actually professed to have morals.
    "Gene..."
    He still didn't look up.
    "Gene, I'm sorry, you didn't leave me any choice."
    He coughed, and spat some blood into his handkerchief. "Just go home to your mother, 
will you?" he mumbled.
    "Gene, you have to understand that it wouldn't Work. Not in a thousand years."
    "You bet your ass it wouldn't work! If I want to get eaten alive, I can go back to 
the Everglades and lay down in front of an alligator!"
    "Please, Gene. Don't you see-that I like you?"
    He tested the flow of blood. It seemed to be easing up now, but she had certainly 
given him a deep and vicious bite. He had nearly ended up joining Mathieu in the 
tongueless brigade, and that certainly wouldn't have helped his political ambitions very 
much.
    "Just get out of here, will you?" he said. "I'm going. home."
    Mathieu had left his limousine and now stood a few yards away, watching Lorie 
silently and impassively. Another shower had started, and the rain was making a soft, 
prickling noise on the gravel and the grass.
    Lorie finally turned and walked away. Mathieu took her arm, and ushered her over to 
the Cadillac. As he opened the rear door for her, he looked back at Gene with a face as 
emotionless as a manhole cover in the road. Then he climbed into the car himself and 
drove toward the wrought-iron gates.
    In utter silence, as the limousine approached, the gates swung open. Then, after it 
had passed, they swung closed again, and locked. Gene saw the car's red lights 
disappearing down the gravel driveway, flickering past trees and bushes until they were 
out of sight. After that, there was nothing but the high forbidding wall, the closed 
gates, and the rain that sprinkled the grass.
    He sat there for a while, and then he switched his tar engine off. Still holding the 
handkerchief to his tongue, he opened his door and stepped out into the rain. Out here, 
it was so far away from the streetlights of the city that he could see dim clouds passing 
overhead and a faint moon shining above the trees.
    He walked as quietly as he could toward the gates. He didn't want to touch them, in 
case they were electrified, but he stood as close as he could and peered through. The 
driveway led down a long avenue of oak trees and disappeared about five hundred yards 
away around a bend, which presumably led up to the main house. He thought he could see 
the dark silhouette of a roof and chimneys, but it may just have been the branches of the 
trees.
    There was something sinister and yet intriguing about the Semple house. He wanted to 
have a glimpse of it, even if only to satisfy himself that it was just another expensive 
diplomatic mansion with the coach lamps, the rosemary bushes, and all the usual 
trimmings. He went back to his car, leaned in to open the glove box, and took out the 
small set of screwdrivers that one of his girlfriends had given him with the attached 
message "from your favorite screw, with love."
    One of the screwdrivers was a bulb-tester. He took it out, and walked cautiously back 
to the wrought-iron. gates. Then, very gingerly, he reached out with the metal tip of the 
screwdriver and touched one of the iron curlicues. Nothing happened. The gate wasn't 
electrified, after all. He looked up at it. It was so high, and spiked with such long and 
barbaric spears, that it probably didn't need to be. The thought qf being impaled on one 
of those made his groin feel distinctly odd.
    He grasped the gates with both hands, and then found a foothold. It wasn't difficult 
to climb up the first six feet or so, because there were plenty of scrolls and leaves to 
hang on to, and even though he was breathing hard from the exertion, he was able to get 
up there in only a few seconds. Higher up, it was more difficult. There were fewer curls 
of iron, and at the very top there were nothing but upright spears, with points that were 
rusted into vicious sharpness.
    He stopped to rest for a moment about ten feet up. Looking behind him, he could see 
his white car with its doors still open, and beyond that the darkness of the road that 
led up to the Semple house and the distant gleam of a few neighboring lights. In front, 
through the prison-like bars of the gate, he could still see nothing more than gloomy 
overhanging trees, and the pale ribbon of the driveway leading between them. The rain had 
eased off now, and there was a light, fresh breeze. He wished his tongue wasn't so damned 
sore, but then that was partly the reason he was halfway up this Gothic gate.
    "Upward, my boy, ever upward," he breathed to himself, quoting the long-ago words of 
his campaign agent hi Florida. He gripped two of the iron spear-shafts, pressed the soles 
of both his shoes against the gate, and began to hoist himself further up like a Fiji 
islander scaling a coconut tree. Panting, he reached the top. The tricky bit was going to 
be climbing over the spikes themselves. There was no foothold, and he would have to try 
to wedge his feet in between the uprights and hope that they didn't slip or, even worse, 
get irrevocably stuck.
    He jammed his left foot in, and carefully swung his right leg over the spikes. The 
gates rattled a little under his weight. He stayed there, taking deep breaths, until he 
could summon up the strength to wedge his right foot in between the shafts on the other 
side and swing his left leg over.
    Just then, he heard a deep rumbling noise from the direction of the house. He froze, 
sweat trickling down the sides of his face, and listened. It was probably nothing more 
than distant thunder. There was a warning of electric storms overnight, and they usually 
rolled into Washington from this side of the river. He gripped the gates tighter, and 
prepared to hop over.
    The rumbling came again, and this time it definitely wasn't thunder. It could have 
been a motorcycle, or a jet airplane, but it definitely wasn't thunder. He squinted into 
the Semple grounds through the darkness, but a bank 6f clouds had obscured the moon and 
it was impossible to make anything out but shadowy trees. The rumbling was certainly 
coming from there.
    Then he heard the most frightening sound he had ever heard in his life. It was the 
bounding, rustling noise of large animals running through the bushes and trees. What's 
more, they were coming his way. The Semples had set their dogs on him!
    Tense and terrified, he swung his leg back over the top of the gate. The running 
noise was coming nearer, and he didn't dare to look toward the house. He struggled to 
extricate his left foot from between the spear-shafts, but because he was off-balance it 
wouldn't come out. He wrenched it as hard as he could, but it was still stuck.
    He was aware of huge, pale shapes leaping through the oaks and the undergrowth, and 
the scuff of heavy paws on gravel. Then he lost his grip,- and half-slithered, 
half-dropped off the gate .to the ground, twisting, his ankle and leaving: his left shoe 
still wedged between the bars.
    Gasping in pain, he limped towards his car as fast as he could. Just behind him, he 
heard the rattling thump and scratching of the Semple's beasts as they reached the gates 
and threw themselves up at them, snarling and growling in frustrated aggression.
    He started the car, swung it around in a slew of gravel, and headed back down the 
winding hill with screeching tires. It was only when he was back on the main highway 
toward Washington that he slowed down and allowed himself to breathe normally. His whole