He nodded.
Trudging back up the lawn, he moved more cautiously than before. The shadowy grounds seemed familiar, as did the tall windows ahead, but he couldn't put them all together into a specific memory. He paused twenty yards from the house, beneath a magnolia, and listened intently. Nothing. Light streamed out quietly from the windows. The tire tracks led on past it to… that would be the driveway. So then this, the shadowy mass between him and the house, this would be the garden, and —
He was standing in back of Sharon's house.
Momentary doubt, then certainty. It was all familiar, though the night still made it mysterious. He caught his breath. If they'd broken in, harmed her —
The thought sent him running quietly round toward the front. The ruts turned into the driveway but there was no truck there, only a small low shape he recognized instantly as her Triumph. He stood for a moment in front of the familiar door, then slipped round to one of the front windows. He raised himself on tiptoe and peered in.
The room was brightly lit but empty. His eyes searched it from one side to another. Nothing was broken, nothing missing, no evidence of violence or the presence of strangers. He moved silently to another window: the dining room. The big table shone softly in the light. It was cleared and polished and a cut glass vase held slightly wilted peonies. One corner light was on.
Then, as he watched, a figure appeared in the hallway beyond, and his heart leapt. It was Sharon Sue in a red dress, her hair up. She passed the door and he lost sight of her. He dropped to his heels. Thank God she's safe, he thought, and wondered whether she'd seen them, reported them… she couldn't have ignored a truck rolling over the lawn. Unless, of course, she hadn't been home. He went back to the front door and rang the bell.
"Who is it?" he heard her call.
"Me."
"Who? Aubrey?"
"Yes."
A pause. "What do you want?"
"Well, I want to come in. There's been, well — just let me in, please, and I'll tell you."
He heard the snick-snap of the electric bolt and then the door swung open. He smiled, envisioning how he must look in bedraggled, torn uniform, black-smeared face, muddy boots. "Evening. I'm not looking my best, darling, but believe me, I've been through a lot." His eyes fell on two suitcases beside the door, and then returned to her. She had a hat on now, and was carrying a small black purse. "Going somewhere?" he said.
"Jus' a little trip, Aubrey," she said, fidgeting with a glove. "What is it you needed? I really haven't much time."
"I'd hoped for a shower, and — but I'd better phone in first." He saw the telephone on a stand nearby and started for it.
"Aubrey, dear."
"Yes, Sharon Sue?"
"Sit down."
"Just have to make one call."
"Aubrey, will you sit down and tell me what this is all about? Do you know what time it is, and you burstin' in here all crazy like?"
Slightly cowed by her tone, he retreated to the divan and perched on its arm. "Why — sure, all right, I'll explain. I was kidnapped, by coloreds — by the Railroad. They took government property. The shell, I told you about it, remember? Shiloh?"
"'The coloreds?" she said, looking suspicious.
"Yes." He was in a hurry to explain; the telephone stared at him impatiently. "Somehow they took over the patrol boat that was waiting for us. They knocked me out and left me tied up in a boat that right now is hidden the woods out back of your place. I just got free. I've got to call Norris. They're in a truck, and I know where they're going." He stood up and took a step toward the phone again.
"Sit down, Aubrey."
Her voice was soft, and there was even a little note of pity in it as he saw the automatic she held in one red-gloved hand.
He felt suddenly cold. It wasn't the gun, nor that it was being pointed at him. It was Sharon Sue Hunt herself. She was the same — no, looked the same, pale, lovely, teetering on high heels, faultlessly dressed — yet not the same woman. Though her west Tennessee nasality was the same, her coy Southern-belle archness, was gone. She even held herself differently: straight, without the sway, the incline toward a man, the plea implicit for support. He faced a stranger. He sank back into the divan, eyes fixed on her face.
"That's real nice now. You just sit there for a little while, while I think about what I'm going to do with you." She looked around. "Poor boy. You look so tired. Can't hurt to offer you a drink, can it? Want one?"
He nodded, not trusting his voice. He was still trying to convince himself he was awake, that this was real. "Joke," he croaked suddenly.
"Sorry?" she poured bourbon from a decanter.
"This is a practical joke. Sharon Sue, it would be funny, but this is not the time for it. I really do have to call Norris. Now. You see, they're on their way to Richmond."
"Now, Aubrey." She set the glass beside him and backed away, leaning against the door-jamb. "That's a natural response, I suppose, and it makes me feel bad, it really does, but I'm not playin' with you. Not anymore. It's all for real — though I never intended for you to get caught in the middle like this. Even when they told me you were out in the boat.
"You're not a bad man, Aubrey. You were just conditioned, in a way — and confused, and not all that bright. There are a lot like you in the Confederacy, I'm afraid. Not bad, just held by the old unjust ideals." He watched her face set. "Of course, there are the others. The ones who are evil, in Castle Thunder, in the White Mansion and the Senate, the Leaguers, the Tredegar people."
It was all bypassing him; he couldn't see any of it, couldn't relate what she was saying to anything coherent. He reached for the bourbon and took a healthy slug. "Look — I'm just getting more and more confused. Are you saying you're some sort of — of spy, for the North?"
"Does everything progressive have to come down here from up North? There are people here who think the CEs are human, Aubrey."
"That's ridiculous. Of course they're human. That's why they were emancipated, a long time ago."
"Conditionally emancipated. But did that give them their freedom? Bullcrap. They get inferior educations, poor food, they live in Colored Areas — that's not emancipation, it's only a prettied-over form of slavery. Which you know, only you can't admit it, because then you'd have to admit you've spent your life in the uniform of an unjust cause."
"State's rights—"
"Spare me that old Secesh horseshit. States have no rights. Only human beings do. And the Confederacy exists to stamp them out." She was flushed now. "It would have been better for us, I swear, if we'd lost the War. Maybe rough for a while, but then we could have rebuilt, black and white together. They'd be no Almost War, either, we wouldn't be nose to nose with the Yankees. There'd be peace in the world, real peace."
"But, Sharon Sue — " he groped for words, scarcely aware of what he was saying; the shock was still too great. "You — you're not a Yankee "
"I talk like one?" she giggled. "No, I'm not." She held up a fist.
Staring at her, he couldn't believe what he saw, what it meant. Sharon Sue, on the Railroad? And only then did his mind begin to function, setting the facts in their places.
The first leak, about Shiloh itself; he'd told silly witless coy Sharon Sue all about it. He'd suspected Channing, Norris, the others, but he'd done it himself, with the aid of bourbon, soft lights, and the lips of a beautiful woman.
"How — how did you get hold of the — the operation order? How did you know about that?"
"Nothing very complicated, Aubrey, believe me. Jesse and Ella are both Railroad too, of course. Your briefcase was no problem for him — he started his career as a safecracker. Ella's a photographer. We had microfilm of everything in your briefcase within hours after you left the house."