“I’m sorry,” she said, setting the chair down beside a beautifully proportioned candle stand. “I didn’t hear you drive up.”

“That’s an interesting chair,” he said. “Shaker, isn’t it?”

She looked at him approvingly. “Yes, made by Elder Henry Blinn, of Canterbury.”

“You have many valuable pieces here.”

“Admiral Bass, the owner, “gets the credit for what you see.” She moved behind the desk. “He’s quite an authority on antique collecting, you know.”

“I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Do you wish a room?”

“Yes, for tonight only.”

“A pity you can’t stay longer. A local stock theater opens in our barn the evening after next.”

“I’ve a knack for poor timing,” Pitt said, smiling.

Her return smile was thin and formal. She spun the register around for him and he signed it.

“Room fourteen. Up the stairs and three doors to your left, Mr. Pitt.”

124 VIXEN 03p>

She had read his name upside down as he signed it. “I’m Heidi Milligan. If you need anything, just push the buzzer by your door. I’ll get the message sooner or later. I hope you won’t mind carrying your own luggage up.”

“I’ll manage. Is the admiral handy? I’d like to talk to him about … about antiques.”

She pointed through a double screen door at the end of the lobby. “You’ll find him down by the duck pond, clearing away lily pads.”

Pitt nodded and headed in the direction Heidi Milligan had indicated. The door opened onto a footpath that meandered down a gently sloping hill. Admiral Bass had wisely chosen not to landscape Anchorage House. The surrounding grounds had been left to nature and were covered with pines and late-blooming wildflowers. For a moment Pitt forgot his mission and soaked up the scenic quiet that hemmed in the trail to the pond.

He found an elderly man, in hip boots and brandishing a pitchfork, aggressively attacking a circular growth of water lilies about eight feet from shore. The admiral was a big man and he threw the tangled root stocks onto the bank with the ease of someone thirty years younger. He wore no hat under the Virginia sun and the sweat rolled free from his bald head and trickled off the ends of his nose and chin.

“Admiral Walter Bass?” Pitt said, hailing him.

The pitchfork stopped in mid-throw. “Yes, I’m Walter Bass.”

“Sir, my name is Dirk Pitt, and I wonder if I might have a word with you?”

“Sure, go right ahead,” said Bass, finishing the toss. “Pardon me if I keep after these damned weeds, but I want to clear out as much as I can before dinner. If I didn’t do this at least twice a week before winter, they’d choke off the whole pond come spring.”