"The Sphinx" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

THE SPHINX A Star Original
The lighted window was now only two or three feet away, and he could hear voices more distinctly and the creak of floorboards as someone walked around in the room.
It happened at the very instant he was stepping on to the guttering. There was a loud, hair-raising snarl, and something immensely powerful and heavy leaped up at him from the ground and tore him bodily down from the creeper. His fingers and face were lacerated as the beast's weight dragged him straight through branches and leaves and brought him to the grass with a back-bruising thump. Then the thing rolled on top of him, slavering and snarling and tearing at him with vicious claws. Gene smelled a rank animal odour that was anything but dog, and he screamed in desperation as his sweater was ripped away from his arms, and guzzling jaws bit into his shoulder muscle to tug the flesh away from his collarbone.
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He could always remember the first time lie'caught sight of her. Later, he used to joke about it and call it "love at first bite." It was at the Schirra's cocktail party for Henry Ness, the new Secretary of State, to celebrate Henry's inexplicable engagement to that very raucous and very ambitious Caldwell girL As usual at the Schirra's, there was plenty to drink and nearly as much to eat, and Gene Keiller was right in the middle of talking to a Turkish diplomat with appalling dandruff, simultaneously sinking his teeth into a fresh crab vol-au-vent (he hadn't eaten all day), when the glittering dresses and black tuxedoes parted like the Red Sea and Lone Semple walked in.
Gene wasn't yet blase" about beautiful women. He hadn't been working for the State Department long enough to get sick to his stomach of all those fawning, crooning, elegant young ladies who cling around the perimeter of Washington society life with no panties on and an unquenchable thirst for any man who might have been mentioned by William F. Buckley, even if it Хwas only once. Gene's immediate boss, Walter Far-lowe, had a nose for political groupies and called them the Prone Department. But when Gene looked up with a mouthful of puff pastry and a shred of crab hanging from the side of his chin, he couldn't have cared "Whether Lorie Semple was a camp-follower or not.
"Hey, Gene," said Senator Hasbauro, -leaning over.
"That's one hell of a piece of ass. Take a look at that goddam frontispiece."
Gene nodded, and almost choked. He reached for his napkin, and patted his mouth, and the vol-au-vent went down his throat half-chewed. All he could say was, "Arthur, for once you're damn right."
She didn't seem to have anyone with her. She was tallЧtaller than every other girl in the room and most of the men. Gene guessed five-foot-eleven, and it turned out later that he was half an inch on the short side. Her height hadn't made her retiring or timid, though. She stalked into the center of the room, under the twinkling chandelier, with a straight, arrogant back and her chin lifted.
"Jesus," whispered Ken Sloane. "Did you ever see a girl who looked like that before?"
Gene said nothing at all. Even the Turkish diplomat, who had been explaining at great and tedious length his absolute commitment to MARV missiles on Turkish soil, couldn't help noticing that Gene was no longer with him and was staring at Lorie Semple like a man who had just seen a religious vision.
"Mr. Keiller," he said, tugging, at Gene's sleeve. "Mr. Keiller, we must talk warheads!"
Gene nodded. "You're absolutely right. That's all I can say. You're absolutely damn right."
Lorie Semple had a mane of brushed-back tawny hair that fell over her bare shoulders. Her face was classically beautiful, with a straight nose, a wide and sensual mouth, and upslanted eyes. Around her neck she wore a three-strand choker of emeralds, and nobody in the whole room believed for one moment that they were green glass. She was dressed in a clinging, low backed, empire-line evening dress of flesh-colored silk, so gleaming and tight around the bust that when
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you first glimpsed her you had to look again, because she looked as if she was topless.
Her breasts were enormous and she obviously wasn't Wearing a bra. Her nipples raised the silk into softly shadowed peaks, and when she walked the bouncing o{ each bosom was enough to quieten conversation and have even the few faithful Washington husbands glancing surreptitiously over their wives' shoulders.
