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The Knout And The Nihilists ....(97k)    by A. de Granamour

-A dominatrix hides behind her title of Countess.
-A lover of sadism uses his power as police chief to sate his sadoerotic needs.
-A Tartar, hiding nothing, simply enjoys watching women writhe under his lash and sexual demands.

The cruel and the innocent are thrust together by history-and the cruel dominate, defiling the naive and pure. Sex and sadism march through the courts of Czarist Russia.

PREFACE

History has a curious habit of providing parallels in nearly every century, so that the astute historian can look back and compare. Alas, mankind rarely consults the historian to profit from the past, and thus an eternal cycle of despotism, conspiracy to overthrow it and replacement by a different kind of power invariably occurs.

In the early days of the Bible, when Cain slew his brother Abel, assassination has been the favorite mode for the elimination of enemies, whether they be personal or political. The urge to violence, it appears, is not just contemporary to our own frenetic times; it has inevitably accompanied the growth of virtually every nation on the globe of the world. And always, at the moment of fermentation of the scheme to topple some hated monarch or dictator, president or pasha, there is the burning belief that with the elimination of that one man, the trubles of the times will disappear. History shows us that this is not true at all. And the irony of history is that often the successor to the victim so violently deposed proves that the status quo would have been infinitely better. When Charles I was brought before a high court of justice controlled by his enemies and beheaded, the English people found themselves much worse off under the austerity and religious persecutions of Oliver Cromwell. In the United States, after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the policies of the succeeding Presidents abandoned the cause of the Negro whom the martyred Lincoln had emancipated.

We find still another ironic parallel in this story, which concerns itself with Czarist Russia in the eighth decade of the nineteenth century. It marked a comparative era for the Russian people when viewed against the long-range history of past centuries, and even more so during the chaotic period which spanned from the death of Alexander II until the 1917 revolution.

For Alexander II, son of Nicholas I, came to the throne in 1855 and abolished serfdom six years later by the Edict of Emancipatpion. This act freed some twenty-two million peasants, a third of Russia's total population. It was Alexander II who introduced the first sensible system of local government for the many provinces and a new judicial procedure.

But terrorism and nihilism flourished despite these liberal accomplishments, and our story tells how the brutality and corruption of his ministers and his police brought about his assassination.

Those who planned his murder and struck him down were obsessed with the belief that all the ills and injustices they had suffered under a cruel bureaucracy would vanish with his death. They could not know that his son Alexander III, who was to reign thirteen years, would be a fanatic reactionary, a Czar who fostered the persecution of the Jews and the forcible Russification of minorities, a ruler who suppressed liberal thought and punished even more cruelly with the knout, the nagaica and the plet than his father had ever done before him.

But the story shows, together with its illustration of the sensuality and sadism of the decadent aristocracy and the petty officials who administered as they saw fit the edicts of the liberal Alexander II, that there is little more logic for the violent overthrow of a monarch or a president or a tribal chieftain than in felling the lofty top of a diseased tree whose flawed roots brought about the tree's wasting sickness. In our own land today, un-like these historic times of Czarist Russia which we are about to narrate, we have the freedom to choose our constitutional representatives to voice our desires for good government, wholesome progress that does not bypass the spiritual in its quest for the material gain, and a way of life which may, God grant, one day bring brotherhood and harmony to an old world that has too often endured the ironic parallels of unthinking violence, hatred and prejudice, and unleashed terror.

A. de Granamour

CHAPTER ONE

It was the Year of Our Lord 1881. Thousands of miles across the seas, in a land a little more than a hundred years old, Tuskagee Institute was being founded by Booker T. Washington, and New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois had passed the first pure-food laws of that land. That young nation was agog with the daring deeds of Frank and Jesse James, on whose heads the Governor of Missouri had set a heavy price. The State of Kansas had adopted prohibition, and the Supreme Court had declared that the Federal income tax law of 1862 was constitutional. And on July 1st , not quite four months after his inauguration, the newly elected President of the United States, James A. Garfield was shot at the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in the nation's capitol by a disappointed office-seeker, dying two a half months later. By the end of this notable year, the Secretary of State of the United States was to declare the Hawaiian Islands part of the American system within the bounds of the Monroe Doctrine....

A bitter Russian January wind had piled the St. Petersburg streets and walks with thickly packed snow, and the stolid drivers of the droshkies conveying that city's elegant aristocracy to the performance of "Les Sylplrides" at the Ballet Theatre swore angrily and plied their whips over the backs of their struggling horses. It was an hour as yet before the curtain would ascend and the spectators in their boxes might applaud the exquisite ballerina Claudine Normancier, who would make her Russian debut this very night. The rumor had it that the Grand Duke Alexei himself would not only favor the performance with his presence, but also command a different kind of performance from the slim, poignant-featured premiere danseuse in his own villa on Novgorodny Road.

But the Countess Elisaveta Rademkin was not at this moment overly concerned with either the snow-clogged thoroughfares nor the Grand Duke's secret amours. She had her own fine new carriage, equipped with curved wooden runners to traverse the snow and sleet, and her faithful coachman Ivan Betrushnik was a hardy rogue who had driven her safely about St. Petersburg through many a vile winter. As regards a love affair, she was presently enamoured of a tall blond lieutenant in the Czar's own guard, Dimitri Ushiskin, who had these past six months tenderly consoled her for the absence of her elderly husband, Count Paul Redemkin, engaged in secret diplomatic mission throughout the provinces for the Czar himself.

Her concern was that the charming brunette who was Madame Emalieff's newest assistant in the dressshop which she was pleased to patronize had misunderstood her request for flounces on the new gown she intended to wear at the ballet and had delivered instead an absolutely Unsuitable costume.

The Countess stood now, in an elegant camisole trimmed with expensive Alencon lace, two billowing petticoats, the finest lisle hose that could be found in all St. Petersburg, and high-buttoned shoes with mother-of-pearl buttons from the instep to the ankles. Hands on hips, her cold blue eyes angrily fixing the crestfallen young brunette, she snapped, "Do you realize what you've done, you stupid little fool? And there won't be time to do anything, since I must leave almost at once for the ballet! Didn't you understand my instructions clearly? Or can it be that Madame Emalieff did not transmit to you my explicit orders concerning the way I wished the skirt to hang and to be ornamented?"

"I was so sure, Madame the Countess-" the trembling young brunette stammered. But she got no farther. With a furious gesture, the Countess walked over and slapped the girl's face.

"Ohh!"

"Yes, you may well say that! And do you know what I'm going to do? I shall have to wear a dress I've already worn to the theater, just so that I don't miss the debut of this supposedly marvelous French slut who thinks she can compete with our full-blooded Russian dancers! And everyone will be looking at me in the box and wondering why it is that on so important an occasion Countess Elisaveta Rademkin can't have a new gown!"

"Forgive me, Madame the Countess-"

"Not at all! I shall have my driver take a note to your mistress, do you understand? And you ll stay here until I return from the ballet. Then I shall have you birched for both your impertinence and your stupidity, and Ivan himself will do it."

"Oh my God-you can't mean that, Madame the Countess-oh no, it's impossible-have mercy!"

The beautiful young seamstress sank down on her knees, clasping her hands in prayer, her eyes swimming with tears. She was twenty, her name was Nadia Moresko, and her father had once been a minor boyar with many versts of land not far from Moscow. His steward had taken advantage of his illness to let a greedy neighbor buy up some of his land and make off with Nadia's father's best servants. After all, things weren't as they had been in the good old days when serfs were slaves and had remained on the land of their birth, their bodies and souls belonging to their noble masters and mistresses. And Nadia's father had fallen into debt and blown out his brains three years ago, so that his lovely sensitive daughter had been left penniless. Her mother had died a year later, grief being the principal cause.

And so the lovely orphan had found a home in St. Petersburg with a distant cousin of her father's, who was personally odious to her. She had sought employment and, because she was skillful with the needle and thimble, had been engaged by the authoritative and fat Madame Emalieff. In time, but without giving poor Nadia any additional wages, the unscrupulous and despotic dressmaker had piled more and more responsibility on her-and at this very moment some of that was about to boomerang against poor Nadia herself. For it had been the dressmaker who had received the Countess Elisaveta Rademkin's specific orders on the gown. Then, harassed by many orders from her elite clientele, she had shunted off as much work as she could onto the capable shoulders of the lovely brunette. But in her transmission of these orders, she had forgotten to write down the principal details concerning the Countess's wishes-and now Nadia Morensko was about to suffer a dreadful penalty for her employer's own blunder....

CHAPTER TWO

Neither the Countess Elisaveta Rademkin nor Nadia Morensko could know that this misunderstanding about a new gown for the ballet and the unjust and humiliating punishment which the Countess was to have inflicted on the lovely young brunette seamstress would have incredible repercussions.. . of such solemn and terrifying magnitude, indeed, as to result in the death of the Czar of all the Russias. For now all the piqued patrician could feel was irritation over this stupid clod of a girl who had spoiled her fashionable appearance at a performance where the Grand Duke himself was to preside, and for her part, poor Nadia knelt there trembling with stupefaction at the thought that she had been condemned to the most mortifying and shameful of punishments. She had never been beaten in all her life, certainly never by her kindly parents, nor even by her unscrupulous and greedy employer Madame Emalieff, for the latter was too well aware of what a treasure she had garnered in this lovely young woman to whom she paid a wretched pittance and whom she ordered about as if Nadia were a slave. Since Sophia Emalieff herself had come from the commonest of backgrounds, it delighted the plump dressmaker to be able to reprimand the daughter of an actual boyar. (There was, as you can see, snobbery even among the poor and the bourgeois, as well as among the aristocracy in this the nineteenth century!)

"Yes!" the Countess angrily repeated, "You'll remain in here until I return from the ballet, is that understood? I'm going to have my housekeeper, Olga Kirvushoff, take charge of you and lock you up in one of the maid's rooms till I come back. And she'll have word sent to Madame Emalieff that I've ordered you to stay the night so you can be properly thrashed, do you understand me?"

"Oh no-have pity-but it wasn't my fault, I swear it on the holy ikon, Madame the Countess!" Nadia Morensko sobbed.

Disregarding the anguish of the beautiful young woman still kneeling at her feet, the haughty Countess, a woman of thirty-five, with imperious face and a magnificently buxom figure enhanced by the soft milky skin of a young girl, strode toward the table near the door of her salon, picked up a silver hand bell, and shook it energetically in the air. A few moments later the housekeeper appeared, a gray-haired woman, stern-faced, in her middle forties, with powerful thews and sinews so that her shoulders and upper arms seemed those of a wrestler. "Yes, Madame the Countess?" she deferentially inquired.

"Tabut don't hurt her too much. I'm going to have Ivan give her the birch when we get back from the ballet."

"Yes, noble lady," the housekeeper permitted herself a mocking grin at the unfortunate tearful young brunette. "Come along, you!" Now she stood confronting poor Nadia, her hands on her hips, glowering, the very picture of a prison matron accustomed to instant obedience and the infliction of the rod herself. If the truth be known, Olga Kirvushoff had once been a teacher in a rural school some twenty versts from Moscow about fifteen years ago, and she had found enormous sensual pleasure in flogging both the boy and the girl pupils consigned to her tender mercies. She had never married, and rumors had it that she had no use for men. Such gossip bore credence among the maids and housekeepers of other dwellings, since it was known that Olga Kirvushoff had been dismissed in disgrace from her teaching post after the district commissioner of schools had been dismissed in disgrace from her teaching post after the district commissioner of schools had visited her class late one Friday afternoon and found no one in attendance. Making further inquiry, the annoyed official pursued his search to the boarding house where she dwelt, and there in her room he found her with an almost naked fifteen-year-old girl, one of her pupils whom she had enslaved with both the lash and lascivious Sapphic embraces, since the girl had only a drunken old uncle to look after her.

Olga Kirvushoff remembered those happier days, as she now stared cruelly at the sobbing dressmaker's brunette assistant, and she regretted that her noble mistress would not allow her the pleasure of applying the rod to this delicious and mature penitent. Indeed, it seemed decidedly unjust that the boorish coachman should be allowed to wield the punitive rod, for he was a clumsy, unwashed and stupid rogue who was forever trying to pinch her bottom and to mumble into her ear that he wanted her to climb into bed with him for a good fucking. Olga would much have preferred to climb into bed with this enchanting and obviously terrified little pigeon.

"After you've locked her in, Olga," the Countess called, having already dismissed the appeal and the anguish of her unjustly condemned young victim, "please come back and help me on with my gown. I just know I'm going to be late, and it's all that stupid idiot's fault!"

