enovel The Panderer John Dexter [Future Story Codes]

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The Panderer ....(98k)    by John Dexter

SIN TOUR!

Jack Bartley had lost the voluptuous Susan Bradford and his last $3,000 in a crap game, and now he was angling for bigger things in Diana Manzer's bedroom. Diana had an incredible appetite for lust, and Jack knew exactly how to appease it-and her. After their first night together, Diana brought Jack into her bus-tour business, and things began to look up again. But only until Jack learned that part of the operation had to be financed by Hugo Zimmer, an impotent puppet of a man who ran a string of houses just outside town. Diana and Jack tried to concentrate on the legitimate end of the business, but it lasted only until Jack met the criminally seductive Leona. She had become a victim of Zimmer's organization when Hugo had one of his henchmen rape her while he took pictures for blackmail. Jack and Diana were in too deep; it was too late to back out. In his Moral Interregnum, Max Lerner writes: "In America the cultural life goals-success, competition, power, prestige, security, happiness-speak more loudly than the moral codes. The indices of belonging are belongings." This was the pattern that Hugo Zimmer imposed, one which threatened to destroy Jack Bartley....

CHAPTER ONE

Have you ever been broke? I mean flat, tapped out, beat and hungry broke?

It's a hell of a feeling, isn't it?

You see all the good stuff of life around you stuff to eat and drink, things to wear and ride and play with-and you can't afford even to step up and greet it, let alone make a deal.

That's the way I was that July night when I sat in Shorty Bleek's bar and thought about the women I'd had last month and had tossed aside.

That can give you a bad feeling, too-thinking about the broads you've let slither away because you were bored or had a new one on the line. There comes a time in the life of every man when those lost ladies would come in handy. But, alas, then it's too late.

From this you should have a fair idea of the mood I was in when I met Diana. To say that I was lower than a dachshund's nipples would have been no exaggeration.

Before I tell you about Diana, I should clue you on how it happened that I found myself in such miserable straits. Not that I'm looking for sympathy, you understand, but it will give you some idea of the kind of guy I am. I figure that if we're going to spend all this time together, you should know something about me.

First off, my name's Jack Bartley and I'm twenty-eight years old. As to looks ... well, I try to be neat and to look alive. Nature didn't give me any more or less of a starting break than most other guys.

I've knocked around quite a bit since I got teed off at my eleventh grade English teacher and walked out of George Washington High in San Francisco. I did a hitch in the Army, sold cars, peddled water softeners in suburbia, barked for a carnival girlie show, and helped another guy fleece the suckers at a clip joint we ran in San Diego.

My two vices are babes and gambling.

I can pass up just about anything except hot thighs and hot dice, and thereby hangs the tale of my undoing.

There was this chick named Suzie. Susan Bradford, if you prefer being formal. But Suzie was a hard girl to be formal with. She had dreamy blue eyes, the kind of softly tousled blonde hair that you'd like to get fingers into, and a body that cried out for the kind of treatment which only a hungry male could give.

It happened that I was hungry. Hell, I'm always hungry for stuff like that. So we blew San Diego together-me with about three grand in my pants and Suzie with what I took for a healthy all-American itch in hers-and we landed in Los Angeles.

I'd spent quite a lot of time in L.A. before, so I knew my way around. That didn't prove to help me, though, because I didn't happen to know a cat named Pete Randale. And Suzie did. Oh, how Suzie knew him!

Pete had this floating crap game.

Well, do I need to tell you the rest?

In just a few hours my three grand was gone. So was Suzie. And Pete. And there I was with a fairly good wardrobe, an unpaid hotel bill, a severe case of unsatisfied libido, and a handful of pocket change.

Luckily, I still had a few contacts around town including Shorty Bleek, who ran this bar and grill and I still had a prosperous appearance, with enough gall to parlay the two into a few meals and drinks. But my credit couldn't last forever.

So I was faced with the dreary prospect of going back to work much sooner than I'd expected.

That brings us up to date, and it should give you an idea why the Scotch and water at Shorty's place just wasn't doing much for me that night.

Now ... enter Diana.

She was sitting at the bar when I first noticed her. She'd come in some time after I had, and she seemed to be alone. I looked her over.

I'm a girl-watcher from way back. That is to say, I've been doing it since I was twelve years old. After sixteen years of practice, a person is bound to gain a certain degree of proficiency at anything, and I claim in all modesty that girl-watching is an art which I practice quite well.

There are guys who would tell you there's nothing to it, that you just ogle babes the way you'd ogle a new Cadillac, a Pacific sunset, or an eight-dollar steak.

Those guys are wrong.

Girl-watching is very definitely an art. This is true because in order to gain the maximum possible pleasure from it you have to stimulate the girl to display herself at her best. You have to give her an incentive to do that. Understand?

Well, look at it this way: Unless you're a peeping Tom and do your watching from a place of concealment (which isn't nearly as much fun, incidentally) the girl can see you as readily as you can see her. Now, if there's one thing that most all girls have in common, it's a desire to be appreciated by desirable men. That word desirable is the key. Not many chicks care to be admired by bums or obvious lechers.

Desirableness in a girl's eyes doesn't have much to do with the cut of your features or even how much weight you carry around. It has to do with grooming, sure, and with such intangibles as poise and attitude.

Assuming that you are well-groomed, in keeping with the locale and occasion, it only remains for you to act poised-sure of yourself, in other words-and to display the right attitude toward the girl herself. An attitude can reveal itself in a glance. Girls dislike equally slobberers and snobs. They are attracted to healthy, bushy-tailed, red-blooded males.

So whether you are healthy, bushy-tailed, red-blooded or not, it will behoove you to act that way if you want girls to be attracted to you. Such attraction pays off in a casual encounters as well as on dates.

Example: A girl is walking toward you on the street. She sees you at the same time you see her. If she likes what she sees-particularly your reaction to the sight of her-she will usually reward you with an inviting countenance, a straightening of her shoulders and perhaps a little extra sway of her hips.

Example number two: A girl is seated opposite you in a club or restaurant. If she is pleased by the way you look at her, she will more likely than not treat you to an extra-scenic crossing of her legs. If she reacts adversely, she will keep her pretty knees primly side-by-side and perhaps even turn them the other way, at the same time elevating her nose as she would do upon encountering anything else unpleasant.

Well, enough of that. I think you have the idea.

Maybe you knew all this already and, if so, forgive me. But there are lots of guys who don't know it and those clowns can't possibly get as big a charge out of girl-watching as the ones who are hip.

Okay. End of lesson one in the Jack Bartley course on girlsmanship.

Back to Diana:

She was seated at the bar, a couple of stools down from me, and I was giving her my standard once-over. She was pretending not to have noticed me, but I knew she had. I knew it by the way she was arranging her dress hem above her crossed legs, and by the way she was holding her shoulders so that her boobs bulged out.

She was no kid, which is to say that she'd never see thirty again. Or even thirty-two. She was somewhere around the midpoint of the dangerous decade in a woman's life.

As I told you, I'm twenty-eight. From that you might assume I wouldn't be interested in a woman who'd reached her middle thirties. If so, you flunk lesson two in Jack Bartley's course.

I won't burden you with a long harangue on the point, but I'll say this: Women are apt to be their juiciest at around Diana's age. Not only that, but plus-thirty dolls usually appreciate the attentions of minus-thirty men, and they are very apt to make it more than worth the man's while.

Knowing this, I sized Diana up carefully. I was without loot, true, but sometimes a guy can make out with a light or even an empty wallet. In this connection, also, his chances are much better with an older dame.

Diana carried her age well.

She was dark brunette, with her hair long enough to tickle her shoulders. She wore a blue flowered dress with a scooped-out neckline. Her large, rising boobs threatened to bubble over its top, especially i he way she was shoving them out there. She seemed passably trim in the waist, though she couldn't have been called slender. Her bare arms were rounded and well-fleshed, and her legs likewise gave evidence of having lots of meat on them.

She was sipping a Manhattan. Once she glanced my way, and our eyes met. There was a flicker.

Lesson three could well be devoted to the reading of feminine eyes, but this is neither the time nor the place for a long to-do about that. Suffice it to say that I was satisfied with what I read in Diana's.

Immediately after facing front again, she twisted on her seat and cocked her crossed calf at a slightly more rakish angle. Her calves and ankles weren't fat, and that's a good sign to look for, especially with women who are a bit plump in other departments.

I took a firm grip on my Scotch-and-water glass and moved to the stool beside her.

Lesson four should concern itself with introductions, pickups, breaking the ice, or whatever you wish to call the process by which male and female get to know one another. There are a hundred approaches, all of them suitable to certain occasion. A lot depends on the woman, and here's where a sizing-up process is very important.

I had noted the way Diana sat-confidently erect-and the levelness of her gaze. I had also taken into account that she was in a bar alone and that she was five to eight years older than me. On the basis of this, I had decided on a direct, no-nonsense pitch.

I have guessed wrong on occasion, but not often. Another thing, incidentally: A woman's first response doesn't always tell you how well you're succeeding. So don't give up too soon. Sometimes you have to be darned persistent.

In Diana's case, persistence was not called for. I had no sooner said, "Can I buy you another one?" than she gave me a thorough once-over, smiled conservatively, and said, "Why not?"

I told myself that I was in like Burton. (Joe Burton, I'm talking about. He's a tiger with the ladies in my old home town.)

Actually, of course, I wasn't buying at all. I was charging. But, for my purpose at the moment, it was all the same thing. I ordered and charged, we sipped and smiled at one another, and then came the introductions.

Her last name was Manzer, and she told me right away that she lived just around the corner.

Lesson five? Look out for professionals.

Now, I've got nothing against them, you understand. As far as I'm concerned, the working girls should be allowed to ply their trade. They actually represent a great boon to many guys who might otherwise find themselves out in the cold, in a very literal way.

For myself, I've never cared to go that route. The few times I've tried it, it's been depressing. In the first place, most prostitutes are sexphonies. They don't really dig men-not after their first couple of hundred, at any rate. Many of them dig females. Some just dig money. As I said ... depressing.

There's no thrill of conquest; a man is left with the unpleasant impression that he doesn't have what it takes to make a woman fall over and play cozy unless he pays her for it. Now, money has its place in the art of girlsmanship-there's certainly no doubt about that-but it's in the build-up, not the payoff. The payoff should be for sweet mutual pleasure and nothing more. That's where the real boot comes in.

So I suddenly became wary of Diana Manzer.

She didn't have the look of a hooker, I'd thought, but I recognized the possibility that I could have been wrong. I decided to do some verbal feeling-out.

"An interesting crowd comes through this place, don't you think?" I asked. "I like to hang out here just to watch them."

"Really?" She gave me a calm look and expelled cigarette smoke.

"How about you? Don't you find the place entertaining?"

"I hadn't really noticed, to tell the truth," she said, picking up her glass. "I had something unpleasant to do tonight and thought a couple of drinks might help me."

"Oh?"

"But, then, you wouldn't be interested in my troubles."

"How do you know? I've had some of my own."

She looked at me again, more closely this time. "What do you do?"

I grinned. "That covers a lot of territory. You want me to start at the top of the alphabet?"

"I mean for a living," she explained. "Most people specialize in one thing."

"I don't," I told her. "Right now I'm uncommitted."

"Mmmm." She let her eyes tour me and then looked front again. But I noticed that she continued to watch me in the dark-shaded mirror.

I had just about convinced myself at this point that she was no pro. She was, I took it, a woman with a problem. That meant she was a woman who needed the help of a man.

I took heart.

"Go on," I said. "Tell me about it. It will make you feel better."

"I don't know if it will or not. Talking makes some things worse."

"Let's try, shall we?"

She looked directly at my again. "You're a funny one, do you know that? You can't really be interested.

You're just trying to make out, aren't you?"

"Mm-hmm." I nodded pleasantly. "But I'm interested, too."

Our eyes held one another's for quite a time, each of us sort of half smiling as if we'd discovered something worth further exploration. But then she glanced at her expensive watch.

"It's too late," she said. "I have to meet this man at nine o'clock."

"Oh?"

"A business conference. He's offered to take my troubles off my hands."

"Accommodating fellow," I said. "What's he getting out of it?"

"He's getting a sight-seeing business that I just about broke my ... back ... trying to keep on a paying basis. I took it over two years ago when my husband died. But I couldn't make it stay in the black."

"Sight-seeing, hmm?" I sipped my drink. "Sounds Kke it might have possibilities."

"That's what I used to think. My husband made it pay, of course, but times were different then. Anyway, there are some businesses that it takes a man to run."

"Maybe that's your trouble," I suggested softly. "You need a man. To run the business, I mean."

This time our eyes held for a very long while and there was an openness about her dark-eyed gaze that zinged me.

"This man," I said. "The one you were going to meet. You could probably meet him tomorrow just as well, couldn't you? I mean, his offer won't be closed by then, will it?"

"No," she said thoughtfully. "I don't imagine so. He's been after me for quite a while to sell out."

"Call him. Tell him you can't make it tonight. Say he'll hear from you in the morning."

"And?"

"And we'll go up to your apartment and talk it over."

"You have nerve, haven't you?" Her tone revealed grudging admiration ... and interest.

"That's right." I smiled. "What have you got to lose?"

"Well ... not my virginity, at any rate. But I don't know you."

"That's why we should go to your apartment."

After searching my eyes for another few seconds and evidently finding what she wanted to see, she slid off the stool and edged past me. As she did so, my eyes tested her rounded white breast-tops much as you might visually test cantaloupes on a produce counter. I graded them A for succulent ripeness.

Diana's hips, though heavy, moved with lithe promise as she walked from the bar in front of me. And her calves, as I've said before, were very good in nylons that were extra-sheer.

Things are looking up, old boy, I said to myself as I headed for what I hoped would be a rewarding evening in Diana's place.

CHAPTER TWO

We didn't climb into bed right away.

But we did most definitely climb into bed.

My interest in Diana, believe it or not, was not centered solely on her body. The fact that I was moneyless and without a job forced me to other considerations.

Point one: Diana had said she owned a sight-seeing business which was foundering for want of a masculine hand on the tiller. Point two: I had two hands which were most definitely masculine. Point three: there is money to be made in the sight-seeing game, especially in Southern California.

Points one through three, inclusive, added up to opportunity with a big fat capital O. At least, that's the way I had it figured on the basis of what Diana had told me thus far. I wanted to hear more.

After she had telephoned a man whom she addressed as Mr. Zimmer, we relaxed on the French Provincial sofa in her living room and discussed things over Scotch on the rocks. Yes, she had deserted the Manhattan kick and gone farther east to join me where the booze was best.

"My company specializes in tours of the movie stars' homes and the studios," she said.

"What studios?" I countered. "The way things are in Hollywood now, there's more activity at the La Brea Tar Pits."

"That's just the trouble," she said. "Or, at least, it's one of the troubles. Another one is that the movie sexpots are deserting Beverly Hills. Now they're scattered all the way from Bel Air to Madrid. Hollywood just isn't what it used to be, and that's what's knocking hell out of my business."

"Change is the law of life," I pontificated. "If we would grow and prosper, we must change with the changing times."

"Please. No lectures." She sipped some more Scotch.

"Look," I said. "The tourists are still coming to California, right? Statistics tell us there are more people arriving in this smog-drenched paradise daily than ever before."

"So?"

"So the tourists still want to see things, don't they? They don't come one, two or three thousand miles and sometimes farther than that-just to get fouled-up on the freeways."

"I guess not."

"So California has a lot more to show them than disappearing movie lots and stars' homes. There are TV programs, night clubs, Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm ... and don't forget charming old Tijuana just two hours' drive away."

"Now, wait a minute, Jack." Diana put her cool fingers on my arm. "Thanks a lot, but you're talking on a larger scale than I can possibly operate. I have only a couple of busses, and small ones at that. To cart people all over Southern California costs money."

"Haven't you ever heard of thinking big?"

"But I don't have the capital. And, anyway, Fanner's got the general sight-seeing business sewed up. They've got an "in" with all the big hotels. I couldn't hope to buck them. Even in the limited field where I've been operating, they've been tough competition."

"Listen," I said, tapping her thigh. (It tapped very nicely.) Bigness can be an asset, but it can also be a liability. Then, too, when a business gets fat and complacent, it can be easy pickings."

"Not for me," she said, finishing her Scotch.

"For us, maybe," I told her firmly.

She gave me a good long look. "You've really got an idea about this, haven't you?"

"Damned right. Now tell me: Do you have any physical assets that can be mortgaged-real estate, busses, that sort of thing?"

"Yesss...." she said slowly. "My husband had the plant all paid for, and I've managed to keep it clear. That's about all I've been able to do."

"Then we can raise enough operating capital to get going."

"You keep saying we," she pointed out. "Pardon me for being blunt, but just why do you think I should take you in?"

"For several reasons, but for now we'll talk about these: First, I know Southern Cal like Mr. Kraft knows cheese. Also, I'm a good salesman and I know how to manage a business. To prove it, I can show you the financial statement on a bar I just sold down in Dago. Add to that the fact that I'm hungry."

"You're also not overly modest, are you?" Diana observed.

"Modesty never gained a man a thing."

She looked at me closely. The liquor had mellowed her quite a bit; I could tell that by her eyes.

"You said there were other reasons," she reminded me. "What are they?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes."

"Number one, I'm a man. And I happen to think that a man is what you need most." Her eyes widened a little bit at that, but I went right on: "Number two, I'm available-no wife or kiddies or other encumbrances. Also, I'm not a bad guy when you get to know me. Now, how does that strike you? Be honest. This is no time for fooling."

Diana said, "I don't know what to say." Her voice was smoky and it cracked once in the middle of the sentence. Her eyes were smoky, also. That let's-go-to-bed look was creeping into them.

I looked down at her breasts, almost half exposed above the scoop-top dress she was wearing. She had an uplift bra that was a world beater, serving those big mounds up in a way to make your mouth water. I took plenty of time looking her over, then I lifted my eyes to hers. "As you told me in the bar, you have no virginity to lose."

"You're a very direct man," she murmured, and wet her lips with a red tongue-tip.

"Very."

Our eyes locked again, and I decided it was time to make my move. The openness of her gaze told me I had clear sailing.

I moved closer and encircled her with my arms, pulling her abundant body against me. Her bosom pressed my chest and yielded. The scent of Chantilly drifted up from delightful places. I watched her lips slowly preparing.

Then I sent my mouth swooping downward.

At first touch, her red lips were soft. They were parted slightly. I moved mine against them, tightening the suction and forcing her lips farther apart. Suddenly hers quivered and pulled at mine and, at the same time, I felt her arms extend themselves around my back and take hold. Then she made a little sound, and her warm tongue rose up and entered my mouth.

The fact that Diana Manzer wanted it, and wanted it in a real big way, couldn't be denied. I figured if I gave it to her just as she wanted it, it might sell her on the idea of a more permanent relationship for us. I'd had some experience with lonely widows before. I wasn't entirely cynical about the thing, however. Any way you looked at it, I was in for a good time.

I wasn't looking at anything right then, actually. My eyes were closed and I was feeling. Feeling Diana's soft warm lips which had opened like the petals of a flower, and feeling her tongue which was probing the inside of my mouth, circling and twisting and curling around mine. One of her hands was pulling against my back, the fingers sharp-tipped, while the other one ruffled the short hairs at the back of my head. Her curvaceous, sweet-smelling warmth was molded to me.

After receiving the thrusting ministrations of her tongue for some seconds, I pressed firmly with my own, forcing hers back into the lush cave from which it had come and entering after it to continue making love in the molten heat of our mutual passion.

Our bodies were turned half-facing one another on the sofa, and momentarily I felt the anxious moving of Diana's thighs and the sleekness of her stockinged ankle as it began to rub my lower leg in a mute plea to extend the scope of our lovemaking.

I moved one hand from her back, slipping it along her far side and down onto the warm rise of her hip. The fingers worked their way along her clothed thigh to find her dress-hem, which had pulled well above her knee. As we continued to kiss, I fingered her skirt and slip away from her leg, deftly edged beneath both garments, then sent my hand upward.

This time there was no skirt or slip between her flesh and my fingers. There was just Diana, encased in sleek, tightly drawn nylon. I rubbed the nylon with my palm and teased the tactile skin beneath it with my fingertips.

Diana moaned, her tongue suddenly become wilder, her hands grasping against me fiercely.

I stroked her stockinged thigh back and forth, then let my fingers slip down its outer slope. She lifted her leg to allow more latitude for my playing. My hand worked its way down and around and gradually upward.

The tip of one finger touched a garter which had nylon bunched in its metallic grip. I edged another finger onto it, then moved them upward along the elastic strap. After slipping them underneath the strap, I lifted it and pressed with my thumb against the button of the clasp. It released, the garter coming free.

I stroked Diana's bare thigh and, as I did this, she tore her mouth from mine. She was panting. "Oh, Jack, that turns me on!"

As her head lay against the top of the sofa, I nibbled the edges of her lips. At the same time, I found the other garter on her stocking top. I opened it as I had done its twin. Her stocking became limp.

Bending over her, I brushed my fingers across the top of her right thigh, then I touched at its inner slope and at the inner slope of her left, and continued over the left thigh until I found another garter clasp. It came open. I petted her some more, my fingers inching higher and then dropping back to take care of the final garter.

I now freed myself from her loose embrace and slipped from the sofa to come to rest on my knees in front of it. Her legs were at my left side, against me, and without hesitation I took hold of the hem of her skirt and slip and pressed them upward until I had bared her thighs entirely. I bent my head and fastened my lips against the honeyed flesh.

Diana whimpered in her need, moving her legs to make more room for me, and at the same time bringing her hands to the back of my head where they began to press. I worked my mouth along the lush slope of her left thigh and then her right. I wanted to take all the time in the world with this, teasing her with the brushing of my lips and the sliding pressure of my tongue-tip.

As I kept kissing her, I slowly lowered each of her nylons, brushing first one and then the other an inch or two at a time. Diana was making it more and more difficult for me to move back and forth from one of her legs to the other because she was inching them farther apart. Also, they were twisting and turning passionately beneath my lips. She raised the right one, as she had done before, and this gave me access to the full width of its inner side. The skin was marvelously soft there. I caressed it, licking gently with my tongue.

Diana was going wild by this time, making little noises and twisting and turning on the couch. She acted as if she wanted me to put an immediate end to her sweet misery, but I knew she wasn't ready yet. We had just begun.

When I had given thorough attention to both of her white, lush thighs, I sat back on my haunches and lifted one of her feet in order to remove her shoe and the stocking which was rumpled at her ankle. After that, I took off the other shoe and nylon. This made her legs completely nude.

But there was a lot more clothing in the way.

Her head was still back against the top of the sofa when I moved up beside her again. Her lips were parted moistly and her eyes were closed. Her raven hair had become pleasantly mussed, one waved lock falling across her cheek.

I found the zipper at her right side and lowered the tab. Then I urged her upright and released the fastener at her back.

"Do you want to stand up, dear," I asked, "and we'll get this dress off?"

"Oh, Jack...." she half-moaned. "We shouldn't. We really shouldn't."

"Nonsense," I said and nibbled at her lips again. They opened, and I took the lower one between both of mine and sucked it. She shuddered.

I helped her to her feet and without bending, gathered her dress in my hands. I lifted it all the way up her body and over her head. I tossed it at a chair.

Her underclothes were pale blue-a wired strapless bra with lace cups, and a shining nylon half slip with a lacy upward slash at one side. Her breasts rose above the bra in lush, delectable fullness. The cups were cut so low that they barely contained her nipples. I knew that I could easily lift each breast out, but I wanted to get rid of the bra entirely.

I was quick to do it. The bra's wide back strap came apart in my fingers and Diana's bountiful breasts tumbled free.

They were very large-larger than my hands could contain-and they were lush and soft, but firm enough to stand outward in trembling grandeur. At the crest of each globular mound, wide rust-red circles bloomed, and at the center of each circle was a nub of deeper hue. The nubs were barely crinkled now, lying almost flat. Except for her nipples, her breasts were a smooth pinkish white and this tone continued upward and downward on her body with no distracting tanlines to mar the symmetry of her form. Diana appeared not to be a sun-worshipper, and that made her a California rarity.

Resisting a strong desire to lift and fondle each of her breasts immediately, I took hold of the elastic at her waist and let it down. I knelt before her to finish removing the half slip, then I tossed it away.

Diana stood now in a single garment-a brief blue panty girdle, its garters hanging free. I reached for its top and began to roll it down, gradually freeing her spongy buttocks and the soft bowl of her belly. It came down her thighs, past her knees, and then was off.

I took her buttocks in my hands and pulled her to me.

Her body shook as I kissed her. She said, "Oohhhh...." very softly, and then she pulled away and turned toward the bedroom. Her white, trembling buttocks were a delight as she moved quickly from the room and disappeared into dimness.

I was on my feet and after her. She was stretched out on the bed when I arrived beside it. Though there was no light in the room, there was enough illumination from the open doorway to cast a soft glow on the long lushness of her body, her legs parted slightly and one knee upraised.

Moving quickly, I rid myself of my clothes. Then I got on my knees on the bed beside her.

"Kiss me here, Jack," Diana murmured as she gathered the twin bounties of her chest between her hands, forcing the mounds together and raising them toward my lips. Her nipples had firmed slightly.

I eased her hands away and took her breasts in my own grasp, fingers extending upward along their j outer sides and my thumbs underneath them. I squeezed gently, my fingertips sinking into their softness. I waggled them and Diana moaned. Then I brought my forefingers and thumbs up to their crests and began teasing her nipples. I stroked and rolled them between my thumbs and fingers, urging them up. They responded quickly, stretching tall and thick and very red. I plucked at them.

Diana wriggled beneath me, her shoulders twisting, her thighs opening and closing in need. I knew it would be cruel to make her wait much longer, so I bent my head and took a swollen red nipple into my mouth.

She cried out sharply.

I loved the fleshy tower with my tongue as my lips drew upon the surrounding flesh, my teeth biting her gently. She moaned. She ruffled my hair. I let that nipple go and went to its twin, treating it in the same manner.

After that, I shook both breasts between my hands, letting the turgid tips rub back and forth against my mouth. I flicked my tongue at them and then nipped first one and the other.

"Oh, Jack, I'm going to scream!" Diana said harshly. "Finish me! For God's sake, finish me!"

