Timothy Culver - Power Play

“I saw Joe... I thought...”

Joe at once got to his feet, a contrived smile spreading across his face. “Evelyn, no, not at all.” As he came toward her, the smile seemed to grow more natural. “Bradford’s still the healthiest one of us all. Healthier than you right now, from the look of you. Come sit down.”

She allowed herself to be led to the room’s only comfortable chair, which Howard had hastily vacated. Sitting down in it, she said, “I’m sorry. But this thing about Paris...”

From his corner, Wellington said, “That was my fault, Evelyn. I’m sorry. I hoped to find you here and tell you it was going to happen, but you didn’t come down this morning. And there was no safe way to get in touch with you at the estate.”

“I spent the morning with Dinah,” Evelyn said.

“The fact of the matter is,” Joe said, a surprisingly savage undertone of anger in his voice, “Wellington prefers to keep his decisions a secret until they’ve already been acted on. Saves a lot of argument, doesn’t it, Wellington?”

Howard said, heavily, “That won’t do any good, Joe,” while at the same time Wellington was saying, “It frequently does, yes. Saves a great deal of argument. As well as a great deal of agony for the people involved. This time, however...” he came forward from the corner toward Evelyn, “... the truth is, my habit of secrecy tripped me up. I should have gotten the word to you so you could be prepared for it, and I’m sorry I failed to do so. I take it you didn’t let anything slip.”

“Of course not,” Evelyn said, too impatient with the question even to be irritated by it. “But why tell him he’s going to Paris?”

“Because he is going to Paris,” Wellington said.

“He is? For God’s sake, why?”

“Because,” Wellington said, “he was getting too impatient. He was reaching the point where he was starting to be suspicious of my men. It was absolutely imperative that we give him something to do, to occupy his mind and let him believe some progress was being made.”

“But then what? How long can you keep him in Paris, and what do you do after that?”

“We’ll decide that when we come to it,” Wellington said. Everyone else was looking at Wellington, their expressions absorbed. “For the moment,” Wellington went on, “it gives us more time to try to come up with a more permanent solution. In any case, we couldn’t hold him in Eustace any longer, he was champing at the bit, you’ve seen that yourself.”

“But why Paris? Won’t it be easier for the Chinese to get hold of him there, away from home?”

“On the contrary,” Wellington said. “That was another argument in favor of the move. Here in this country Bradford is a retired former great, put out to pasture, so all we can expect from the government is minimal surveillance and protection for him. But in France, even as a private citizen on a simple vacation trip, he comes under the heading of a distinguished foreign visitor. That, plus the suggestion that there might be an assassination attempt in the works on French soil, and I guarantee you the French government will do a better job of keeping Bradford out of the clutches of the Chinese than the family could ever do at home.”

Evelyn glanced at Robert, but he was still looking at Wellington, his expression intense, as though he were trying to look through the skin and bone down into Wellington’s brain. Evelyn said, “How many of us will be going?”

“Just the two of you,” Wellington said, but she kept looking at Robert, who finally did meet her eyes. He answered her unspoken question with a helpless shake of his head; no, there was nothing to be done about it. But his regretful expression almost made up for it.’

Wellington was saying, “We can’t afford to have Bradford see a familiar face in Paris. We don’t want him questioning anything.”

Robert said, “I might be able to get over for a day or two.”

Wellington frowned at him, strongly disapproving, but then shrugged and said, “I suppose it’s possible. If everyone exercises a good deal of care.”

“In any case,” Robert said, “we have a week before you go.”

“And someone might come up with a better idea before then,” she said.

Was that pessimism he was covering? “Let’s hope so,” he said.

Wednesday night she saw the light flickering in the woods. It was nearly one o’clock, she was on the way home from Robert’s place, and shortly after she’d passed the gate on the private road she caught a glimpse of the light out of the corner of her eye, far away to the right through the woods.

She stopped the car at once, astonished at the idea of a light off there at this hour, but when she looked for it it was gone. She backed the car slowly, searching for it, and all at once there it was again, so pale and small as to be the reflection of a reflection. Moonlight glinting from a piece of glass? No, it wasn’t that kind of light, it was definitely electric illumination, a light bulb or flashlight.

And now it was gone again, it just winked out. She stayed where she was a minute or two longer, but it was gone for good.

What could it have been? Some guard of Wellington’s, maybe, sparingly using a flashlight to pick his way through the woods. Or perhaps someone from the other side?

She drove on to the house, frowning over the light, and it figured in her dreams after she went to sleep. In the morning, she went down to the stables and took out Jester and went riding off into the area where she’d seen the light, just to see if there was anything there.

The lost town was up this way, in the middle of the woods, the place where she’d brought Robert the first time they’d gone riding together. Now, failing to find anything to explain the light in the area where she thought she’d seen it, she followed an impulse and rode on through the woods toward the site of the town.

She was nearly to it, Jester moving at a comfortable walk through the woods, when a man dressed as a hunter, and with a rifle tucked under his arm, appeared from behind a tree and called, “Excuse me, Miss.”

Evelyn stopped, and frowned at him. He was a stocky man, perhaps forty, with a blue shadow of beard on a heavy jaw. His red hunting cap and red-and-black hunting jacket seemed vaguely frivolous on him. There was no feeling of menace in any way; in fact, she only felt from him the natural irritation of a landowner meeting a trespasser; the reverse of the facts. She said, “What do you want?”

“I’m lost, Miss. Could you—”

“You certainly are. This is private property.” She pointed off to the left. “If you go that way, you’ll come to a dirt road. The public land is on the other side of it.”

Instead of thanking her, or moving off, he looked up and said, “Are you Mrs. Canby?”

She still thought of him as only a trespasser. “Yes, I am.”

“Well, Ma’am, I work for Mr. Lockridge, and the thing—”

“For Bradford Lockridge?” She knew he was lying, of course.

But he said, “No, Ma’am. For Mr. Wellington Lockridge. We’re putting up a little construction back up in here, and—”

“Construction? What kind of construction?”

“I’d rather Mr. Lockridge told you about that, Ma’am.”

“Well, I’ll just see it for myself,” she said, but before she could move he’d grabbed Jester’s reins and was holding them, and for the first time she realized just how cold his eyes were. He said, “My orders are to keep everyone away, Ma’am. If Mr. Lockridge tells me to make an exception in your case, I’ll be happy to let you through.”

“And if I go through anyway?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“What will you do? Shoot me?”