In a nondescript little boarding house at 23 Petropolsky Street, about two miles north of the fine house of Elisaveta Rademkin, three young men and a stunningly handsome girl were talking in low voices. It was not a precaution against the eavesdropping of the landlady, who was sixty-two, somewhat deaf and incredibly dullwitted; it was because their project was not one which ought to be bruited about for strangers to hear, and particularly not for the ears of the brutal chief of police, Alexander Dvorkin. That last name was anathema to three of these young people, and it would soon be even more odious to the female member of this conspiratorial quartet, Vera Dugashkin.

All four of these young people were students of the Polytechnic Institute, a college for liberal arts, languages, social sciences and political history under the patronage of the Czar himself and thus handsomely endowed. Tuition was low, but admittance was selective. A formidable quintet of examiners had the duty of testing each applicant to the Polytechnic Institute, and thereafter made recommendations to the head of the institution, who summarily accepted or rejected the applicant. It was the belief of Alexander II that the future of Russia depended upon the edification of the young, and to that end he had favored that institution with his imperial patronage, wishing it to be known of him that he was fair-minded and tolerant, just as he had been in freeing the serfs. Another of history's ironies was here: out of that selfsame institution of learning, was to come a band of conspirators whom fate had chosen to end the Czar's life!

But it was not of the Czar that these young people were so earnestly conversing on this bitterly cold January evening. And if Alexander Dvorkin, this squat, lecherous, and sadistic chief of police, had heard their utterances, he would have unhesitatingly condemned all four of them to the knout-and Vera Dugashkin would have been dragged to his bedchamber immediately after her flogging. Handsome twenty-one-year-old Boris Lukatieff, who with his good frind Alexei Volnikoff, had rented this dingy set of rooms from old Madame Luba Rostoff, leaned forward and pounded his knee with his fist for emphasis: I tell you, comrades, that filthy pig of a Dvorkin isn't fit to live! You know that as well as I do, Alexei! And you too, Vladamir! And as for you, Vera dushka, pray God you'll never come face to face with that bearded, fat butcher!"

"I know, Boris," his roommate agreed, "Just last week Dvorkin's men brought me in for questioning, and all because I'd given a speech on the steps of the institute about freedom of thought! Why, doesn't the Czar say that we students are the hope of Mother Russia? It's we who must think and free the people from tyrants like the chief of police and all those brutal men of his who like to bully old women and children and ruin helpless girls they drag into their prison!"

Boris Lukatieff was black-haired, with sparkling eyes and the face of a poet, while his roommate Alexei, the same age, was blond and sturdy, more like an athlete than an intellectual. Vladimir Sokonikoff, a year older, was tall and lean and had just begun to grow a fashionable mustache. Vera, who secretly longed to be Boris's sweetheart and who had almost flung herself at him, was nineteen, with golden hair coiffed in in a thick oval braid at the back of her neck, severely drawn away from her pure forehead, with dreamy features and sensually ripe lips. Vladimir glanced covetously at her, for he was at the point of breaking off with his mistress, a pretty third kitchen maid in the house of the Boyar Illigodoff. His fickle Kitty had found a wealthier man than he, who was but a poor student and could spend only a few kopecks on her entertainment. So there wouldn't be any more pussy from that little slut, and what he wouldn't give to get between Vera's white thighs and stick his aching cock deep into her tender cunt!

"Why, Boris dear, do you denounce the man so much? Do you accuse him of crimes of injustice?" she demanded. Vera Dugashkin was a younger daughter of petty bourgeois parents, and her elder sister Natasha was about to be wed. As a result, she had become a kind of orphan at home, for her fond parents made much of Natasha and deemed her only a student. So that was why she had eagerly urged Boris, Alexei and Vladimir to let her come to their meeting this evening because, as she said, "At home, I'm treated like a cabbage without any brains at all. And at least you fellows have fine ideas and a girl can feel herself less of a slave by exchanging thoughts with you." Of course, it was true, she hoped that through her presence, Boris would at last be aware of her and make some overture to her.

But the handsome young radical could see in Vera Dugashkin only an enthusiastic supporter for his idealistic rage against a tyrannical police officer who was persecuting the young people of Russia. "Why do I say what I say, little one? Ah, you don't know what that filthy beast does to pretty girls like you, once he's got them down there at what they call the fortress. It was once an old armory, do you see, and when Dvorkin was named the head of St. Petersburg police, he appropriated it for his own private dungeon and torture chamber."

"Don't tell her everything, Boris," Alexei pleaded. "Such things aren't fit for a nice girl's ears!"

Boris gave his friend a look of scorn: "You talk like a sentimental idiot, Alexei Volnikoff! If she wanted to become one of us, it's only fit that she knows what we're fighting and why. Listen, Vera, there is a student at the institute-or rather, they give out the news that she's out in the country recovering after an illness. Do you know Anastasia Stoskin?"

"Oh yes, I did indeed. She's that very pretty red-haired girl I met in the biology class last semester," Vera volunteered.

"She's just eighteen and her mind's gone, that's what, and she won't ever be coming back to the Institute," Boris said gravely. "And I'll tell you why, Vera dushka. Some fellow she was sweet on asked her to pass out some pamphlets. So the poor girl did, without bothering to read them, satisfied they must be all right if her boyfriend gave them to her. Only they were seditionary. And one of them fell into the hands of a corporal, a man who's a Cossack and, what's worse, has Tartar blood in him. Corporal Peter Kuprin. His ancestors used to ride for Ivan the Terrible and they'd stage pogroms in little villages and torture all the people and rape the women, that's what they'd do. And Peter Kuprin's just as bad as his forefathers ever were."

"You'll scare her!" Vladimir, shaking his head, dolefully protested.

"So much the better! Then shell know what she's getting into when she's one of us!" Boris Lukatieff fiercely declared. "Well, listen, then, Vera, since you asked the question. So this Peter Krupin made inquiries around and there was always someone to be a good citizen and to inform. And about a month ago he came up to Anastasia as she was coming out of the Institute and told her that the Commissioner of Police wished to talk with her privately. And the poor girl went along, and that's why she's in a sanatorium now, not in the country, and her mind's gone."

"But in heaven's name, Boris, what was done to her?" Vera gasped.

"Don't say I didn't warn you, little one," Boris took Vera's hand and squeezed it between both of his. But he wasn't aware of the dying look of ecstasy she sent him, for she wanted nothing better than to have him hold her even tighter than that, even closer than that, with his two friends out of the room, to be sure." First, they brought her before this fat pig of a Dvorkin. He asked her all sorts of questions, and the poor child was frightened and naturally she had nothing to tell him. So he said that she was being obstinate and that she was a nihilist. And then he had this bastard Kuprin take her into the punishment room and show her the instruments. The whipping bench, the stocks, the post and all the nice little things they use on helpless girls like her. And when she still said she didn't know anything, that slob of a Dvorkin made a gesture. Kuprin tied her down on the bench, pulled up her dress and petticoats, and took down her drawers-"

"He didn't!" Vera cried, blushing scarlet.

"He did. And then he took a birch rod and whipped poor Anastasia until she was bleeding and screaming with the pain. And there were lots more things they did to her I don't even dare tell you about, little one. That's why I say, you'd better stay out of this. We're fellows, sturdy and not afraid of a thrashing. But with you, being so pretty, they'd do worse than that. Just as they did to poor Anastasia."

"But how can you know all this, Boris darling?" Vera cried, beside herself.

"Because, duska," Boris said soberly, "there's at least one good fellow in the entire rotten barrelful. He's only a lowly private, just another policeman, and Dvorkin probably doesn't know anything about him. But he can't stand seeing injustice, and it was he who watched through the bars of a little window out in the corridor and saw what they did to Anastasia. It's no wonder the poor girl lost her reason. Don't ask me anymore."

"How horrible!" Vera shuddered.

"Yes, and that's why, Alexei, Vladimir, we've got to pay that bastard back. If we could get Kuprin along with Dvorkin, it would be a wonderful thing."

"But how, Boris?" Alexei Volnikoff asked.

Boris Lukatieff stared at him, then put his fingers to his lips and mysteriously whispered: "A bomb!"

CHAPTER THREE

Even as the three young nihilists proposed the assassination of the feared and destested police chief of St. Petersbury, the object of their hatred and loathing was occupied at his favorite task of interrogating helpless, comely female prisoners in the interrogation chamber of the Lublianka Prison, aptly described as a fortress, with turrets of ominously gray stone, a grille ten feet high that encircled the building and through which one passed only by a heavy iron gate guarded by a uniformed sergeant of police. Alexander Dvorkin had sent his most trusted aide, Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky, to attend the performance of the ballet, so as to ascertain any possible attempt on the life of the Grand Duke. Lieutenant Lumovsky had taken a cordon of twenty secret police agents, dressed as inconspicuously as possible, to the magnificent building of the Imperial St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre and had stationed them advantageously, with two men at the back of the Grand Duke's box, and the rest along the the stairway and in the glitteringly resplendent lobby of this sumtious edifice.

It was true that the questioning of the two suspects Alexander Dvorkin had just had seized could have been handled as easily and competently by the lieutenant or by the even more sadistic Sergeant Nikolai Trogoff. But that would have been to deprive himself of the most delightful pleasures which he counted as one of the inestimable benefits of his high office, for Alexander Dvorkin was a cruel sadist whose lust for cruelty and the domination of his helpless female victims had no equal in all Of Czarist Russia.

He had come from humble origins, the third-born son of a lowly muzhik and the sluttish daughter of the village drunkard. He himself had been a serf on the huge farm owned by a noble boyar, and had often known the lash until Alexander II, just twenty years ago, had set free all the serfs. At the time, he had been a stripling of twenty-two, uneducated and knowing nothing but abject poverty, hard labor and the whip and the curses of his brutal superiors, like the steward of the fine house and the hetman of the labor crew.

When the Edict of Emancipation had been proclaimed, Alexander Dvorkin had run away, abandoning his parents, his brothers and his two sisters. He had made his way to St. Petersburg and obtained employment as a coachman to a widowed Countess, then twice his age but still fadingly handsome. In those formative years, he did not yet have the paunch and the look of savage dissipation about his features, and so the widow had taken a imagine to him, amused herself by having her pretty young housekeeper give him lessons in reading and writing. He repaid his mistress for this favor by raping the housekeeper one night when the Countess was attending a ball, and compelling the unfortunate young woman to yield to him whenever he wished on pain of a good thrashing, having already given her a sample of what she might expect if she dared betray him to the mistress. He had seen enough floggings on the farm and experienced enough himself to be highly competent in the administering of a beating; he had taken his belt and thrashed the young housekeeper's bottom and thighs and then, as she rolled over, shrieking and pleading with him not to hurt her, had flogged her naked titties until she crawled on the floor at his feet and hysterically agreed to do his will. Two years later, out of his own avid desire to forge ahead out of his miserable beginning, Alexander Dvorkin was able to read and write well enough to be entrusted with many important duties in the household of the still enamoured Countess. For by now, needless to say, she had taken Alexander Dvorkin to her own bed and found him a lusty and more than satisfying lover. He had been careful not to show his brutal side to her, satisfying that lust on the body of the trembling and almost complying young housekeeper Nelda, a brown-haired, timorous young woman whose plain features and self-effacing manner did not hide the fact that she had a breath takingly exciting body, once stripped and palpitatingly flung upon a bed.

By the time he was twenty-five, Alexander Dvorkin had managed to have Nelda dishonoraby discharged, for he had tired of her by then and already fixed his greedy eyes on a flirtatious, saucy seventeen-year-old kitchenmaid whom the countess employed. It was a simple matter to get rid of Nelda; he took one of her household accounts, falsified it, and then-ingratiatingly informed the Countess, when the two of them were lying together in bed after having made passionate love, that perhaps it was none of his affair but he had discovered that the housekeeper was cheating her noble mistress. Enraged, the Countess summoned the terrified young woman to her boudoir, while Alexander Dvorkin hid in a closet. Denouncing her as a thief, the Countess produced the tradesman's bill. Despite her protests that this bill had been altered and that the accusation was untrue, poor Nelda was found guilty by her angry mistress-who may have even suspected that muzhik lover might have had some secret erotic dealings with this pleading servant. And then finally the Countess ordered that Nelda be given a sound thrashing before she was turned out into the street, at which point Alexander Dvorkin left the closet, advanced upon the horrified young woman, and proceed to strip her naked, bind her wrists and ankles to the legs of the piano bench over which she was forced, and then had the pretty young kitchenmaid bring him a birch rod fashioned of long broom reeds. He flogged poor Nelda till she slumped, bleeding and fainting on the piano bench, and then seized the Countess and fucked her brutally, to the latter's ecstatic delight.