She reached for me, tugging and trying to pull me on top of her. At the same time she tried to get her near leg around me. This process caused her to become very open, and the sight of all that womanly enticement was too much for me to resist.

I swung nimbly into place and fell to my elbows.

"Now! Now! Now!" she chanted urgently.

I ran my hands beneath her body and downward to grasp her plump buttocks. They were two magnificent, squeezable handfuls. I lifted her that way as she churned and tried to reach me.

I pressed forward, nudging her at exactly the right place.

She let out a strangled cry at. the contact.

I discovered that I wouldn't have to treat her gently. She was as ready as a woman could be. Here it comes, babe! I thought as I tilted her buttocks a little more, until she was just right. Then, in single exertion, I took her.

"OOHHH!" she screamed, and her legs came up around me.

It had been a long time since she'd had it, I presumed, from the way she was reacting. Either that or else I was an even more formidable man than I'd thought. But I didn't bother to debate the issue. Right then there was something far better to do.

I began to do it and she began to help me. We alternately slid apart and slammed together. It wasn't necessary to hold her by the buttocks any more because her legs were clutching me for dear life, rhythmically flexing.

After propping myself on my arms, I watched her contorted face. That's one of the kicks, as far as I'm concerned-seeing their sweet torture when they're being ravished.

Diana was being ravished expertly, and she was appreciating it. Her eyes were jammed closed. Her head tossed. Her mouth was open, twisting, revealing her gleaming teeth. She was talking, also, in gasping spurts-telling me just what she liked about me in those blunt Anglo-Saxonisms that nobody's ever im proved upon.

I said, "Yes, baby, yes," and kept slamming. Not too fast, yet. Just hard and steady.

We bucked and rolled and struggled. She panted sharply and tore at my back. Her legs skidded high on me, giving me an even straighter shot at her. She took all I had, believe you me. There was no holding back.

It wasn't long before I could feel her getting there, and so I ran my arms under her ribs and grabbed on tight. Then I tore out all the stops. She howled. She really howled with joy as I pummeled her. The big balloon got bigger ... bigger and bigger still....

She swiveled and lifted, thrusting herself at the sky, and just then the balloon went bang, and I was plunging in the warm embrace of ecstasy, groaning and straining out of myself again and again.

I rolled onto my back.

Diana was half on top of me, kissing me all over the face with her open mouth, her breath hot and sweet and pumping from deep in her lungs.

I held her to me with my arms around her back and, when my mouth was free enough to let me speak, I asked, "Is it a deal, baby-all the way, you and me?"

"Yes, lover!" she gasped. "Oh, yes, lover!" And she kept kissing me.

I hardly need tell you that I got little sleep that night

CHAPTER THREE

The next morning we went to see Mr. Zimmer he man who'd been trying to buy the sightseeing business from Diana.

I figured he was worth a shot before we began making the rounds of the banks. We knew Zimmer had dough. Whether we could deal with him depended on whether he'd be interested in coming in as a partner instead of buying the business outright.

If he said yes, we would have a three-way partnership, since Diana had already agreed on a split with me.

It hadn't been difficult bringing her around to that point-not after we'd spent the night together. Every inhibition she owned had melted in the heat of our passion, and Diana had turned out to be a free-wheeling sex machine. All she'd needed had been a stud like yours truly to press her starter.

We ran the gamut that night. She must have been spending a lot of long, lonesome hours of late, dreaming up things to do when she finally got a man in her bed again, because she took advantage of the occasion in a big way. All of which was great, as far as I was concerned. By morning we were bushed but happy, and I was sure I'd convinced her I was a handy man to have around.

When we started talking business over scrambled eggs and coffee, I pointed out that an employer-employee relationship between us really wouldn't do. She saw what I meant and didn't raise an objection.

Then, too, she realized she didn't have the know-how or the drive it would take to put the business on its feet. Frankly, I don't know what convinced her I did, unless she figured that a man who had know-how and drive in bed would also have it behind an office desk. More than likely, though, she just wanted to make sure I'd stay on deck. On her deck, that is.

The deal we made was that she would contribute to the partnership all the assets of the company as presently constituted, I would contribute my services, and we would split the proceeds down the middle.

As soon as I'd gotten that nailed down, I brought up the matter of Mr. Zimmer.

At first, Diana bridled.

"I don't know if we want him in the deal, Jack," she said.

"Why not?" I asked, chomping toast.

"Well, in the first place, I don't like the man. He's ... I don't know, kind of funny. He gives me the creeps."

"Between the two of us, we can handle him," I said. "Our two votes can make him a silent partner any time we want. How much was he prepared to pay for the business?"

"I was asking fifteen thousand and he'd offered twelve," she told me. "That was for everything, including the busses, but not the real estate, of course. He was to get a five-year lease on that. I hoped I could bring him up to thirteen-five."

"Let's try to get a flat ten grand for a one-third share," I suggested. "If we can swing it, that will leave the physical assets clear so that we can float another loan from a bank if we need it later."

"But ten thousand for a third?" she said. "I bet he won't go for it."

"He won't be buying merely a third of what you have now," I pointed out. "It will be a third of whatever the business becomes. If things go the way I think they will, he'll get his money back the first year."

"Can you convince him of that?"

"I'm a pretty good convincer," I said with a sly leer.

She studied me and I could see she was a little afraid she'd let me move in too fast, in more ways than one. She said, "If my husband could see me now, I'm afraid he might call me a dunce."

That made me sore, but I shrugged. Always play it cool; that's the best way to go. "There's still time to send me on my way," I said. "We haven't drawn up any papers yet."

She took my hand. "I don't want to do that, Jack," she assured me firmly.

"All right, then," I said with relief, then smiled at her. "You know, I'm risking something in this venture, too. I'm going to devote a lot more than eight hours a day to it. I'll be working like hell to make it succeed. And I've got some contacts in this town that will help us."

"I'm sorry," Diana murmured. "I didn't mean what I said before."

"I understand how you feel," I said. "You're taking a chance with me. But it's going to turn out to be the best bet you ever made in your life. I really mean that, Di. I like you too much to give you a snow job."

"Do you, Jack?" she said, getting up from her chair and moving over to sit on my lap. "Do you like me that much, really?"

"Angel...." I murmured as I opened the front of her robe.

She was wearing nothing underneath it.

We did get over to Zimmer's place that morning. But it was late-close to eleven-thirty.

He lived in a house on Westlake Avenue.

Now, if you know Los Angeles, you know that the Westlake district isn't on a par with Brentwood or Bel Air. It isn't even on a par with Hollywood. It's sort of one step away from being an out-and-out slum, and that one step's a shorty.

As we drove down there in Diana's three-year-old Buick, she said, "This isn't much of a neighborhood, but the man does have money. I had him checked before I started to negotiate with him." She smiled at me. "You see, I'm not always impulsive."

I figured from this that Zimmer couldn't be a very exciting specimen. Either that or else he hadn't given her a tumble. I was firmly convinced, with good reason, that the way to Diana's confidence was through her panties.

I asked, "What's his business?"

"He owns income property-rooming houses, mostly. They're cheap stuff, but I guess they pay."

"What got him hot to go into the sight-seeing business, I wonder?"

"He said he had some ideas about what he could do with it. Like you have, maybe." She paused thoughtfully. "I guess I've been missing a bet these last two years."

She guided the car to the curb and I looked around us. The street was lined with two-and three-story houses that dated back to the early part of the century. Originally single family dwellings for the upper middle class, most of them had been converted into flats or room rentals. They were in various stages of dilapidation peeling paint, sagging porches, roofs that looked as if they might blow away in a stiff breeze.

We got out and walked up a cracked strip of concrete that bisected a patch of dry Bermuda grass and weeds. The mess could hardly have been called a lawn.

On the porch an old man sat in a rocker, a blanket wrapped around him even though it was a warm day. He had a thick cane in his hands, its black rubber tip trained on a spider that was crawling along the porch rail. After the old man had watched the spider closely for several seconds, the cane-tip following above it, he drove the rubber against the rail, squashing the arachnid. Then he grinned at us toothlessly.

The front door of the house was standing open behind a screen. Beyond it a high-ceilinged, narrow corridor stretched away in the gloom, a staircase with an ornate balustrade taking off at the left.

I pressed a stained white button beside the door and a bell rang somewhere in back.

"Go on in ... go on in...." the spider-man advised in a harsh, thin voice.

I gave him a slight smile and turned back to the door again. We waited.

There was a shuffling sound in the dimness, and then a man seemed to materialize from nowhere just inside the door. He had a smooth, expressionless face, thin-lipped, the eyes pale blue and watchful. His hair, which was combed across the top of his forehead, was coarse and medium-brown, showing no gray in spite of the fact that he must have been about fifty. He wore a nondescript flannel sport shirt and gray slacks.

He looked at Diana. "Come in, Mrs. Manzer." He didn't smile, but merely reached to open the door.

We walked in.

"Mr. Zimmer, I want you to meet Jack Bartley," Diana said. "He's my partner."

"Partner?" Zimmer looked closely at me. "I don't understand."

I extended my hand and Zimmer took it. His hand was large and thick, but his grip had no conviction. He released my hand quickly.

The old house had a musty smell which had struck me the moment I'd entered. I was also struck by something else-the fact that Zimmer wore a very cheap set of false teeth. Not only did they look false, but they clicked when he talked.

"I've decided not to sell the business," Diana said.

"Oh?" Zimmer continued to look at her expressionlessly.

"There is something we wanted to talk with you about, though. I'll let Mr. Bartley explain it."

Zimmer looked from Diana to me, and we all just stood there awkwardly. I could sense what Diana had felt about this man. There was something peculiar about him.

Finally he turned toward the back of the house. "Well, come in," he said. We followed.

Zimmer was evidently a tight man with a buck, judging by the dimness of the house. The bare bulbs which burned in every other socket along the ceiling must have been 25-watters.

We turned into a narrow side corridor which was even more gloomy. Zimmer's apartment opened off that.

His living room was drab and cheerless. It had two high windows but they were filmed with dust and shaded by an adjacent building. The furniture was ponderous, old and mismatched. Against one wall was a roll top desk which was littered with papers. Above it, strangely incongruous in the surroundings, hung a large calendar which featured a color photograph of a nude, large-busted girl.

"Sit down," Zimmer said. He took a straight-backed chair near the desk while Diana sat in a black leather lounge chair and I lit on an ottoman which didn't seem to match anything else in the room.

"Well?" Zimmer said, looking from one of us to the other.

I had come to the conclusion he was going to be a hard nut to crack. That made me sorry I'd talked.

Diana into coming to see him, for I was afraid, if I failed to convince him" to throw in with us, it would lower my standing in her eyes. Taking a deep breath, I prepared to plunge ahead and do the best I could.

"Mr. Zimmer," I began, "I have some ideas about how this business can be put on its feet. That's why Mrs. Manzer took me in as a partner. It's no secret that we need capital for expansion, and therefore we're prepared to sell you a one-third interest."

He smiled for the first time, very thinly, but he didn't speak. So I went on:

"We're going to expand operations as quickly as possible-set up tours to other points of interest and put on a promotional campaign."

Zimmer looked at Diana. Then he asked bluntly, "Does Mr. Bartley speak for you?"

"Why ... yes." She glanced uncertainly from him to me.

"Then perhaps Mr. Bartley and I should discuss some things privately." He was looking at me again, his expression still uncommunicative. "I have some definite ideas of my own."

"I'm sure," I said slowly, "that anything you have in mind can be discussed in front of Mrs. Manzer. After all, she's been the sole operator of the business for some time and...."

He cut me off without raising his voice. "I wouldn't want to embarrass her," he said.

I looked at Diana and she shrugged. Her eyes were puzzled.

"Well, I have no objection if Mrs. Manzer doesn't," I said, wondering what the hell old Zimmer had in mind.

Diana stood up. "I'll wait for you in the car, Jack."

"All right." I walked with her to the door of the room.

"I can find my way from here," she said, and touched my arm before she disappeared into the hall. I closed the door after her.

"What's this all about?" I asked Zimmer as I walked to a chair nearer him.

He gave me a long, sober look. His expression had not changed except for a slight narrowing of the eyes. He sat calmly erect, his legs crossed, his mouth forming a hard line.

"When I offered to buy Mrs. Manzer out, I had a definite reason in mind, Bartley. The tours she was running didn't interest me. What I liked about the company was the fact that it was firmly established and had a good, legitimate reputation."

I watched him closely' and allowed him to go on:

"I have no interest in sight-seeing as such. But the business would lend itself very nicely to another purpose. Can you guess what I have in mind?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't," I told him.

He gave me a long steady gaze. "Girls, Mr. Bartley. Prostitutes. Do you follow me now?"

What he'd said had startled me; you can be sure of that. But I didn't see exactly what he was driving at. I told him so.

"The company would continue to run tours," he explained. "But that would just be a front. The real business would be transacted at several houses I would establish outside of the city where the law enforcement agencies are more ... tolerant. We would transport the clientele in sedan busses-unmarked, of course-in groups of ten or twelve in each car."

"You mean cars like those elongated jobs that run back and forth to the airport?"

"Exactly. Arrangements would be made through the tour office on referrals from bars. It would be very discreet, I can assure you."

"You have the girls, do you, Mr. Zimmer?"

He smiled thinly again. "Let's just say that I can get them. There will be no problem in that regard."

"And the out-of-town locations?"

"I have certain properties in mind."

"It sounds risky," I told him.

He said, "There i i a certain degree of risk attached to every opportunity to make a large profit. The risk in this case would be slight, however. There would be nothing the city police could do, since no money would be accepted at the tour office except for transportation-sight-seeing excursions to the country."

"An interesting idea," I said.

"If you and Mrs. Manzer are prepared to operate along these lines-leaving all the special arrangements to me, of course-I would be willing to make a substantial investment in the business." He paused. "Say something in the neighborhood of twenty-five thousand dollars."

I pursed my lips and barely restrained a whistle. "It sounds tempting," I admitted.

As I mentioned before, I have nothing against prostitution. In San Diego, as a matter-of-fact, my buddy and I had dabbled in it on a small scale. We'd had these girls, two of them, who used to hustle drinks and sometimes accommodate a customer, when they found themselves a live one. We worked on a fifty-fifty split with them.

Zimmer remained silent and watched me, waiting for a more conclusive reaction.

Finally I said, "Diana-Mrs. Manzer-might not be willing to go along."

He still didn't say anything.

"Twenty-five thousand," I said. "Is that a firm offer?"

He nodded. "On the terms that I indicated."

"I'll talk with her," I told him.

"Use your own judgment, of course," he said. "But it might be possible, if she's prepared to leave the management to you, for us to go ahead with it and not involve her in the details."

"It might be possible," I agreed noncommittally.

Zimmer stood up. "Let me hear from you."

"I'll do that," I said as I walked with him to the door. I was turning the proposition around in my mind.

When I stepped into the Buick and Diana started the engine, she asked, "Well, what was that all about?"

I had decided to tell her. To try to operate any other way would have been difficult and, anyway, I felt I owed it to her to be frank. After all, it used to be her business.

"I said, "Zimmer has some ideas of his own, all right. The main one is that he wants to put us in the pandering business."

"What?" She threw me a startled glance.

"That's it," I said. Then I went on to outline exactly what he'd told me.

"Well, it's out of the question," she said indignantly.

"That's what I though you'd say," I admitted.

"What you thought I'd say? You don't mean that you would actually go for it?"

"It sounds like a slick operation," I told her.

"But prostitution, Jack!" she said, as if the mere idea were unthinkable.

"It's the world's oldest business. Always been with us and always will, regardless of anything the puritans try to do. All we'd be doing would be providing transportation. Zimmer would run the messy end of it."

"You called it by its right name the first time, Jack," she said. "It would be pandering."

"We'd still concentrate on legitimate tours," I told her. "This other would just be something extra. The money Zimmer's prepared to throw in would cover all the expansion we'd want to do. It would put us on our feet, Di."

"You really want to play along with it, hm?" She gave me a close look.

"Not if you don't want to," I said firmly.

"Bait if it were up to you...."

I finished the sentence for her: "I'd let Zimmer make us rich."

"I still don't like the man," she said.

"Neither do I. But I like his twenty-five thou, and what we'll make in dealing with him."

"You're not exactly a man of high principle, are you?"

"I never claimed to be," I said. "But I'm leveling with you."

"Let's think it over, shall we, Jack?"

"Sure."

I figured I'd gotten her about half sold. The process could be completed, I hoped, that night in bed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Diana's outfit was known as Sunnical Tours. It consisted of an office on Beverly Boulevard near Vermont-a single-story stucco building with a service area and garage in back; two medium-sized busses of 1958 vintage; contractual relations with several live-wire travel agencies and some middle class hotels; and a sizeable portion of good will, built up over a period of seventeen years.

There were three employees-the two tour guides who ran the busses and a girl who covered the office.

The girl was Eleanor Tilson, and I would have laid eight to five, the minute I met her, that she was nympho. When Diana introduced us that afternoon, Eleanor's gray-green eyes flashed me a "welcome, stranger" look that could hardly have been mistaken. She was ash blonde, fairly tall, and built for action. Her form had none of the heaviness that marked Diana's, and she had at least a ten-year age advantage on her boss. I looked her over quickly and filed her for future reference.

Then Diana and I retired to the private office in the rear half of the small building. There was already a spare desk in it, which I assumed Diana might have used when her husband was alive and running the show. Now it was pushed against the wall. The place was neat, paneled in pine and furnished in metal and plastic. There was a man's picture on the wall, which I took to be her husband's.

Di got out the firm's account books, and we sat side-by-side on a short green couch and went over them. She answered all my questions frankly.

The girl, Eleanor, made four hundred a month and the drivers each drew six-fifty. Diana's take had fluctuated all the way from a high of a thousand to as little as three hundred in some months. That's the way it goes when you run a business of your own-the help has to be paid first, then the other bills, and the owner takes what's left after allowances are made for reserves. In the case of Sunnical Tours, the reserves were in the form of the physical assets which could be mortgaged to meet emergencies or for purchases of new equipment.

The books showed cash on hand of only eight hundred twenty dollars, thirteen cents. It was obvious that the business had been lean and getting leaner. Diana's decision to sell out had been an understandable one.

"What do you think?" she asked me finally.

"I think we should take Zimmer's offer," I said. "If we mortgage the properties, we're flat on our back. What if the promotional gamble doesn't pay off? I think it will. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't have been interested in the deal at all. But what if it doesn't? We ought to maintain some kind of reserve."

"I still want to think about it," she said.

"Sure." I hesitated for a few seconds, then hit her with: "Speaking of being flat, that's the state I'm in right now. How are chances for a little advance? A hundred-fifty, maybe?"

She didn't flinch. "You're a partner, darling." It was the first time she'd used a term of endearment with me. She picked up the checkbook.

"Thanks, Di," I said. "You're a damn good scout."

She smiled at me as she made the check out. "Can't you do better than that? Scout isn't a very warm word."

"You're a sweetheart, then. How about that?"

"Much better," she said, and signed the check.

By the next morning, everything had worked out the way I'd hoped it would. Diana had given me a grudging okay on the deal with Zimmer, stipulating only that our office not be involved directly in the prostitution end of the business.

"As you said, we'll just furnish transportation," she told me. "We don't have to know why the men want to take the out-of-town tours."

"I guess not," I said, knowing damned well that it couldn't really be worked that way.

Whoever was at the front counter would have to know the score and would have to discuss it with the clients. After all, guys weren't going to walk in and sign up with us without being assured of what was waiting for them at the end of the ride. That was where Eleanor Tilson came in.

But I figured I could handle her, so there seemed to be no point in further argument with Diana. The main thing was that Diana had okayed the deal; how we ran it was going to be my responsibility.

We made a quick trip to see Diana's lawyer-a fat little man with an office on Olympic Boulevard. After we'd explained the partnership setup to him without mentioning Zimmer's special angle, of course-he said he'd have the papers drawn up and ready by four o'clock.

Then I phoned Zimmer from a booth. I told him everything was set, and we made a date to get together that night at Diana's place to close the deal. Zimmer said he'd bring a cashier's check for the twenty-five grand.

I figuratively rubbed my hands in satisfaction as I rejoined Diana in the car. I'd come a long way in less than forty-eight hours. Talk about a promotion! I said to myself. Who was that guy named Barnum, anyhow?

"Where to, darling?" she asked, as I got into the Buick.

She probably wanted me to suggest that we kill a few hours in her bedroom. But I had something else to work on-namely, Eleanor.

I said, "Why don't you run on home, or go shopping or something? I want to camp in the office for a while and see how things go."

"I can be there with you," she said.

"If you'd rather," I told her, "but actually it won't be necessary. I just want to familiarize myself with the routine operation, see the way the girl handles the clients, and meet the drivers when they come in."

She shrugged. "All right. It's going to be nice, as a matter-of-fact, not being tied down to that place all the time."

"I should think you'd like it," I agreed. "Of course, it will all depend on the money. But there'll be plenty rolling in as soon as Zimmer's pandering setup takes hold, to say nothing of what we're going to make on the other new tours."

"I hope so, Jack," she said.

"It's as good as in the bank," I told her.

When I got to the office, I didn't go into the back room but sat right behind the counter at a spare desk next to Elbe's. A few people drifted in and signed up for the stars-and-studios tours; other reservations came in by phone from the agencies. But, all in all, it was pretty slow.

I met the drivers-or spielers, as they're called in the business. One was a short, gray-haired man in his fifties named Hank Shelby; the other was younger thin and dark-complexioned, with hawk-like features and went by the name of Ted Price.

The busses pulled up at the white-marked curb in front of the office just before each tour was due to start, and a few people boarded there. Eleanor explained that most of the clients got on at the various hotel stops. The busses went directly to the hotels from the office, then headed for Hollywood and points west. After each tour was over, the bus circled the hotel route again, dropping the customers off.

During the course of the morning, Ellie and I got acquainted. At lunch time, Ted Price relieved her for a half-hour and we walked to a restaurant on Vermont. Over steak sandwiches I furthered the getting-acquainted process, putting it on a little more personal basis.

When she felt, I guess, that it was safe to do so, Ellie brought up something that had evidently been bothering her:

"You've never been around before, Jack." (I'd told her to call me by my first name; the mister jazz had never cut any ice with me.) "How come you bought in?" She added, "If I'm out of line asking, just say so."

I gave her my most engaging smile. "Diana needed a hand to help run things. She figured I could build up the business."

"It could use it," Ellie remarked.

I'd been reading the warm, inviting look in her eyes, and I'd noticed the way she seemed to preen for me. The girl didn't have too much chest-but, then, boobies aren't everything. Her legs were slim and long and she had a delectable behind-pouting, elongated buttocks that switched nicely inside her belted shift. She was delightfully ungirdled.

When we were sipping our second round of coffee, I decided to feel her out on the new deal: "You know, a business like Simmcal has possibilities that lots of people might not think of."

"Really?" she said, bending slightly to sip from her cup.

A short lock of her brownish blonde hair had an intriguing way of falling close to one eye every once in a while. I kept imagining how she'd look when her hair was really mussed up.

"For example," I went on, "there are certain offbeat attractions that out-of-towners would like to latch onto but which aren't included in a normal sight-seeing tour."

She looked at me closely. "Now you've got my interest aroused."

"By the way, Ellie-do you have a boy friend?"

"Why, Jack!" I could tell by the. way she'd brightened that she was glad I'd asked.

"Well, do you?"

"Nobody special," she said, obviously waiting for me to go on.

"Maybe you'd have dinner with me after work tonight," I suggested. "We could talk a little about some changes that are coming up in the business."

"Well, sure."

After we got back to the office, I went into the rear room and phoned Diana's apartment. Luckily I caught her at home.

"Well, are you learning a lot?" she asked me.

"I'm getting the drift," I said. Then: "Look, honey, there's a little personal matter I've got to take care of this evening-a deal I had on the string before I met you. Can I beg off on our dinner date tonight?"

She said slowly, "I suppose so."

"I wouldn't do this if it wasn't necessary, sweet. Why don't you pick up the papers at the lawyer's office and later fix yourself some dinner. I'll be over just before eight. Zimmer isn't due to show up until then."

"All right, Jack," she said. She added softly, "I'm going to miss you."

Good Lord, I thought, but women get possessive!

It bothered her to have me out of her sight for even a few hours. Well, that was part of the cross I had to bear in the deal, I supposed. Considering the advantages I was gaining from the partnership, it wasn't too high a price to pay.

I assured her that I would miss her, as well.

"Tell me one thing, darling," she said. "Does this personal matter of yours involve a male or female?"

"I think he's ambivalent," I told her. "But our dealings never reached a sexual plane."

"I hope not," she said. "Anyway, I'm sure you're not that kind. So I'm relieved."

"Good! See you at eight, sweetheart."

"At eight."

I made a kissing sound at the telephone and hung up.

It wasn't difficult maneuvering my way into Eleanor Tilson's apartment that evening. And I figured it would be just about as easy maneuvering my way into Eleanor.

We had left the office at five o'clock sharp, had driven in her car to a restaurant on Sunset, then had gone to her place on Normandie after I'd told her I didn't care to discuss business details in public.

I think she would have been as quick to let me come up if I'd just said I wanted to use the telephone. She was a real ready girl, that one. It was there in her eyes, for any man who was hip enough to read it.

The only thing that bothered me was that I didn't have much time to operate, and I wanted to cover as much ground with Ellie as I could. I had decided the best bet was to get good and cozy with her first, and then to slip her the scoop on the Zimmer deal. I figured she'd be happy to go along-once we were on an intimate basis-and when I offered her an extra hundred bucks a month.

But, as I said, time was short. It was already twenty minutes to seven when we stepped into her furnished single, and I'd promised Diana I would meet her at eight o'clock. That didn't leave much time for a buildup.

Remember Jack Bartley's course in girlsmanship?

It's time for another lesson. This one we'll call How to Get In and Get Out in a Hurry, or something equally appropriate. Watch closely, now:

As soon as the door snicked closed, I said, "Well, we have just about an hour before I have to leave to meet a new backer for the business."

Elbe frowned faintly. "An hour?"

"Mm-hmm. An hour is a fairly long time, if you look at it in a certain way. I mean, a lot can be done in an hour if a person makes the best possible use of it. On the other hand, if you waste it, it will disappear before you hardly know it's gone."

She sat down beside me on the couch. "What are you saying, Jack?"

