Together we watched darkness slowly cover the horizon. Neither of us had the least idea how wide the oceans were, or that America lay undiscovered somewhere in their midst. Side by side in the harbor rode the two Venetian galleys, twin lanterns burning, their captains probably already in private conference deciding how soon they might be able to give up the farce and sail for home. The Pope's breathing was growing louder and more labored. I remained in the tent, unchallenged and almost unnoticed, as physicians and prelates, recalled from God knows where in that small town, began to gather.
A final time Pius beckoned me to his side. "You will be going far, my son. To a strange, long life, in distant lands. You will be going farther than . . ."
I bent over him, trying to hear more. But the rest was lost in the struggle of his old lungs to breathe, in a chanted dirge the monks chose that moment to begin. Pius died near midnight, and the ranking churchmen on his staff scrambled away in an excited effort to be first back to Rome.
Chapter Five
Travel by automobile was not something that Mr. Thorn enjoyed. In fact—except for flying machines of all types, which he liked immensely—complex machinery of any kind had always impressed him as perverse and unreliable. He detested, for example, firearms. But he could get along in an uneasy coexistence with mechanism when he had to; and recently he had been brought to the reluctant conclusion that the advantages of being able to drive oneself about in one's own automobile outweighed the attendant irritations. Thus it was that two evenings after Mary Rogers had splashed her Hollywood blood on Ellison Seabright, and one evening after her visit to Thorn's hotel, Thorn was alone in a rented vehicle, on his way to see the Magdalen again. Or so he hoped.
Persistence on the telephone had finally paid off, and he had wangled for himself an invitation to the Seabright mansion. Persistence, and a ploy of passing along for Mr. Seabright's ears some hints of information that Thorn guessed the most recent purchaser of the supposed Verrocchio would be unable to resist. The guess was evidently right.
The house lay in what was probably the wealthiest suburb of the metropolis. The high wall enclosing its several hectares of grounds was constructed in large part of real adobe; looking at this wall, Mr. Thorn thought that some segments of it, near the house, were possibly old enough to have seen forays by hostile Indians. He knew little of the history of this part of the world, but meant someday to study it, an effort he suspected would not be easy. History, unlike machinery, he always found interesting; but he had seen too much of history to have any faith in the official account of anything.
As soon as the drive leading to the house parted company with the curving public road, it passed under an iron gate, now closed, in the old wall. Just outside the gate, Thorn stopped his Blazer—having seen what a high proportion of the natives elected to use four-wheel-drive vehicles, he suspected they had some good reason and had followed their example. A gatekeeper, a Spanish-looking man, appeared now inside the ironwork, which opened itself on electric tracks as soon as Thorn rolled down his window and announced his name.
Inside the gates the graveled drive curved to and fro through spacious lawns now enjoying their evening sprinkling from an automatic system. Citrus blossoms blessed the air. From behind a mass of greenery the house came into view—for its time and place, quite an impressive villa, though it was not like some that Mr. Thorn had visited. Like its surrounding wall it was eclectic, with some good old sections that looked especially venerable. Additions over a number of decades, some quite recent, had made it very large.
As Mr. Thorn parked his Blazer and approached the sizable front portico, there sounded from somewhere on the other side of the building the thrum of a diving board, followed by the trim splash of a lithe body entering a pool. It was, somehow, a definitely female splash; and Thorn, with no more than that to go on, immediately visualized the dark and slender woman who had been with Seabright two evenings ago. Stephanie Seabright, bereft of her only child just two months past. Stephanie who did not seem to mourn, but yearned. And swam, too, evidently; though Thorn could not really be sure from a mere splash that it was she.
At the front door Thorn was met by a butler, who resembled physically the bodyguard who had attended Seabright at the auction room. This man was a little slimmer and younger, though, and therefore presumably a little faster on his feet.
"Come in, sir, you're expected. Right this way, please."
"Thank you." To Mr. Thorn, the simple crossing of any house's threshold for the first time was always something of an event; and in this house he had a special interest. Once inside, enveloped by air conditioning, he was led across a wide entry floored with Mexican tile into a sort of manorial hall that made the house seem even larger than it had looked from outside. The ceiling of this hall, at about third-story level, was supported by wooden beams so gigantic that the whole effect reminded Thorn of nothing so much as the passenger concourse of the Albuquerque airport, where not long ago he had spent part of a long bright afternoon between planes, besieged by sunlight, squinting through sunglasses and changing his place in search of deeper shadow. He had in his time been inside private homes that had rooms bigger than this hall. But not many such homes, and not much bigger.
Pushing open a massive door of carven wood, his guide stood deferentially aside. Halfway down the length of the booklined study thus revealed, Rodrigo Borgia rose up from behind a desk, all red smears cleaned away, and dressed as for a leisurely safari.
"Mr. Thorn, glad to see you again," Ellison Seabright boomed. "That's all, Brandreth," he added in an aside to the butler, and then came forward as to some old friend, extending one great arm for a handshake. "Too bad we didn't have more of a chance to talk the other night." In fact they had never talked at all. "That damned woman . . . you'd like a look at the collection, right? Of course you would. So let's go downstairs and do our talking there." Seabright had a light, homey, completely American voice. Mr. Thorn could easily imagine him reading the ten o'clock news, getting high ratings on the job.
Thorn murmured something in the way of a response. The easy voice of his host chatted on, while a massive hand on Mr. Thorn's bony shoulder guided him out of the study again and back across the baronial hall. At the far end of the hall a small elevator opened its bronze door and without a groan accepted the combined weight of the two men.
Of the several levels indicated on the elevator's control panel, two appeared to be below ground, and Seabright pressed the button for the lowest. During the brief descent he chatted with Thorn about the Arizona climate, and the importance of always maintaining the proper atmospheric conditions in rooms housing a collection. As he talked Mr. Seabright kept eyeing his guest steadily. It was a gaze not quite offensive, but still it would have been found intimidating by almost any visitor. The elevator eased itself to a stop meanwhile, surrounded by deep silence. Scream down here, thought Mr. Thorn, amusing himself privately, and no one will hear you.
"Ah, Stephanie!" Seabright exclaimed, taken by surprise as the door opened. The lift had delivered them to a perfectly cooled lounge or game room, of a size and elaborateness appropriate to the house. At one end of the room was a bar, and on one of the bar's six chrome stools perched the dark lady of the auction room, the lately bereaved mother. In a few more years she would have to give up brief bikinis such as she was wearing now—but not for a few more years, and she was making the most of the time left. Over the shreds of cloth she wore as symbolic cover-up a translucent short cape, some hybrid perhaps of cloth and plastic. Behind the bar, Thorn noticed at once, there was no mirror, but a mural of youths and maidens, pseudo-Greek and semi-porn, and Stephanie had to turn her head to see the men. Her dark hair as she looked round at Thorn was almost wet enough to drip, and her face bore the practiced smile that he remembered from the auction room. At Stephanie's fingertips on the bar, a tall glass held a little dark liquid and some ice.