By the time he was twenty-seven, Alexander Dvorkin practically ruled the household; and all of the pretty young maids-whom he himself selected for employment-visited his bedroom by stealth, while he continued his love affair with his noble mistress. He had also learned how to forge and cheat and lie expertly without being found out, and besides, the widow could not live without him and thus was blind to his infidelity as well as to his peculations.

Then came a chance meeting in a tavern which changed his entire life. On one of his infrequent evenings off, Alexander Dvorkin went to a little tavern to drink some kvass, and it chanced that he was seated next to a furtive little man who carelessly spilled a drink on him. Bellowing with rage, Alexander Dvorkin was about to thrash the clumsy little man when the latter whispered, "No, no, you fool, I work for the secret police, I'm here looking for a rogue-forgive me, I didn't mean to offend you, good sir!"

Releasing him, Alexander Dvorkin demanded proof of this high stature, and when the little man showed him a document signed by the them all-powerful chief of police, Alexander Dvorkin was impressed. So much so, in fact, that he bought many drinks for his new friend and plied him with questions on the work of a secret agent.

Even after the Edict of Emanicpation, there had been sporadic attempts by inflammable young students to assassinate the Czar as well as many other aristocratic noblemen whom the students blamed for the decadence and corruption of the government officials. It was the little man's duty to track down some of these seditious traitors, to arrest them after having heard them make their revolutionary speeches against authority or to seize them in the act of distributing pamphlets calling for treasonable violence against the servants of the Czar. He had come to this tavern this very night in search of two young students who were suspected of being nihilists.

A conning and cruel scheme was spawned that night in the cunning mind of the ambitious young muzhik. In some of her unguarded moments in the bedroom, Countess Irina Naskova had often talked about the oppression and the cruelty that existed in much of Russia, even with the advent of the liberal Alexander II. Alexander Dvorkin foresaw a way to make his fortune in more ways than one; he would deliver the Countess over to the secret police, confiscate her money and jewels, and himself become a member of that dread organization, a post certain to be his after he had shown such proof of perspicacity and patriotism.

He made several appointments with the little man whom he had encountered in the tavern, and managed at last to obtain an interview with the then chief of police. The latter welcomed him with open arms, telling him that it was his duty to denounce even a blue-blooded aristocrat if she were known to be seditious. And, as Alexander Dvorkin had greedily hoped, the chief intimated that he would not be ungrateful to the informer.

It was very simple matter indeed. Countess Irina Naskova became easily intoxicated on champagne, and it was then that her tongue wagged most injudiciously. Ten days later, her treacherous lover saw to it that she had more to drink than was her wont, and as he made love to her, he slyly commented on the regime of Alexander II. To his delight, the Countess began her familiar tirade about the suffering of the people under the cruel Czar. And Alexander Dvorkin had made certain that the little furtive man of the tavern was hiding in the bedroom closet so that he could himself hear and testify to what the Countess had said.

A fortnight later, Countess Irina Naskova was brought before the chief of police, interrogated in the subterranean chamber where, straining against the whipping post and shrieking for mercy as a sturdy corporal lashed her naked back and shoulders with a nagaika, she confessed her treasonable utterances against the Czar of all the Russias. Released from the whipping post, she tearfully signed a document confirming this confession and was then exiled to Siberia for life. Though by edict the estate and monies of all convicted traitors were confiscated and revert to the Czar, Alexander Dvorkin had already ransacked the elegant house and made off with enough loot to live comfortably for many a year. As his "reward" for loyal service to the throne, he was made a secret agent of police.

Now he had truly found his metier, and his ascent was gradual but inevitable. It was found that he had an admirable skill in wresting confessions from the most obstinate male or female prisoners, and for two years he was given the post of chief interrogater in the subterranean torture chamber. There it was that he learned to use the birch, the plet, the nagaika and all the other cruel implements of persuasion and punishment in vogue in Russian prisons. By the end of that time, he had learned that there was little difference between a peasant girl, a milliner's assistant, and a countess; once stripped naked and tied bown on the flogging bench, once the rod swished down to deliver it's burning kiss upon their naked bottoms and thighs, they were all sisters under the skin in their tearful plaints, their abject pleas for mercy, and even their frantic avowals to do anything in the world to escape the further descent of the lash.

At the age of thirty, Alexander Dvorkin was promoted to the rank of sergeant, and because he managed to suppress an assassination plot against the Grand Duke, was made lieutenant. Just two years ago, when his superior died of a heart attack, he ascended to the supreme rank of chief of St. Petersburg police, and his power became absolute. Despite the liberal outlook of the ruling Czar, Alexander Dvorkin's position between the malefactors and throne gave him free rein to suppress the slightest revolts, to interrogate and punish even the most innocent simply because they were suspected of treason. And thus tonight, this bleak January night which was to begin the inexorable plan to end the life of one of Russia's most liberal Czars, Alexander Dvorkin preferred cold damp confines of the subterranean interrogation chamber to a box near the Grand Duke himself. For as he coarsely put it to his subordinates, "You want to watch dancing? Bah, it's not for me, those painted faces and those dancing tights on the stage! Let me rather have a pretty bitch standing in the pillory with her naked bottom sticking out for a good switching, and then you'll really see a dance worthy of the name!"

CHAPTER FOUR

Alexander Dvorkin thoughtfully tugged at his stiff black beard in which only a few gray hairs showed, and his beady little eyes narrowed with cunning. It was a fine haul his men had made this afternoon, and it would be a delightful evening, with no one to disturb him. His best men would be at the ballet able to take care of any uprising or nonsense, so he would have a free hand to examine these two luckless prisoners. They had been arrested on an open charge of sedition, and brought to Lublianka Prison straightaway. Here, hidden away in one of the underground cells, they could be kept indefinitely, so long as it pleased him to learn what bits of information they could give him about the plan to assassinate the Grand Duke. Of course, he didn't for a moment think these two young beauties really had anything to do with such a horrible, violent plan. More than-likely, they were probably the sweethearts of the real conspirators. But just the same, their fine plump white backsides would smart for it till they'd tell him all he wanted to know.

He had chosen his chief torturer. Corporal Peter Kuprin, to assist him in the interrogation. The two men formed a perfect foil for each other; Kuprin was thirty-eight, nearly six feet five inches in height, and burly, with powerful muscles and not an ounce of fat on his massive body. His head was shaved bald, and his high-set cheekbones and slanting, cold blue eyes and thin lips gave him indeed the look of a Tartar barbarian. He could drink enormous quantities of vodka or kvass without showing the slightest effect, and then proceed to orgiastic rutting upon a cringing, terrified naked female victims without any slackening in his virility. But most of all, he was even more of the lash than was his master. And it pleased Alexander Dvorkin to let Peter Kuprin exercise his special talents this January evening.

The chief of St. Petersburg police dealt differently with the bourgeoisie and the aristocrats than with the common criminals or young students seized and brought into the Lublianka Prison fo questioning. With those who were the more fortunate thanks to the blood which flowed in their veins and their financial superiority to the rank and file of ordinary prisoners, he showed the courtesy of an interview in his private office, But this office was so ingeniously constructed that when a young woman stood before his heavy desk, he had only to push a button just inside the top drawer, where upon the section of the floor on which the unsuspecting victim was standing would suddenly sink down till she disappeared from view from the waist down. Below, a signal already having been prearranged, his torturers would at once pinion the young woman's ankles, truss up her dress and petticoats and lower her drawers, and after much tantalizing and shameful palpation of her naked limbs and private parts, proceed to flog her expertly while Alexander Dvorkin, calmly smoking a cigar and pretending that nothing unusual was occurring, continued his bland questioning. Depending on the ability of the whipped female to continue a flying conversation ( interrupted by stinging cuts of the switch or the nagaika ), the procedure would be drawn out or speeded up according to his whim.

But tonight, the two visitors to the "fortress" were not fortunate enough to have either noble blood in their veins or to come of parental homes wealthy enough to reprieve them and to guarantee them deferential treatment. He and Peter Kuprin were in the subterranean interrogation chamber, and two guards had just brought in the intended victims, who, now, wringing their hands and beginning to weep, had already caught a glimpse of the terrifying apparatuses with which this grim, huge chamber was furnished.

One of the women was petite, extremely attractive, about twenty-four, with frizzy little blonde curls all over the top of her high forehead, a sweet rather vapid heart shaped face and enormous blue eyes. Connoisseur of female flesh as he had become, Alexander Dvorkin was sure that under her none too fashionable and heavy winter garments, Lydia Petrovna possessed a magnificently opulent pair of bottom-cheeks and titties. She was clerk in a little tobacco shop off Strazne Road, where a number of suspicious young revolutionists had been seen meeting on several occasions. Her employer, a cantankerous old widower in his early sixties who had frequently and unsuccessfully sought to induce Lydia to share his lonely bed, had seen a way to get even with her for her rejection of him, by simply intimating to a police agent that it would be well to watch his employee because he believed her to be sympathetic to the revolutionary cause. Indeed , in Czarist Russia in this epoch, just as in the days of the Holy Inquisition in Madrid and Toledo four centuries past, a vindictive neighbor could easily balance the scales as regards unrequited love or some vexing act by denouncing the object of his spite to the authorities. This very morning, Lydia Petrovna's room had been thoroughly searched but not a scrap of evidence produced to link her to or with the young revolutionists; needless to say, such a lack of evidence did not pronounce her innocent in the eyes of the sadistic, bearded chief of police who now greedily devoured her with glittering, narrowed eyes as she stood trembling before him, glancing nervously at her companion.

The latter was taller, perhaps five feet seven inches in height, a mature twenty-eight years of age, her dark-brown hair thickly braided in coronet style around the top of her head, Her name was Eleanora Vishnieff and her only crime was that she inhabited a little studio apartment on the second floor of the building which housed the tobacco shop in which Lydia Petrovna was employed... that and the fact that her husband had deserted her two years ago for a young tavern wench whom he had taken off to Odessa, obliging Eleanora to earn her daily bread by tutoring the children of her neighbors and by doing some sewing for wealthy families. The secret agent to whom the old tobacconist had denounced his blonde assistant had mentioned that Eleanora Vishnieff some times came to his shop to purchase papyrossky, the cheap Russian cigarettes with strong black tobacco and long paper tubes which burned unevenly but cost only a few kopecks. And since it was unusual for a female to have the habit of nicotine, this irrelevant fact at once made her suspect in the crafty mind of the secret agent.

Corporal Peter Kuprin, his arms folded across his brawny chest, black-booted and wearing a white woolen tunic and coarse black breeches, stood to one side contemplating his future subjects, whose charms very soon he was going to have the pleasure of unveiling and streaking with the burning and infamous stigmata of the birch or the plet. Though not a muscle in his face flickered to betray his emotions, the brutal Tartar torturer was churning with lust at the sight of these delicious creatures, and he shot his master a look of intense gratitude for having selected him as their interrogator.

Alexander Dvorkin pulled at his beard again, thoughtfully glanced at the sheaf of documents in his hand and then fixed both quailing young women with a stern look: "Petrovna, Vushnieff," he began in a dry voice, "you've been brought here for complicity in a plot to assassinate the Grand Duke. Now before you begin to speak, let me warn you both that we know a great deal more than you think we do. I hold the authority of the Czar himself to do whatever is necessary for the protection of the royal family or any of his trusted officers and government officials. My men are already rounding up and taking into custody all of that nasty little group of radicals and plotters, and they'll be here very shortly, I can assure you. But you can save yourselves a great deal of discomfort and lighten your sentences by throwing yourself upon the mercy of the Czar, confessing your complicity in this wretched affair, and making a full confession. Well, now, what do you say, eh?"

"But this is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous and a dreadful mistake!" Eleanora Vushnieff gasped, questioningly glancing at her lovely petite blonde companion. "I never think of such things. I earn my living teaching children and by sewing, and I cannot assure you that I work too hard for my daily bread to have any truck with such nonsense as plots and revolutionists. I demand to be taken before a magistrate where I can make a statement!"

"I see," Alexander Dvorkin again tugged at his beard and shot Peter Kuprin a smirking glance of anticipation. "You appear to have a fair education, Eleanora Vushnieff, so it will go all the worse with you once we find out you're really guilty, you understand me? Now, a stupid little piece like this little Petrovna, who's had very little education and whose answers won't be as high-faluting as yours, I'm quite sure, well have a greater chance at leniency. So you'd better change your tone, Madame Vushnieff, because right here we've the ways and means to make you. Take a look about you, and then think it over very carefully when I say that because of my authority, I am not content until I know whether a prisoner is telling the truth or lying. And I just don't take a simple statement of yes or no, understand that also! Isn't that right, Kuprin ? "

"Indeed it is, Excellency!" the Tartar chuckled.