I gave her a steady look. "That we shouldn't waste it. It would be a sin."

She inched closer. "I don't want to waste it. Heaven knows that."

"We have a business matter to discuss," I said, drawing a bead on her wide mouth, which was the color of cotton candy. "But that can come later, I think."

"What ... should come first?" she asked tremulously, tilting those cotton-candy lips up toward me.

"We should, chickie," I said, and with that I went for the kiss.

Her lips were sweet-tasting-sweeter than cotton candy and a lot more stimulating. I drew on them, my own lips pulsating gently, and gradually her lips came apart. I pressed my tongue between them.

Ellie reacted as if I had jabbed her with a high voltage wire. She started to tremble and she pressed her body against me. At the same time, her arms took hold around my back.

From that point on, it was just a matter of doing what I wanted to. Actually, this wasn't much of a test, because Ellie had been waiting for me to make a move. When I said we had only an hour, she obviously became as anxious to make good use of those sixty golden minutes as I was.

Nympho? No doubt about it.

"Oh, wow!" she breathed when I finally released her. "You can really kiss!"

"That isn't all," I said.

She shoved a long, warm thigh up against me. "You mean there's more?"

"Kissing's for kids. I got out of school a long time ago."

Her eyes smoldered naughtily. "Well, just what do you suggest?"

"For a starter, why don't we get out of our clothes?"

"Mr. Bartley!" she said playfully. "You've shocked me!" Her smile asked for more.

"That was nothing," I said. "Wait until I really get started."

She stood up and swayed in front of me. There was lots of girl there to explore. "This getting out of our clothes bit," she said. "Just how should we do that, do you suppose? I mean, who undresses who? Or is it whom?"

"You worry about grammar. I just want to get nude." I stood up and took her in my arms.

"Tiger!" she squealed, as I pinched her clothing at either side and began to pull it up.

"Why don't we do one another," I suggested, as I reached under her dress and slip.

"Oh, that's a peachy idea," she said, rubbing her chest back and forth against mc.

That was when I discovered that she wasn't wearing a brassiere. Her flippers really flipped, if you know what I mean. And there was more there than I'd thought. That loose-fitting dress of hers just didn't do justice to her busties' at all.

"I'll take off one thing," I said, "and you take off one." I had hold of her bare thighs at the back, just above the tops of her stockings.

"Great!" she exclaimed.

"I have first dibs," I told her, and brought my hands up onto the nylon-sheathed cheeks of her fanny.

Now, I'm a guy who happens to believe that fanny feeling is great sport at any time and under all conditions. The barer the girl is, however, the more exciting it becomes-at least, down to the final sheer article of clothing. Then it is problematical whether the fanny is more exciting with that single article on it, or with nothing on it at all.

Eleanor's fanny felt good with just a pair of sleek silken panties between the rounded, firm, springy flesh and my fingers. The nylon slid against her loaf-like buttocks as I rubbed my hands back and forth and around. Then I grabbed hold tight, one hemisphere firmly settling in each palm, and I shook them up and down.

"Oh, God!" Ellie said, her own hands fluttering down my front.

I reached up to catch the elastic at the top of her pants and pulled it downward, just as her hands completed their southern journey. We busily became acquainted with one another.

Her pants were the first garment that came off.

I worked them down to her knees, and gravity took them the rest of the route. She kicked the pale peach-colored undies away.

When you have a girl pantsless and braless (which Ellie was to begin with,) the battle's over. Not that it had been any battle with Ellie, at all, of course. I think she would have skinned out of everything if I'd just whistled.

"It's my turn," she said, but she continued to maintain a frying-pan hold on me.

So I backed away, breaking the hold.

"Oh," she pouted.

"Patience," I said, and held my arms out a ways from my sides.

She slipped off my coat.

"My turn, again," I told her.

I removed her belt and then lifted her dress over her head.

Ellie's nipples were a delicate light brown, and they sat pertly atop her gently-curved, pale-white breasts. As she took off my tie, I busied myself with the pinching of those light-brown tips, hardening them nicely.

I lowered her half slip, then straightened up.

"This isn't fair," she complained as she stepped up against me and went to work on the buttons of my shirt. "You had so much more on than I did." By that time, I wasn't very anxious to keep up the patter. The sight I'd had when Id removed Ellie's slip had been too enticing. I said, as I held her bare buttocks in my hands and rolled them back and forth, "Why don't you let me throw off the rest of my things?"

"All right," she agreed, pulling my shirt out and getting the final button. "But I want to do this right now." Suddenly she wasn't standing in front of me any longer.

As I got out of my shirt, she had opened up a second front, so to speak, and was engaged in an effort of liberation. The effort was quickly successful.

As she enjoyed herself-and brought a great deal of warm, throbbing pleasure to me, at the same time I satisfied a curiosity I'd had: I found out what her bair looked like when it was really mussed. As I did the mussing, I had a good view of it, from the top.

When the time was right, I eased her over onto the rug, shucked down the rest of my clothes, and covered her sleek golden body with my own. She still had her stockings and garter belt on, but they didn't bother me in the least. In fact, I kind of like to ball a chick that way. Especially when the chick is as long-limbed and tender as Eleanor Tilson.

I stroked and kneaded her pliable breasts, then began to kiss the firm little buds. They puckered nicely against my lips and tongue.

"Here, Jack," Ellie murmured, her hands describing circular patterns on the inner slopes of her voluptuous, parted thighs.

But I passed up the opportunity. I'm a little particular about some things. I mean, Ellie was okay and all that, but she'd been too easy. Since she'd been that way with me, I knew good and well she was the same with others. Hell, she might even have been breached by some other stud that very morning.

"Damn you," she complained, as I continued to center my oral attentions on her breasts and didn't respond to the invitation she'd offered.

But she got over her pique quickly.

I drove it out of her, quite literally, in just a few moments. Then we were both happily in motion. She was very lean and lithe, her body as limber as a fine young willow tree.

I pumped up and down as she gasped over and over again and tossed her tousled head against the carpet. Once I ran my hands into those ash blonde waves and mussed them some more, then grabbed a tight hold on her head, plastering my mouth to hers and plunging my tongue into her in the very same rhythm I was applying elsewhere.

This helped speed things up for both of us. Pretty soon she was emitting a frantic, high-pitched mewing, and then her body began to tighten.

I hammered her mercilessly, and she cried out as she finally fell backward over the cliff of sweet release. I followed her down, both of us landing in a haystack made of cotton.

We continued to lie side by side for awhile., petting, and it was then that I brought up the matter I had wanted to discuss with her:

I said, "There's sure as hell nothing that's as much fun as sex."

"Sure as hell," she echoed in a breathless murmur, between breathless kisses of my cheek.

"I think everybody should have that fun, wherever they can find it, don't you?"

"Mmm ... I'm all for it," she agreed.

"Even if it's on a ... uh, professional basis?"

She stopped petting me and kissing me and looked me in the face. "What do you mean?"

Then I told her about Zimrner's scheme, the part she would have to play in it, and the extra hundred a month I was prepared to give her for her trouble.

"I'll do it for you, Jack," she said, gently.

I wasn't sure whether it was for me as much as for the hundred, but either way the result was going to be the same.

"You're a good girl," I said, running a hand down her body and fluffing her hair gently with my fingertips.

"If you really think so," she replied, pulling at me, "you'll prove it again."

"But, honey, I have to have a breather," I protested. "Anyway, like I said, we only have an hour and ... "

"Don't worry about that," she said, stifling my half-voiced argument. Then, quick as a bunny, she changed positions.

In no time at all, she had accomplished a remarkable feat of reconstruction, after which the two of us set about to tear the re-built monument down again.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS five minutes of eight when I arrived AT Diana's apartment, and Zimmer was already there. It was at this meeting, incidentally, that I learned his first name. It was Hugo.

He had dressed up for the occasion, in a medium-dark suit and tie, but his clothes still managed to look nondescript and somewhat too lived-in. He was a drab individual, and yet you had the impression that beneath the drabness there was an active mind-a mind perhaps too active in ways most people would find obscure.

We signed the partnership agreement and Zimmer handed over his check. Then, at Diana's invitation, we toasted our new relationship with snifters of brandy.

I had been observing her attitude toward the man. and it was plain to see that she didn't like him. She was the sort who made her feelings plain. An honest person. I decided. A good person. I felt a slight twinge over the way I had cheated on her that evening.

While it was true that we hadn't exchanged love pledges, I knew Diana took it for granted that I was hers and she was mine. That was, I believed, the only way she would have had it. She wasn't loose sexually.

I, on the other hand, had never remained tied down to one woman for long. I preferred to be free all the time. It seemed to me that there were too many flowers blooming in the fields for a guy to pick one, put a vase around it, and spend the rest of his life admiring it alone.

I was afraid, right from the beginning, that the difference in our attitudes would spell trouble. But I was determined to take the chance. After all, I was a gambler and there was too big a potential prize at stake for me to pass it up.

I wasn't thinking only about the business we were going to derive through Zimmer. I had ideas of my own to try which, I felt, would prove to be even more profitable in the long run.

In watching Zimmer and Diana together, I was struck by something which was equally as clear as Diana's dislike for the man, and that was his attraction to her. He kept eyeing her in that special way of his, his gaze shifting every once in a while from her face down to her gigantic breasts.

As I sipped my brandy, I told myself that we were a threesome who were headed for trouble, just as surely as God had put a serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Later, after Zimmer had bid us good night, Diana said, "I can't get over the feeling that we've made a mistake, Jack. He isn't our kind. I know it."

"We'll make a good boy out of him," I said. "Re member, it's going to be our two votes to his one."

"But we've given him an okay on the prostitution thing."

"That's not in the partnership contract," I pointed out.

"I know that," she said, "but it was certainly understood. If we tried to go back on it now...."

"I don't say we should go back on it," I told her, "but we do have a right to reconsider our decision if things don't work out as cleanly as Zimmer said they would."

"He'd be fit to be tied," she said. "And I'll bet he's a vicious man to cross."

"You think so?"

"He's hard, Jack. I wouldn't be surprised if his heart was a chunk of concrete."

I laughed. "Don't dramatize."

She took out a cigarette and I lit it for her.

After she had expelled a plume of smoke, she asked me, "Do you have any idea how he's going to get the girls to run this operation of his?"

I shook my head. "He didn't tell me. He just said not to worry, that he had a way."

"He looks like a white slaver to me," she remarked.

"White slavery went out with nickel beers and high-button shoes," I told her. "Nowadays girls do it because they want to, or so I've heard."

"Just the same, I think the man's capable of anything." She seemed almost to shudder.

"You really hate him, don't you?"

"Yes. And it's strange, too, because he's never laid a hand on me and never uttered an improper word.

But he has a certain look about him."

"I know what you mean," I said.

Diana suddenly brightened, which warned me she was about to change the subject. "Well, how did your dinner meeting go tonight?"

"All right," I said. "I told the guy I'd lined up something far better than the deal he'd offered me. So that was it."

"You had to go to dinner with him to tell him that?" Diana pressed.

"I didn't want to be abrupt about it. He's done me some favors in the past."

"I see."

She got up from her chair and walked over to me, plumping down on my lap. "Well, we're together now, anyway. And we have the whole night ahead of us. So, let's start making up for lost time, hmm?"

Diana wasn't wearing a girdle that evening. I could tell by the soft way in which her more-than-ample buttocks molded themselves to the straight contours of my thighs.

I'd spent the last two nights in Diana's apartment-and, for the most part, with Diana, also-and it was now clear that she expected this night to be a repeat performance. It was almost as if we were a pair of newlyweds.

But her desire this evening posed a very definite problem. For me, that is. I had already gone the passion route twice that night, and at the moment, I was in no condition for another trip.

Could I just up and tell her, "Sorry, love, but I'm too bushed to bounce you on the mattress," and expect her to smile sweetly and understand? I was afraid not.

The fact that I'd been away from her for several hours had already given her some cause for concern, I knew. I certainly didn't want to add any fuel to the fire of her doubt.

So, what to do?

Well, it was just a matter of ingenuity. I would be good for one bout with her, I figured. But not quite yet. And when we had that one, I wanted her to be satisfied with it and to fall asleep.

I began in a more or less conventional way: I opened the top of her dress, slipped it off her shoulders and down her arms, then unfastened and removed her brassiere.

The fruit of her chest hung there in front of my face. It was round and ripe and heavy. Even as thoroughly satisfied as I had been that evening, it did something to me. But nothing externally discernible, as yet.

I lifted one lush plump globe in each hand and examined the wide aureoles which capped their front surfaces. They were aureoles to reckon with-almost the size of silver dollars, rusty-red and crinkled. I began to stroke them with my thumbs.

"Oh, Jack-eeee...." Diana murmured, closing her eyes and soaking in the feeling.

I avoided touching her nipples, but concentrated my caressing on the wide rings around them. I slowly circled each nub, rubbing first with my thumb and then with the tip of my forefinger. The nipples began to respond, even though I hadn't touched them directly. As I watched, they slowly came to life, growing and fattening.

I gripped her breasts in my hands, or as much of them as I could hold, and waggled them. The swelling nipples bobbed.

"Kiss them," Diana said. "They ache to have you kiss them."

"Mmm," I said and moved my face nearer. But, instead of kissing, I rubbed the hardening lips with my nose.

"Jack, don't tease me!" Diana said petulantly. "Go on now," I responded. "You like being teased."

"Well ... maybe a little. But please kiss my nipples now."

It was a sweet invitation-no doubt about it but I didn't want to proceed too fast. A long night lay ahead of us, and I had to get through it on a minimum of exertion. So I continued merely to nuzzle her boobs with my face and to put off the pleasure of taking her nipples directly to my mouth.

Finally Diana became very anxious and she grasped a big full-to-bursting breast in each hand. At the same time, she moved her shoulders this way and that, trying to place the nozzle of first one booby and then the other right where she wanted it to be. I evaded her maneuvers skillfully and enjoyed, at the same time, the way her breasts responded when she lifted them and squeezed them and pressed them this way and that. They were beautiful, big, yielding balls of flesh, tipped aggressively in scarlet. The nipples were now straining outward-as big and fat and tall as they could get. The lighter colored redness around them had puckered up and, all in all, they presented a twin display of titillation that was extremely hard to ignore.

I wasn't ignoring it. I was enjoying the sight very much. But I was restraining myself, as far as any immediate action was concerned. As I said before, there was a long night ahead.

"What's the matter, darling?" Diana finally murmured, still holding her breasts out and upward but having given up the attempt to move one of them into my mouth. "Don't they look good to you tonight?"

"They look terrific!" I husked.

"Then take one."

I reached for one breast with both of my hands and Diana transferred it from her fingers to mine. I moved my face closer and lifted it toward my lips.

She was breathing hard. "Well?"

"It's so good," I said, "I want to postpone the moment as long as possible-just enjoy the anticipation of it."

"Are my breasts really that good?" she asked. "You don't think they're too fat?"

"They're not fat at all," I lied. "They're nicely full and rounded." Well, that last was true enough.

"Do men like them so big-I mean, really?"

"Men like them big," I told her.

"And the nipples? Are they too big?"

"They're just right."

"Then prove it, Jack. Take that one. Take it, please." And with that she shoved it at me.

I could have pulled my head back, of course. But, what the hell, I'm not made of stone. Speaking of that, one part of me was already giving evidence that it might actually be made of something just about that solid. Still, however, I wanted to take my time. One round was all we were going to have, and I wanted to make it a climactic one. I had learned from experience that Diana's sexual appetite was not too easily satisfied.

But I did open my mouth and I took the nipple she was shoving at me. I held it gently but firmly, my lips against the fullness of the boob and my teeth upon her aureole. The flat of my tongue pressed upward against the firmly extended nipple-tip and every once in a while moved up and down across it, flicking it a few times before I let it settle on top of my tongue again.

Diana shuddered and said, "Oohhhhh...."

She was like most women with big breasts. She responded mightily when they were sucked. I was responding mightily, also, and I knew that she was aware of it, sitting on my lap as she was.

I released booby number one and turned my attention to booby number two. It came in for the very same treatment I'd given its twin.

Diana had been holding me first around the back and then at the back of the head, in order to press my mouth more firmly against her, but finally she moved her hands downward and to me. I throbbed.

This would never do, I decided. She was bringing me along too quickly. So I pulled my mouth from her breast. As it bobbled, glistening in freedom, I took a firm grip around Diana's back and underthighs and I stood up.

With me holding her that way, and her holding me the way she was, we headed for the bedroom. There, in the dim light, I dropped her in the middle of the bed.

Now, that's quite a sight in itself-a big, plump, king-sized brunette with meaty thighs and huge knockers, bouncing happily on an innerspring mattress. The sight is especially good when the huge knockers are as bare as they can be and when the meaty thighs have little more on them than a pair of stockings, since her skirt had pulled delightfully high. I decided to get undressed.

As soon as I had accomplished that, I stepped to the bed where Diana lay smoldering. I stripped her of her dress immediately, and then did the same with her half slip.

She wore panties that were brief and silken pink. I grasped them around the top and pulled them down-out from under her large buttocks, which she had raised slightly to help me, and down her firm, fullfleshed thighs. The panties turned inside out as I drew them to her knees. I continued, pulling them down her calves, past her ankles and over her feet, knocking her black pumps off at the same time.

I bent over her and unfastened each of her garters, while all of her wonderful enticing loveliness twisted and squirmed right beneath my lips and eyes. Then I slowly drew her stockings down. One. Two. I tossed them away.

As I was doing that, Diana had been wriggling out of her garter belt, so that now both she and I were as naked as sin.

I went to her.

I was primed for action by that time, of course. I could have driven into the final act of the drama without any difficulty whatsoever. But I still wanted to take my time and save the best for last.

So I positioned myself beside Diana on my knees-my knees beside her knees, more or less-and I bent forward to plant my mouth in the approximate vicinity of her navel. It was soft there. Man, was it soft! I let my tongue move against her.

As I did that, I moved against her in another way a little farther to the south.

"Oh!" she cried out as my fingers pressed against her.

I stroked and fondled here, moving deliberately and deftly-exciting her greatly, I knew. Her hips were rolling and thrusting upward, performing an imitation of the ultimate act itself. In a way, I was performing an imitation of the ultimate act, too. It's a matter of placement and of friction. In these latter respects, I was loving Diana as utterly and as excitingly as if I had been fully with her.

And she was responding in the same way.

She hadn't even bothered to reach for me as I made digital love to her. She was being too thoroughly thrilled to do anything except to move her hips and squirm and moan and twist her legs this way and that.

I kept going.

And suddenly I knew that she was at the apex. She cried out, thrusting rigidly upward and then going humidly soft. And just as this happened, I dropped my face to capture and lift into my mouth one of the glorious, high, sprouting buds of her bosom.

"Oh, God, oh God, oh God...." she said, the final tone dying slowly away.

"You liked it?" I whispered, my lips now nibbling at her ear.

"It was wonderful," she replied, rubbing her hands up and down my back.

Well, I thought, that took care of act one.

The only trouble, of course, was that my own lust was still at the ready. But it would just have to wait its turn, I decided, and I rolled onto my back.

Diana remained quiet for a long while. Then, softly, I felt her fingers find me. By then my passion had subsided.

"You, too?" she asked.

I said, "Don't be silly."

She lifted herself on an elbow and looked at me. "Then why didn't...."

"I thought you'd enjoy it that way." I grinned. "You did, didn't you?"

"You're a wonderful lover," she murmured and pressed her face to mine. Her mouth was very sweet and very moist, and warm and soft and open.

I extricated myself from her embrace as soon as possible and got up. "We need some more brandy," I said. And, with that, I plodded nakedly into the living room.

I brought back the bottle and a pair of snifters. I poured.

We sat on the bed, still naked, and we sipped and talked.

Strangely enough, we got to talking business. I out-lined to her, more fully than I had before, some of the plans I had in mind. She expressed no opposition to any of them. It was clear that I was going to have things pretty much my own way as far as development of the sight-seeing company was concerned.

Diana had obviously been in need of someone just like me. Her need had been two-fold and equally intense in each direction.

Several drinks later, business began to lose its hold on our interest. Money business, that is. What might whimsically have been called monkey business came to the fore again.

Act two was about to start.

I began it by kissing Diana's ankles. Now, you may think that ankles are among the least attractive portions of a woman's anatomy to kiss, and perhaps you're right. But don't forget that the ankles are attached to the calves which, in turn, are attached to the knees, and that the knees adjoin the thighs.

A woman's thighs are definitely not among the least attractive kissing regions. This was particularly true of Diana's thighs, for they were long and full and delectably soft and smooth.

Also, a woman's thighs are among the most sensitive portions of her body.

I took my time reaching them.

First I covered her ankles and calves most thoroughly. I kissed along the smooth straight tops of her calves and then lifted her legs in turn and moved my teasing lips along their gently curving undersides. I pressed my mouth against the hollows at the backs of her knees.

Diana was flexing her legs by this time and exhorting me to a more positive demonstration of passion. She began to use the naughty words she always reverted to when she was very excited. I answered her in kind.

As this exchange went on, I gently parted her legs and crawled between them.

The trouble with lots of guys when they get to this point in the proceedings is that the view blinds them with lust and they become overanxious, thereby losing out on some of the delights to be experienced if a man will only take his time.

I took mine because I had plenty of it that night.

I kissed up and down Diana's thighs with a thoroughness which she may very well have never experienced before. She kept talking to me all the while, indulging in flights of fancy concerning what was going to happen next and describing the anticipated activities in blunt but very colorful terms. It was pretty much of a monologue, however, because at that point my mouth was well occupied.

Diana seemed most appreciative and vocally responsive when I captured little bits of her thigh-flesh between my lips and teeth and nibbled it ... and also when I trailed my tongue-tip up and down.

Eventually her hands found their way into my hair and around the back of my head, and she began pulling at me. I went along.

Diana was a different sort of person than Eleanor Tilson, and for that reason I didn't hesitate to do what Diana most desperately wanted me to do at that moment. I kissed her deeply and lingeringly and with animated passion. It was good. In fact, at that moment I most thoroughly enjoyed it. If that makes me an oddball in your eyes, then so be it. I know what I like and right then I liked what I was doing very much.

That Diana liked it even more than did I had no doubt. She was wriggling and twisting and thrusting herself at me in wild abandon, talking and gasping and pulling at my hair. , I took a long time with it, seeking to bring her almost to a state of culmination, but not quite.

When I sensed that the crucial time had arrived I took the final position and forged my way fully into the wondrous soft warmth I'd been denying myself for so long. Diana welcomed me with a moaning sigh of pleasure and she wrapped me immediately in her enfolding limbs.

A few long sliding jolts was all it took to force her over the top. But I was just beginning.

So, to act three:

I moved in a slow deliberate rhythm-long, highly placed, looping forward and back. At first, she seemed to be immune, totally unresponsive, lingering at the portal of sleep.

But, gradually, she came to life.

A few minutes later she was fully with me, moving her hips as she had done before, furrowing my back with the pointed tips of her nails. I kept driving at her-still in long, slow, steady strokes. But I could sense fulfillment beckoning from a far horizon.

I began pounding harder and shorter. Diana responded perfectly, coming along.

We were in the heat of it in a very few minutes for the topmost passion prize.

When we reached it, it was as if we were in the teeth of a tropical gale, with the most awesome force of nature beating at us from all sides-lifting us, hurling us, sending us soaring.

We settled in the eye of the hurricane and fell downward to slip beneath the surface of a soft, still sea.

I rose from Diana's motionless form and walked into the living room, where I set the lock on the door and turned out the lights. Then I retraced my steps to the bedroom, feeling my way carefully from one article of furniture to the next. I found the bottle of brandy where I had left it beside the bed and tilted it to my mouth. All that remained in the bottle was a single, long, satisfying drink.

When I'd emptied the bottle, I dropped it on the rug. Then I stretched out on the bed beside the woman whom I had carried through three phases of the most intense physical passion. She didn't stir. I listened carefully and detected the soft, even sounds of her deep breathing. She was, quite understandably, fast asleep.

In another couple of minutes I found sleep, also, and neither of us had our dreams disturbed that night.

CHAPTER SIX

WITHIN A FEW WEEKS, THE EXPANSION PROGRAM OF Sunnical Tours was well underway.

We'd bought another bus-medium-sized and several years old-plus a pair of sedan-busses needed for Zimmer's operation. I had a couple of new tours running-one a nightly visit to several Hollywood night clubs; and the other, a day-long jaunt to Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm. The latter attractions are located fairly close to one another in Orange County, thirty miles from downtown L.A.

I escorted the night club tour, and Ted Price drove for me. On the other one, I did both the driving and spieling, since our two regular drivers were busy during the daytime. The movie star and studio routes, though fading, still had enough appeal to produce a profit.

In the meantime, Zimmer had acquired his outof-town properties-two large, older houses secluded in the foothills northwest of the city-and he was in the process of remodeling and furnishing them for business. As to the stocking of the houses, he'd given me no inkling of where the girls were going to come frOm and I hadn't inquired. I figured that the less I knew about that end of things, the better off I would be.

Anyway, I had my hands full with the two daily tours I was running.

The one to the night spots sold for fourteen bucks a head and included a complete show and a drink at each of four clubs, with transportation, tips and tax thrown in.

How did we do it? By making a social deal with the management of the clubs, of course. They got anywhere from twenty-five to forty people at a crack, many of whom bought extra drinks, paid for pictures, or perhaps returned another day on their own if they liked the place. In return, the clubs gave Sunnical a substantial discount on cover charges and drinks. I signed the check at each place and the drinks were dispensed to our patrons for tickets which we gave them when the tour began.

The trip to Orange County worked much the same way, except that there's no liquor sold at Disneyland or Knott's. The patrons got their admission to Disneyland (Knott's has no entrance fee), several selected rides and attractions at each place, and one of Mrs. Knott's famous chicken dinners, all for a flat eight dollars for adults, and five-fifty for kids.

We put out a brochure for distribution through travel agencies, hotels and motels, and pushed the new tours in newspaper ads. The immediate response was better than I'd expected, and it built steadily.

The night club tour was especially popular right from the start, the reason being that it was a little wilder than comparable offerings by our competion. It included a Hollywood strip-joint as well as a top-flight Sunset Boulevard supper club. The other two stops included a modern-jazz hangout and a place on La Brea that typified the speakeasy era.

