Children of the Storm

probably looking for a good observation point; you can see the children's bedroom windows from that part of the garden. When he realized he'd been seen, he panicked. That's all.”
        He leaned forward, putting one arm protectively around her, and he kissed her, tenderly, on the lips, dizzying her for a moment before he pulled away again.
        “I don't want to see you hurt,” he repeated.
        “Don't worry, I won't be,” she assured him. “I don't intend to go for any more walks, alone, at night. Not until this thing is over and done with, anyway.”
        “Good.”
        To change the subject, partly because she was unsettled by his kiss and partly because she was not up to any tender intimacy just now, she said, “Do you think Joe and Helen will be in California by now?”
        “For hours,” he said.
        “Will Rudolph call them?”
        “Yes, on the radio-phone, relayed from Guadeloupe. It's really a shame that we have to disturb them now, when their vacation's just begun. They'll want to come right home.”
        “That's best, isn't it?”
        “I guess,” he said. “Though there isn't anything that either of them can do.”
        He bent, kissed her again, more quickly this time. “Have a good night,” he said.
        “I will.”
        She watched him walk away toward the stairs, then stepped into her room, closed and locked her door.
        The darkness was empty and still.
        She did not turn on the lights, but walked across the room to the largest window.
        For a long while, she stood there, very still, staring at the palm trees and the lawn and the night sky and then distant sea beyond, fingering her throat, swallowing with difficulty, trying to penetrate the shadows for a glimpse of some watcher.
        Eventually, she realized that there was no one there.
        Only then did she draw her drapes and turn on the lights.

----

    TWELVE
        
        Half an hour later, refreshed and relaxed by a hot shower and a couple of glasses of cold tap water that quenched some of the fire in her throat, she had pulled back the covers and was getting into bed when someone knocked at her door. From the solid, forceful, rapid pounding, she knew that it was Rudolph Saine, though she could not imagine what he might want to ask her now. Surely, he had covered everything, earlier, in the kitchen. Wearily, resigned to the fact that she'd have to wait a bit longer before ending the night, she turned her back on the bed and went to see what Saine wanted.
        “Yes?” she asked, when she opened the door.
        She was wearing a high-necked, oriental pa-jama which covered her bruised throat, and she felt less self-conscious than she had earlier.
        “I'm sorry to bother you,” Saine said. But he was clearly not sorry, for he was only doing his job, still, and he was not the sort of man to apologize for what duty necessitated.
        “I wasn't asleep yet,” she said.
        He nodded. “There have been new developments within the last half hour, things I thought you should know about.”
        She felt that she probably didn't want to know, no matter what these new developments were, but she also knew he was going to tell her anyway, even if she would prefer to remain ignorant.
        He said, “Of course, we have no conventional telephones, as you know them, here on Distingue. When we wish to place a call, we contact the marine operator on Guadeloupe, by means of our radio-telephone which is kept upstairs, in Mr. Dougherty's study. The Guadeloupe marine operator then dials the number we want, in a conventional manner, and makes a patch between the mainland line telephones and our radio-phone. It sounds very complicated, but it is really quite simple and efficient, as it would have to be for all the business Mr. Dougherty has to do by telephone. It's more expensive than normal telephone service, but Mr. Dougherty hardly worries about expense.”
        Relaxed a moment ago, Sonya felt a minimum of tension slowly creeping back into her, like dirty water. Rudolph Saine was usually a man of few words, direct and to the point. In offering this long explanation of the radio-phone, he seemed to be avoiding, for as long as possible, some ugly bit of news.
        “Though the radio-telephone is simple and efficient, it is also-vulnerable,” he said. “It does not function well during bad weather, and not at all during a major seasonal storm.