giving me twenty-four hours’ notice so that I may bring down a few members of my staff to escort you.” He glanced at Mathieson: “Naturally such services will be billed to you. But you understand the necessity.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll take your husband off now. I’m afraid you and the young man will have to fend for yourselves most of the time.”
“We’ll manage. Thank you.” Her face came around toward Mathieson. “Good luck.” She was smiling but he couldn’t fathom what might be behind the smile. Unnerved he followed Vasquez down the corridor with Homer Seidell; they went downstairs and Vasquez strode right out the front door. “May I have the keys to your car?”
He passed them over and Vasquez handed them to Homer. When Homer pulled the car away Vasquez said, “If you want the car it will be in the garage beside the main barn. The keys will be in it — we don’t have thieves up here.”
“Are you trying to reassure me?”
“You’ll begin to feel like a prisoner of war here after a bit. It will be important that you realize that escape is dead easy. That knowledge, I think, will encourage you to stay and stick it out.”
“Stick what out? You still haven’t really explained the program.”
“Homer facetiously described it as boot camp but it was quite apt. We’re going to be rough on you. You’ve got to be conditioned out of some of your most comfortable habits. It will be modeled to some extent on the army’s basic-training techniques, although there’s one significant difference — we’re not concerned with inculcating obedience; quite the contrary. What needs development is your initiative. Essentially I want to see you become comfortable with a variety of methods and techniques that will strike you at first as unfamiliar and perhaps unpleasant. We’ll present you with challenges that you’ll be forced to meet with a combination of trained responses and imagination. Bear in mind you’re going to be fighting formidable antagonists who regard violence as an acceptable and even commonplace solution to nearly any sort of problem. I’m not forgetting your prejudices — you may not wish to initiate violence but you’ve got to know how to deal with it when you’re faced with it.”
“Sounds ominous.”
“I assure you it is. But you know the seriousness of it better than I do.”
“How long does all this take?”
“You’re impatient.”
“Of course I’m impatient, damn it.”
“It shouldn’t take terribly long. We can’t expect to make you over. A few basics — and we do need to restore you to first-rate physical condition. Fortunately you seem to have the remains of a good constitution, according to Doctor Wylie. But that sort of training is peripheral at most. Mainly we’ll be acquiring information and improvising our schemes based on that information. My organization is already casting its lines and in a very short time I expect to have dossiers on each of your enemies.”
At the edge of the trees Homer Seidell came in sight. He walked up the driveway with his rolling determined gait.
Vasquez said, “Homer has instructions to be rough with you. Try to remember who your real enemies are. Homer’s a very good man.”
Vasquez turned away, disappearing back into the house. He left Mathieson feeling uneasy.
4
He jogged in tennis shoes and a gray sweat suit with a towel flopping around his neck. Homer Seidell paced him effortlessly and Mathieson was embarrassed by his own puffing and the streaming sweat.
They came around the corner of the fence. It was still a quarter of a mile up to the house and he didn’t think he was going to make it but he was determined to try, if only because of the half-concealed contempt with which Homer had treated him all day.
Momentum and the slight downslope of the driveway were all that kept him from collapse. When he reached the porte cochere he sat on the steps of the porch panting for breath. There was a roaring in his ears.
Homer went bouncing into the house without breaking the rhythm of his stride — up the steps three at a time... Mathieson was still gulping for air when Homer appeared with a bottle of mineral water and two tumblers. He set them down and handed two chalky tablets to Mathieson. They looked like oversized aspirin.