Some old contacts I had around town had been helpful in setting up the arrangements, and I drew on my experience as a salesman and carny barker to put the tour across. Also, I got some tips from Ted Price and Hank Shelby-two old hands at the game. The patrons usually had fun, we made money, and the clubs got some promotional benefits. It's a good deal that pleases everybody, and ours seemed to be doing just that.

Maybe you're wondering what sort of patrons we got for the night club tour. Well, they were mostly out-of-towners, but we drew a few locals, as well-married couples who'd never ventured out on the night rounds before and preferred to go with a tour rather than to plunge in on their own ... and, of course, unescorted women.

Tours of this sort are a boon to gals who are traveling alone or with another girl, and also to those who live in town but haven't been able to latch onto a man who will take them to some of the places they want to visit.

If you'd like to get an idea of how the tour was run, why don't you tag along with me some night?

Let's see ... there was that time when I got mixed up with the two broads from Keokuk. Yeah, that would be a good one to tell you about.

It was a Saturday, as I recall, and we had a pretty good-sized crowd with us. A few had gotten on at the office, as usual, but most had boarded at the two hotel stops in downtown L. A. and the one we made in Hollywood.

After the group was all together, I started my spiel, using a microphone that was hooked up with several speakers built into the roof of the bus.

Standing in front, facing the patrons, I introduced myself (to them I was the "tour escort"), then delivered a few stock lines about the driver. That's always a good way to start. I usually either ask the patrons to bear with him because this is his first night and he doesn't know the town very well, or else I ask them to give him a round of applause because it's an important occasion in his life; then, when the clapping has ended, I announce that he's gone all day without an accident. I may also use the old one about his mother having wanted to be a minister, but now being happy because as a bus driver he's caused more people to pray than he would have done in church.

Hokey, all of them. But they seem to go over well. And they serve to break the ice.

After the bus starts to roll, I usually sit on the top step beside the driver, face front, and point out places of interest that we pass, carrying on a running line of patter into the microphone.

Also, I try to prepare the patrons for the festivities to come. We get some pretty strait-laced ones sometimes, and they require a little softening up.

The particular night I'm talking about, for in stance, there was this pair of biddies from Kansas. (I find out where the patrons live by asking for a show of hands while I rattle off the names of a few states the big ones like New York, Illinois and Texas-after which I ask the other people to call out their states' names.)

I don't remember where the rest of that night's crowd was from, but it's a safe bet that there were Texans and Illini, and some from elsewhere in the Midwest, perhaps one or two from up north-Oregon or Washington-a couple of Japanese men who'd just arrived in the country, a pair from Europe, and maybe a lady from New York traveling alone ... oh, yes, and let's not forget the broads from Keokuk.

Of course, I didn't know they were from Keokuk until later. At the start, I only knew they were from Iowa. But we became pretty well acquainted before the night was out-about as well acquainted as a guy and two girls can get.

I think it was on that night that we had the elderly couple from Utah-the husband kept falling asleep during the evening and his wife had to keep rousing him-and a giggling spinster from Ohio who got high on her second drink and furnished a bit of extra merriment for the others.

It was a typical crowd, except for the Keokuk broads. They were most definitely special.

Our first stop, as usual, was the place on La Brea. Now, this is an interesting joint. It's called The Ragtimer and it features atmosphere straight out of the 1920's, with a five-piece jazz band, a guy in a derby hat, striped shirt and red sleeve-garters who plays rinky-tink piano, and a half-dozen broads in black mesh hose, spangles and feathers who dance on the bar and double as cocktail waitresses between shows. The place is usually crowded and noisy and the drinks aren't the best, but its rowdiness and color get the tour crowd in the mood for fun.

We always catch the first show there, which goes on at around nine o'clock. It doesn't amount to much, really. The piano player leads some community singing, then the band marches in, blasting their heads off, after which the girls mount the bar and do some Charleston and twist numbers. The girls are pretty good-looking and their costumes are cut low enough to let you see their boobies quiver. So, what more do you want with your bourbon?

I usually stand in back and shoot the bull with the manager or a hatcheck girl while I keep an eye on my charges, most of whom are grouped around some large tables, with a few couples paired off at smaller ones. Sometimes I have a drink, if business is good that night and the manager feels like springing.

On this occasion, however, I had my eye on those chicks from Keokuk. I'd given them a pretty good look when they got on the bus, and had been shooting glances their way as we drove along. They'd chosen to sit in the front row where my low vantage point had afforded me a damned good view of their legs.

They were appetizing babes, both of them. One had auburn hair in an up-do, dangling earrings, and a look that was cool but led me to conclude she was out for no good. She was tall and on the slim side. Svelte was the word.

Her friend was champagne blonde, hair short and wavy, and she had a pair of gray-green eyes that really sparkled. Everything seemed to amuse her. Figure-wise she was a knock-out, with a set of attributes that would have challenged a Mount Everest climber ... or most any other male, for that matter.

They each wore stylishly short skirts, and those two pairs of crossed legs were sight to see at close range. The blonde showed a patch of white thigh above the top of one stocking, but the taller one wore longer hose, and I could see only as far as their dark tops.

At The Ragtimer I watched them sitting at a front table, chatting and giggling together, and I began to get one hell of a yen to try to split up their duo. I never succeeded in doing that ... but the way things turned out was even better.

It was at our second stop-the strip-joint on Vine Street-where I made my move. They'd gotten a table close to the action, as they always seemed to do, and I sauntered up and slipped a chair between them.

I gave them a grin. "You ladies don't mind company, I hope?"

They each looked me over and, as I glanced from one to the other, it was hard to decide which pretty set of features had the biggest welcome written on it.

The auburn-haired one said, "Not at all. Things are always more fun with a man around. By the way, I'm Beryl Ross and this is Gladys Covel. We're from Keokuk."

That was when I found out.

It seemed to me that a name like Keokuk required a little discussion. After we had kicked around its Indian derivation for a while, I found out that it was a medium-sized town located on the Mississippi River at the point where Iowa, Missouri and Illinois meet. I also learned-and this was of greater interest-that Gladys was a librarian and Beryl a kindergarten teacher. They had pooled their resources for a whang-bang California vacation which had so far turned out to be something of a dud.

As we sipped our drinks-with me being a big man and buying the first round so that the girls could save their tickets for later-Beryl remarked, "What's the matter with the men around Los Angeles, anyway? We haven't had a date since we got here. As a matter-of-fact, we haven't even been approached."

"I can't account for that," I said, swiveling my head to take in both of them. "From where I sit, you're a pair of charmers."

"Thank you, kind sir," Beryl chirped. Then she added, to her friend, "He's nice, isn't he, Gladys?"

Gladys was smiling at me. "But he's working, Beryl. He has to be nice to us."

I was just about to assure her that being "nice" was entirely a matter of my own choice, when a brassy fanfare from the instrumental group announced the opening of the show. A bald-headed guy in a dinner jacket hopped the stand and grasped a microphone.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," he said through a toothy grin, "and welcome to the hottest show in Hollywood. Tonight you're gonna see six of the most charming little lasses on the Pacific Coast as they strip down for your most special enjoyment. These girls are the cream of the crop, as you will soon discover, and I hope you'll give each of them the reception she deserves.

"Now, our first dancer of the evening is about to entertain you. Come on and give a warm welcome to pert and pretty little Balla Fire."

The dancers at the joint didn't interest me. I'd seen them all many times before. Burlesque routines had never really appealed to me, anyway. They were too artificial to be very exciting, in my view, though there seemed to be a constant audience for them.

Strip clubs were making it big in L. A. right then. The burlesque theaters on Main Street were still operating, also, though these had long since lost most of their luster. I wasn't old enough to remember it myself, but I'd heard about the old Follies and the Burbank in their heyday-how they'd given a start to some of the top performers in the business and how their shows used to play to packed houses every night. In recent years, night clubs like the one we were attending had stolen most of the thunder.

The girl who called herself Balla Fire was competent. Small, dark and balloon-breasted, she bumped across the stand and along the runway in front of us. She shed her break-away gown quickly and then her bra and the shafts of diaphanous fabric which hung below her middle, until she was left in the legal minimum-pasties and net pants. It was at that point that she began to bear down.

Behind me I heard one of the biddies from Kansas say, "Isn't it disgraceful!" At about the same time, an older man chuckled appreciatively. "Well, it just goes to show you-one man's meat ... and all that."

I glanced from Beryl to Gladys. The tall redhead was watching the dancer with casual interest and sucking on a cigarette, but Gladys wasn't looking at the show at all. She was watching me.

When our eyes met, she smiled. "Pretty good, isn't she?"

I grinned back. "She slings it around."

"Do I detect a note of disdain?" Gladys asked in true librarian fashion, as her gray-green eyes continued to sparkle.

"Not when I look at you," I said. "If you do, you're just not reading me right."

"Well!" Her eyes widened slightly and her smile held on. "Maybe you arc being nicer than you have to be."

We watched the rest of Balla's act, then the flame-tressed girl who followed her, and the third one, who was a statuesque blonde. By that time the Keokuk girls had spent their drink tickets, since those particular coupons wouldn't be good at the next place, and I had bought another drink for myself.

When the blonde ducked behind the curtains, Beryl said to me, "I can't see why men like strip shows so much. They seem so pointless, really. I mean, a man gets all worked up, and there's nothing to be done about it."

"It's the best some guys can do on a cold night," I replied.

"I'll bet you don't have that problem," she said, her brown eyes hopping from the top of my head to my face. "Anyway, it isn't cold tonight, is it?"

"You know, I was just thinking that same thing myself," I told her, then glanced back at Gladys who was still watching me, all aglow.

I'd made up my mind by then that I'd found myself a coupe of live ones. The only question was how to work it. I mean, one guy to two women was not exactly the approved ratio.

These dolls didn't show any sign of wanting to split up, however. They each just sat there and looked at me as if I was an ice cream sundae or something and they hadn't had a thing to eat all day.

There was always the chance, I knew, that they were just flirting. Perhaps the fact that they were two against my one had given them a sense of security which had made them go a little further than they otherwise would have. I recognized this as a possibility, but I didn't really believe it. They were far from home, on a fling in the big city, and I had learned long ago that normally respectable girls sometimes became quite 'daring in such circumstances.

Before the next stripper was introduced, Beryl flashed her friend a look, then said to me, "I think I'll powder my nose. Will you excuse me?"

Almost before I had assured her that I would, Gladys stood up also. "I'll join you," she said, and then she added to me, "Now don't go away."

"I wouldn't think of it," I stated, then watched them twist their cute fannies between tables on their way to the ladies' room.

This will resolve the problem, I thought, as I sipped my Scotch and water and gazed idly at the fourth performer on the stand-an older brunette who could do amazing things with her chest muscles. I presumed that when the girls came back I would find out which one I was going to get. I had visions of them flipping a coin right at that moment.

As far as I was concerned, I didn't much care which of the beauties I drew. The redhead had seemed a little more reserved, but I knew enough not to jump to conclusions. Some people wear a thicker mask than others; when they take the mask off, you're apt to find an entirely different individual underneath it.

I had a surprise when the girls returned. The redhead was still cool and composed and the blonde was still smiling. They took their places at either side of me and, for quite a while, neither of them said a thing. Perhaps nothing at all had been decided, I thought.

Then the auburn-haired one, Beryl, turned to me and asked, "Do you have to ride the bus all the way to your station, or can you get off at one of the hotels?"

"I'm through when we get out of the last night club," I said, wondering exactly what she was getting set to spring.

"Good." Beryl's eyes now assumed a twinkle which matched the blonde's. In fact, the way she looked at me was down-right predatory. She added, in a sultry tone, "We're staying at the Hemming." (That was the name of the hotel where we stopped in Hollywood.)

I looked from one of them to the other and asked, "Both of you?"

The question, on its face, was innocent enough. But they had grasped my real meaning. At least, Gladys had.

She spoke up: "Certainly, both of us. We do everything together."

Interested?" Beryl asked, her brown eyes glowing like coals in the reflected light from the stage where the fifth strip teaser was bumping away unnoticed.

"Hell, yes," I said with gusto.

Gladys placed a cool hand on my arm and whispered, "Do you think you're man enough?"

So, there it was, cousins-all spelled out in black and white. Evidently Beryl and Gladys had decided they were going to share me, and they didn't want to take any chances on my chickening out at the last minute. They wanted to have everything settled in advance.

Was I man enough?

I wasn't sure, to be honest with you. But I knew one thing: I was damn well going to find out!

For the sake of appearances, I let them go up to their hotel room first.

Then, when the bus was ready to take off, I grasped Ted Price by the arm. "You fly it in, boy. I'll see you tomorrow."

He gave me a wise look. "That quail that just got out, huh?"

"How'd you guess?" I grinned.

"But there are two of 'em."

"So what's wrong with a double-header once in a while?"

"Why don't you keep one of 'em warm for me?" he suggested. "It'll only take me thirty minutes to get this crate put away. Then I'll be over and join you."

"No dice," I told him. "They both want me."

"You got it all settled?" he asked.

"Practically."

Envy bloomed on his face. "You've got a rough night ahead, daddio."

I grinned again. "That's what I was figuring. Isn't it hell?"

I swung out of the bus and tossed him a wave. Usually I make a little good-bye speech to the folks, but that night I'd decided to forget it.

The bus' door closed and the big vehicle snorted, then moved on its way.

It was a little after two a.m. by that time, and the hotel lobby was quiet. I headed straight for an elevator and punched the number of the Keokukers' floor. Or was it Keokukians? I didn't know, and I was damned if I cared. I had lots better things to interest me.

When I landed on the eighth floor, I prowled the deeply carpeted corridor in search of 812. That was the number Beryl had given me. I found it. After pausing for just a second, I rapped.

The door moved inward as soon as I touched it. Not only had it been unlocked, it hadn't even been closed all the way.

The room was dark.

I called, "Anybody here?"

There was a soft giggle. Then Beryl's voice said, "We're all here, honey."

"But I can't see a thing," I protested.

"You'll get used to it," she said, "Just close the door."

I did, and it was as if I'd jumped into a bottle of India ink. I started to walk with my arms stretched out in front of me.

I banged my shin on a small table and cursed mildly.

Gladys giggled again. "I think he's having a hard time," she said to her friend.

"Before long he'll have a harder one," Beryl stated.

I began to wonder what kind of a tigress' den I'd fallen into. I wasn't thinking of backing out, you understand, but the short hairs on the back of my neck did prickle a little bit.

It was just excitement, I told myself. Hell, what did I have to be afraid of?

"Have you got the range yet?" Beryl asked, her voice rich and velvet-sounding in the dark.

"I'm not sure," I told her. "Maybe you should talk me in ... you know, like they used to do when they guided planes into the airports."

"What's the matter with your radar?" Gladys asked. "Don't tell me it isn't working."

"Don't worry about that," I said. "Everything I've got works fine."

She giggled.

I could still see practically nothing in the room. There was just no light coming in, at all. Even the drapes on the windows had been closed.

I kept inching my way in the direction from which the girls' voices had come.

When Beryl next spoke, her voice was very close: "Why don't you get undressed?"

It seemed like a good idea, so I agreed without argument. I took off every stitch, throwing my clothes on a chair I'd bumped into.

"Are you ready?" Beryl asked.

"I'm nude," I said, "Let's put it that way."

"Then walk toward my voice. I'm on your side of the bed. I'll put my hand out."

I began to walk. And suddenly I bumped right into her groping fingers.

"You aren't ready, are you?" she said.

"Well, what did you expect?" I shot back. "I'm not that fast-especially when I can't see anything to aim at."

"Give him a chance, Beryl," Gladys said. "I'm sure he'll do the best he can."

Beryl was holding onto me and gently drawing me toward her. I could make out the dim outline of the bed in front of me and two shapes atop it. I inched forward and my legs bumped the mattress. In the meantime, Beryl's grasp was setting up the normal reaction.

"That's all right," Beryl murmured. "Yes ... not bad at all!"

"What are you talking about?" Gladys asked.

"His reflexes. They're pretty sharp."

"Let me see," Gladys said, and the shape on the other side of the bed sat up.

"Take it easy," Beryl told her. "We'll each have our turn." Then, to me, she said, "Can you see to lie down between us?"

"I think so," I replied.

She released me and I climbed onto the bed.

There was warmth there, and a tantalizing blend of two perfumes. I felt softness at either side of me. Bare softness. I settled down and turned onto my back.

The girls cuddled me from either side, each of them clutching an arm. "Now, how's this?" Gladys murmured, and her fingers walked downward across my middle.

"Oh, Beryl!" she exclaimed. "He's terrific!" .

The prickling I'd felt on my neck before became stronger. It was strange, being with two broads like this and having them talk about me. But my body didn't seem to mind. At least, part of it didn't.

Gladys caressed me expertly. "Mmmm ... very nice."

The blonde sex-bomb was to my left and the long tall redhead at my other side. They were each turned toward me and grasping my arms so that I couldn't get at them.

I said, "Wait a minute, now. This is darned pleasant, but I don't exactly like to be pinned down."

Gladys laughed. "Don't worry. You'll get your chance to pin us down soon enough."

Now I felt Beryl's hand above the other girl's. "He's going to be good at it, too."

"You're telling me," Gladys murmured.

"Keep that up and you'll both be disappointed," I warned them.

"Oh?" Gladys' hand left me.

Beryl began to caress my inner thigh. Her fingertips were soft as the touch of a feather.

I pressed my palms against the bed and wriggled my shoulders, trying to free my arms from the women's grasp. But they each had their weight against me and I wasn't able to accomplish a thing.

I squirmed and wiggled some more, but still they held me fast.

"Look, you wildcats," I said, "give me a chance, will you? I'd like to find out what I'm getting, too, you know."

"You want to feel us, you mean?" Beryl asked.

"It might be nice," I told her.

"Yes, it might be, at that," she agreed. "Well, all right. But me first, okay? Gladdie, let go of his other arm." Beryl continued to clutch my right arm tightly.

Gladys leaned away from me and let my left arm go. I raised it above my body and brought it down gently at my other side. The palm of my hand came to rest on Beryl's soft smooth belly.

"How's that?" she asked.

"Very good, so far."

"It gets better," she assured me.

I slid my hand up.

"He's a breast man, honey," Beryl said. "That's what's been bothering him."

Gladys giggled. "Oh, goody!"

Beryl turned on her side and spoke right against my ear as I moved my hand to her bosom. "She thinks she's hot stuff because hers are bigger than mine. Do you think mine are too small, Jack?"

I felt them carefully.

There's something especially nice about feeling a pair of breasts when they're lying on their sides, the lower one against the bed and the other on top. They're so very soft and free like that. And very yielding, too.

Beryl had accused me of being a breast man. I'm not, really. At least, I had never thought of myself that way. I most certainly like breasts, but I like the other feminine accessories just as well.

Beryl's breasts were not too large but, lying as she was right now, they were immensely appealing. I stroked them-starting with the top one, at its base, and working out to the tip, which was already firm. Then I lifted the top breast on the back of my hand and worked my fingers onto her other one, which rested at the bottom. I moved my fingers back and forth between the two of them. Finally I extended my hand around both boobs and rubbed my thumb back and forth across the nipples.

They were hard little berries, those nibs. I wanted to be able to see them.

"Well?" Beryl asked. "You didn't answer my question."

"They're good," I told her. "You've got nothing to be jealous about."

"Wait until you feel mine," Gladys said at my back. "I measure forty-two, you know."

"I'll get to you," I promised. "Damn it, can't we have a light on?"

Beryl laughed deep in her throat. "So that's the kind of man you are-you have to have the light on when you do it to him?"

"I don't have to," I said. "But it's more fun. I like to see what I'm feeling."

"My chesties, you mean?" Beryl asked.

"Those and all the rest." I kept working on them. "By the way, where'd you get that word for them?"

"It sounds a little nicer than ... well, than other things."

"Beryl's inhibited," Gladys said. "You should have seen her face when I showed her the slang dictionary in our library. She got red as a radish."

"I'd like to see her face right now," I said. "As well as her chesties."

"What do you call them, Jack?" she asked.

"What?"

"Women's breasts."

"There are lots of names."

"But which one do you like best?"

"I like seeing better than talking." I said. "And feeling's better than that." I was feeling up a storm right then. "Now, kissing ... that's the best."

"But tell me what you like to call them," Beryl pressed.

"See what I mean?" Gladys said. "She's badly inhibited. She thinks four-letter words are just so naughty that they give her an awful bang."

"Is that right, baby?" I asked, still stroking her breasts.

"Yes. Tell me" Her voice had become husky and tense.

So I began to tell her about her breasts in the language she wanted to hear.

"Oh, yes ... oh, yes," she said. She wriggled against my side, her breasts moving in my cupped hand.

Gladys giggled. "See there? Oh, you've really turned her on, now!" By that time I was getting very anxious to do more than just talk and squeeze. I wriggled down lower on the bed until her reclining breasts were opposite my mouth. Then I lifted the top one and pressed its point between my lips.

"Oohh!" Beryl said.

"What is he doing now?" Gladys asked.

"Oh, he's ... he's kissing me."

"Mmmm...." Gladys responded, and I felt her hands stroking downward on my back until they went all the way to my buttocks.

I held Beryl's breast between my fingers, lifting and moving it around, while my lips and tongue made ardent love to her very firm nipple. She was panting hard and squirming against the bed.

Gladys kept petting me in back, but I hardly felt it at all. Beryl's breast was too tasty.

I let the top breast go and lifted up the other one. I circled its hard crest with my tongue.

"Oh, that drives me crazy!" Beryl exclaimed.

"How about this?" I asked, and then I took both of her nipples in my mouth at the same time.

When a woman's lying like that, you can do it. If your mouth happens to be reasonably wide, that it, and her breasts reasonably loose. Beryl's were. They were loose to the point of being floppy. But I wasn't complaining.

Gladys had scootched downward behind me and was now kissing the small of my back while her fingers moved up and down my thighs, squeezing them. Her ministrations were having their effect. Coupled with what I was doing to Beryl's bosom, they had fired me sufficiently for me to want to bring things to a conclusion.

I slipped my hand down Beryl's body and between her legs. She jumped as if she'd been prodded with a hot poker.

After a little while, I slipped my palm over the rise of her hip and brought it flat against her buttocks. They were small and tight. In fact, Beryl's bottom was about the neatest and firmest I'd ever felt. I pressed it toward me and then, in order to correct my position and line it up with hers, I suddenly twisted toward the head of the bed.

Gladys' lips had been at the small of my back all the while and, when I moved, they slid onto one of my buttocks. She nipped me. Then she giggled and moved up toward the head of the bed, also.

I brought my right hand into play, down between Beryl's body and my own. I guided myself. At the same time, I pulled her toward me with my left against her fanny. I twisted and pressed.

"Oh, Jack!" she said, as I made headway.

I took my hand from her bottom and grasped the back of her topmost thigh. I pulled her leg up over mine.

"Okay?" I asked.

"Okay!" she panted.

I went home.

Beryl moaned sharply.

I moved my hand to her bottom again, to provide a little extra push, and she snaked her long leg more tightly around me. As we began to move back and forth, I felt Gladys' nubile body plastered against my back-her breasts like big firm pillows, her belly soft against my rump-and she was moving with me.

I was like a slice of ham in a sandwich. Or a frankfurter in a bun.

Beryl began to pant harder and to grip me tighter with her free leg. By then I didn't need to push her behind with my hand at all, because she was bumping up against me for all she was worth.

I decided to heighten her excitement even more, so I said, "There's nothing better than loving, is there?" Only I didn't say loving.

"Oh, Jack!"

"Say it, if you'd like to," I told her. "Get it out of your system."

So she said it, repeating the single word over and over again-rhythmically explosively in time with our thrusting.

Gladys giggled and rubbed my back.

And then all hell broke loose-Beryl first, then me, and finally with both of us together, in a smashing crescendo of gratified lust.

Two of us who occupied the bed had been gratified, that is. The other member of the threesome hadn't ... as yet.

Beryl no longer held me. She lay completely relaxed, not moving or saying a thing. I turned from her, rolling all the way to my other side so as to face Gladys.

"I hate both of you," she said petulantly.

I took her in my arms and pulled her to me. "Your time has come, chick," I said.

Then, clasping both hands around her buttocks which were softer and larger than Beryl's-I slid my body downward and pressed my face between the softly relaxed mountains of her breasts.

There was enough there to suffocate a man, and I kissed and nuzzled it, turning my face this way and that, my parted lips savoring her warmly scented flesh.

"Take one," she said to me. "Ooooooo, take one now!" And, with that, she grasped her topmost breast in her hand and guided it to my waiting mouth.

I drew in the succulent flesh. And I ask you: what is there to do with succulent flesh but to suck it?

Those breasts were lush, tender beauties-round and firm-centered, but very soft and yielding. And the nipples that spiked their tops were veritable spires of passion. Towers of delight. Monuments to lust.

I laved her nipples with my lips and tongue, pulling at them, nibbling at them, lapping and nudging them in and out of my mouth. I went from one to the other, kissing and kissing. And all the while I was twisting her buttocks this way and that, causing her body to grind against me and rub across me. Her thighs were scissoring in their need. I could feel their heat and their big, smooth softness.

Gladys was so much woman that I began responding more quickly than I had thought possible. As soon as she felt my readiness, she twisted her large, luscious bosom away from me and swung nimbly astride my form.

Her breasts hung above my face and I played with them, patting them back and forth, lifting them, stroking them, squeezing them, then drawing first one big ripe nipple and the other deeply within my mouth. While I did this, Gladys had forced us into union and was riding me like the champion bronc-buster that she was.

She moved smoothly, swiveling and twisting. Her plump buttocks would first press my thighs, sending me deep to her snug warmth, and then she would lift from me and the warmth would nearly leave. But not quite. It would return to claim me again, settling fast, and then once more it would retreat. Down and up. Down and up.

I took my hands away from her bosom and ran them around her sides and down her back. I gripped her fleshy, firm buttocks. I pulled her and met her, thrust for thrust.

My ascent was slow, as the second time always is, but hers was rapid. She cried out, "Oh! Oh, I'm going to have it!"

And then she howled.

I mean she howled right out, like a tormented beast, and seemed to explode all around me. She quaked and quivered and worked against me in a way I'd never felt before. And then her body plopped down on mine.

"Unh-uh, baby," I said. "We're not through yet."

"What?" she murmured dreamily.

"Roll over," I ordered.