Eleanora Vushnieff stared at the huge, brawny Tartar and shivered as she saw the lecherous glow in his slanting eyes. Turning back to face the bearded chief of police, she vehemently declared, "But I've no reason to he, your honor! All you need do is ask the neighbors-" 'Oh, we've done that

"Oh, we've done that already, Vushnieff, "Alexander Dvorkin curtly declared. Another of his mannerisms, when he was impatient to begin a session of interrogation, was to drop the victim's Christian name, and humiliate her by using only her family name, as if she were already a convicted criminal. "The tobacconist says you've been in his shop quite a few times, Vushnieff. At the same times, I dare say, when these traitorous young dogs have been huddling in the back thinking up their vicious little plots to strike at our glorious Grand Duke! There's no need denying it, we've sworn witnesses and depositions enough to convict you already."

"But in the name of heaven," the beautiful dark-haired girl protested in a voice that had begun to tremble as she finally began to realize the terrible situation, " Until last year, I was happily married and my husband could tell you I never had any political ideas at all! I'm only a hardworking woman now, without my husband, forced to earn my living as best I can."

"With a chattering tongue like that and a bold, handsome face, Vushnieff, you might earn a great deal more if you held the yellow ticket." Alexander Dvorkin insultingly taunted her. For in Russia, all professional prostitutes were obliged by law to register at the police stations of every town or city in which they plied the world's oldest profession, and received a yellow identification card which they had to keep on their persons at all times to be presented upon demand.

Eleanora Vushnieff uttered a choking gasp as she understood his shameful innuendo, and her finely grained olive-sheened cheeks flamed with humiliation.

Satisfied with the effect he had achieved, Alexander Dvorkin turned his attention on the trembling blonde Lydia Petrovna. "Now, it's your turn, Petrovna!" he declared. "Your employer says he's often seen you talking to those young dogs. Now be a sensible girl, Petrovna, don't give us any truble tonight. Myself, I'd much rather be at the ballet enjoying the dancing-wouldn't I, Kuprin?" This with a broad wink.

"Of course, Excellency, it's well known how you like to watch the ladies dance!" the Tartar smirked, "You see?" Alexander Dvorkin continued in a gently confidential tone of voice. "If you'll just confess here and now, Petrovna, and sign this paper, I'll intercede for leniency for you with the magistrate. The worst that can happen will be that you'll get a whipping from one of the prison matrons and spend about two years in a cell. But that's much better than being knouted and then sent to Siberia for the rest of your life, don't you think, Petrovna?"

Certain now that both young women were terrified out of their wits by his hard manner and direct accusation, the bearded police chief approached petite blonde Lydia Petrovna and, an angry frown on his saturnine features, pursued: "Quickly now, Petrovna! I have a feeling that you're going to be more sensible than Vushnieff there. But I tell you this, woman, if you don't at once confess and throw yourself upon my mercy, I can go so far as to sentence you to the knout! Have you ever seen a criminal whipped with that, eh? It would take the skin off your tender flesh from the nape of your neck down to the crease between your buttocks, and that's no lie, is it, Kuprin?"

"Da, Excellency," the Tartar torturer chuckled assent.

Indeed, the knout was one of the most terrible flagellatory implements ever invented, and its most famous use was against the beautiful Countess Lapushkin, in the days of the Empress Elizabeth. That domineering ruler had heard that the lovely Countess-whose first name, by another historical irony, was the same as that of the dark brown-haired divorcee-had disparaged the regal beauty, and for that lese majeste the Countess was sentenced to receive the knout, to have her tongue torn out and then to be sent to Siberia for life. On a cold wintry morning she was escorted to the scaffold, and there made to undress, removing all her elegant finery and Parisian laces, till she was naked to the waist. Then one of the executioner's assistants hoisted her on his broad back, gripping her wrists and bending well forward, where upon the brutal executioner dragged her garments down still lower to expose the shapely and delicate-skinned cheeks of her fliching bottom, at which she protested tearfully, crying out that she had been sentenced to be flogged and not to be displayed like a whore before the populace.

The knout was made of a bull pizzle. long wide and thick, with two hides sewn together, with an extremely heavy handle; it required both of the executioner's hands to wield, Drawing it far behind him and stepping back, he would then launch it forwards, at the victim. History records that the Countess Lapushkin survived this brutal beating as well as the tearing out of her tongue, and lived to publish a document denouncing the cruel Empress. But well beyond that, and even during the days of the comparatively benign Alexander II, there were occasionally public executions of murderers or forgers sentenced first to the knout, and even so gentle and innocent a young woman as the charming Lydia Petrovna had actually witnessed its application. Small wonder, then, that she shrank back with a stifled cry of horror, and then, wringing her hands, tearfully exclaimed, "Oh, your honor, not the knout! But I've done nothing, I swear to you on the holy ikon! Wait, I know why that old fool denounced me-it's because I wouldn't sleep with him, yes, yes, that's surely it! Oh please, your honor, question him, not me, and you'll find I'm innocent!"

Poor Lydia Petrovna had no way of knowing that Alexander Dvorkin was a pathological sadist; she could have produced the most convincing evidence to clear her name, and it would have availed her nothing; she still would not have escaped the flogging, the stripping, and the eventual rape to which this autocratic tyrant meant to subject her in the name of the Czar.

"So!" he thundered. "You're going to play that game, are you? We'll have the truth out of you before too much linger. And we're going to start with your older companion, who seems to be a little more educated than you, Petrovna! When you see how we deal with her, perhaps you'll decide to speak the truth. Kuprin, put Vushnieff on the whipping bench, tie her down solidly, and let me see her bottom. Then I'll decide what's to be used on it!"

"Oh no! You can't mean that, your honor! But this is impossible-oh the shame of it-please, have mercy! I swear to you I've seen them in the tobacco shop, but I don't even know their names!" Eleanora Vushnieff clasped her hands as tears glistened in her dilated eyes.

Alexander Dvorkin made an impatient sign, and the grinning Tartar seized the unfortunate young woman and dragged her over to a low wide wooden bench into which were set at top and bottom heavy metal manacles destined for her wrists and ankles. Forcing her down on the bench despite her cries and hysterical sobs, he swiftly locked her wrists in the manacles, and then proceeded to treat her ankles the same way. Then, winking at his master, he stooped and dragged up the victim's thick skirt, at which she turned her face over her shoulder and began to babble: "Oh for dear Lord's sake, your honor, not naked! Oh the shame of it-it's not right, it's not decent woman, I've never had anything to do with revolutionaries! Oh, what are you doing-oh not my petticoats too! Please, oh have pity, your honor-oh dear not my drawers, at least leave me my drawers, they won't protect me much, oh your honor, have pity on a poor unfortunate woman who's never done anything wrong, who's praised the Czar all her life!"

Her tone became strident, hysterical, as the Tartar torturer impassively and expertly continued her disrobing, a procedure in which he was past master. In spite of her frantic wrigglings and her attempts to flatten herself against the bench so that he could not drag away her garments, Kuprin managed to unlace her petticoats and to yank them down as far as they would go, to about her calves, since the widely separated placement of the lower set of manacles straddled her exaggeratedly. And now he had began to tug down her coarse muslin drawers, at which her wails and cries became deafening as with all her strength she ground her loins against the whipping bench to retain this last veil to her modesty.

Slyly Kuprin reached between her buttocks and with right thumb and forefinger applied a diabolical little pinch to her cunt. Eleanora Vushnieff uttered a shriek of pain and shame at this outrage, instinctively arched herself up and at that moment the Tartar yanked down her drawers to expose the olive sheened, smooth, twitching hemispheres in all their voluptuous amplitude.

The cheeks were broadly oval, the ambary, shadowy groove normally narrow and dissembled; but thanks to the straddling imposed by the manacles, it now was lasciviously distended, and Alexander Dvorkin's eyes feasted on the thick dark-brown fleece which framed her soft palpitating cunthole and flourished so luxuriantly that it grew along even the beginning of that secretive posterior groove.

"Tear the drawers quite off, Kuprin," he commanded. "Otherwise, they ll hamper her movements. Since we can't go to the ballet this evening, we must have our dance all the same, eh, you Tartar rogue?"

"Your Excellency has the keenest wit in all St. Peter burg," Peter Kuprin salaciously chuckled as, again gripping the coarse stuff of the drawers, he ripped them from Eleanora Vushnieff s body and flung them to the stone floor of the interrogation chamber, an act which was announced by a piercing shriek of abject shame and despair as the unfortunate young woman turned her face to one side and, closing her eyes, sobbed hysterically, knowing herself to be undone and thoroughly at the mercy of these two torturers.

As for Lydia Petrovna, she stared with incredulous and dilated eyes, her magnificent round titties wildly heaving against the bodice of her thick winter dress, and Alexander Dvorkin's swift, appraising glance told him that she was, despite her terror, fascinated by the revelation of that magnificently sculptured quivering and contracting naked female posterior distended before her.

To make certain that the victim's dress and petticoats would not, during her expected struggles under the lash, tumble back down to protect her naked bottom, Peter Kuprin took a cord, and carefully rolling up the garments nearly to her shoulder blades, passed it under her body and round her back, knotting it tightly to keep them in place. It was necessary to her shoulder blades, passed it under her body and round her back, knotting it tightly to keep them in place. It was necessary for him to administer sadistic little pinches to the poor young woman's sides in order to get her to arch her torso up from the bench to permit the circling of the cord; and when he had finished, the Tartar slipped his left hand along the young woman's side and pressed intimately against the outer curve of her left tittie, while Eleanora Vushnieff gasped and groaned, her body shook with violent shudders of outraged modesty.

All this while, Alexander Dvorkin was savoring the fascinated terror of lovely little Lydia Petrovna. As soon as Kuprin straightened, the chief of police made a sign, and to poor Lydia's cry of anguish, she felt herself seized by the wrist and dragged towards another apparatus near the bench on which her companion in misfortune lay tethered and prepared for her whipping.

Being petite-about five feet three inches in height-poor Lydia Petrovna was even easier to handle than her taller companion, and despite her tearful entreaties, she found herself forced to kneel down on a huge upholstered chair whose heavy wooden back was formed like the headboard of a pillory: two smaller holes for the wrists, and a neck yoke. Once this headboard was clamped down into place, the unfortunate young blonde could not see what was taking place behind her, while at the same time she was compelled to kneel upright and then bow her head and thrust her wrists forward, in a posture which magnificently emphasized the rotundities of her plump posterior.

At the edge of this heavy seat on which she knelt, sturdy metal rings had been sewn into the upholstery, and two strong cords lay over one arm in readiness. Peter Kuprin deftly corded each ankle and made it fast to the corresponding ring, and then without further ado began to unfasten Lydia's Petrovna's skirt, to drag it down as far as it would go, and do the same for her two dowdy lisle petticoats which were observed to be somewhat threadbare and of cheap material. Dying of shame, poor Lydia twisted and squirmed as best she could, but she was fettered too adroitly to escape the crafty and knowing fingers of the Tartar. Then she uttered a wild, prolonged cry of outraged virginal anguish-for indeed she was still untouched by man despite her twenty-four years-as her drawers were fucked down to mid-thigh, her shirtwaist rolled up high on her back and tucked round her bowed neck so that its flaps dangled against her panting round full closely-spaced titties.

"Now there's a bottom one can really work on, isn't that so, Kuprin?" the chief of police, in high good humor, remarked. "You will notice, my good fellow, that here we have two splendid female posteriors, yet each is different from the other and thus requires careful and exemplary treatment. Now for that big, spacious backside of Petrovna's my first impulse would be to use a good sturdy birch, whereas on Vushnieff, I'd try the plet. Of course, that's only my impression, Kuprin. You do what you like. Remember only that I want to hear both these wenches squeal and tell us everything they've been holding back, eh?"

"Spassibo, Excellency," the Tartar inclined his head with a grin of lustful pleasure at this mark of tribute to his flagellatory prowess. "You know I shall always do my best in your service. It's for the Czar, may he have long life!"

"Amen to that, Kuprin. Now let's see, with whom shall we begin? I think that since Vusnieff wants to show off her better education, she may be impressed a little more that we mean business when she hears Petrovna yell. Oblige me, my good fellow."