He never knew what impulse really made him do it, but as she stood there, with her straight back and her supercilious look, Gene Keiller stepped forward and held out his hand. It was unnerving, stepping up close, because this tall girl had the kind of green eyes that seem to stare at you heartlessly, like a cat, and Gene had already downed three vodkatinis and wasn't at his
best
"I don't know you," he said, with a lopsided grin.
The girl stared at him. She was at least as tall as he was, and she was wearing some strong, musky perfume that seemed to fill the ah? around her like a haze.
"I don't know you, either," she replied, in a deep voice that was heavy with some European accent
"Well," said Gene, "maybe that's a good reason to introduce ourselves!"
The girl stared at him. "Perhaps."
"Only perhaps?"
The girl nodded. "It we don't know each other, perhaps it is better that we remain that way. Strangers."
Gene gave Ms little diplomatic laugh. "Well, I can. see your point But this is Washingtonl Everybody has to know everybody around here."
The girl still kept staring at him, almost hypnotically, and the more she stared the more he found himself thrown off his pitch, and shuffling his feet and staring at the carpet He hadn't felt like this with a girl
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since he left grade school, and yet here he was, rugged Gene Keiller, with the Florida tan and the wide white smile, the curly-haired Democratic champ who used to Jciss all the babies and make Jacksonville housewives swoon with delight, simpering and bumbling worse than Charlie Brown.
"Why?" she said, parting those moist pink lips. "ErЧexcuse me? Why what?" The girl kept staring at him. She didn't seem to Wink at all, and that disconcerted him.
"Why does everybody have to know everybody?" Gene fingered his collar. "Well ... I guess it's a question of survival. You have to know who your friends are and who your enemies are. It's kind of like the law of the jungle." "The jungle?"
He smirked. "That's what they say. It's a tough life, you know, being a politician. It doesn't matter how low down the gum tree you happen to be, there's always someone who'd like to climb higher, who'll stand on your head to do it."
"You make it sound . . . very aggressive,"-she said. He noticed she was wearing earrings made of small curved animals' teeth set in gold. .He was gradually managing to overcome his nervousness, but all the same he was conscious that she had the upper hand in this conversation and that all the other guests were watching him out of the corner of their eye and sizing up his performance. He coughed, and waved towards the bar.
"Would you, er, care for a drink?" She looked at him. There seemed to be long pauses in their conversation, and he got the impression that she was weighing him up with considerable care. Stalk-ing him, almost
"T don't drink," sne safd simply. "But don't let mo stop you. You seem to be enjoying it."
He coughed again. "Well, I, er, like a drink just to unwind. It kind of relaxes the nerves, you know?"
"No," she said, "I don't know. Tve never takea a drink in my life."
He blinked at her. "You're kidding! You didn't even laid ihe cherry brandy in your old woman's kitchen cupboard?"
With a long-fingered, long-nailed hand, she brushed tack her tawny hair and shook her head seriously.
"My mother is not an old woman. She is really quite young. And she has never, ever, had alcohol in the house."
'1 see," said Gene, embarrassed. '1 didn't mean to implyЧЧ"
"No, no," she said. "Don't worry. I know what yon meant"
For a while, Gene stood there with his empty glass in his hand, giving the girl little smiles and saying "well" and "uh-huh," but not daring to leave her in case any of the other unattached men In the room horned in. There was something about her that frightened him but at the same time was mesrrierically fascinatingЧapart from the fact that she had the biggest pair of tits he had ever seen.
He finally said, *%_er, haven't introduced myself. That's pretty dumb, for a politician! My name's Gene Keiller."
They shook hands. He waited expectantly for the girl to introduce herself, but she'said nothing, simply smiled faintly, and kept on looking around the room. "Aren't you... going to..." She turned back and smiled at him. Х'Gene Keiller," she said. 'Tve heard of you.1*
"Oh, really?" he grinned. "I haven't had too much publicity lately. These days I'm a working politician, not a campaigning one. Promises are one thing, you know, but carrying those promises out is a whole different ballgame."
She nodded. "I thought you were a politician. You talk in such old cliches."
He stared at her. He wasn't sure if he'd heard her correctly, because Senator Hasbaum had just laughed loudly next to his left ear.