"Oh, Jack, I just want to sleep. I ... "

I threw her off, bumping her into Beryl and bringing a grunt from the sleeping redhead. Then, pulling Gladys over and at the same time working myself on top, I finally got us into balling position. Real balling position, I mean-with that busty, hippy blonde flat on her back and me poised between her thighs like a frog getting ready to jump.

I jumped, all right. But not like a frog.

I rammed myself to her like delivering a coup de grace. Gladys cried out but I paid no attention. I began to drive slowly and steadily, and I ran my hands beneath her body to grasp her luscious big buttocks and pull them up. Slam ... slam ... slam, I went at her.

The way I felt right then, I was set to go all night. At first Gladys protested in a succession of sharp little moaning cries, but gradually she began to breathe harder and her cries took on a hopeful, expectant tone. I kept going.

Her thighs flexed at my sides. Her buttocks began to move slightly of their own accord.

"Come on, baby," I said. "Let's really get with it, shall we?"

And, little by little, she did. In another few minutes we were riding the express to endsville, puffing and chugging and slamming as the locomotive hammered up and back. It was a long sweet ride. When we neared the station, her cry was like an old-fashioned steam whistle, shrill and keening. And then, my exploding breath was like the puff of escaping steam.

We were at rest.

"Oh, God," Gladys said.

"Now, you answer the question," I murmured at her ear.

"What was that, tiger?" she breathed.

"The one you asked a long time ago-about whether I was man enough."

"Oh, glory!" she said. "That question answered itself."

I rolled from her and we were quiet for a while. Then she said, "You know, Los Angeles turned out to be pretty good, after all."

"Thank Sunnical," I replied.

She giggled contentedly.

It's nice to have satisfied customers.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The fact that I didn't spend all night with the girls from Keokuk was a commentary on the sad condition of my personal life at that time. I was bound hand and foot to Diana.

She had insisted that we live together and, in order to accomplish this without interference, she had picked out a new apartment and we had moved into it as man and wife. At the same time, and for the same reason, she gave up most of the social life she had known. I became everything to her, and I knew it would be only a matter of time until she would expect us to get married, even though the subject had never been discussed. I assumed she wanted to take her time about bringing it up because of the difference in our ages, but I had no doubt she would have accepted my proposal in a minute if I'd made one.

I began to feel trapped. And that's a nasty feeling for a guy like me to have. It's apt to lead to acts of desperation.

Diana was very possessive. I had to be with her every night, and to account for my activities during the day and evening. I could have put my foot down, of course, and declared my independence as far as our personal lives were concerned. The partnership agreement protected me in the business. But, still, I knew it would be difficult to go on if Diana and I were not on friendly terms.

The business continued to develop favorably, and that included Hugo Zimmer's part of it, as well. He put his brothels into operation and Sunnical set up its transport service to and from them. Zimmer showed no sign of wanting to meddle in any other aspect of our operations, and so we left his end of the deal strictly alone.

That is, we did until I met a girl by the name of Leona Temple.

She showed up one day at the office, having ridden in from the country on our sedan-bus. The driver-one of the new boys we'd hired to handle the Zimmer runs-had spotted her walking along the country road between the house and the main highway, and he'd stopped to give her a lift. The guy never should have done it, of course, but, as things turned out, I was glad that he had.

She looked for all the world like a waif, as she stood in our front doorway wearing a cheap, ill-fitting blouse and skirt, no make-up, and her yellow hair hanging straight as silken string at either side of her childish face.

It was no wonder our driver had failed to realize, when he'd picked her up, that she was one of Zimmer's girls. When she'd asked hirn to take her to his station, he had begun to suspect. But she'd refused to answer questions. The driver had decided it would be better to bring her in to us than to leave her out in the sticks where someone else would find her. His schedule had prevented him from taking her back to Zimmer's.

I had been sitting in the front office, since there was no trip to Orange County that day, and I'd been taking advantage of a lull in activities to get a little cozy with Eleanor. We were both looking forward to a noontime romp in her apartment.

I was mighty thankful for Ellie during this period of time. If she hadn't been around, I would have had no relief from the monotony of Diana. And monotony is exactly what it had become for me.

When the sedan-bus arrived, with its load of satisfied customers returned from Zimmer's, I had taken my hand out from under Ellie's dress, and she'd moved back to her desk just behind the counter.

Then the driver had appeared, offering his explanation, and following him had been Leona.

I took her into my private room, offered her a cigarette which she declined with a shake of her blonde head, and then I asked her to tell me what was on her mind.

She twisted her hands in her lap. "Are you in business with that man Zimmer?" she asked. Her blue eyes were afraid and distrustful.

I said, "In a way. Are you one of his girls?"

"No," she said firmly. "I mean, I was going to model for him. At least, I thought I was. But when I found out what kind of business he was really in, I wouldn't have anything to do with it. That was when he locked me up."

"Locked you up?" I stared at her.

"But I got away," she explained. "When your driver picked me up on the road, I thought that maybe you would help me if I told you all that had happened. I didn't know where else to turn. Will you help me?" She looked at me intently. "Or will you make me go back to Zimmer's prostitution place?"

"Suppose you tell me everything, and then we'll see. What was that stuff about modeling for Zimmer? What did you mean?"

"Well, that was how he got me to come out here-to California, that is. I'm from Helena, Montana. I lived there with my aunt. When I saw Mr. Zimmer's ad in the magazine...."

"Wait a minute," I said. "You'll probably think it's strange, but this is all new to me. I don't know a thing about any modeling, magazine ad, or any of the rest of it, so start at the beginning, will you?"

What follows is Leona's story-in her own words, as nearly as I can remember them:

Well ... you know my name. I'm eighteen years old, and I was living in Helena. My folks died when I was young, so my aunt was taking care of me.

I'd just graduated from high school last June, and I was thinking about leaving Montana and moving some place where a girl could have a better chance. For a career, I mean.

Maybe I don't seem like it now, mussed up the way I am and all, but I'm not bad-looking, and I'd sort of been dreaming about being a model-the way a lot of girls dream, I guess.

So, anyway, when I saw this ad in the movie magazine, I got real interested. It said that girls were needed in Hollywood to be models and to appear on TV, and it said to send a picture to a certain box number along with your name and address and that you would be considered.

Well, I did it.

And I got a letter back. It was signed by Mr. Zimmer, and he told me I was just the sort of girl they were looking for. To prove it, he offered to advance the cost of a bus ticket for me to come out here, and he told me to write him and let him know if I was interested and when I could leave.

I don't have to tell you, I guess, that I was real excited. I mean, it sounded like the chance of a lifetime. So I wrote him right back. I told him I could leave any time, and I said I'd be waiting to hear from him.

A few clays later, the ticket came by airmail. And, in his letter, Mr. Zimmer said he'd meet me at the Los Angeles bus station.

I told my aunt about it, of course.

She warned me that it might be some sort of trick, but I just thought she was jealous. Gee, how I wish I'd listened to her!

Well, I took the bus, and it was a wonderful adventure. I'd never been out of Montana before-at least, not since I was a baby.

When I arrived here in California, Mr. Zimmer met me just as he'd said he would do.

He seemed funny. I mean, he wasn't the sort of man I'd expected him to be. He was awful quiet, and he looked at me in kind of a creepy way. But he didn't act fresh or anything, so I guessed it was all right.

He took me to this place he had-kind of a studio in an old house near downtown. The name of the street made an impression on me because it was the name of an Indian tribe in my part of the country. It was Arapahoe.

Anyway, he had this room in the basement with a lot of lights and a camera on a tripod, and kind of a fancy couch with a red drape over it. He said he acted as an agent and that he wanted to have some pictures of me to send around to the people who hired models-photographers and TV producers and like that.

Then he asked me to take my clothes off.

Well, I said I wouldn't do it, of course. I wasn't interested in that kind of modeling, and his letters hadn't said anything about posing in the nude. If they had, I wouldn't ever have come out. But he told me that he had to have pictures of that kind in order to get jobs for me.

I asked him if I couldn't pose in a bathing suit maybe, but he said no, that I had to be completely undressed. He said that the people who hired the models had to know just what kind of figures they had. I told him he should have explained that I'd have to pose in the nude before he brought me out to California, and I asked him to give me the money to get back home. He said he wouldn't. So then I told him I had enough money to buy a bus ticket, arid I started to walk out.

That was when he called in this other man. An awful man he was, too. Mr. Zimmer called him George.

He was big and unshaved and as strong as a bull. He grabbed me and threw me down on the couch and started to pull at my clothes. I screamed, but Mr. Zimmer just stood there and watched, with a mean smile on his face and his eyes kind of glinting like he was crazy or something.

This man-this George-got me undressed. Most of my clothes got torn, even my underthings. He just tore them right off me. And then he pushed me down and started to kiss me all over.

It was terrible.

And, while he was doing that, Mr. Zimmer set up a camera and lights and started taking pictures of it.

Well, this George ... he ... made love to me. And Mr. Zimmer took pictures of that, too.

Afterward, George left.

I was almost out of my head by that time. You can imagine. I was naked and I'd been raped, and Zimmer had told me the door was locked and that I couldn't get away. He said he was going to develop the pictures he'd taken, and that if I didn't do everything he told me to do he'd send copies back to my aunt and to other people I knew at home. He'd gotten my address out of my purse.

Well, I couldn't let that happen. I mean, I'd told everybody that I was coming to California to be a model. And for them to see pictures of me like that ... well, they wouldn't have realized that I was being raped. Mr. Zimmer said he'd write the letter in such a way that they would think I'd taken part in some kind of wild show.

I told him that if he did that, my aunt would have the police come after him because she knew who he was and that he had got me to come to California. She'd seen a couple of his letters.

But he just laughed and said he'd tell the police he had nothing to do with it, that I hadn't even met him at the bus the way I was supposed to do, and that he didn't know where I was. He said there would be no evidence against him.

As far as I was concerned, he said I wouldn't be able to talk because he was going to hold me prisoner, anyway-whether I agreed to cooperate or not.

What could I do?

I. was alone in Los Angeles-I didn't know anybody-and he had taken my purse with my money. I didn't even have any clothes I could wear.

So I said I'd do what he wanted. That was when he gave me this blouse and skirt and took me out of the basement by a back door. His car was parked there and this big man, George, drove us to the place out in the country.

When we got there, Zimmer told me I was to go to bed with men who would come out. He said I'd get money for it and that, after I'd saved a certain amount, he would let me go. But he said he'd keep the pictures of me, just in case I decided to make trouble for him later.

Well, I refused to do it.

I wouldn't do that sort of thing, no matter how much money I was paid.

So he locked me up in a room there-to give me time to think things over, he said. It was on the second floor, but I broke a window and crawled out on the porch roof. I jumped from there to a tree limb and got away. I could have killed myself, I guess, but I made it. And your driver picked me up on the road.

Are you going to help me? I just don't know what else to do, Mr. Bartley. If I go to the police, Zimmer will send those awful pictures of me back to my home town. Anyway, I can't take the police to his house in the country, because I couldn't possibly remember how to get there. So what could I prove against him?

But maybe you can do something. I mean, does a girl have to do what Zimmer says, even if she doesn't want to? Do you back him up in that?

I'd hardly spoken a word as Leona told her story. What she'd said had shocked me, and it had started a crawling sensation on my spine. If Zimmer would go to the lengths she'd described in order to get prostitutes, then he might do most anything to protect himself from exposure.

The man must be out of his mind, I thought, to operate the way Leona had described.

And then the notion occurred to me that perhaps it was Leona, not Zimmer, who was crazy. Perhaps some peculiar mental q had caused her to make up the story she had just told.

I studied her. "Could you take me to the house on Arapahoe Street?" I asked. "Do you remember what the number was?"

She shook her head sadly. "There were a lot of old buildings along that street that looked just about alike. I couldn't pick out the right one. All I remember is that it wasn't too far from Wilshire Boulevard.. We crossed Wilshire when we were driving to the house, and that meant something to me because I'd heard the name. I mean, everybody's heard of Wilshire Boulevard-even in Montana."

"Yeah," I said, still trying to decide if I could believe the girl's story.

There was an Arapahoe Street, all right, and it crossed Wilshire. Also, it wasn't too far from Westlake Avenue, where Zimmer lived. Moreover, Diana had told me that Zimmer owned other rooming houses in the area. It seemed to add up, in a way. Still, that didn't prove that the rest of Leona Temple's story was the truth.

The thing that bothered me was that it seemed outlandish. I could hardly bring myself to believe that Hugo Zimmer would do what this girl had said he did.

Suddenly a thought occurred to me.

"You said Zimmer's ad appeared in a movie magazine," I reminded her. "Do you remember the name of it?"

"Sure," she said. "It's the one I always read Movie Fan's World."

I pressed a button on the side of my desk and picked up my telephone. Eleanor's sexy voice answered it in the outer office.

"This is going to sound funny," I told her, "but I'd like you to run up to the corner and buy something for me. I'd go myself, except that I want to stay here with Miss Temple. Do you understand?"

"Sure, Jack," she said. "What is it?"

"A copy of Movie Fan's World. It's a magazine."

"I know. I've seen it. But what do you want with that, for God's sake?"

"I told you it would sound funny," I said, "and I can't explain right now. But it's very important. Can you get away?"

"Yeah. Things are quiet. I'll open your door so you can see the counter, and you'll have to answer the phone. I'll hurry."

"Thanks a lot, El," I said, and hung up the phone.

"You don't believe what I told you?" Leona asked. She had been watching me closely through those large blue eyes of hers.

"I don't know what to believe," I said. "Zimmer doesn't seem like the sort of man who...."

I let the sentence peter out right there because, on second thought, Zimmer did seem like the sort who might do something pretty offbeat. But to pull a deal as wild as this....

"How many other girls are there at Zimmer's house-I mean, the one out in the country?" I asked.

"I don't know," Leona said. "I didn't meet any of them. Zimmer locked me up as soon as we got there. But I saw your busses bringing the men, and I heard girls' voices in the house."

"Did Zimmer say he got all his girls just the way he got you?"

"He didn't tell me anything-not any more than I've told you, that is. He was pretty close-mouthed. He's really a terrible man. I'm afraid of him."

We didn't talk any more until Elbe brought the magazine. Leona just sat in front of my desk and stared at me, apparently fearing that I would force her to go back to Zimmer's brothel, and not daring to turn anywhere else for help because of the pictures Zimmer had of her.

I felt sorry for the kid. And I was inclined more and more, as the minutes passed, to believe her story.

Shortly after Eleanor had dropped a copy of Movie Fan's World on my desk, practically all my doubt vanished. For there was the ad, on one of the back pages. It was just a small one-a column wide by an inch deep-but it packed a punch that must have been the same as dynamite to a lot of glamour-struck girls in the hinterland.

It read, in black letters across the top, Models Wanted. Underneath, it went on: Girls 18 to 25 are needed for photographic and TV modeling. Big opportunities now. No experience necessary if you qualify. Send snapshots with name and address. The ad bore a Hollywood box number but no name.

"Do you believe me now?" Leona asked, her eyes still very wide.

"I'm almost forced to."

"Wh-what are you going to do about it? Are you in favor of what Mr. Zimmer's been doing, or can you make him let me go and destroy those pictures?"

"I'm not in favor of it, Leona," I said. "As a matter-of-fact, what you've said upsets me a great deal."

"Then you'll help? I'll bet there are other girls out at his brothel that need help, too."

"I wouldn't be at all surprised," I told her.

I lifted my telephone and rang the buzzer in the other room again.

"Look, Ellie," I said, as soon as she had answered, "what we had in mind for this noon is of!"

"You meanie," she retorted. "Do you think the girl you have in there would be better? Is that it?"

"It's nothing like that, El. We've got a problem. I wonder if you'd take Leona home to your place right now and stay with her for a while."

"Well ... sure. I guess so. But who'll watch the office?"

"I'll have Diana come over," I said. "I've got some outside checking up to do."

"On what, if it's any of my business?"

"Our friend Zimmer. Leona will probably tell you about it. But you keep it quiet, do you understand? This is going to have to be handled carefully, or we're all liable to get in big trouble."

"Is it that sinful?"

"Just take care of Leona," I said. "And keep her with you all the time."

"Okay, Jack. Do you want me to come in and get her now?"

"Just stay there," I instructed. "We'll be out in a minute."

I hung up the phone.

"I was talking with my secretary," I said to Leona. "You heard what I told her. You don't have to be afraid to stay at her place. We won't tell Zimmer you're there. In the meantime, I'll check on this thing and, if I find you've told me the whole truth, I'll see that it's straightened out. Will you cooperate with me?"

She nodded, the tension on her face having eased noticeably.

"Come on, then," I said, and walked with her to the door of the office.

CHAPTER EIGHT

As soon as Eleanor had left with the Temple girl, I sat down in the front office and put through a call to Diana. She'd had something planned for the afternoon, but I got her to agree to come over.

I didn't tell her what it was about, but merely that something had come up that I had to check into and that Ellie hadn't felt well and had gone home. I was afraid that if Diana heard the Temple girl's story, she would want to do something rash.

When she showed up at the office, she gave me a searching look. "You know, if I was the suspicious type," she said, "I might think it was funny that both you and Eleanor had to be away at the same time."

"Oh, for God's sake, Diana," I chided. "You know there's nothing between Ellie and me.

She gave me a look that said she wasn't too sure of it, and placed her handbag on Eleanor's desk. She rolled the chair into position and sat down.

If Diana had possessed any evidence that I'd been fooling around with Eleanor, it would have broken us up, I knew. But I gave her credit for enough intelligence to realize that if I was going to bed with Eleanor that afternoon, I would not have called her (Diana) to take care of the office. The whole thing was too obvious.

I said, "I'll try to be back before five. But in case I'm not, I'll see you latef at the apartment."

"You'll be able to handle the night-club run tonight, won't you?" she asked.

"If I can't, I'll get hold of Hank and have him go with Ted."

She nodded. "What's it all about? Is there some kind of trouble?"

"I don't want to upset you about it yet," I told her. "I'll know more tonight, and we'll talk about it then. Okay?"

She shrugged.

I'd been turning the whole thing around in my mind and trying to settle on the best way to deal with Zimmer.

I didn't want to accuse him of anything until I'd uncovered some evidence of my own. He could have just laughed off the Temple girl's story and even denied that he had anything to do with the ad in the movie magazine. As far as the box number was concerned, it could have been registered in a phony name and, by the time I had checked it out, Zimmer could have covered his trail.

On the other hand, of course, Zimmer could have admitted the whole thing and challenged me to do what I could about it. After all, Sunnical was deeply involved.

Who would have believed that Diana and I hadn't known exactly what Zimmer had been up to?

For a starter, I wanted the address of Zimmer's place on Arapahoe, if indeed he had a house there, as Leona had said.

I asked Diana, "That report you got on Zimmer a long time ago-before we made our deal with him-do you have a copy of it here in the office?"

She looked at me for a moment, then said, "Yes. It's in the file with the partnership papers. I thought you'd probably seen it."

"No, I haven't," I replied, walking to the filing cabinet.

I found the file quickly and shuffled through it until I'd located what I wanted. I scanned the report, which had been prepared by a private investigating firm. Zimmer's properties were listed and, yes, there was one on Arapahoe. It was designated as a rooming house. I noted the street number.

Diana moved up beside me as I put the file away. "Does this have something to do with Zimmer?" she asked. "What you're going to do this afternoon, I mean."

"Maybe," I told her. "I'm not sure yet. I'll talk to you later, huh, sweets?"

After giving her a quick kiss on the cheek, I left by way of the side door and walked to my car which was parked in back.

The house on Arapahoe was not unlike the one in which Zimmer lived, on Westlake. Both were old and rambling, and they had a gloomy drabness about them which seemed to reflect the personality of their owner.

Or, perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps, after spending years in and around places like this, Zimmer had taken on something of their forlorn quality.

I drove past the house and parked half a block from it. Then I began to walk back.

I'd assumed that Zimmer wouldn't be there. If he was, the skeletal plan which I'd worked out would have to be abandoned. Since none of Zimmer's personnel knew me, I felt that the plan could be carried out so long as he didn't show up.

I headed up the front walk. There was a For Rent-Rooms sign tacked to the building. The porch of the house contained only a pair of vacant wicker chairs. The front door was a massive slab of oak with a small window in its upper half. I twisted the old-fashioned manual doorbell in its center.

A woman opened the door. Middle-aged, she was short and dark and had eyes like black glass beads. She drew nervously on a cigarette and gave me a close look. "Yes?"

"I'd like to see the room you have for rent."

"We've got several," she said, continuing to give me the once-over. "Is it for yourself?"

I nodded.

"You want housekeeping privileges?"

"Just a sleeping room," I said.

"No women," she warned. "We don't allow women coming in and out."

I smiled at her. "Agreed."

She shrugged and stepped back to let me in.

As she led me down the dim hall, she said over her shoulder, "You don't look like the type to rent a room in a house like this."

"It's close to my work," I said. "Right now I'm interested in saving money."

She nodded jerkily, my answer apparently having satisfied her.

Near the end of the hall, she stopped in front of a door with a metal 7 nailed on it, and she jingled some keys from a side pocket of her dress. After several tries, she found the right one. The door opened.

The room was barren and as cheerless as Zimmer's own apartment had been.

"It's ten dollars a week," she said. "Okay?"

I glanced around. "It will do. I'd like to move in right now."

"Where's your stuff?"

"It's in my old room. I'll go over and pick it up tonight."

"Well, you can pay me now," she said, taking a step forward and peering at me through the curling wisp from her cigarette. She had a hard face, and the garish lipstick she wore didn't help it.

I dug in my pocket and brought out some bills. I separated a ten and handed it to her.

She removed a key from the ring she carried and gave it to me. "It will open the front door, too," she said. "I'll bring you a receipt."

I smiled. "Don't bother. I trust you."

She shrugged again and headed for the door. When she reached it, she stopped and turned back to me. "Remember ... no women."

"I wouldn't think of it," I said. Then I added in a confidential tone, "Actually I'm a homosexual."

She squinted. "Just a joke."

She didn't join in my laughter, but turned and stomped out on her stumpy legs. I walked over and flipped the door shut.

At least I was in the house, I told myself, and the ten dollars it had cost would prove to have been money well spent if it helped me get some solid evidence on Zimmer. I decided to wait a little while before i started looking around, in order to give the hard-faced manager a chance to busy herself with something. Too bad I was in a back room, I thought, so that I couldn't keep a watch on who entered and left the house.

I removed my jacket and hung it over the back of a plain wooden chair. Then I stretched out on the three-quarter size bed. It was almost as uncomfortable as a bench; it had crude springs and little more than a pad to serve as a mattress.

The room did seem to be fairly clean, I decided with some surprise. There were a couple of dark stains on the brownish ceiling where water had once run over upstairs but, outside of that, the place was in pretty good condition. The single window, though it faced another wall only a few feet away, was at least clean.

I thought about the manager's concern that the male roomers not have women guests. Hypocrisy, I thought-the world was full of it.

Here was Zimmer running a couple of houses, and forcing young girls into them by trickery and blackmail so that they could spend their lives being ravished by men of all sorts. At the same time, he required his manager to see that the tenants in his rooming house were deprived of friendly sex-fun with girls who were willing. I assumed it was a practical decision, motivated by Zimmer's need to avoid the eyes of the police, but the hypocrisy which lay behind the situation was all too plain.

I have a theory about society, especially that which exists in the United States: You and I-all of us bring on the so-called social evils which we are supposed to deplore-specifically, crime and corruption and much of the violence that we read about in our newspapers.

How?

Take a look:

We outlaw gambling, as a general practice, and yet we make it all right to place bets on horses within the confines of race tracks, and to place most any kind of bet in the state of Nevada. In New Hampshire it's all right to throw a quarter into a slot machine, and in some towns in California you can bet on a game of poker. Where's the sense to it? Is there really any principle involved? Is it any wonder such laws breed only disrespect for law in genereal?

People have always gambled and they're always going to gamble. The puritans can't stop it. Government can't stop it. No one can stop it.

What if we, as a society, recognized this and gave up our futile efforts to prevent gambling, but instead regulated it in such a way that it would be operated cleanly and honestly, and with sufficient restraint so as not to offend the sensibilities of those who are opposed to it on moral grounds? In one stroke, we would go a long way toward putting the underworld out of business, restoring respect for law-and-order in general, decreasing the cost of law enforcement, and easing the general tax burden, since taxes taken from gambling would be far less painful than those now levied on property owners and across the counters of retail stores. All right, let's go a couple of steps further: Let's say that prostitution was legalized under the same sort of sensible controls, and let's say that narcotics were made available to addicts in drug stores on medical prescription, again under strict regulation.

The underworld-the massive crime syndicates which now suck the life's blood of the nation would be completely immobilized. They would have no reason to exist any longer, because the products and services which they've been supplying to large numbers of the population would now be available through legal channels.

Think of the saving in police costs and in taxes. Think of the reduction in violent crimes. Dope addicts would no longer be impelled to rob and sometimes kill in order to gain funds to satisfy their cravings at black market prices, and there would be no incentive for anyone to recruit new addicts. Then, too, narcotics would lose the lure which they now have as something "forbidden." Addiction would unquestionably decrease.

And the whole thing would have a beneficial rather than a degrading effect on the moral climate of the nation, because people would no longer be forced to violate a law in order to obtain that which they want or need and which others really have no right to deny them-if you believe in the doctrine of individual freedom, that it. Respect for law and its sanctity would be greatly increased.

I know. People point to Nevada and say that there's a state where gambling has been legalized and that it has the highest crime rate in the nation. But I submit that this is so only because gambling is unlawful in most of the rest of the country and that, therefore, Nevada attracts unstable elements from everywhere else. Also the syndicates, which operate beyond the bounds of law-and-order in other areas and have grown fat there on corruption, find Nevada a fertile field for the extension of their activities. If the syndicates were put out of business, and gambling and narcotics and prostitution were placed in the hands of responsible elements under strict govern mental control, what a different situation would prevail!

And you can go still further in showing how so-called "respectable" society spawns its own evils:

How much less violence there would be, and how much less poverty and less money spent on relief doles, if no elements of our population had to bear the stigma of racial persecution.

Well, enough of that. I didn't mean to launch into a lecture. Maybe I'm all wet, anyhow. But, to me, the foregoing makes a certain amount of sense. It's always surprised me that more people don't see it.