"With the greatest pleasure in the world, Excellency," the Tartar declared. He stood for a moment contemplating the huddling and contracting naked bottom cheeks of the petite blonde tobacconist's assistant, then slyly ran his calloused palm over the magnificent satiny globes. They were breathtakingly tempting to a flagellant; upstandingly rounded, quite expansive, with a gradually broadening shadowy fissure between them, and the skin was sensitive and of a a pale carnation tint that contrasted exquisitely with Eleanora's warm-olive-hued flesh. By a sadistic refinement, this whipping chair had been placed at a slight angle to the left of the bench on which the brown-haired victim lay, so that both young women could look at each other; but while Lydia could observe the play of the lash of her companion's naked behind, she would be quite unable to know when the Tartar executioner was preparing to assail her own jutting naked posterior with his whip. Nor could Eleanora watch that punishment, either, though to be sure she could look back over her shoulder and observe her own.

At the wall nearest the Tartar, a brine-filled bucket held three birch rods of varying lengths and thicknesses. At eye-level on this same wall, from a row of hooks there hung a formidable arsenal of whipping implements, from the three-thonged short whip known as the nagaika, to the English cane with crooked handle and long whippy stick (Alexander Dvorkin had requisitioned many a flogging instrument from a friendly European nation in order to have at his disposal a varied and artistic collection), and the infamous plet, the whip made of a two-foot-long slender cedar handle to which three strips of thin rawhide between three and three and a half feet long were attached. The ingenuity of the plet consisted of the different length of each rawhide lash so that it would apply three separately placed biting kisses on the naked flesh of the naked victim condemned to its caresses. When hardened male offenders were interrogated, the chief of police often bade the Tartar torturer use a plet which had tiny leaden balls fixed to the ends of the three rawhide thongs. But that far crueler and destructive whip would not be inflicted on the shuddering, satiny naked bodies of these delectable female prisoners, since Dvorkin and Kuprin intended to enjoy themselves with the coerced sexual favors of Lydia and Eleanora after their nervous systems had been furiously agitated by a sound and severe though not permanently damaging whipping.

The chief of police now seated himself on a leather-padded foot-stool, folding his hands and leaning forward to contemplate the squirming naked behind of the weeping Lydia Petrovna. Eleanora Vushnieff, her cheeks still flaming with the blush of shame, had closed her eyes and tried to diminish herself on the ignoble whipping bench, perhaps momentarily thankful that the lustful eyes of this bearded satyr were not fixed on her instead.

Kuprin strode towards the bucket and lifted each of the birches in turn, to get its heft and feel. Then, glancing back at the whimpering blonde in the pillory-chair, he chose at last the shortest and thickest of the rods, shaking it out so the excessive moisture would not soften the atrocious sting as they smacked pitilessly against that pale-carnation-tinted skin. Then he returned to take his stance at the victim's left, his eyes fiercely glittering, his nostrils flaring, his muscles surging along his brawny body as he prepared to begin the s'ance of this most delightful of all sadistic sports.

Slowly he drew back the birch, holding it stiffly and directly above the quivering naked bottom globes of the whimpering Lydia Petrovna. Then, as the chief of police sucked in his breath and leaned forward even more excitedly, the brawny Tartar delivered the first sweeping cut of the bushy rod, dashing it over the top of Lydia Petrovna's naked right hip. A startled cry escaped the young woman, and she involuntarily jerked at her clamped neck and wrists, while the Tartar drew back the rod and observed the first marks on her naked flesh, indicative to his practiced eyes of the degree of sensitivity of her skin. Bright pink striata had at once leaped upon the smooth bare flesh thus pitilessly attacked. Now, with a kind of cruelly artistic cunning, Kuprin directed a backhanded cut over the young woman's left hip, and once again Lydia Petrovna jerked and cried out, finding her posture atrociously cramping and confining, though the movement of her bottom was not at all restrained-a highly important nuance so far as Alexander Dvorkin and his sadistic assistant were concerned.

There followed a long pause, through which poor Lydia fidgeted and squirmed about on her knees, for the upholstery though thick, was hard and exacerbating to her dimpled knees, covered in coarse black woolen hose which were held up by white flannel garters bound tightly round the middle of her plump thighs. With the mass of petticoat and drawers fucked down just below her bottom, that sumptuous posterior appeared the more obscenely naked as it twitched and contracted, with the darkening marks of the first two cuts vividly imprinted on the pale-carnation sheen of those voluptuous rotundities. And as she moved about, trying again to find a more comfortable resting place for her dainty knees, she unwittingly exposed the pink cleft of her virgin cunt, thickly downed with fleecy dark-blonde curls, a sight which made the eyes of both men blaze with anticipatory lust.

Suddenly without warning, Kuprin directed a furiously slashing horizontal cut from right to left across the plumpest curves of both huddling bottom-cheeks, and then a second and yet a third within the short space of perhaps ten seconds. Lydia Petrovna shrieked, plunged her naked seat this way and that, tugging frenziedly at her yoked wrists and neck till the pillory board creaked its protest. Her eyes huge with anguish, blinded with tears, her mouth gaping in her anguished cries, she thus exhaled her suffering. Leaving the birch rod lying between her straddled knees and atop the pile of tucked-down garments, the Tartar now went to the wall to take down the plet and to return to where Eleanora Vusnieff lay trembling, her eyes tightly shut, on the whipping bench.

CHAPTER FIVE

Despite his huge stature, Peter Kuprin moved swiftly and silently, and before the dark-haired young woman could prepare herself, he raised the cedar handle of the instrument and swept the three rawhide strips down in a diagonal lash, leaping them furiously with an angry "Clack!" over the spacious oval globes of her olive skinned bare bottom.

"Ohhh! Ahhh. It hurts me, it hurts me! Oh, your honor, spare me, in the name of mercy, I'm innocent!" she cried hoarsely, turning her contorted face back over her left shoulder to stare imploringly at the bearded chief of police who had drawn his stool a little closer to the bench so that he might watch the suffering of this more mature and probably more impressionable victim.

The first stroke had left three closely paralleling bright pink weals which ran from the base of Eleanora Vushnieff's left buttock to the edge of her naked right side, where the longest of the three rawhide thongs had bitten. The Tartar studied the effects of this first stroke by the plet, his lips curving in a cruel smile as he saw the flesh twitch and quiver. Then, slowly raising the whip again, he brought it down with a quick jerk of his wrist, sending the three divergently long rawhide strips straight down over the middle of her naked bottom, one of them biting exactly into the shadowy groove between her magnificent bottom cheeks, while the other two angrily smacked the olive-sheened flesh of the inner curves of both quivering nether globes.

Eleanora Vushnieff's body convulsively jerked, then her head rose up, her eyes swimming with and she uttered a hoarse cry: "Aiii! Oh, your honor, I can't bear such pain. I've done nothing to deserve it. Oh, spare me, sir, spare me!"

Alexander Dvorkin's face was flushed and twisted with his mounting lust. He nodded to the Tartar, who laid the wicked plet on the victim's shuddering bare posterior, and then went back to the pillory-chair. He retrieved the bushy rod and, holding it out stiffly again as he stood at right angles to the petite blonde sufferer, directed three or four swift, short cuts over the upper summits of Lydia Petrovna's right buttock. She had begun to whimper when she saw the Tartar move away from the whipping bench, rightly divining that it would be her turn again, and as the stinging withes bit sharply against her pale-carnation flesh, her posterior swerved violently from side to side, and she began to sob, "Ohhh! Owwoohhh! Have pity, your honor, oh no-I've done nothing, I swear upon the ikon. Ohhh, please, it hurts, it hurts!"

Moving over to the left, Peter Kuprin now administered three brisk cuts across the top Of the blonde's left bottom cheek, and then, placing his left palm on the middle of her shuddering back, drew back his arm and with all his strength delivered a furious slashing blow across the exact centers of both huddling naked globes. Lydia Petrovna wrenched at her wrists and neck, till again the pillory board clattered and creaked, and her wails and hysterical sobs burst out poignantly: "Aaahhhrrr! Ohh, have mercy, it's too much, I'm innocent, oh don't, don't, your honor. I'm a good girl. I've never been in any truble before. I did nothing-ohhh, how it hurts me!"

The Tartar turned back to his master, who nodded again, held up his hand, and then addressed the weeping young sufferer: "Of course it hurts, Petrovna, but we haven't even started yet, do you understand? Perhaps by now you know we're not fooling with you, eh? I'm going to give you a little rest now so you can think it over. But when Kuprin comes back to you, girl, you'd better have made up your mind to tell us everything we want to know, or I may let him flog you with the plet. And you can imagine how that will hurt on such a tender bottom as yours, my girl. Very well, Kuprin, we mustn't keep Madame Vushnieff waiting, her bottom's-likely to take a chill in this damp room, don't you imagine?" And with a peal of satanic laughter, the chief of police made a sign to the brawny torturer, who left the birch rod on the seat between Lydia Petrovna's straddled knees and moved back to the whipping bench to resume the flogging of the shuddering and now terrorized dark-haired older victim. Seizing the cedar handle of the plet, and moving back a few steps, he lifted the whip and then brought it down with a sudden jerk of his wrist just as the ends of the rawhide strips reached the huddling naked behind of Eleanora Vushnieff, so that this time, the pointed ends of the thongs nipped the twitching, enervated flesh of her naked bottom. Here was seen the admirable efficacy of the plet: each thong varied in length by three inches, so that the longest rawhide strip stung the edge of the young woman's right hip, the middle thong bit against the ripe summit while the thong at the left of the handle lodged its fiery kiss at the base of her left buttock near the sinuous shadowy furrow separating the condemned posterior.

Eleanora Vushnieff's hips lunged upwards, then swerved from side to side, and she fell back on the whipping bench with a thud, drowned out by her piercing shriek of pain, as, turning her tearstained, contorted face back over her left shoulder towards the Tartar torturer, she implored, "Eeeeowwwoohh! Your honor, mercy, mercy! Youl! tear me to pieces, oh, it's unjust, I've done nothing, I've nothing to tell you, don't you understand?"

"Your courage is to be admired, Vushnieff," Alexander Dvorkin mockingly retorted as he tugged at his beard and hunched forward, his glittering eyes devouring the lascivious bright streaks which the strips of the plet had left on the victim's olive-tinted naked bottom. "But I warn you, Kuprin hasn't even begun to warm up to his work. And by the time he's reached the halfway mark, he's going to try the effect of a supple, flexible birch on that big behind of yours, Vushnieff. Of course, just so no one can complain that we aren't fair in our methods, Petrovna will then have to taste the plet. I've always wanted to know to what degree of sensitivity a thrashing brings a tender backside, whether the flesh is hotter after a good taste of the birch or whether the plet prepares it more painfully for the birch. So I'm grateful to you both for allowing me to conduct this experiment, which will doubtless be of great aid to us in future interrogations. Go on, Kuprin!"

"Oh no, oh heaven help me-eeeowwwooohhh!" the brown-haired victim shrieked as once again the three rawhide thongs of the cruel plet swept down, this time spreading out their sinister dark brown bands over her entire posterior. With expert dexterity, the Tartar was able to wield the instrument so that the three lashes could fall en masse, or slither out like three biting serpents, or again, as he had just shown, direct vicious flicks with the pointed tips of those three polished rawhide thongs. Thus the suffering could be infinitely varied and a whipping mercilessly prolonged, yet without tearing the fine skin of a woman's tender bottom.

But now the chief of police himself deigned to "honor" the two unfortunate and innocent young women by taking a literal hand in the proceedings. Striding towards the pillory-chair on which the weeping and whimpering Lydia Petrovna knelt, he seized the birch and, after first passing his left palm down over the small of her back and stealthily caressing the sides of her naked, squirming hips, he applied six quick cuts all over her bright-streaked naked behind, from top to base, while the unfortunate young woman sobbed and screamed and twisted her hips from side to side in a frantic effort to escape the thrashing. Meanwhile the Tartar, following his master's efforts, lifted his arm and administered four slashing blows without pause over the tossing, wriggling and jerking bottom globes of the dark-haired captive, Eleanora Vushnieff frantically tugging at the manacles which held her slim wrists and, her face turning back over her shoulder, uttering plaintive, sobbing cries to implore mercy.

Deaf to these entreaties, Peter Kuprin stepped back, planting himself well at the victim's left, and then slowly raising his right arm, swept down the three rawhide thongs so that they cracked wickedly against the base of the condemned posterior. Eleanora Vushnieff lunged and twisted madly on the whipping bench, her face upturned to the somber ceiling, her eyes drowned with tears, her mouth gaping in a heart-rending shriek of despairing torment: "Ahrrroouuueeeowww!! ! "

The Tartar stooped over the writhing sufferer, his glittering eyes examining the vividly streaked olive-sheened flesh of her voluptuous, mature behind. Nowhere was the skin broken, but the angry pattern of whip marks was lasciviously varied, from angry little darkening swellings where the tips of the rawhide strips had bitten, to the broader, longer crimsoning welts left by the length of the burning thongs, and then the brighter, even more obscene stigmata from the most recent lashes.

