system felt swamped with fear and hyped with adrenalin.
    He reached his apartment in Georgetown and left the car parked in the street. It was 
a quiet, old neighborhood, and he had been lucky to rent the top floor of a dark, brick 
house that was set back in its own paved yard. The owner was' a friend of his father from 
the days when students wore coonskin coats and thought that Artie Shaw was the bee's 
knees. He swung open, the gate and limped on his sprained, stockinged foot to the front 
door.
    He switched on all the lamps in his pale-yellow decorated sitting-room, turned on the 
late-night movie with no volume, and put Mozart's string quartets on the quad stereo. 
Only then did he permit his brain to start thinking about Lorie Semple. He splashed 
himself a large glass of Jack Daniels and lay back on the gold-upholstered couch with his 
injured foot on the onyx coffee-table, turning over the night's events and trying to make 
something out of them that didn't seem ludicrous or bizarre.
    There was no question that Lorie was a fascinating girl. In normal circumstances, he 
would have expected to be having dinner with her right now, with a promise of bed in her 
eyes and the orchestra playing seductive music. He would at least have expected to come 
away from it all with a date fixed for tomorrow. But she was stonewalling him cold, even 
though she claimed that she liked him, and she was even prepared to bite him to make 
herself understood.
    He lit a cigarette, and suddenly realized how sore his tongue was. He went through to 
the small brown-and; black bathroom, with its serried ranks of expensive bottles of 
aftershave, and switched on the light over the wash-basin mirror. Then he stuck his 
tongue out and inspected it.
    The strange thing was that the scarlet wounds were so few and far between. A normal 
human bite is even and crescent-shaped, but this one consisted of only four distinct 
marks. Gene touched them gently, and winced. It was almost as if he had been bitten on 
the tongue by a large dog.
    He stood in front of the mirror a long time, and when, the phone rang he jumped hi 
nervous surprise.
    
    
    Two
    
    It was Walter Farlowe, his boss. He wanted to remind Gene that there was an eleven 
o'clock meeting the following day to discuss the West Indies negotiations, and that he 
expected Gene's punctual attendance. Gene said he had everything ready,- and that 
everything, was fine.
    "Do you have a headcold?" asked Walter.
    "Do I sound as if I do?"
    "I don't know. You sound funny. Like your mouth is full of breadroll or something."
    "Oh, that," said Gene. "I bit my tongue by mistake."
    Walter chuckled. "You bit your tongue? I wish Henry Ness would."
    "I wish Henry would bite his whole goddamned head off."
    After putting the phone down, Gene poured himself another drink and sat down to think 
some more. All his political life he had made his mark by being the kind of man who 
finishes everything he sets out to do. Every 51e, every report, every incident was 
carefully documented, detailed, and closed. Loose ends disturbed him, and that was 
exactly what this business with Lorie Semple had turned out to be. Apart from that, his 
pride had taken its biggest beating in twenty years. Not only had a busty 
nineteen-year-old virgin bitten his tongue, but she'd set her watchdogs on him and made 
him leave one of his $75 English shoes stuck in a goddamn gate.
    He groped around for his telephone book and looked up the Semples. As he expected, 
they weren't listed. He stood there tapping his glass thoughtfully against his front 
teeth for a while, and then he picked up the phone and dialed a number. After all, he 
thought, it's only just past midnight, and not many young ladies in Washington go to bed 
this early to sleep.
    The phone rang ten or eleven times before it was answered. A dozey girl's voice said, 
"Hello? Who is this?"
    "Maggie," said Gene, as brightly as he could manage. "It's me, Gene."
    "What's the time?"
    "Oh, I don't know. Around twelve I guess."
    "You don't know? I buy you a three-hundred-dollar Jaeger-le-Coultre and you don't 
know?"
    "Don't get sore. You weren't asleep, were you?"
    Maggie let out a long, patient sigh. "No, Gene, I wasn't asleep. How could any girl 
keep a job as your private secretary if she ever slept? I am awake, twenty four hours of 
the day. It's just that some of the time I'm a little less awake than the rest of the 
time."
    Gene listened patiently. "Maggie," he said. "I know this is kind of an imposition, 
but I was wondering if you could do me a small favor."
    "That's what you always say. Gene, it's my night off! Just for once, can't a girl get 
some of that rest that makes her beautiful?"
    "Maggie, you're always beautiful, rested or exhausted."
    "Don't give me that. What do you want me to do?"
    "Do you remember a French diplomat called Jean Semple? He died about three months ago 
in Canada or someplace."
    "That's right. He was mauled by bears on a hunting trip."
    "Well, what do you know about his background? His family? Particularly his house?"
    "Nothing at all. Why?"
    Gene picked up the phone and walked over to the couch. On the color TV screen, some 
moth-eaten monsters were rising from their graves, and a bunch of terrified people were 
running away, waving their arms in the air, and mouthing silently. Mozart continued to 
play calmly in the background.
    "I met Semple's daughter tonight, 'round at the Schirra's. She was very mysterious, 
you know? Very . . . what can I say? . . . remote. I get the feeling there's something 
strange about her that I ought to know."
    Maggie sighed again. "You mean, she gave you the brush-off and you want some inside 
dope that's going to assure your seductive success?"
    "Oh, come on, Maggie, it's not like that at all. She lives in this huge house outside 
of town, with walls around it like Fort Knox, and there are wild dogs running around in 
the grounds that could tear a man's leg off with a single bite."
    "Maybe the Semples have a valuable art collection or something. Did you see the house 
itself?"
    "I wasn't even allowed past the gates. She has this kind of chaperone, called 
Mathieu. He's a mute, and he looks like Jack Palance playing Dracula. When I faintly and 
meekly suggested that I might be allowed ini I was given the rebuff of the century."
    "You? Faint and meek?"
    "I can be faint and meek when I want to. The trouble was, the whole place was off 
limits, no matter what kind of line I came out with. All I want to know is, what goes on 
there? I mean, Lorie Semple's a terrific-looking girl, and believe it or not I would like