I lay on the hard bed in Room 7 and waited until it seemed that the time was right to make a move.

After easing the door open and satisfying myself that the hall was empty at the moment, I walked to the door at the back of the hall which evidently led to the basement. It was a heavy door, probably sound proofed, but it wasn't locked. I assumed that was because of some housing ordinance. Moving as quickly and quietly as I could, I entered down into the darkness.

There undoubtedly was a light switch somewhere near at hand, but I didn't want to press it. I felt around. There was a metal door to my left at the foot of the stairs. Seemingly empty space extended to the right. I assumed this was the utility area where a water heater, fuse boxes and such were located.

The metal door was securely locked. My hope that Zimmer's "studio" might have a flimsy door which could be opened with a skeleton key was dashed. That meant I would have to figure out some other way to get in.

I thought about "George"-the unshaved giant whom Leona had described. She'd said that Zimmer had "called" him after Zimmer had taken her to the studio. That meant George probably had a room in the basement-somewhere beyond the darkness that stretched off to my right. And he probably spent a lot of time in it, so as to be near at hand when Zimmer needed him to perform his special function in the white slaver's scheme of things.

And George would have a key to the studio, wouldn't he? Sure, he would, because there was a Yale lock set into the metal door which snapped when the door was closed. I had felt it; and there was no doorknob. Since Zimmer wouldn't take a girl in there and leave the door open, it figured that George would carry a key so that he could enter quickly whenever he was called.

I thought about George, wondering if he was really as big and rough as Leona Temple had made him out to be. If he was, I figured my only chance of taking him would be to hit him by surprise.

Peering into the darkness to my right, I tried to pick out some detail among the vague shapes that my eyes had become aware of. There were pipes and a large boiler; there was a crude wooden enclosure that probably housed paints or tools; then, further back, there was another door. I headed into the darkness toward it.

As I got nearer I could see a thin line of light along the concrete floor where the door abutted, I moved closer still, taking care not to kick anything that would cause a sudden clatter.

I was right beside the door now, and L put my ear against the thin partition. There was a radio or television playing on the other side. That meant George was at home.

Excitement began to build within me. I looked around my feet, to see if I could spot anything that might be used to send the big man on a quick, certain trip to dreamland. There was nothing. Zimmer kept his basement as neat as the proverbial pin.

I walked back to the wooden enclosure I'd spotted earlier. Its door wasn't locked; I could feel the hasp and the wooden peg that held it.

I eased the peg out, then drew the door open.

The hinges of the crude door creaked loudly, the harsh sound knifing through the darkness. I froze.

There was a bump and a scraping from inside George's room, as if a chair was being pushed aside. He was coming to investigate, and I didn't have a thing to meet him with, except my bare hands.

I But I did have the element of surprise in my favor, if I took advantage of it.

I left the door of the tool room open and hurried on the balls of my feet to the partition beside George's door. I got there just before the door opened, and I flattened myself against the wall.

Leona hadn't lied about her rapist. She hadn't even exaggerated. He was at least six feet tall and built like a lumberjack. His arms bulged below the rolled sleeves of a flannel shirt.

He stopped outside the door, light striking his back and throwing a massive shadow on the brightened concrete before him. I tensed myself.

George was squinting stupidly at the tool room door, evidently trying to decide what to make of it. I hurled myself forward.

The old Army training came in handy as I chopped at his neck with all my strength. Thick as his neck was, I got through to him. But the blow didn't put him out. He grunted, wobbled on his legs, and turned toward me. His face was pudgy and wore a five-or six-day growth of black whiskers. His eyes were deep-set in dark hollows. He was blinking, trying to focus.

I brought my right hand up to his throat with everything I had behind it.

He gagged, his tongue lolling, and then his eyes rolled up and pitched forward. When he struck the bare concrete floor, it didn't do him a damned bit of good, I'll tell you.

I jumped over him, grasped his ankles, and pulled him back into his room. It was a cramped little place, stuffy and foul-smelling. There was a cot that looked as if it hadn't been properly made up in a month, a plain wooden chair, and a small table where a portable TV flickered. I snapped the set off.

Then I looked around and my mouth must have fallen open. The walls of the room were plastered with glossy black-and-white photo enlargements of George and a variety of women.

I moved closer to study them in detail.

The women were in different stages of undress or entirely nude. In some of the scenes, George was pulling articles of clothing from them, while in others he was in the very act of rape. There must have been at least a dozen different women pictured.

As I stared at them, I couldn't keep from shuddering at the awesomeness of the evil which Zimmer and his trained ape had been practicing. And George evidently lay day and night in that little room, staring by the hour with relish at the proof of his depravity!

What I had to do, of course, was to tie him up before he awakened. I shook myself into action, looked around and spotted an old chest of drawers against the wall. I crossed over to it, thinking that I might find something inside that I could use in binding George.

I found something, all right. The first drawer I opened was filled with a tangle of women's stockings, brassieres, panties, girdles, and slips, many of them torn. I opened another drawer: more of the same.

So this was the way Zimmer paid him, I thought. The old man gave him that lousy room, probably some slop to eat, a woman every once in a while to rape, and let him keep their underwear and the pictures to furnish vicarious pleasure in-between times. For those goodies, the ape did Zimmer's dirty work and-who knows?-maybe provided the old man with some kicks of his own in the process. I remembered Leona's description of Zimmer laughing and watching glint-eyed as George violated her.

The whole setup made me want to puke.

I pulled some stockings from one of the drawers and quickly tied George's wrists and ankles. Then I wadded a brassiere, forced it into his mouth, and tied it securely with another stocking. George was fast asleep and, from the look of him and the sound of his breathing, I figured he would be out for some time. There was blood on his face from the headlong fall he'd taken on the concrete.

In one of his pants pockets I found a ring of keys. I pulled these out, then turned off his light and closed the door of the room behind me.

I walked back to the foot of the stairs.

The key fit the lock of the studio door, all right. I shoved the door open, felt for a light switch, and pressed. Then I pushed the door closed.

The room was as Leona had described it. I no longer had the slightest doubt that everything she'd told me had been the truth.

I began to go over the place carefully.

CHAPTER NINE

It's hard to say how long I was there before I heard someone coming.

I'd gone through Zimmer's files of photographic negatives, other files containing correspondence with his victims, and records relating to the sex resorts he had m the country.

The evidence had surprised me in one respect: Zimmer had been operating one of his properties in town as a house before he'd made his deal with us and had set up the country locations. Now the Los Angeles operation had apparently been closed down.

There was enough evidence in that room to hang Hugo Zimmer by the short hairs and to blast his entire operation to hell. But I knew I didn't dare turn it over to the authorities. If I did, Diana and I would go down the drain with him, since we'd been aiding and abetting his felonious deeds. So that meant we would have to take care of him ourselves ... somehow.

I hadn't gotten around to pondering the problem when footsteps sounded on the concrete stairs outside the studio. I closed the drawer of the cabinet I'd been searching and bolted across the room to snap off the light. The metal door fit so tightly that I was pretty sure no light had shown from under it.

I had barely enough time to drop on my haunches behind a filing cabinet before the door opened and the light went on again.

It was Zimmer, of course, and he was not alone. There was a girl with him.

She was brown-haired and almost as young as Leona Temple, but she did not have the Temple girl's naive, open-faced quality. This one seemed a great deal more mature.

As Zimmer watched her carefully, she looked around the room and asked questions about the equipment. Then she asked what sort of pictures he needed of her.

"They must be nudes," he said firmly, his blue eyes intent and calculating.

The brunette lifted a brow. "You didn't say anything about that."

Zimmer opened his hands, palms upward, in an innocent shrug. "I thought you would understand. People who hire models ... they must know what they're getting. They have to be certain there's no fakery no padding to make the girl's figure look better than it really is."

"I'm not sure I want to do this," the girl told him as she ran her finger casually along the edge of a metal cabinet. She was still walking around, evidently trying to decide what her best move would be.

I was pretty well situated, in a corner where neither of them was likely to go, but I was worried just the same that I'd be discovered. I didn't want Zimmer to find me hiding in his studio like that. I preferred to confront him later, when the time was right and on my own terms.

Zimmer was saying, "But you'll have to do it, my dear. I'm afraid you have no choice."

She stopped her slow pacing and gazed at him directly. "I most certainly do have a choice. As a matter-of-fact, I can tell you and your modeling outfit to go climb a tree if I want to."

She was a scrapper, this one. I could see that Zimmer was going to have his hands full with her.

His eyes narrowed. He seemed very sure of himself. "I don't believe you will want to do that," he said.

Watching the two of them made-me think of a cunning jungle animal stalking its prey. Only, Zimmer was not going to make a "kill." George would do that ... or so Zimmer thought. And Zimmer would have the pleasure of standing at the side and watching.

The girl walked up to Zimmer. "I've made a mistake. I can see that now. So we'll forget about the whole deal, shall we?"

She turned away from him and began striding toward the door.

Moving with a quickness that surprised me, Zimmer rushed up behind her and grasped her bare arm, turning her around. Her mouth opened as if she were about to scream, but she didn't get it out. She merely stared at the man, apparently too astonished by his sudden action to make a sound.

Zimmer spoke, his voice smooth and nard as glass: "You're not leaving." And then he issued a sudden bark that reminded me of the Nazi storm troopers you see on The Late Show. It was the single word, "George!"

I was in it now, I knew. When George didn't show, Zimmer would investigate. Then, when he found the big man bound and gagged....

I stood up.

The girl, who was facing directly toward me, gasped.

Zimmer muttered an exclamation, his eyes narrowed to slits. Then he said, "What the devil are you doing here?"

"Checking up on you," I told him, walking to the center of the room. "What do you say we talk?"

Zimmer looked quickly from me to the girl. "Not now."

"Yeah, now! Right now, before you have a chance to add another head of human stock to your stables."

"What's he talking about?" the girl demanded of Zimmer.

Ignoring her, he said to me, "This is none of your affair, Bartley. Our deal...."

"Our deal didn't cover anything like what's been going on here," I stated firmly.

He studied me for a minute in cold detachment, and then he snaked a hand inside his jacket. It shook me when he brought out a gun. I hadn't even considered that he might be armed. The weapon was a small but competent-looking automatic.

He leveled it at me. "As much as I hate to do it, Mr. Bartley...."

The brown-haired girl interrupted his speech with a scream. And then she bolted for the door. It was obviously a hysterical reaction with no thought behind it.

Zimmer swung the gun in her direction. He could have cut her down with a simple squeeze of his finger, assuming he was crazy enough to do it. In the split second that I took to consider the matter, I decided that Zimmer might be just that crazy.

I dived at him, but he whirled with an agility that once more surprised me, and I sprawled on the floor. The gun went off. The bullet missed me, ripping into the far wall of the room.

At the sound of the explosion, the girl had gasped and flattened herself against the wall, where she hung for a moment as if she were pinned.

Zimmer, breathing hard, stepped back. He held the gun levelly to cover both of us. "You're a foolish young man, Mr. Bartley," he said in a tight voice. "Very foolish."

The girl remained against the wall, wide-eyed, not making a sound. The high mounds of her breasts moved up and down with her ragged breathing.

"Come here, Abby," he said, his voice softer but still carrying a lot of menace. "Stand beside me."

Numbly, she did as he ordered. Though Zimmer turned slightly to watch her from the corner of his eye, it was clear that he wasn't concerned about her so long as she was away from the door.

He said to me, "Get up, Bartley. Then perhaps you can explain what you did with George. I assume you forced him to let you in here."

I stood up. "George is bound and gagged in his room. I took the keys from him."

"I see," Zimmer said. "Well, that will be fine, then. Yes, indeed. Everything is working out beautifully."

"I don't know what the devil you're talking about," I told him.

"You'll see." His voice hardened: "Now, take your clothes off, Mr. Bartley."

"What?"

"Disrobe," he said firmly.

The pretty girl, Abby, was still in a state bordering shock. She looked from Zimmer to me, her brown eyes wide.

"I'm going to have you help me solve our little problem," Zimmer went on. "Then there will be no question about our working together in harmony. Take off all your clothes, please."

"You're out of your skull!" I shouted.

"Oh, no," Zimmer smiled. "On the contrary. I'm doing the most sensible thing that a man in my position could do." His expression became smooth and determind once more. "Don't assume that I will hesitate to shoot you, Bartley, if you don't cooperate, because my own life is at stake, in a manner of speaking. Now this is the last time I'll ask you: Will you please disrobe?"

I had figured out what he had in mind. It didn't take a genius, after all, to see it. He was going to force me to enact the role of George and he would take the pictures while he held the gun on me. Then he would be in a position to blackmail both Abby and myself me even more effectively than the girl, for he would have graphic evidence of my commission of rape. The fact that he was forcing me to do it would constitute a point of defense, no doubt, but I was afraid that it wouldn't be strong enough to get me off the hook inasmuch as Zimmer and I were business partners. The mere fact of the partnership made me at least partially liable for whatever Zimmer did.

The question that really concerned me was whether he would shoot if I refused to play along with his scheme. I didn't weigh the matter very long. I didn't have to. Zimmer, by pulling the trigger a few minutes ago, had proved his determination. The bullet hadn't missed me by far.

Maybe you're saying to yourself that if you were in my spot you wouldn't have done what Zimmer was demanding, that you wouldn't have committed rape under any conditions. If that's true, then it proves you're a bigger hero than I am, I guess. I didn't like the thought of rape. It was repugnant to me-and yet I was damned if I was going to let Zimmer shoot me down for not doing it. As crazy as he was, I wouldn't have put it past him. By that time, I was prepared to agree with Diana that the man was capable of anything.

So I began to get undressed.

Zimmer enjoyed the whole thing, beginning right at that moment, and then convinced me that I'd been right about his sexual perversion. He seemed to be contemplating with glee what was about to happen. I wondered if perhaps he was incapable of treating a woman in the normal way.

Brown-haired, brown-eyed Abby-whose last name I never learned-watched me with something close to horror as I took my clothes off and as she, too, began to realize what was going to take place. It was a study in contrasts-the expression on her face compared to that of Zimmer's.

As for myself, I can tell you that it was no fun stripping down, under those conditions.

Normally I get kind of a kick out of undressing in front of a girl. I'm not exactly an exhibitionist, but it does give me a minor charge to see the look on a chick's face when I doff my clothes, and let her get an eyeful of what a man looks like. It isn't that you meet many girls (if any at all) who haven't seen men in the nude before, but most of them seem to remain at least mildly fascinated with the sight.

Even Abby was fascinated, as stunned with fright as she was right then. Her face began to assume a rosiness, her lips parted, and her eyes became even wider than they had been before.

"Excellent!" Zimmer pronounced when I was nude. "Now take the girl's hand and lead her to the couch. And just in case you think that the two of you might succeed in rushing me together, consider this: I could surely kill one of you before the other one gets to me."

Abby walked along stiffly, looking straight ahead. She reminded me of the Christian girls in those movie spectacles about ancient Rome as they marched to meet the lions in the coliseum.

We reached the couch and I said to her, "It will be better if you don't fight. There's no way to get out of this."

"But I don't understand," she protested feebly.

"The man's crazy. We'll have to humor him. I'll try to make it up to you later." I could only hope that she wasn't a virgin.

Numbly she sat on the couch, then let me ease her into a reclining position.

"No!" Zimmer shouted. "Not that way. I have ... something else ... in mind."

As Abby and I stared at him, Zimmer told us exactly what it was that he wanted us to do. He could hardly keep from chortling as he described it, his eyes and mouth having assumed a vicious leer.

"Damn it!" I exploded. "The girl's just a kid!"

"Oh, she's old enough, Bartley. Don't worry about that. She'll probably even enjoy it. Anyway, I want a variety of pictures of you, so that you won't even think of giving me any trouble. Now stand in front of her."

"We'll have to do what he said," I told her. "It will be over in a few minutes."

Her hands trembled as they reached for me, then touched, and she began the ministrations which were necessary in order to consummate the act in the manner Zimmer wanted.

Zimmer had switched on two sets of floodlights which now bathed the couch area. He stepped over to the camera.

It's strange, but even under the threat of force that hung over me-with Zimmer watching and preparing to take pictures, and with me actually loathing the fact that I was being forced to take advantage of the girl-nature still responded in the usual way.

Abby's fingers were soft and caressing, though they trembled with fear. And her lips, when they touched me, were wonderfully warm and exciting. My entire body stiffened and my hands clenched into fists at my sides. There were two clicks of the camera.

I didn't look at Zimmer as it was happening, but I could imagine the naked lust that was etched on his face. When he spoke, his voice betrayed it:

"All right. That's enough. We don't want to waste you." And he laughed fiendishly.

I stepped back. By then my nerves were taut. I had to take the girl; there was no longer even the slightest question of choice.

"Pull the clothes off her, Bartley!" Zimmer demanded. "Make it look good. And, Abby, you fight him even if you don't feel like it. This part has to look like rape."

I'd been wondering about the other. I mean, there had been no suggestion of force in the first two pictures he had taken. Now I realized that Zimmer had insisted on those shots in order to give him an extra leverage on me. By using those pictures, he could smear me very nicely without involving the girl in a rape charge; the rape angle would have to be used only if Abby or I first pointed a finger at him. I could imagine the result of the first two pictures were shown to Diana.

I bent over the girl.

"Fight him!" Zimmer howled at her, sounding exactly like the madman that he was. "Fight him now!"

The girl squirmed on the couch, her thighs twisting. Her eyes had become suddenly intense. And then she erupted into savage action, Zimmer's command having apparently served to unleash a pent-up reaction to the fear she felt.

She began to fight me, and there was nothing phony about it. Her fingers clawed, striking at my arms. I tore at her blouse, trying to shield myself at the same time, but her fingernails gouged me painfully, drawing blood.

A sudden fury rose inside me: Why should I be forced to endure punishment at her hands? None of this was my fault. I couldn't help what Zimmer was making me do.

And I reacted by increasing my effort. I pulled her blouse open, ripping it savagely. Beneath it she wore a pink brassiere that was temptingly loaded. Her breasts rose in full ripe orbs, packed closely together. The white flesh quivered as she fought me.

"That's it ... that's' it!" Zimmer cried out. I could almost hear the saliva on his lips.

Abby wailed as she struck at me more furiously than ever. I fought off her arms and succeeded in opening her blouse all the way. I was about to pull at the waistband of her skirt when she lifted her right leg, aiming her knee in a sudden jab at my groin.

I dodged the thrust but realized then that I couldn't hold anything back in my effort to subdue the girl. She wasn't acting. She was really fighting me with all she had.

I dived forward, pinning her against the couch and trapping her left arm between her own body and the couch-back. Then, throwing my side against her churning thighs, I held her other arm with my left hand and pulled at her skirt with my right.

Her skirt came up, a lace-fringed pink slip with it, and this exposed the long lovely lengths of her tempting thighs.

What is it about girls' legs that make them look so much better when they are flexing upward and twisting, as Abby's were right then? Maybe it's only in the mind of the male-the thrill of forceful conquest and all that, or maybe thighs are more aesthetically pleasing when they are tensed and up-raised.

Whatever it was, the sight of Abby's lovely lush thighs agitating wildly thrilled me to the core, stirring me in such a way that I began actually to relish what I was doing and what I was going to do.

I was going to rape her and glory in it!

The girl wore flat shoes and no stockings, and her legs were a light even tan all the way up. They were kissable legs, if I'd ever seen them-legs to draw a man and thrill him, and hold and press him in their warmth.

I tore her skirt and slip-one mighty yank rending both garments from hem to top-and then, without a moment's' hesitation and while Abby was still churning violently beneath me, I reached for the elastic band at the top of her pink silken pants.

The camera clicked and I heard the sound that escaped Zimmer's lips, indicating his satisfaction with the shot he'd obtained. I didn't care. Now I cared only about what I was doing.

I was an animal now-no less than Zimmer, though in a different way. I was making a sexual "kill." As for Abby-even in spite of the perverse circumstances, it was plain that she had gotten caught up in the spirit of the sexual drama. She was fighting fiercely, and yet I seemed to see revealed on her face a desire for me to go all the way with her-to force her to submit to me.

I would not disappoint her.

I pulled the panty elastic away from her belly, yanking it fiercely. It popped. Then the nylon split all the way down.

Continuing to pull, I began to bring the pink flimsy garment down, tearing it more as I did so. She was revealed nakedly to me now-a twisting churning target for my lustful desire.

Her pants came all the way down her legs, and I threw them aside. Then there was nothing between us. There would be nothing to stop me, once I'd gotten her legs sufficiently open, from completing the act which Zimmer ordered.

Yet her breasts were still brassiered, and I wanted to see those beauties bared, as well. I wanted them to shake and bobble nakedly as I took her.

So I hooked two fingers under the band that was between the loaded cups and once more I yanked with all my strength, even as Abby continued to claw me and tried to knee me in the groin. But she was not a large girl and was therefore no match for me at all. She couldn't rise from the couch; I had her pinned.

Her brassiere broke and the contents of its cups spilled free. Full and round and white, the twin entities of her bust hobbled before my gaze, the nipples large and coral-pink and puckered but still not taut.

I grabbed at them fiercely and Abby cried out. My thumbs pressed and rubbed at them and then, pincer-like, I sought to draw out the tender tips. They surged up, stiffening nicely.

Holding a breast in each hand, I shook them back and forth. Abby kept lashing at my arms and once succeeded in raking her nails across the side of my face. The smarting of the wound made me all the more determined.

I pressed myself down upon her as she still rolled and tossed, and I used my knees to help pry her thighs apart. I could hear the click of Zimmer's camera again.

And then I was surging forward, heedless of the flailing fury of Abby's' arms and the bite of her nails as they raked my flesh. I only knew that I was taking her, finding the target of my assault and hitting it with lust. She was no virgin and I was glad of that, but either way it would not have affected the outcome of my effort.

Zimmer giggled from behind me, and it was a sound that I had never heard issue from a man before. It was a rattling, jarring giggle that sounded as if it might have come from the devil himself. But that didn't bother me, either. Nothing mattered now but for me to probe the warmth I'd invaded. Again and again and again, harder and harder, until I was at the apex of sensual fulfillment.

Abby was no longer fighting. She was pushing against me now, lifting and pushing her lower body and moaning and pulling at me with the hands which moments before had seemed intent on scratching out my eyes.

Zimmer continued to laugh gleefully. I heard the shutter of his camera snap several more times.

Finally I forced Abby to the brink of release and we hurdled over it together. There was no more fight in either of us as we lay with our arms and legs enmeshed.

Perhaps half-a-minute later, when I looked at Hugo Zimmer's face., I saw that it had changed. It was looser than before, the lines around the mouth more slack, and his eyes had taken on a haunted look. He still held the gun quite levelly, however.

I got up and dressed.

"You will drive the car for us, Bartley," he said, "since I doubt that George will feel up to doing it. By the way, we must untie him, mustn't we? The poor boy.

"Abby will come along and cooperate and do everything I tell her to do. Either that or the pictures I've taken will go to her family in ... where is it? Glendale? I would send them the first two pictures, I believe. The last ones were a little violent. We wouldn't want her folks to think that she was being raped." He laughed fiendishly again.

Abby had pulled her fragmented clothes around her but hadn't risen from the couch. Strangely, right then she seemed more interested in me than in Zimmer or what lie had been saying. And, even more strangely perhaps, the look in her eyes was not exactly a hateful one. It might even have been described as warm, in a way.

When I arrived at the love nest I shared with Diana, I had to face a fusillade of questions. She was like that.

Either she was basically insecure or else it was because of the fact that I was younger and she was afraid she wasn't going to be able to hold me. She always had to know exactly where I'd been and what I'd been doing. Rarely did I tell her the complete truth.

This time I said, "There was something I had to check out-a report on Zimmer that might have caused us some trouble if it were true. I found there was nothing to it, so there's no point in yakking it around."

"Don't you think I should know about it?" Diana asked. She was seated on the couch, wearing a pink dressing robe which was fastened up to her throat and falling loose around her lower body. It split away at her crossed knees and I found myself staring at her naked white thighs.

The sight didn't move me at that moment.

Lately Diana hadn't been moving me very much at all, and that fact had been giving me a quiet fit. I didn't know what the hell I could do about it without upsetting what had become a very profitable apple cart. Now there was the additional complication of Zimmer-what he was doing and the evidence he held against me.

I said, "If I told you, you would only get upset, and for no purpose. As I said, I checked the story out and found it wasn't true."

"All right, Jack."

I had been pouring myself a drink, but now I glanced at her. Her tone had not been right. It had been detached, as if her mind had switched to another track altogether. Now I caught her studying me through narrowed eyes.

"What is it?" I said. "Is my nose on crooked or something?"

"That scratch," she told me, suspicion rearing its horned head. "No. There are two of them. Two scratches. Woman scratches, Jack."

"Don't be ridiculous," I said.

"You were with a woman, weren't you?"

"I said not to be ridiculous. I won't even dignify the question with an answer."

She leaped to her feet. "You'd damned well better dignify it! Were you with that tramp Eleanor, after all?"

"Diana...." I warned, "that's enough."

"Enough, hell!" She began advancing toward me. "Were you, Jack? Were you with that scum?"

"She's no scum and I wasn't with her," I said heatedly. "Now are you satisfied?"

She was looking at my face at close range. When her eyes found mine, there was trouble in them. Bad trouble ... for me. "No, I'm not satisfied at all. I've suspected for a long time that you've been cheating. I've suspected it but I didn't have any proof. Now...."

"Now you think you have proof?" I shot back. "Because of a couple of lousy scratches on my face?" I slapped at my own cheek.

She stood stock still and stared at me, her eyes delivering a verdict.

"You want me to tell you how I got them?" I said, my imagination having conjured up a story in the few seconds I had paused. "You won't believe it, probably, because you seem bound and determined to think what you want regardless of what I have to say, but I got those scratches from the underbrush when I was scrounging around at one of Zimmer's resorts."

Her eyes widened, admitting a trace of doubt. "You were out at ... on of the country places?"

(We very seldom spoke about the sex resorts and had no specific name for them. It was a matter of unspoken mutual consent that they should remain out of our conversation-and thoughts-as much as possible.)

"I had to go there," I said. "Now that's all I'm going to tell you about it."

She softened. "All right, darling! I'm sorry."

It surprised me that she should come around so fast. But, then, I guess she had really wanted to believe I was faithful, in spite of What her anxiety-bred suspicions had whispered to her.