He now adjudged her bottom to be ready for the birch, while poor Lydia Petrovna would in her turn be able to compare the difference when the plet swept over her even more vividly striped naked posterior.

Alexander Dvorkin accepted the cedar handle of the plet from his Tartar aide, while the latter went over to the bucket beside the wall to choose a longer thinner and murderously flexible birch for Eleanora Vushnieff's further whipping. Then, in unison, both men raised their arms, descended them swiftly, and the cries of the two helpless captives rang out in a kind of agonized and piteous chorus: "Aiii, oh, it's too much, have mercy, your honor! Eeeowww, spare me, I know nothing, I'm telling you the truth, on the ikon I'll swear it, your honor!"

But neither torturer responded now, for each was caught up in the maelstrom of his own vicious lust. The birch and the plet rose and fell repeatedly, with only an occasional pause, to prolong the sufferers' agonized suspense, and the interrogation chamber was filled with the poignant, hysterical screams and babbled entreaties of the whipped young women. Lydia's plumper, paler-skinned bare bottom seemed to be marked more vividly than was Eleanora's, but under the stinging slashes of the supple long withes of the slender rod, the latter's naked posterior was even more mobile and uninhibited in its feverish contortions.

At last the two police officials, breathless and sweating, flung aside their implements, each exchanging a meaningful glance with the other, as they watched their two victims vibrate and jerk and twist unceasingly long after the final stroke had fallen on those now furiously welted naked behinds.

"Now then, you stubborn bitches, are you ready to confess, or shall we try the knout?" Alexander Dvorkin hoarsely demanded. "We've quite a special one on hand here for particularly stubborn offenders." He went over to the wall and took down from a heavy hook a terrible flagellatory weapon. It was about seven feet long, its thong measuring some four feet, while the wooden handle composed the remainder. The knout was originally a Tartar invention, though to be sure the Russian usage of it often varied it in length and width. Generally it was made from the hide of an old donkey, usually boiled in vinegar and mare's milk, and about an inch wide. The lash was usually curved to produce two sharp edges along its entire length. The Czar's executioner, as well as every prison official who had occasion to use this fearsome whip when a magistrate's sentence prescribed it, practiced daily so as to be expert in its wielding. A well-trained flogger could apply his strokes all within the space of a silver ruble, and he could also skin the entire width of a woman's back or bottom or even the flesh of her straining thighs. In the days of Ivan the Terrible, those convicted of major crimes were sometimes sentenced to death by the knout, and if the victim was a woman the executioner would wrap the thong around her naked body, tearing her nipples and titties, often ripping away her belly and loins.

But no such fiendish marring of such lovely flesh was now contemplated; Alexander Dvorkin intended solely to impress his victims with their helplessness so that they would willingly submit themselves to have any further flogging remitted.

It was this ferocious instrument which Alexander Dvorkin, moving round the pillory-chair, now displayed to the horrified, tear-blurred eyes of blonde Lydia Petrovna. Her face congealed with terror, and then she began to babbly hysterically, "Oh no! Oh you'd kill me! Mercy, your honor! Oh not the knout, please, I'll do anything, but I'm innocent. Even if you tortured me to death, by all the saints, I swear it, I'm not guilty of treason, your honor! Pity, pity on a poor orphaned girl who hasn't anyone to defend her, in the name of humanity, your honor, pity!"

"Do you think the bitch is lying to us, Kuprin?" the police chief slyly asked, as the Tartar giant moved round to stare greedily at Lydia's tear-stained, contorted face. Thus the two sadists keened the young woman's suspense to the most enervating pitch, rendering her further resistance to their lubricious desires quite impossible, as indeed they knew it would.

"Well, I'm not sure, Excellency. She has had a good dose though, and she still keeps on saying she's innocent. After all, we haven't really placed her as a member of that scummy group of revolutionists."

"That's true, that's true!" poor Lydia wailed, believing herself now to be reprieved, "I'll take any oath you wish, your honor! But I tell you, it's only because I wouldn't give myself to that wretched old devil, that's what it was, I know it! I'm a virgin, your honor, and he's so old and filthy and cruel-why, he pays me only a few rubles a week and he takes it all back in the rent he charges me for my miserable little room! Have pity, your honor, let me go, I'm loyal to the Czar, I swear I am.

"She seems convincing enough, Kuprin," the chief of police drawled, thoughtfully tugging at his beard. "All right, Petrovna, maybe I won't throw you into jail and have you charged with treason. You know what that would mean, the knout at a public stake, and then exile for life to freezing Siberia. So you're ready to take an oath?"

"Oh yes, your honor, oh yes, anything you ask, oh thank you, your Excellency, thank you!" the plump petite blonde captive sobbed.

"Well then, Petrovna," Alexander Dvorkin's voice trembled with rut, "will you show yourself grateful if I pardon you and let you go now with only a warmed backside for your truble?"

"I'll say prayers for you every night, your Excellency! Oh yes, I'll be ever so grateful, thank you, thank you--. "

"Wait a minute, Petrovna. That's not exactly what I meant. I want a little better proof of your gratitude than your prayers. I want you to give me what you wouldn't give the tobacconist, do you understand me now?"

From the whipping bench on which Eleanora Vushnieff lay, a horrified gasp was heard as the dark brown-haired older woman comprehended ahead of her younger companion the brutally unjust motive for this interrogation.

"Well, speak up, Petrovna!" the chief of police impatiently persisted. "Maybe you do need a taste of the knout after all!"

"Oh, no, your Excellency, not the knout! Oh God, do anything you want, take me then, but not the knout, oh not the knout, I beg of you!" the blonde captive heartrendingly sobbed.

"Now that's showing sense, Petrovna," Alexander Dvorkin thickly chuckled as he undid the fly of his dapper uniformed breeches, drawing out his swollen penis, with the dark veins standing out like gnarled growths against the unhealthy sallow, taut skin. Handing the knout to the Tartar, he jerked his thumb toward the whipping bench and Peter Kuprin grinned and nodded.

Moving behind the chair, Alexander Dvorkin gripped Lydia Petrovna's naked, whip-streaked hips and thrust his prong against the gaping pink cleft of her virgin cunt. The blonde victim uttered a strangled cry, regretting her horrid bargain, but it was already too late. Grunting in his lust, Alexander Dvorkin crammed himself against the hymeneal seal, and even as her piercing cry of pain rang out, burst through it and hilted himself inside her narrow love-canal.

Meanwhile the Tartar had planted himself at the head of the whipping bench, holding the knout in both hands, twisting it about and showing it to the horrified dark-haired captive. "I'd hate to turn your lovely bottom into raw meat, Vushnieff," he intimated with a lecherous smile. "And then of course I'd have to dump that bucket full of brine on it to stop the bleeding, wouldn't I? Oh, it'd heal up in time, all right, but I don't think any man would want to have any truck with you once he took a look at the scars."

"You-you devil!" Eleanora Vushnieff panted, tensing her bottom muscles in a useless attempt to diminish the magnificently firm, angrily striped contours of her voluptuous behind.

"You'd best watch your tongue, Vushnieff," he barked. "I think you shall have the knout after all. We'll start with five good lashes right over that big bottom of yours. Then maybe you'll change your tune, woman!"

Eleanora Vushnieff uttered a cry of incredulous horror, craning her neck to stare back over her shoulder as the Tartar walked back to the end of the whipping bench, placed himself at some distance from it, and gripped the heavy long wooden handle with his sinewy fingers, slowly lifting the dangling curved dark-leather band.

"Oh no! Don't hit me with that, oh don't, for heaven's sake! Mercy-have mercy on me! What do you want of me?"

"Your cunt, bitch, that's what I want of you! Beg me to fuck you, and I'll let you off the knout this time. But be quick about it, for I'll have my satisfaction with you one way or the other, it's no matter!" the giant growled.

Her flesh already cruelly burning from the double thrashing with birch and plet, her body involuntarily shuddering with dread at the sight of that hideous whip, Eleanora Vushnieff bowed her head and a long shuddering groan escaped her: "Ohhh, good heaves, do it then and be done with it!"

"Now you're showing you've really got some brains, Vushnieff. Very good, but don't for get you yourself begged me to do it. Come along now, I'm going to make you more comfortable so we can have our time together," the Tartar chuckled. Then, unlocking the manacles which held her wrists and ankles, he grasped her by an elbow and dragged her up from the bench, drew her stumbling and sobbing, over to another ingenious apparatus toward the other end of the interrogation chamber.

It was a low, square straw-covered wooden platform, with two iron rings set into the wood about a yard apart. A few feet ahead of the rings, there rose a thick triangular-shaped board, with two small rings fixed at the base on each side and a yoke-hole at the top. Eleanora Vushnieff was made to kneel upon this platform, her knees locked by the manacles in the floor, and then her wrists were corded and tied to the rings set in the triangular post, while the top was lifted and her neck fitted down into the groove;' then the headpiece was locked back into place. Thus she crouched virtually on all fours, while her neck and head were held higher than the plane of her sculptured back, and the exaggerated straddle of her thighs gave full access to her private parts. The Tartar tore away her petticoats entirely and rolled her stockings to her knees, to have as much of her tempting, mature, olive-satiny body naked as possible. Then, opening the fly of his breeches, he bared a huge, swollen organ, fully seven inches in length, and knelt down behind her, his brawny fingers squeezing her belly and thighs and hips as he adjusted himself. Eleanora Vushnieff whimpered and closed her eyes, her body shuddering violently as she felt his cockhead probe against the tender twitching lips of her gaping cunthole. And then as with a brutal shove, he forced into her channel to the very balls, she uttered a cry of pain at the brutal, rasping and distending vigor of his organ as, unleashing all his rut, the Tartar executioner began to fuck his victim.

Soon once again the interrogation chamber was filled with the clamorous groans and sobs and cries of the two helpless and ravished victims, as well as by the grunts and gasps and lewd oaths of the torturers. When they had had their fill of their victims, the latter would be released without formal charge brought against them-but the two young women would bear to their graves the indelible memories of the unjust and shameful ordeal which they had suffered.

CHAPTER SIX

The Countess Elisaveta Rademkin moaned softly as she pressed herself against Lieutenant Dimitri Ushiskin, hardly conscious that her carriage had stopped in front of her elegant house. It was nearly midnight, they had just returned from the ballet where, to her great delight, she had encountered her blond young lover. And since he was not on duty and since also her husband was still traveling through the provinces on business for the Czar, she had impulsively invited him to return to her house with her after ther performance, that they might take tea and some of fat old Grushenka's honey-cakes together. To be sure, she counted on satisfying more than her appetite for food in his companionship, for she had just remembered she had condemned Madame Emalieff's young brunette assistant to a sound birching for having delivered a faultily executed gown. Thus, her vindictive pique had been somewhat lessened when she met the tall, smiling young officer in the foyer of the theatre after the first act of "Les Sylphides," but now the delicious thought of the stolen hours she would spend in his embrace recalled to her again what an exciting spectacle it would be to have dear Dimitri witness the girl's whipping.

The Countess herself had, in the past, twice visited Lublianka Prison to testify to the Chief of Police against two thieving maids who had been in her employ until each had stolen a trinket from her jewel case and been found out. In each instance, righteously, the beautiful, mature aristocrat had remanded the weeping and pleading girl over to the custody of the police, and the next day had gone to prefer charges. She had accordingly met Alexander Dvorkin each time in his capacity as chief of the Czar's police in this capital city of Russia, and she had been ostentatiously escorted by a handsome and attentive lieutenant of police (none other than his trusted aide Sasha Lumovsky) to a comfortable armchair from which she could watch the "interrogation" of the unfortunate girl. Each time, she had shivered voluptuously as the sobbing young maid, tearfully pleading for mercy and swearing to her noble mistress that she hadn't meant to steal the trinket at all, had been dragged either to the whipping bench or to the pillory-chair, trussed up, skillfully tethered, and her drawers then taken down to expose her naked bottom. Countess Elisaveta Rademkin had been fascinated by the whippings. One of her maids had endured the three-thonged leather plet thirty times across her broadly ova, pale milky bottom cheeks. The other girl had tasted a thick, twiggy birch rod. To see the naked flesh of a healthy young female bound and jerk and tremor, while the soft skin reddened and darkened under the repeated kisses of the lashing, had excited the Countess almost to a paroxysm of sensual excitement, which on one occasion she had relieved in the arms of her own husband, the second time having satiated her lust in her husband's bed with this same young Czarist officer whom she was now inviting into her house.