It was my turn to be petulant now. I wanted to try to discourage her from raising an issue like this again., I said, "So you've been suspecting me, have you? The next thing I know, you'll be having me followed. You're a big girl. Di, but sometimes you don't act like it."

She approached me from behind, pressing her soft body against me and running her hands upward across my chest. Her voice was liquid warm: "I said I was sorry. What else can I do, Jack?"

I gave her the silent treatment.

"You want me to prove how sorry I am? Is that it?" She hesitated. "I will if you want me to, baby. I'll prove it in a way you'll like."

The prospect didn't interest me. I could still feel the warmth of Abby. My conquest of the young girl had rocked me so thoroughly that I had no desire for another woman-least of all, Diana.

"Never mind," I said and moved away from her. I went back to preparing myseif a drink.

Diana didn't say anything for a while and I could tell that she was still standing where I'd left her. Then I heard a rustling. I turned.

She stood in the center of the room stark naked.

I said, "Is that supposed to be the answer? Is that the answer to everything?"

Concern crossed her face. "It used to be enough answer for us. Not just the flesh ... but what was behind it, too. We've never talked much about love, Jack, but I ... "

It was necessary to interrupt her before she said any more: "And this isn't the time, either. Not after you said the things you just did. I think we should each take a little while to think."

Her. lips parted and she stared at me. She didn't say anything. A slight tinge of what seemed to be shame appeared on her face.

I set my highball glass down, untouched. "I think I'll go out to a bar for my drink," I told her. "And don't worry. I won't be with any other woman. You might as well go on to bed. You can throw some blankets on the couch for me."

I walked out before she could say anything.

When I returned a couple of hours later, the apartment was dark.

I snapped on the living room lamps. The blankets were there, with a pair of pajamas laid out beside them. I stepped to the bedroom door and eased it open. Diana seemed to be sound asleep.

After showering, I got into the pajamas, darkened the living room, and stretched out on the long couch. I pulled the blankets around me.

The first light of morning woke me up. A glance at the wall clock told me it was ten minutes after six. I shucked off my pajamas and walked nude into the bedroom.

Diana lay on her side in a flimsy blue nightgown, the covers crossing just beneath her bust. I stripped them down and over the foot of the bed. The lacy hem of Diana's nightie was around the tops of her thighs.

I looked at her as she slept, her features beautiful in repose and innocent of make-up. Her black hair lay tangled beneath her head and fanning across the pillow. The large red eyes of her nipples showed through the flimsy stuff of her gown. And at the base of her belly was the vivid darkness which promised so much.

Desire built quickly in me.

We had to make up and I had decided that this was the way to do it-to go to her on my own and to awaken her with the thrusting force of my maleness. It was not entirely a matter of duty, however. Diana had not lost all of her power to tempt me.

I turned her onto her back. She stirred and made a slight sound, but didn't awaken. I bent and lowered the shoulder straps of her gown. Her breasts were two soft spreading mounds, crowned with circles of dull red, each of which was punctuated at its center by a soft nub.

I got onto the bed beside her and pressed my open mouth against the pillowed softness. My tongue began to tease a lip-surrounded nub into erection, and then I drew upon it.

Diana moaned as she began to emerge from sleep.

I pressed my mouth upon her other aureole and caused its nipple to rise, as well.

When I raised my head I saw that Diana's eyelids were fluttering. Time to get on with it, I thought, and so I dropped my hands to her fleshy thighs and spread them apart.

Diana's eyes opened. "Dar-ling...." she said, in a voice still dulled by sleep.

I hauled the bottom of her nightgown up until it met the top part, just below her breasts, and then I vaulted over one of her thighs, settling myself where I could take proper aim.

I moved forward, touched her, and made her say, "Oh!"

And then: "Oohhh ... oh, darling!" She was wide awake now; there was no doubt about it.

She clutched me with arms and legs.

I didn't say a word but just rocked up and down on top of her for all I was worth.

And that proved to be all that was called for in order to make us lovey again.

On the way to work, I stopped off at Eleanor's place. She had dressed for the office but was waiting to hear from me before she left her apartment. Leona Temple, looking more child-like than ever in one of Eleanor's too-large dressing robes, was with her.

I told Leona, "It's going to take a little while to straighten things out, I'm afraid, but I'll promise you that Zimmer won't use the photos he took of you as long as you don't make trouble for him. On top of that, I'll give you enough money to pay for some clothes and a bus ticket back to Montana."

She gazed at me soberly. "I don't really want to go back to Montana, Mr. Bartley."

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

She looked down. "I wanted to be a model, but I guess maybe that was just a childish dream. I'd still like to stay in California, though. There must be something out here that I can do."

"Whatever you want is fine with me," I said. "How would it be if I gave you a little extra to tide you over for a while-until you find a job that you like?"

She smiled wanly. "That would be very nice of you."

"Then that's what I'll do. You get dressed and we'll all go to the office."

When the Temple girl had disappeared into the bedroom to put on the old blouse and skirt which were the only clothing she had in the world, Eleanor said, "She could hurt you a lot, Jack-you and Uiana and all of us, for that matter. As far as Zimmer's concerned, she could probably fix his wagon for good."

"I know that," I said. "But I don't think she's the type to make trouble. A little money and the chance to make a clean start for herself is all she wants."

"Maybe," Eleanor admitted. "She does seem like a pretty good kid. But when you stop to think of the way Zimmer treated her...."

"Let's not, huh?"

She looked at me questioningly.

"We've got to live with Zimmer for a while yet, whether we like it or not. So let's try to forget what Leona told us."

"Can you forget it?" Eleanor asked. "I'd damned well better," I told her.

But I couldn't forget, of course.

When I'd first seen the evidence against Zimmer, neatly filed and catalogued in his basement studio on Arapahoe Street, I'd thought I had him by the short hairs. Now he was the one who had me. It didn't feel good, I'll tell you.

Though I figured I had made amends to some extent for the way he'd treated Leona, I couldn't keep from thinking of Abby and the other girls, many of whom were probably no older, who were being held as virtual or actual prisoners in Zimmer's out-of-town resorts and being made to serve the men I transported out there.

I knew, also, that Zimmer couldn't maintain the operation for long. It was too fraught with hazards.

Zimmer was clever as many madmen are clever. But there was no wisdom in his schemes, which is another way of saying there was no sanity in them. So it was just a matter of time ... for all of us.

I kept coming back to the conclusion that I would have to face up to him myself, get hold of the pictures he had taken of Abby and me and destroy them. Then I would have to settle with Hugo Zimmer.

But that was when my plans hit a roadblock. The only way I could think of to stop Zimmer without destroying myself and Diana at the same time was to kill him, and I didn't want to contemplate committing murder.

Yet, I couldn't stand by and do nothing.

Sacrifice myself in order to get Zimmer? Well, maybe I deserved it. But Diana didn't. I didn't love her and I was tired of having her around my neck, but I still appreciated what she had done for me and I couldn't escape the knowledge that I had been the one to insist we do business with Zimmer in the first place. Diana had actually been blameless, her only sin having been that she had trusted me to run the business.

A hell of a spot, huh?

So while the "tours" to Zimmer's sex resorts continued, and our legitimate business grew, and Sunnical prospered, I stewed in a caldron of guilt and frustration.

In spite of myself, I began taking it out on Diana.

I stayed out more and more, with Ellie and others, and I made less of an effort to explain myself to Diana or to smooth her hurt feelings. Her suspicions of me began to grow again.

Somehow I almost welcomed them. Maybe I was subconsciously courting punishment because of the guilt I felt, I don't know.

I was in a particularly vile mood when one night, in the midst of the night club tour, I saw a ghost from out of my recent past, and the sight set me off like a trigger does a gun.

Who was it?

I mentioned her a long way back, so maybe you'll recall her name. In case you don't, however, I'll refresh your memory:

Her name 'was Susan Bradford, and I had a very special reason to hate her. She was the girl who'd helped bilk me out of my bankroll just before I met Diana.

CHAPTER TEN

SHE was seated at a ringside table in the club on the Sunset Strip which the tour visits to close out each evening.

It's an in place, meaning that all the trend-setters go there. Most any night you can spot at least one nationally-known movie or TV personality in the crowd; some nights they bloom there like daisies on a hill. And Suzie Bradford was among them. Dreamy-eyed Suzie Bradford. Blonde, lush-bodied Suzie Bradford. Thieving Suzie Bradford.

That last was all I could think about when I saw her. She'd taken me down the line for three thousand bucks, and now she was enjoying herself as if I'd never existed, while I was in trouble up to my eyeballs.

It wasn't Suzie's fault that I was in trouble, of course, except perhaps in a very remote and roundabout way. If Suzie hadn't beat me out of my loot, then I might not have picked up on the deal with Diana. But, on the other hand, maybe I would have done it, anyway. Then, too, it wasn't the fact that I'd made a deal with Diana that had gotten me in hot water. It had been my desire to cut corners-to try to get something for nothing. Specifically, I'd let Zimmer pay us more money than a simple one-third partnership was worth.

So it really was myself that I hated right then, I guess, and I was projecting that hate to Suzie.

All I know is that my temperature gauge shot up to the danger mark and I had to do something about it. The something I determined to do was to get back at Suzie.

She was not alone at the night club. She was with an older man-graying hair, thin mustache, most distinguished looking. I wondered who the luckless fish was and how much she had succeeded, or hoped to succeed, in extracting from him.

I stood at the side of the intimate smartly-appointed room, ostensibly watching over my tour-charges but actually staring daggers at Suzie's beautiful bare back and wondering how I could get her out of there and some place with me alone.

The first thing to do was to make arrangements with Ted Price, I decided. He would have parked our bus around the corner and would most likely be in a coffee joint down the street, slopping up Brazilian brew and ogling some waitress' boobs. Ted, as driver, wasn't permitted to drink intoxicants while on the tour, of course.

I headed out of the club and looked up and down the street. Half-a-block away was a glorified sandwich stand that looked like the sort of place Ted would have picked to while away an idle hour. I walked to it.

Sure enough, Ted was inside at the counter. And sure enough, again, he was looking right down the valley between a pair of hanging breasts as the overdeveloped waitress who owned them leaned on her elbows in front of him. Ted did all right with the broads. He had that way about him.

I walked in and settled on the stool next to his. Ted didn't glance at me, since his attention was still occupied in probing the softly shadowed cleft between the counter girl's knockers. But when she straightened up and turned my way, it caused Ted's head to turn.

"Jack!" he said. "What the hell are you doing here? Did you decide to give up booze for coffee all of a sudden?"

I grinned. "Nothing so drastic as that. But I met somebody in the club. Do you suppose you could shepherd the clients back home?"

A wise look came over his face. "Somebody, huh? Lovely and available, no doubt. Man, I don't know how you do it."

"I hear you do pretty well yourself," I told him. "How about that, for example?" I nodded in the direction of the buxom waitress who had moved a little way down the counter as soon as she'd discovered I hadn't wanted to order.

"I ain't got to that one yet, daddy, but I'm sure tryin'," Ted replied with a leer.

"So, how about it? Will you call in the club as soon as the show's over and herd the yokels out? Then I'll see you tomorrow."

"Sure thing, Jack."

"Thanks." I gave him a friendly slap on the arm and stood up.

As I headed out, Ted called after me, "Have fun!"

Fun! I thought. I was going to have fun, all right, but it was going to be a far cry from the kind of fun Ted had in mind ... or, at least, so I thought at the time.

When I reentered the night club, the main act was on. It was a well-known singing trio-a girl and two guys-and they were shaking the walls with a full-throated rendition of Funny Valentine.

I grabbed the arm of a passing waitress and she stopped. "See that blonde girl at ringside?" I asked, pointing.

The waitress nodded.

I handed her a bill. "Tell her there's somebody who wants to see her for three thousand reasons. Got that? I'll be waiting in back."

She shrugged and proceeded on the errand as I moved toward the back of the club. I could still see Suzie from there, so if she tried to run out I could follow her. I doubted if she would do that, however. She was too smooth to resort to running.

In less than a minute, Suzie was coming toward me. And-would you believe it?-she was smiling. That chick had all the self-confidence in the world. She was evidently figuring that she could get away with conning me all over again.

It was understandable that she should feel that way, I guess. After all, I was a man and Suzie possessed some of the best man-bait in the world. In fact, I had never seen better.

I studied her as she approached. She was wearing a captivating black dress that fit snugly above the waist, cut low on her bubbling bosom. The dress was held up by spaghetti straps. From the waist down, it flared, its wide hem hitting right at her knees. She had her blonde hair piled up on her head and a thin black ribbon around it which was ded in a small bow at the front. A gleaming choker of pearls encircled her throat.

She was gorgeous. I could appreciate that fact and still hate her.

I moved back a ways, so that we would be out of sight from the table Suzie had just left.

She threaded between a couple of chair-backs and moved up to me, a black clutch bag gripped tightly in a gloved hand. "Jackie," she purred. "How nice to see you."

"I'll bet," I told her dryly, and then I asked, "How's Pete Randle?"

(Randall, you'll recall, was the character to whom Suzie had steered me and who had relieved me of my three grand in a crap game as crooked as a Pike's Peak path.)

"Now, Jack...." She touched my arm.

Something happened at the contact, even though her glove and my jacket and shirt were between our flesh. I really felt it for this girl. I still felt it for her, in spite of everything.

That made me all the angrier.

"We're getting out of here," I said.

"But I can't," she protested, her blue eyes imploring. "I'm with a man."

"I saw him. How much do you figure on snaking him down for?"

"Jack, you don't understand me at all. It wasn't my fault you lost your money in Pete's game."

"Wasn't it!" I said. "Then how come you didn't sdok around to show me a little sympathy, huh? How come you disappeared just when the money did?"

"My mother got sick, darling. She was up in Seattle. I had to rush to her. Then, later-after Mama died...." She blinked rapidly a couple of times, as if holding back tears. " ... you just were nowhere to be found when I got back in town and started looking for you. I missed you a lot, Jackie."

"You did, huh? Well, goody! Then you should want to ditch that creep you're with and spend some time with me ... so that we can get reacquainted."

"I'd love to, Jack. You know that. But this man

-I can't just walk out on him."

"You'd better, honey," I told her. "Unless you want me to walk over to his table and tell him all about you."

She stared at me.

"I'll do it, cutes. So help me, I'll fix your wagon with him so that he'll never want to see you again!"

"I think you would," she said flatly, having dropped the pose she'd been trying to carry off.

"Now you're getting smart. Go back to him. Tell him something's come up and you have to rush off. Make up any story you want to-you're good at that

-but get back here in two minutes flat."

"Then what, Jack?"

"Then, my little pet, we're going up to your apart merit and discuss old times."

She gave me a calculating look. "What is it you have in mind?"

"I'm not going to kill you, if that's what you think. Losing three thousand bucks isn't worth a murder rap. Let's just say I'm going to teach you a lesson you won't soon forget."

She watched me a bit longer, then her eyes began to sparkle. "You still like me, don't you, Jackie? I mean ... way down deep. Maybe you won't admit it to yourself but you got antsie-pantsy again when you saw me just now."

She was right. I couldn't keep from admitting it to myself because that's the way I am. I'm basically an honest guy. But my desire for her wasn't going to stand in the way of my taking some sweet revenge.

"Just go talk to your friend," I said. "I'll be waiting. And if you try to cross me, maybe I will kill you. Who knows?"

Smiling now, she turned and headed back to her table.

I knew what she was thinking. She was telling herself that a quick roll in the hay would soothe my wounded ego. All she'd have to do, she thought, would be to let me ball her and that would get her off the hook.

You see, I never had slept with Suzie. I'd been hot on her trail-and I mean hot-when she'd ditched me those several months ago. Now she was probably prepared to deliver in order to keep me from hurting over the loss of the three grand.

Well, she had a surprise corning, I told myself as I smoked a cigarette and waited for her to return.

She returned ... and within the two minutes, just as I had instructed.

"Come on," she said, grasping my arm. "Let's get out of here before he sees you."

"Suits me," I replied.

We grabbed a taxi in front of the club and in ten minutes we were in Suzie's modern and expensive little apartment on a street called Cresthill Road, which overlooked the bright lights of The Strip.

She took off her gloves and dropped her bag on a muted green chair. The place was lighted indirectly, in a soft suggestive way, and the white carpet on the floor was thick and shaggy. A cute little love nest, I thought. I wondered how many suckers she'd brought up there ... and haw much she'd taken them for.

"Scotch, Jackie?" she asked. "It was Scotch, wasn't it?"

"Was and is," I told her.

She crossed to the small bar and began to pour it. She poured one for herself, as well.

I was seated on a small sofa when she brought the drinks, and she sat down beside me.

A hot blonde in a cool apartment at two o'clock in the morning-it was a setup. And yet there was something I wanted that wasn't part of the usual bill of fare at such a time. I wanted not just a measure of compensation for what Suzie had done to me-compensation in the form of Suzie's perfumed flesh. I wanted revenge.

We sipped our Scotch and I forced myself to chat with her like a couple of old friends. Then we had refills. This time I was the one to make them and I poured doubles.

We sipped those, also.

Finally I said to myself, Old buddy, the time has come!

Little Suzie was one surprised girl when I took the glass out of her hands and set it on a low table, then took a firm grip around the upper half of her nubile body and threw her face-downward across my lap.

"Jack!" she cried out.

"You'd better remember the neighbors, sweetie," I said as I began hauling up her wide skirt and the flouncy black petticoat beneath it. "They're yours not mine."

"Jack!"

The display now spread before me was one for connoisseurs, let me tell you.

I go slightly ape at the sight of a well-curved and lightly-clad fanny.

Suzie's bottom was the best I'd ever seen in my fife. And lightly clad? There just couldn't have been a pair of panties any thinner or more transparent than the ones she was wearing. And they were black sheer exciting black, through which the pinky whiteness of her rounded buttocks gleamed.

Below the panties, the bareness of her full thighs almost blinded me above the point where they were encircled by the taut black tops of her stockings. Said black tops were tugged tightly by blacker garters which traveled upward beneath her pants and fastened to a thin belt around her waist.

Indeed, it was a sight!

If I hadn't been intent upon revenge, I would have kissed it.

I would have started on her thighs, just above her stockings, and I would have covered every curved inch of them with my lips. Then I would probably have slipped down her panties and kissed the lovely buttocks that they contained. Yes, they were kissable buttocks, friend-and I guess I don't have to tell you that you don't see too many of that kind.

I didn't kiss them, however.

What I did was spank them.

With the first crack of my hand against their shimmering softness, Suzie squealed.

With the second spank, winch made them shake like exquisite molds of jelly, Suzie moaned.

With the third spank, which began to pink them beneath the black nylon, she shrieked.

Strangely, however, she didn't fight me very hard. If she had really fought, I might have had a rough time of it, because she was a healthy energetic girl. But she just lay there and hollered and dug her fingers into my legs.

I continued to spank her.

I'm no sadist-at least, not to an abnormal degree-but I have to admit that I got a hell of a charge out of the feel of that lush bottom as it bounced and shook and quivered beneath my open palm. It was really reddening now. I was paying Suzie back, but good! Revenge had never, never been so sweet!

Suddenly I knew that, in order to climax the punishment, I would have to take her panties off. A spanking, after all, is not much of a spanking unless it is delivered against a backside that is totally nude.

So I stopped swatting her for a moment and dug up beneath the rumpled folds of her slip and dress.

"Wh-what are you doing?" Suzie demanded in a tear-choked-or was it a passion-choked-voice.

"I should think it would be obvious," I told her. "I'm taking off your pants."

"No!" she cried. "You have no right."

"I have all the right in the world, baby," I said.

And take off her pants is exactly what I did.

I slipped the elastic down across the sweet smooth hemispheres of her behind-now quite pink from the spanking I'd been giving them. At that point, the diaphanous black nylon pulled inside out. I stripped the panties down her thighs, past her knees, and all the way to her ankles. I lifted the leg elastics over her high-heeled pumps and tossed the small garment across the room.

Then I got down to work with a vengeance.

Suzie cried out all the stronger, imploring me to stop and then cursing me for not doing so. But still she didn't fight very much. Her fingernails bit into my calves as she clutched them for dear life.

I pounded her bare buttocks. It was spank, spank, spank-again and again. They turned from pink to rosy red. They shook, yielding deliciously to the stinging force of my hand.

She shrieked, "Oh! Oh! Oh!"

I could only conclude from the way she was hollering, coupled with the fact that no one had come pounding on our door, that the apartment must have been sound-proofed. But that was her worry, not mine.

Finally, as I continued to pound her fanny, and as her cries changed from loud exclamations to sobbing moans, she did something that surprised me: She reached around her own back and grasped my left hand, which had been positioned in such a way as to hold her down, and she carried it underneath her and pressed it hard against the twin bulges of her bosom which were then all but falling out of her low-cut dress.

"Rip the straps!" Suzie cried. "Rip them off!"

I was surprised, but I didn't give her an argument. I grasped one strap and yanked it. It popped. Then I popped the other one in the same way. Her soft bosom tumbled free.

Then as I continued to spank her with my right hand, my left one toyed with the hanging naked glories of her breasts, hobbling them and shaking them in my fingers and finding and plucking at their stiffening tips.

Passion had risen within me to such an extent that I could no longer contain it. I thrust my feet out in front of me on the shaggy white rug, making a ramp out of my legs, and I gave Suzie a little shove. She rolled down my legs, her skirt winding around her middle, and her bare pink-nippled breasts tossing. She finally came to a stop, face-downward, in the middle of the room.

She lay there, her smarting red bottom bare, her long black-stockinged legs tight together, the pink nose of one naked boob showing beneath her body, her cheek pressed against the soft carpet, and her blonde hair falling down and curling over her neck and shoulders.

I stood over her and began tearing off my clothes.

"This way," Suzie said in a passion-charged voice.

"Do it to me this way!"

"What?"

"When I'm this way, you damned fool! This is the way I want it!"

Don't ask me why. Masochism? The desire to punish herself for what she had done to me or to others? I don't know.

But I knew I would do what she asked.

Nude and throbbing with lust, I bent over her nearly naked form. I parted her legs and, gripping her firmly around the hips, I lifted her up. She helped me.

"Now!" she cried. "Slam me! Hurt me! Kill me with it, I don't care!"

On my knees behind her, I moved up. We touched. And then I pressed forward.

She cried out-a harsh, open throated bellow of pain-but I kept thrusting. I was making headway. More. More. I had her now.

She kept crying out and I began to batter her. My motions were slow and short at first. I knew I was hurting her. She kept yelling. Pretty soon it was going good.

"Grab me by the breasts!" she screamed. "Grab them and twist them!"

I reached up beneath her and grabbed. I shook them first and then I twisted.

And all the while I kept ramming up and back. Up and back. Longer strokes now. Harder. Firmer. Savage.

It was crazy-not right, I knew-and yet it was wildly thrilling. It hurt me a little, and I knew it was hurting Suzie a million times more. She was not loosely built, this girl. Every inch of her body was finely molded and firm.

It was ram ... slam ... bam in back, and pull ... twist .. pull at her bosom.

And then all hell broke loose, shaking me and convulsing me and threatening to turn me inside out.

When I had finally quieted and fallen back away from her, I realized that she had not been satisfied at least, not physically. She was still smoldering with lust.

I wanted to help her.

There was no more hatred in me. What I felt for her now was not pity, eitiier; it was a feeling far more tender and personal.

I rolled her over, looked at her tear-stained but wondrously beautiful face, and then bent to her and began kissing. My hot mouth pressed against her twisting thighs and moved up.

I gripped her around the middle and kissed her more avidly and passionately and intimately than I had ever kissed a woman in my life.

Suzie responded quickly. Her hips thrust. She moaned and gasped and panted.

When she finally achieved completion it was in a magnificent burst of energy that made it almost impossible for me to stay with her. I stayed, however, right to the last.

After it was all over, we lay on the rug, our arms around one another and my lips against her ear: "I'm sorry ... sorry...."

"Don't say that," she told me. "Just say you forgive me."

"Angel...." I murmured. "Say you forgive me, Jack."

I said it. And then I said something else. Tt was, "I love you."

I'd uttered those words a few times before, during the course of my checkered career, but I'd never before meant them as I did now.

We spent the night together. All night. And I didn't care that when I returned to my apartment, in the morning, Diana would raise all kinds of hell.

I didn't care what Diana did because I had found something more important to me than her, the business, the mess with Zimmer-everything.

Yes, my cynical friend, I had found love.

Maybe it had been a strange way to discover it, but I knew it had happened to me. When it hits you like that, you can't help but know. And then there's not another thing in the cockeyed world that matters.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WHEN I WALKED INTO MY APARTMENT at SEVEN fifteen, Diana was up and dressed and watching the door like a cat at a mouse hole. Only angrier.

I knew immediately, by the look on her face, that the two of us had had it.

"Don't tell me where you've been," she said as she stood up and crushed a cigarette in an ash tray that was already full to overflowing. "I don't want to know. But I've got a few things to tell you." Her voice was cold. She'd gone through the hot phase of anger and had reached the point of hard determination.

"Okay," I said. "Let's have them."

"First, I'm moving out. Today. In fact, my things are all packed. You can look in the bedroom if you don't believe me."

"I believe you," I said. I could have added that I didn't give a damn, but I didn't want to hurt her more than she'd been hurt already.

"Second, our partnership is washed out, as far as you're concerned. I'm taking over the business again."

Now, this was another matter. I'd worked by butt off putting the business on its feet, and I was damned if I was willing to sit by and let her take the whole works away from me. We could liquidate it, sure, but in such a way that I would get my share. That was really what I wanted to see happen, as a matter-of-fact, because it would separate Diana and me once and for all and would take care of the Zimmer problem at the same time.

Still I didn't want to fight with her, because I figured she was just talking. I had as much say-so in the business as she did, thanks to the partnership contract, and that protected me ... I thought.

I said, "As far as the business is concerned, we'll work something out."

She glared at me. "The only thing to be worked out is you. You're going to be out as of today."

"And just how do you propose to accomplish that?" I asked.

"There's a way. A very simple way. I've already been in touch with Hugo."

"Hugo?" I snapped. "You mean Zimmer?" I laughed. "So ifs Hugo now, is it?"

She ignored my verbal barb: "There's nothing you can do, Jack, because there's a clause in our contract that gives any two partners the right to buy out the third by refunding his original investment, with or without his consent."