And there was a further reason for her wishing him to become titillated by this spectacle of a decent and very pretty young woman trussed up so shamefully by the servants, because the past few weeks Elisaveta Rademkin had begun to suspect that her stalwart and attentive young lover was beginning to tire of her mature charms. She had seen him on Betroskoff Road in a troika, with a saucy red-haired young woman beside him wearing a new astrakhan cap and muff, and the two of' them had been very close together in the troika, the lieutenant's arm around the hussy.

Later, when she had remonstrated with him for his fickleness, Dimitri Ushiskin had given her a sorrowful look and retorted, "But, my beloved FJisaveta, that was only my little Cousin Tanya. She lives in Moscow, and I hadn't seen her for over a year. You mustn't be so jealous, my adorable, beautiful Veta!"

That tender diminutive had almost reassured her, for Dimitri Ushiskin used it only in moments of their fiercest passion, and he had fitted act to word, indeed, that very same night, making her gasp for mercy as he fucked her energetically in the magnificent broad bed in her chamber.

Still and all, he was twenty-four, and she was eleven years older, and tonight, while dressing for the ballet, she had noticed that her breasts, of which she had always been so proud, and of which Dimitri so often rhapsodized, had begun to lose some of their firm elasticity and to sag at the lower crests. It would do no harm to provide this handsome suitor with a sensual diversion which would quicken his desire for her. Indeed, if it proved successful, she might well initiate the rule of the rod in her own household, something which her husband had expressly forbidden her to do. The old fool, believing that serfs and dressmakers and maids were the equal of the aristocracy! That was the truble with Russia today, and though she admired the diplomatic achievements of Alexander II, she was not at all in sympathy with his leniency to the commoners. Why, that would be to destroy all the nobility, all its meaning, all its rights which had been handed down throughout the centuries! No, so long as that old fool of a husband of hers continued to be absent on business for the Czar, she would rule this house and her word would be law.

There were many attractive young maids in her service now, girls who had been told what had happened to Masha and Pauline, how those two thieving sluts had been properly thrashed and then sent to the women's prison just outside St. Petersburg to serve out a year of sewing and laundering disciplined by stern matrons who did not hesitate to use the leather strap. But these little scatterbrained fools would soon forget that lesson, they would make mistakes in service, and then she could have the pretext of that negligent service to sentence them to a good thrashing, with dear Dimitri to watch-and to be excited to desire for her immediately after.

Ivan Betrushnik tipped his tall hat as he opened the door of the carriage. "We are here, Madame the Countess," he announced with a foolish grin. He was a heavily set man of forty, beetle-browed, with little more education than a muszhik, .and he had been coachman for the Rademkins for more than a decade. His only fault-and in this day and age one could expect to find perfect servants, not when the Czar himself had freed them all and let them go to seed with this newfangled freedom, though it still prevented them owning land-was that he would occasionally get roaring drunk on Kvass, the cheap potato brandy which could be bought for a few kopecks in the many taverns in the poorer quarters of the city. He was not married, though eight years ago the Countess's husband had bought off an irate father of a young second-floor maid who claimed to be with child by Ivan Betrushnik. Count Paul Rademkin had angrily lectured the sheepish coachman and warned him that another such escapade might get him a flogging in prison and a sentence to the galleys. From that time on, whatever amours Ivan Betrushnik may have enjoyed were unknown to the noble master and mistress. The fact was that so thoroughly had he been cowed by that stern warning of his beloved employer that from that day forth, when the carnal urge became too insistent in his virile, hairy loins, he would frequent the houses along Katrushkin Avenue, where the girls had their yellow tickets of prostitution and their fees were meager, the proprietors of those houses making up for this low tariff by forcing the unfortunate girls to take on ten or even twenty clients a night.

"Thank you, Ivan," the Countess smilingly replied as her lover handed her down out of the carriage, having thoughtfully kicked away the thick snow with his booted foot to clear a pathway for her. "By the way, Ivan, as soon as you've taken the horses and the carriage round and seen to them, come into the house. I want you to do me a service."

"Of course, gracious lady, at once, da da." The bearded coachman grinned and touched his forehead.

As they mounted the steps of the elegant house, Elisaveta Rademkin turned to her lover, her blue eyes no longer cold and authoritative, but limpid and shining like those of a woman ardently in love: "Dimitri," she huskily murmured, "I'm so happy I met you at the theatre! You don't know how I've missed you since last week. I'm lonelier than ever, for my old husband continues to journey throughout the smallest provinces, so many versts from here, and I never hear from him."

"My sweet Veta," he whispered, his arm around her waist as he quickly brushed her cheek with his soft lips, adorned only by the nascent blood moustache he had begun to grow to look like more of a mature man, "it must be dreadfully lonely for you in this big house with all these stupid servants."

"Ah, you've no idea, my beloved," she sighed dramatically. "And the worst of it all is that since the Czar-may Heaven bless his reign!emancipated the peasants, it's just impossible to get decent servants any more. You see, the poor fools think they're free, while actually they have to go on working for their bread, and they're paid so little-not that they deserve more, you know-and because of all the red tape in the magistrates' courts, they still can't own even the tiniest piece of land, so what good's their freedom, when all's said and one? But the worst of all is that because of this nonsensical half freedom they have, they give themselves airs and think themselves immune from punishment. That's another reason I want you to be with me this evening, my darling. There's a very stupid girl, the assistant of my best dressmaker, Madame Emalieff, who actually brought me a gown for the ballet tonight that was the exact reverse of everything I had ordered. She almost ruined the entire evening for me, beloved. I'm going to give her the birch, and I want you to watch."

"But, my darling Veta, it's not right for me to participate in a domestic scene of yours," he protested.

She squeezed his gloved hand and gave him a passionate look. "But I want you to, do you understand, beloved? It's the first time I've been mistress in my own household, and besides, you know how much I love you-do you understand me?"

His fair complexion reddened at once, and not from the bitter cold. He understood quite well, and he lowered his eyes and murmured, "As you wish, my darling."

A radiant smile curved her imperious mouth as she seized the knocker at the door and thumped it loudly to bring the old major-domo, Andrei. Sweeping into the lobby, with a triumphant gesture, she commanded the old man, "You will summon the housekeeper, and send Ivan the coachman to my bedchamber directly, do you understand me, Andrei?"

"Yes, Madame the Countess."

"And have Grushenska stir her stumps and prepare us some strong chai and some of those honey-cakes of hers. Let the maid Anna bring them up. She's the newest here, isn't she?"

"Indeed yes, Madame . If memory serves me right, you engaged her just before the Christmas holidays."

"Good. It will be an excellent example for the chit," the Countess declared. Then, turning to her escort, she murmured, "My darling, give me your arm and lead me up the stairs. Soon well be together by ourselves, but first you must see how I rule my house."

* * *

The bedchamber of Countess Elisaveta Rademkin was ornate and rococo, from the four-postered canopied bed with its Jacob's ladder to the floridly engraved and hand-scrolled chest of drawers topped by a huge oval mirror which had been imported all the way from Paris, as had, indeed, many of the other pieces of bric-a-brac and items of the Countess's wardrobe. There were several ottomans, small and cozy, scattered about the huge room, and a large settee near the enormous bay window which was heavily locked to prevent the winter winds from forcing in the divided, French-style sections and even more heavily curtained to keep out as much of the bitter cold as possible. Oil lamps, beautifully decorated, cast the illumination in this room, as well as a magnificent candelabra whose tall red wax tapers were lighted by a footman now, dressed in the livery of the Rademkin household. The family crest was that of a wild boar with savage tusks leaping over a shield in which was inscribed a Russian motto, "Honor does not turn away from battle."

The Countess quickly instructed pretty young Anna, a girl of about seventeen with rosy cheeks, honey-colored thickly piled hair and a timidly sweet face, to help her remove cloak and furs, and then to disappear with her behind the huge painted screen in front of her boudoir table at the other end of this vast chamber. It was not unusual for Lieutenant Ushiskin to be present; throughout all Europe and for centuries, the tradition had been that a noblewoman might hold her own court in her bedchamber so long as at least one servant attended, that no charge of lechery or infidelity be made against her. But the housekeeper, a shrews and calculating woman, had already instructed the servants under her that if Madame the Countess and that handsome devil of a young lieutenant wished to be alone in Madame's bedchamber, it was their own affair, and that any servant who dared utter a word of gossip against the good mistress would have her to deal with.

Countess Elisaveta Rademkin now reappeared in an elegant wrapper, which hid her camisole, drawers, gray silk stockings with lacy flounce garters at her lower thighs, and a pair of exquisite bedroom slippers, also imported from Paris, where her elderly, doting husband sometimes visited on diplomatic matters for the Czar of all the Russias.

She took her place beside Dimitri Ushiskin, leaning languidly back and staring boldly at the blushing your maid, who modestly lowered her eyes and backed away and moved towards the door, murmuring, "Madame the Countess, the housekeeper and the coachman will be here presently."

"Very good, Anna. And now you may go to the kitchen and bring the refreshments. And don't dawdle or spill any of it, do you understand me? You're going to see a wretched, impertinent creature given the birch, not only for her impertinence but for her stupidity, and I hope it will be a very meritorious lesson for you in your turn!"

At this dire threat, Anna uttered a gasp, clapped her hand over her mouth, turned and fled, to the amusement of the blond, rather effete young lieutenant on the settee at a proper distance away from his mature and still stunningly attractive mistress. When her eyes were soft and limpid with desire, as now, her features changed and became really attractive; but just now, when she had spoken to the young maid, her face was that of a shrew, with high-set cheekbones, firm chin, and superciliously small, thin-lipped mouth. Elisaveta Rademkin had begun to show the years of presumptuous aristocracy and unbridled selfishness. Her skin was still milky, but tiny wrinkles and crow's feet had begun to show at the top of her temples and on her round throat, as well as at her shoulders and just outside the armpits. Inordinately vain, and especially since she had taken Dimitri Ushiskin as her lover six months earlier, she bathed daily and had the housekeeper or one of her maids rub her with a concoction of milk, honey, and orris root, which she believed would retain the pure milky pallor of her very fashionable and aristocratically slurring complexion. She was a woman of about five feet five and a half inches in height, with full, round breasts, a still reasonably slim waist and rather svelte haunches, though the lower cheeks of her bottom were beginning noticeably to show avoirdupois, o Her thighs were perhaps a bit too short for perfection, but her high-set, sinuous calves were still as lithe as a young girl's.

Now, timidly, after a brief knock at the door, Anna re-entered with a tray which she set down on the glass-covered coffee table before the settee, and diligently served first the mistress's guest and then the mistress herself, after which she was about to retreat when the Countess sharply reminded her, "I told you to wait, girl! Go over there and stand in the corner near my boudoir table till you're called for!"

Scarlet with confusion, as the gray-blue eyes of the young lieutenant briefly rested upon her, Anna obeyed. Now again there was a knock at the door, this time louder and more peremptory, and the Countess called, "Enter!" while at the same time reaching for her lover's hand and squeezing it, her body tensing with expectation.

Through the door there now entered the gray-haired housekeeper, Olga Kirvushoff, whose right hand clutched the wrist of the unfortunate Nadia Morensko, and directly behind the softly weeping young brunette, the burly coachman, who had hastily wiped off his boots in the kitchen, removed his heavy coat and hastened to rub his sweating face with a towel.

"As you see, girl," the Countess dryly declared, "I've returned from the ballet, no thanks to you. And now we're going to settle your account, you impertinent baggage."

"I beg of you, Madame the Countess," Nadia Morensko sank down on her knees, clasping her hands as if in prayer, her beautiful, large brown eyes glistening with tears, "I implore you!" she entreated. "Not like this. If-if I must be punished, be merciful and do not have it done in front of a man. I-I will submit myself bravely, I promise I will, but I beg you to do it yourself and in private, Madame the Countess!"

"Sucj airs!" the noblewoman sneered, glancing greedily at her impassive young lover. "Do you take yourself for equality with me, you wretched creature, that you ask me to soil my own hand in wielding the birch on your impertinent backside? That's the task for servants, you impertinent hussy, not for a Countess! Don't you agree, my dear Dimitri?"

"Decidedly so," the young lieutenant nodded. He found the young seamstress really tasty, but he tried not to show his absorbed interest, lest his autocratic mistress again reproach him with infidelity. He had already congratulated himself in not having roused her suspicions any further than they had gone with his "cousin," who was actually a dancer in the second chorus of the ballet and related to him in no way-save by the conjunction of her insatiable young cunt.