I remembered the clause. We'd had the lawyer insert it to protect us against Zimmer, since we had foreseen the possibility that we might not be able to work with him. I'd never thought that he and Diana might some day direct the clause against me. She had always disliked Zimmer, right from the beginning. The idea of them working together seemed ludicrous.

I laughed again. "You've got to be kidding! Now, let's be sensible, shall we, and talk about selling the whole thing out for a three-way even split. Or, we might be able to sell it all to Zimmer."

"I don't want to sell out," she said. "The business is all I have now. Anyway, Hugo and I can get along. I might find, as a matter-of-fact, that he's a lot easier to work with than you are."

"You don't know what you're talking about, Di," I told her. "You don't have any idea what sort of man Zimmer is."

"I admit I've never liked him," she said. "But he's never tried to interfere, and his part of the operation has been clean."

"Clean, hell If you knew what I know...."

"And just what is that?" she asked.

I couldn't tell her. I was too deeply involved myself. There was a good chance that Diana would come apart if she knew what Zimmer had been doing, and my neck was at stake. I kept quiet.

"You're bluffing!" she said with a look of triumph. "You have no evidence whatever against Hugo. You just resent the fact that you're out and he's in. I had a long talk with him a half-hour ago and he's very receptive to the idea of the two of us taking the whole operation over."

"Sure he is!" I said. "He's had his eye on you right from the beginning. Don't you know that? He wants to cozy up to you-to try to take over my place in your personal life as well as in the business. But you'll find that it won't be the same with him as it's been with me. He's not right, Di. He's badly twisted. I don't think he's even a real man!"

She took two quick steps toward me and then swung her arm in a stinging slap across my cheek.

My first impulse was to strike back. But I held myself. There would be none of that. It would be silly.

"You can't think of anything but sex, can you?" Diana snapped. "You think Zimmer's leching after me and that I'd give myself to him. You don't have any respect for him or for me, either. You don't have respect for anyone or anything."

"That's enough, Di," I said, fearing that my restraint was about to melt.

"As far as Hugo and I are concerned," she continued in a calmer voice, "our relationship will be strictly business. I could never think of him in any other way, and he doesn't think of me in any other way, either."

"Like hell," I said. "Haven't you noticed the way he's always looked at you, whenever the three of us have gotten together?"

"It's all in your mind, Jack. As far as you're concerned, sex is all there is to life. Well, it isn't that way at all. Not everybody thinks about things the way you do."

"Oh, don't go holy-holy on me, now," I replied bitterly. "That I couldn't stand. You've been just as hot for bedtime all these months as I have. A damned sight hotter, as a matter-of-fact. If you hadn't been looking for sex when I met you, you'd never have taken me into the business in the first place."

"There's sex, Jack, and then there's love. Evidently you don't know the difference. I doubt if you've ever been in love-except with yourself, of course. That's a very tender affair of long and permanent standing."

"All right, Di," I told her. "I think we've both said enough. Just what do you plan to do? Spell it out to me so that I'll know where I stand. I think you owe me that, if nothing else."

"It's very simple," she said. "Hugo and I are getting together at the lawyer's' office this morning. We're going to sign the necessary papers. Legally, we don't have to pay you a dime for your interest in the partnership, since you didn't invest a dime's worth of money or property to start with."

"I invested a hell of a lot of time and sweat. Yes, and some brain-work, too. Or don't those qualities count for anything in your book?"

She shrugged. "They count ... to some extent. That's why, even though we don't have to, Hugo and I have agreed to make you a cash offer. It will be a modest one, but something nevertheless. I'm not going to be vindictive and send you away with as little as you had when you met me."

"How nice of you," I said. "Just what amount did you and your new boy friend have in mind?"

"Don't call him that!" she snapped. "He isn't my boy friend and he never will be. There's absolutely nothing between us except business."

"Okay," I said. "How much are you going to offer me? TeD me and maybe I can give you a turn-down right now. That will save you, Hugo and your lawyer a lot of unnecessary trouble."

She watched me for a while, then she said, "I was thinking about a thousand dollars. Hugo agreed to that amount."

"Well, isn't that generous of both of you!" I said acidly. "As far as I'm concerned, you can take the thousand dollars and stick it. My third of Sunnical is worth a hell of a lot more than that."

"You think," she said. "Hugo and I happen to look at it differently. And if you'll refer to your copy of the partnership and contract, you'll find that it's very explicit. It says the purchasing partners have to pay the selling partner no more than the amount of his original investment in cash and property. Cash and property, Jack. So the thousand dollars is really just a gift!"

I stared at her. "Did you have this in mind when the papers were drawn up-cutting me out some day, I mean?"

"No, I didn't. But my attorney did. He was protecting my interest, the way a good lawyer should. He regarded me as his client, not you."

"Have you talked with him about this thousand dollar pay-off?"

"Certainly," she replied. "I called him after I talked with Hugo. I reached him at home before he left for the office."

"I think you're bluffing," I said.

She shrugged again. "You'll find out I'm not."

I sat down heavily in a chair. Things were working out far differently than I had expected. A thousand dollars for all the time and work and know-how I'd put into Sunnical Tours! It was ridiculous. But maybe she was right-maybe I couldn't do a thing about it.

I said, "There's a better way to settle things than this--a fairer way.", "Don't talk about being fair, Jack. Not you."

We stared at one another and it was very clear that this was it. There was nothing more that I could say.

I stood up. "You don't have to move out of the apartment. I'll go."

"No," Diana replied. "I don't want to stay here. You can have the place."

"Do you want me to go with you to the lawyer's office?"

"I certainly don't," she told me. "What you'd better do is go to the Sunnical office and clean out your desk. You can also kiss Eleanor good-bye. No ... on second thought, I'm going to fire her anyway. Perhaps the two of you can take off together and find another little spot for yourselves. I think you'd make a pretty good pair."

"I don't hate you, Di," I said. "In spite of everything, I don't."

"I'm sorry that I can't say the same thing. But, then, I loved you, Jack, and you never loved me. What they say about the relationship between love and hate is true. I've found out the hard way."

She walked to the door. "I have to meet Hugo and the lawyer now. I'll be back later to pick up my things. For your sake as well as mine, it will be better if you're not here then. As for the thousand dollars, I'll have my attorney send that over to the office by messenger, along with the formal notice under our contract. When you get it, that will be your cue to be on your way. Oh, yes ... and just in case you had in mind writing yourself a big fat check against the business account, it might interest you to know that my lawyer will be in touch with the bank the moment that they open this morning. No check you write will be any good."

I stood up. "This is a hell of a way for it to end, Di."

"Yes," she said. "Isn't it!" And then she turned and walked out.

I collapsed in the chair again.

In spite of what she'd said about her lawyer's advice, I believed I could have fought her and gotten a damned sight more than a thousand dollars. But there was my personal involvement with Zimmer to think about. I weighed the fact that it would take me off his hook if I just faded away and never bothered him or Diana again; on the other hand, if I made trouble he would be able to strike back at me in a way I wouldn't like.

So I went to the office and cleaned out my desk, as Diana had advised, then I waited to get the thousand dollar check and the notice. I didn't say a thing to Eleanor about what was happening. I certainly didn't want to have anything further to do with her, and there was no point in going through a long process of saying good-bye.

The check arrived and I signed for it. I hardly glanced at the accompanying document, except to see that it was set up on the lawyer's stationery and bore the signature of both Diana and Zimmer. That proved there had been no bluffing on her part. I jammed the paper into my coat pocket, put the check in my wallet, and walked out of the Sunnical office for the last time. My few personal belongings were in a brown manila envelope under my arm.

When I got back to the apartment, I found that Diana's things were gone.

I sat down in the living room, lit a cigarette, and poured myself a drink. After that, I poured myself another ... and another ... two more ... and then I lost count. By noon I was stoned.

CHAPTER TWELVE

WHEN I WOKE UP, THE APARTMENT WAS dimly lit by the last rays of a vanishing sun. I was sick.

Then I was hungry, but I couldn't stand the thought of food. My head felt like a kettle on which some kid was pounding with a spoon.

I forced myself to take another drink along with a pair of aspirin. That helped.

Then I cleaned up, showering and shaving and getting into fresh clothes.

There were lots of things I could have been thinking about, I guess. I could have been worrying about what I was going to do with my life from that point on. I could have been wondering if Suzie was concerned because she hadn't heard from me or if she had perhaps run off with somebody else, the way she'd done before. I could even have thought about the young girls that Zimmer held in the country, and wondered if they would ever be rescued now that Zimmer had a firmer hold on the business and was going to have everything his own way.

Strangely, perhaps, I didn't worry about any of these problems. At least, not right then. What I thought about was Diana. Yes, Diana. Specifically, Diana and Zimmer. Or, more specifically yet Diana and Zimmer and George.

They would become a passionate threesome, I figured. And soon, too.

I reasoned this way:

First, Zimmer wanted Diana and I believed he "wanted" her in the only way he wanted any woman vicariously, with George or somebody like him as the intermediate instrument; second, Zimmer would be concerned lest Diana blow the whistle on him when she found out the way he operated, as she eventually would; therefore, in order for him to "have" Diana and to put her under his complete control at the same time, he would frame her in a nice little picture-taking session, just the way he had framed me.

He might even do it that very night, I thought Perhaps it was going on at that very moment.

I didn't take long to think it over. I left the apartment, got into my car in the basement garage, and took off for the house on Arapahoe.

Diana deserved whatever she had coming to her, you might say. But I didn't feel that way. What I'd said to her that morning had been true-the part about not hating her. I didn't hate her. I felt sorry for her because she didn't know what she was doing.

I had a gun-a neat .38-caliber revolver-which I'd purchased under a legal permit shortly after my violent run-in with Zimmer. I had figured that the time might eventually come when I would need it for self-preservation. It was locked, loaded, in the glove compartment of my car.

When I reached the neighborhood of Zimmer's house, I parked and then took the gun out. I released the safety catch and jammed it under my belt, the way I'd seen private eyes do it on TV. Then I left the car and walked quickly to Zimmer's place.

I wasn't afraid. Maybe it was just that I was still too sick and miserable to feel anything, or maybe I was actually looking forward to the opportunity of parting Zimmer's hair with a bullet, I don't know. But I was ready for whatever was going to happen.

Using the key to Zimmer's house which I still carried as a result of my two-hour tenancy of one of his rooms, I let myself in. There was nobody in the hall.

I walked to the rear of the house and opened the heavy sound-proofed door at the top of the basement stairs. Everything was dark down there.

I listened.

There was no sound, but then that didn't prove anything one way or the other. I started down the stairs.

Halfway to the bottom, I heard something. It was faint, but it had come from Zimmer's studio. Somebody was inside, all right.

I hurried the rest of the way and touched the metal door. It was closed tightly, of course, and I had no key to it. Zimmer had relieved me of that on the day of our ill-fated encounter.

My first thought was to see if George was in his own room and to use my gun to make him unlock the studio. But I discarded that. Dumb lout that he was, I couldn't be sure how he would react. If he tried to take me, I'd have to shoot him, and I didn't want to do that. Zimmer was the one I was gunning for.

So I pulled the .38 out from under my belt and moved close to the metal door of the studio. My eyes had accustomed themselves to the dark by that time and I was able to draw a bead on the Yale lock.

I squeezed the trigger.

The bullet tore into the metal and the door flew open. What I saw before me was a sight I'll never forget:

Diana was standing in front of the red-covered couch at the far side of the room, and she was naked except for brassiere, panty girdle and hose. The floodlights were on and Zimmer was standing a few feet away from her, not far from his camera. The human ape, George, was hulking in front of Diana, holding her dress, and she seemed too terrified to utter a sound. Her mouth was open contorted in fear, and her eyes stared wildly at the gargantuan man.

The scene was frozen in my memory in just the split second before all three persons turned to stare at the door where I was standing, gun in hand.

Diana cried out then. It was a moan of relief, signifying release of tension.

George grunted savagely.

Hugo Zimmer cursed, and then he did the one thing in the world that he shouldn't have done: He reached under his jacket for the automatic pistol he carried.

He didn't get it out.

My first shot ripped into his belly. Even as he buckled forward, the arm which he'd shoved beneath his coat continued to move. So I shot him again.

The second bullet struck him in the face. Blood squirted as he raised his hands and howled. He tottered a few steps, reeling, and then he collapsed on the concrete floor. He didn't move.

George was back-pedaling toward a far wall, yelling, "No ... no ... no...."

I said, "Shut up and get your hands in the air."

He did.

Diana was bent forward, her face in her hands, and her naked white shoulders were shaking with the power of her sobs.

I walked to her and encircled her with a comforting arm.

"Oh, Jack ... Jack...." She cried against my chest.

Before calling the police, I did two things:

First, I had a man-to-man talk with George. That is, if such a talk is possible between a fan and an ape.

I told him he was faced with a choice. He could let me hand him over to the police when they arrived, or he could clear out of the house and never come back.

He cleared out.

Next I went through Zimmer's studio-every cabinet and table drawer-and collected all the photos he had of the girls who'd fallen victims to his white slaving scheme. I stacked them together with all the records on his sex resorts and the photos he'd taken of Abby and me, which I found tucked between a cabinet and the wall. Then I went into George's room where I pulled down all his pictures and took the torn lingerie from his bureau drawers; all these I carried back to the studio and placed with the other stuff. I was going to destroy. Diana helped me load the crap into a couple of paste-board cartons, which we then carried out to my car and locked in the trunk.

As soon as we returned to the house, we went to the manager's apartment.

She gave us a blank look, having heard nothing of what happened downstairs. As I'd assumed, the basement was well sound-proofed. She evidently hadn't even noticed our comings and goings, or else, it was just that she'd been trained to ignore everything that happened, as far as Zimmer's basement activities were concerned.

When I told her Zimmer had been shot and that we wanted to phone the police, she came apart, starting to jabber like a monkey. I had Diana try to calm her while I walked to the telephone and placed the call.

The police came quickly, as Chief Parker's men always do.

Our story, which I had rehearsed with Diana while I ransacked the rooms downstairs, was that Zimmer had taken her to the studio on the ruse that he wanted to have a business discussion and that he had then tried to attack her; luckily I had been on my way over to see the old man to try to talk him into restoring our partnership, and I had arrived just as he was forcing Diana to disrobe; hearing through the studio door what was going on, I had shot the door open and killed Zimmer when he'd reached for his own gun.

Had George been on hand, his presence might have interfered with that story. Also, he might have babbled something about Zimmer's white-slavery operations. That's why I'd let him get away. I had hated to do it, but I'd figured it would be just a matter of time until he was picked up for vagrancy or something and that the authorities would probably then have him committed. Even if he were to blab about Zimmer at that time, it was reasonable to assume that the police would pay little attention to him ... particularly if the Zimmer case had already been disposed of.

It was my hope, of course, that no word about Zimmer's sex resorts would come out and that they could be quietly closed and the girls released. It would be difficult for the girls to make trouble for anyone, since Zimmer was dead and there would be no evidence of the way he'd blackmailed them. Anyway, to institute action they would have to go to the police and admit what they'd been doing, which would then become a matter of public record. I doubted that any of them them would do that. I assumed they would be only glad to be free from the hold Zimmer had on them and that they'd feel the less said about the whole thing, the better.

As it turned out, I was right.

The police accepted my story of Zimmer's kitting. Of course; they asked a lot of questions and nosed around, but what could they do except to believe me? Diana backed up my story completely and there was no evidence to contradict it.

When they finally let us go, we took a taxi back to Arapahoe to get her car-and my own, of course, although I hadn't told the police that I'd driven to see Zimmer. I hadn't wanted them looking in my trunk, so I'd said I had come by cab.

On the way. Diana told me, "I'll never be able to thank you enough or to get over how wrong I was about Hugo. If you hadn't come to help me when you did, I don't know what would have happened. It was awful!" She put her face in her hands again.

"I didn't do it only for you," I said. "It was for myself at the same time. Zimmer was blackmailing me, just as he was blackmailing the girls at his houses. You saw the pictures. That's why I couldn't tell you what I'd found out about him and why we couldn't cut him out of the partnership. When you decided to team up with him alone, I felt I had to help you. I figured I owed you that."

"It looks as if I've been foolish all the way around, doesn't it?" Diana said. "Can you ever forgive me, Jack. Maybe, if you can, we can get together again just the two of us."

"No," I said firmly. "It wouldn't work. But it was kicks while it lasted. Now you've got the business free and clear, and it's a damned sight healthier than it was when you first met me. That is, it will be as soon as we get those houses of Zimmer's closed down. We can take care of that little chore tomorrow."

And we did.

Also, Diana took back the thousand dollar check her lawyer had sent over to me and replaced it with one for five grand. I could have gotten more out of the deal, but that was all I wanted. It was enough to give me a good start somewhere else.

With Suzie, I hoped.

As soon as Diana and I got things squared away, I tried to call Suzie. But there was no answer.

I tried again later and still her phone continued to ring.

By the middle of the evening I was pretty worried and I went over to her apartment. The door was locked, so I camped beside it, smoking one cigarette after another.

I couldn't shake the fear that maybe she had run out on me for the second time. If she had, I knew I'd never be able to get over her.

I waited and waited.

It was about ten o'clock when she finally showed up. And she was alone.

As soon as we saw one another, she flew into my arms.

"Oh, darling," she murmured. "I didn't know what had happened to you. I waited all day yesterday for you call ... and today, too. I was just about out of my mind. Finally, this evening, I had to have someone to talk with, so I went to see a girl friend."

"I had big trouble to take care of," I told her. "Some day you'll hear all about it-well, maybe not all, but enough to give you an idea." I assumed she hadn't seen the small items the newspapers had run on Zimmer's killing. Since it had been justifiable homicide, there hadn't been much sensation value in it and neither of the metropolitan dailies had given it much of a play.

"Do you still feel the same way about me?" Suzie asked, her beautiful blue eyes searching mine. "I mean, the way you said you felt the other night?"

"I wasn't just saying it," I said. "I really meant it and I still do. In case you have any doubts," I added with a mischievous grin, "I know just how we can clear them all up."

She picked up on the play: "Well, maybe I do have some doubts, as a matter-of-fact. Maybe you'd just better prove things to me again."

I nodded toward the door. "You lead the way."

She took her key from her bag and handed it to me. I turned it in the lock and we walked inside, closing the door behind us.

"Speaking of the other night," Suzie said, "you don't have to prove it to me just the way you did then. I mean, not entirely."

"Don't worry," I said. "I'll never do that. Not unless you get naughty again."

"I think you knocked the naughtiness out of me," she replied.

Then I drew her soft warmth up against me and we kissed. Our tongue-tips touched, then circled each other and agitated in moist embrace. At the same time, I held Suzie tightly and after a while let my hands move downward along the graceful curve of her back until they reached the pert provocative mounds of her buttocks. The place I had spanked the night before I now caressed gently, and then I held the springy soft curves in my hands and kneaded them.

Pretty soon it became impossible for us to remain in our clothing, as close together as we were, and I released her so that we could get undressed.

But she didn't begin to undress herself.

She said, "One thing I've always wanted to do and have never done is to undress a man. Isn't that silly?"

"I don't think it's silly at all," I said, adding with a grin, "especially since I'm the man who's going to receive the honor."

She laughed softly and began to slip off my jacket. With my help, she succeeded in removing my coat, tie and shirt, after which she dropped her hands to the waistband of my trousers.

"Just one thing," I told her. "Since turnabout's fair, I get to undress you."

"I wouldn't have it any other way," she said. With that, she released the metal fastener at the top of my pants and drew my zipper down.

As I lifted first one leg and then the other, Suzie knelt in front of me and took the trousers off.

"There's another little matter of turn-about," she said as she looked up at me. "I mean, from the other night."

"You want to spank me?" I asked kiddingly.

"Certainly not," she said, as she continued lowering my shorts.

"Well, then, just what do you want to do?"

She didn't tell me. She showed me. And how she showed me!

In just a couple of minutes I was wound tighter than a very big and very powerful spring, and there was just one way in the world that I wanted to work the tension off.

I didn't strip Suzie slowly and lovingly, as a girl of her exciting dimensions deserved. Instead, I tore at the top part of her beige two-piece dress, pulling off a button, then all but shredding her skirt as I yanked it from her warmly rounded hips. It puddled at her feet, with her lacy white slip quickly landing right on top of it.

"God, but you're lovely that way!" I told her, filling my eyes for just a moment with the sight of her standing there in stockings, bra and panties. The stockings were a very sheer sandy-brown and the undies were white. The bra was cut low and was supported from underneath. I could have lifted her beautiful breasts out of it if I'd wanted to.

I didn't do that, however, but merely reached around her and popped the clasp. I pulled the bra away, flipping her lovelies as I did so. There was an awful lot of spring to them. They stood up and out, softly rounded below and almost concave at their tops. Her nipples, which were a delicate light pink, canted upward. But the nipples were not nearly thick enough or tall enough as yet. I took her breasts in my hands and began to minister to them.

"Oh, it feels wonderful when you play with them like that," Suzie said. "No hands ever made me feel so good before."

"And my hands never felt such goodies before," I replied with a grin. "So help me, I'd always thought that breasts were breasts, more or less, but yours are ... I don't know, but the very touch of them rocks me."

"Mmm." She leaned into my grasp and looked down at what my hands were doing to her. "See the nipples," she said. "Look at how they're growing. Oh, they really like that! They like your thumbs an awful lot."

"Is there anything they'd like better?" I asked. The nipples were swollen now, and I had my hands stretched around each breast, squeezing the tips up at me.

"Yes!" she panted. "Your mouth. They want your mouth."

But I didn't kiss them ... yet.

"All in good time," I told her, and I swept her up in my arms. I carried her to the bedroom.

When she was stretched out on the bed, I quickly stripped off her shoes and stockings. Then I rolled her panty briefs down and picked them from her pinktinted toes. I unclasped and began removing her garter belt.

"Now, Jack?" she asked, holding her tempting firm breasts in her hands and pouting playfully at me. "Will you kiss my tippies now?"

I answered her with a growl, coming down to the bed on hands and knees. And then I answered her even more positively by pressing my mouth around one of the lovely tips and drawing it upward onto my tongue. She moaned.

Kissing breasts is one of my favorite pastimes, and I can tell you from long experience that no two pairs taste just alike. Most all of them taste good, though. It's just that some taste better than others.

Suzie had the tastiest nipples I'd ever put my mouth to. Just slightly tart, they were-but sweet, too. The flavor was just right.

I pulled at them with my lips, going from one to the other-letting them slip out and then taking the rigid little shafts between my lips again and then, over and over again.

Finally Suzie said, "I can't wait any longer. Get on top now."

But I wasn't ready to get on top yet. I wanted to kiss her arms first-the tender inner sides of them-and then I wanted to kiss her belly. It was a smooth little pink-white rise, crowned at its crest by the cutest navel I ever saw, and adorned at its base by a delicate trace of gold. I kissed it all over.

And then I kissed up and down her tender thighs. The velvet flesh of their inner slopes was like honey sweeter by far than any thighs I'd certainly ever kissed before.

Now, to make it all complete, I lifted my face and began to turn her over.

"No, Jack," she said. "Oh, no!"

I chuckled. "Don't worry. It isn't that. I want to try to make amends."

And so I bent and kissed her there, as well. I kissed her right smack where I had spanked her the other night.

I had no sooner straightened up from that little excursion, then Suzie rolled onto her back once more and reached for me with her legs.

"Now make me happy," she said, her green eyes shining. "Make me know I've got a real man!"

Well, the time had come. I dropped to my elbows and moved, my midsection around until we were just right.

"Yes ... yes," she said. "That's it. Now go!" I drove up passion alley like a Ferrari with its throttle wide open, and this drew a joyful cry from Suzie.

"Is that man enough for you?" I asked.

"Oohhhh...." She kind of shivered the sound. "You're all man. Now make me feel it the way I want to."

In the minutes that followed, she felt it exactly as a normal healthy girl wants to feel the man she loves-aggressively, firmly, in slow steady motion that drove her insane with desire.

As for me, I was riding the thrill of thrills.

Every other girl I'd ever had seemed then to have been nothing but a warm-up.

Suzie was swiveling and thrusting, pounding up at me, and clutching me with her arms and legs. Her feet were very high on my back.

Man, it was good!

When I hit the finish wire, she was right there with me and we tumbled into the sawdust together, each of us satisfied to the very tips of our toes.

Later, as we lay talking, I told Suzie a little of what had happened-just that I had sold out my interest in a profitable business and that I had a fivethousand-dollar check lying in my wallet with nothing to do.

She got very excited over that: "Oh, Jack, that's wonderful! It means we can buy some new clothes and travel and play the horses and...."

"Hey, now wait a minute," I said. "This money's going to set us up in business somewhere. I haven't decided what I want to do just yet, but...."

"Maybe I can help you," she said. "I know this man-just a platonic friend, you understand-who has this investment deal open. I think he's looking for someone to take in as a partner."

I leaned over her and looked her right in the eyes. "Suzie," I said, "you wouldn't try to con me again, would you?"

She pushed me aside and sat up, so that we were face to face. "Con you? I don't know what you're talking about." Color had risen in her cheeks and her eyes snapped.

"Take it easy," I said. "I didn't mean anything by it, but there was the business with Pete Randle...."

"So you're going to keep throwing that up at me, huh?"

"No. But once burned, twice shy, they say."

"And you figure I burned you?"

"Let's not fight, baby." I could see she was getting sore.

"I don't know what to think about you, Jack. I don't know whether we can make it together or not. You're so suspicious."

"Let's just forget it, shall we?"

"I don't know if I can," she said.

"If I can forget about Randle, you can damned well forget about my suspicions," I told her.

"Well...."

I eased her down to the bed again and began to kiss her neck and then her cheeks. But, as I made love to her, I also made a resolution:

I was sure as hell not going to let her con me into anything from now on. What we had was too good to let money spoil it I only wished I could be sure about her.

But, then, you're never really sure of any woman, are you? At least, not the desirable ones.

After thinking it over, I decided that this was the way I liked it. It was the uncertainty of things that gave life its biggest boot.

So Suzie and I set out to make it together-me with the five grand and her with a gimmee complex that seemed to be aimed at the sole purpose of getting that dough from me by one means or another.

And what happened to us?

That, my friend, is another story.

THE END
The Panderer ....(98k)    by John Dexter




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