But the black-haired young seamstress, with her poignant oval face, her beautiful dark tear-glistening eyes, her full, sweet glistening mouth and her ivory skin, together with a supple and graceful young body which could not be concealed even by the dark, plain, coarse dress which she wore, began to rouse his lust. If the truth be known, he was already tiring of Elisaveta Rademkin, and moreover, there was a certain danger; if any of her truest friends should discover this liaison and make it known to the Count, a diplomat who had audience with the Czar himself, Dimitri Ushiskin's hope for improving his rank swiftly would be dashed to permanent failure.

The idea came to him now to intercede for this delicious morsel of femininity, but, to be sure, only after the lovely bitch had received a fair portion of the punishment intended for her. In this way he could seem to be compassionate and generous, attributes which must surely impress the creature, perhaps to a later and much more private display of gratitude such as he would imagine, while at the same time convincing the Countess that his interest in the remission of Nadia's whipping was caused also by his feverish impatience to be alone with his supercilious and vain mistress.

Hearing her plea thus rejected, Nadia Morensko bowed her head, covered her face with her hands, and began to sob. The gray-haired, sturdy housekeeper considered her with a cruel little smile of anticipation. It reminded her of the good old days when she had taught in a school where the birch, the ferrule and the strap suppressed the most undisciplined pupils.

"Anna, go to the kitchen and ask Cook to give you a birch rod. Not too thick, mind you, but not too thin either. And be quick about it!" the Countess ordered.

A stifled groan of utter misery and wretchedness escaped the lips of the kneeling culprit. The terrified young maid hurried out of the room and was back in a few moments with the desired implement. It was a rod made up of perhaps half a dozen peeled birch switches, about three feet in length, around the thicker end of which the fat old cook had tied a dust cloth to serve as handle for the wielder.

"Olga, do you think you can horse this stupid girl on your back while Ivan gives her the rod?" the

Countess inquired.

"Indeed I can, noble mistress!" Olga Kirvushoff eagerly retorted. She would have much preferred to wield the rod herself, but the momentous occasion of the first actual corporal punishment given in this noble house told her that things were about to change for the better, and it was quite possible that, once having had a savory taste of the pleasures of giving the rod, the dear mistress would make it a regular practice so that she herself might inflict chastisement on these impertinent young maids who never seemed to pay her sufficient deference which befitted her important position in this household.

"Take her and horse her, then!" was the Countess's sibilant decree. Olga Korvushoff smiled greedily as she bent towards the still sobbing, kneeling girl and, rudely seizing Nadia Morensko by the elbow, dragged her to her feet.

"Pay attention, girl! Put your arms out in front of you and give me your hands!" she authoritatively commanded. Nadia Morensko sent a last fervent appeal towards the haughty Countess: "I beg of you, Madame the Countess," she faintly stammered, "let it be done then by the housekeeper, but not with the coachman and the young gentleman to see my shame!"

"You dare to put the coachman ahead of Lieutenant Ushiskin? What insolence! You've really earned a thrashing, my girl, I can tell you that! All right, Olga, take her up on your shoulders and stretch her out."

Nadia Morensko closed her eyes and passively held out her hands as the housekeeper took them, turned her back to the trembling young brunette, dragged the girl's arms over her shoulders, then bent forward. Immediately Nadia Morensko was hoisted into the air, her legs well off the floor, in the ignoble posture traditionally favored for a domestic birching. Countess Elisaveta Rademkin gestured to Ivan.

"Now then, truss up her skirt and petticoats, and then pull down her drawers so her big bottom will be all nice and bare, Ivan! Then I'll tell you how many strokes to give her."

"Da da, Mistress!" The bearded coachman sniggered, awkwardly glancing at the birch he held in his right hand, then laid it down on a little inlaid tabouret as he advanced towards the shuddering young brunette seamstress.

With his thick, heavy, clumsy fingers he attacked first Nadia's skirt, rolling it up and grunting with effort as he tucked it under the waistband against her shirtwaist. Her two flannel petticoats proved more difficult for him, however, since his own erotic bouts with a prostitute hardly required any ability to doff their garments, and he scratched his furrowed forehead with a baffled look while poor Nadia Morensko groaned and sobbed, her arms dragged down along Olga's body and her slender wrists mercilessly gripped as in a vise.

"You clumsy dolt!" the Countess scolded. "Anna, make yourself useful, girl! Unfasten those petticoats and take them right off. And you may as well finish the task by tugging down those drawers as far as they'll go. All right, Ivan, just get the birch ready and Anna will prepare this impertinent hussy for you. Mind that you lay the strokes on well!"

"Oh yes, good Mistress, that I'll do, you may be sure, good Mistress," the burly coachman beamed, bobbing his head respectfully.

Anna was scarlet-faced as she came forward now, unfastened Nadia's petticoats and drew them off the long, gracefully curved legs. Then the coarse gray batiste drawers were unbuttoned, her soft fingers inserted under the waistband took hold and she began to drag them down, while Nadia choked and uttered a muffled cry of unspeakable despair.

Dimitri Ushiskin leaned forward on the edge of the settee, his eyes glittering with sensual desire at the intoxicating spectacle before him. Nadia Morensko's skin was a warm, vivid ivory, and now that her clothes had been removed, her figure was utterly delicious, supple and graceful to extreme, almost boyish in the smooth, clean structure of the long sleek calves and thighs. But her bottom was truly feminine, composed of two upstanding rounded globes set very tightly together, ripest at the under summits, and of a superlative resilience and firmness.

Feeling herself thus exposed to the eyes of two men, poor Nadia clenched her legs tightly together and pressed her loins against the broad, strong back of Olga Kirvushoff in order to conceal the thick, curly black ringlets which shielded her virgin mount.

She was naked now from her lower back to her lower thighs, where gray lisle hose held up with cloth garters ended their caressing embrace of her sleek, lovely legs. Her finely grained skin twitched as the now lewdly grinning, bearded coachman clumsily moved forward, birch in hand, studying the dazzling posterior charms of this voluptuous young beauty, thanking his patron saints for according him such an exceptional treat as well as the opportunity to win his mistress's approbation by rendering her this unusual service.

"You may begin, Ivan! Count to twenty, and then well see!" the Countess autocratically waved her hand as she leaned back against the settee. She slipped her other hand against her lover's thigh, surreptitiously pinching him to remind him of her unceasing affection for him.

Nadia Morensko ground her teeth together, closed her eyes, stiffening all her muscles as she prepared herself for the ignominious punishment. The coachman brandished the rod in the air a few times to get the feel of it and then, satisfied, drew back his arm and, his beady eyes fixing on the ivory target fixed before him, swept the supple rod vigorously over the tops of Nadia Morensko's naked hips with an angry SWISSHHHH!!

The half-naked young brunette seamstress uttered a strangled gasp, her face partly turning to the left, and her body convulsively jerked under the burning kiss of the first cut.

"That's one, and very good, Ivan! Not too quickly, now. I want this impertinent hussy to feel every blow, you understand?"

"Da, noble lady," Ivan grunted assent.

Now again he lifted his arm, choosing the next place for the rod to fall over that satiny expanse, on which already a bright pink streak attested to the vigor of the first blow. Then, with another grunt, he stepped forward and made the rod dance across the upper summits of Madia's naked behind, again making her body jerk convulsively as she lifted her head, her eyes still tightly closed, a feverish whimper exuding from her tightly clenched lips.

With all her courage, the beautiful young seamstress strove to remain silent under the flogging, to control the movement of her naked limbs and the most intimate parts of her virginal body, but the brutal force of Ivan's arm and the stinging, flexible, biting withes of the slender birch defeated that heroic determination. By the ninth lash, she was sobbing pitifully, one lovely long leg kicking up as the rod made thudding impact with her naked seat, already furiously streaked from top to base. By the twelfth, she uttered a piercing cry and jerked at her pinioned wrists, her panting titties flattening against Olga's sturdy back as, turning her tear-bathed, contorted face towards the settee, she groaned, "Ohh, have pity, Madame the Countess! I can't stand it, truly I can't! Oh, haven't I been punished enough? Have mercy on me, noble Countess! It wasn't my fault, I swear it wasn't. I did what Madame Emalieff told me to, that was all!"

"Little liar! And how you've the audacity to blame your mistress, the best dressmaker I ever had! Twenty won't be enough for you, my girl! Go on, Ivan, make her feel it! Lay it on hard-I want to see that big bottom dance!" The Countess spitefully rejoined.

The coachman needed no further encouragement. His face was already flushed, his beady eyes glittering, and he was beginning to feel an erection, which made him the more embarrassed to experience such a crude phenomenon in the presence of the noble lady he served. Angrily, almost as if it were Nadia's fault that he was thus embarrassed, he sent the rod slashing from the right hip down to the base of her left buttock, drawing a strident shriek of agony from the unfortunate victim as both her legs began to kick up and down, till it was all Olga could do to maintain her hold on the captive.

"Dushka, Veta, I do think we might pardon the poor girl," Dimitri Ushiskin muttered in a low, thick voice to his mistress. "Perhaps she's telling the truth. My mother tells me that dressmakers are always getting something wrong when you give them an order, and after all, the girl's only an assistant. She wouldn't do it on her own authority."

While the young lieutenant thus tried to obtain a reprieve for poor Nadia Morensko, the coachman resumed his pleasing task by inflicting the thirteenth cut of the birch across the base of both huddling, already furiously striped bottom cheeks. Once again Nadia Morensko shrieked aloud in her pain, kicking up first one leg and then the other so that the young lieutenant saw the pink, soft portals of her virgin cunthole. He leaned forward, his eyes feverishly dilated as they stared at Nadia's writhing, squirming, lividly wealed, naked bottom.

"Well, it's possible," the Countess grudgingly conceded, "but all the same, the wretched girl was rude to both of us, my darling Dimitri! Ah, that was a good one, that was, Ivan!" This last as the coachman with a backhanded slash of the rod made the birch switches dance viciously from the edge of Nadia Morensko's left hip down across the huddling globes towards the inner curve at the base of the right buttock.

"EEEEYEEOWWOUUUUU!! ! Oh, kill me then, I can't stand the pain any longer! Oh dear God, I can't stand it any longer, it cuts me so, it tears me! Oh, have pity, Madame the Countess! It wasn't I who made the mistake, I tell you it wasn't! Have pity on a poor helpless girl!" Nadia Moresnko shrieked and cried hysterically, as again she kicked up first one leg and then the other, twisting and flinging herself from side to side, while the angry housekeeper grumbled as she readjusted her grip on those slender wrists, "You filthy little slut, just you try wriggling off-I'll settle with you myself when Ivan finishes with you-you'll see!"

Dimitri Ushiskin covertly glanced at Nadia Moresnko's vividly striated naked bottom. It would really be a pity to spoil such a delicious backside. How he would love to console the bitch right now, for everyone knew that after a girl had been flogged, she was as hot as a furnace to be fucked. He crossed his legs, so as to hide the almost noticeable bulge of his cock, then glanced quickly back at the Countess to make sure she hadn't seen that sign of erotic interest in the little seamstress. She hadn't; she was leaning forward, rapt with excitement, her eyes glittering, following each nuance of Nadia Morensko's suffering.

"Go on, go on," she urged, her voice sibilant, "make her dance, Ivan! Make her apologize to my guest and to me, and make her thank you for teaching her a much-needed lesson!"

SWISH! SWISH! Twice the birch flattened, spreading its long slender withes fan tail over the very center of both huddling, shuddering bottom cheeks. A wild cry of unspeakable despair and agony, as if torn from Nadia Morensko's very soul, filled the bedchamber, and young Anna uttered a sobbing little cry and covered her face with her hands so as to shut out the sight of the torture. Her legs kicking this way and that, her bottom lunging from side to side, heedless of what tempting vistas of bottom-hole and cunt she displayed to her avid audience, the young brunette struggled to break free of the housekeeper's hold on her, hysterically shrieking and pleading for pardon.

"Please, dushka!" Dimitri Ushiskin entreated in his mistress's ear. "After all, she might be the best worker your dressmaker has, and you'll ruin her for work if that brute of a coachman keeps it up much longer. See there, on the left cheek of her behind, the skin is starting to tear and to bleed! For my sake, Veta, pardon the girl! I don't think she'll offend again."

"Wait, Ivan," Countess Rademkin called, even as the coachman again raised the birch in the air again over the squirming, writhing, weeping girl. "Let her down, Olga. Take her td her room and sponge her impertinent bottom for her. Give her a few rubles, something to eat and drink, and let her get back to her hovel."

Grudgingly the housekeeper released the unfortunate victim, who promptly crumpled to the floor, still heedless of the shameless display she made of her welted buttocks and upper thighs. It was Anna now who, at the young lieutenant's secret sign, hurried forward to help the housekeeper lift up the half-conscious young woman and lead her, half stumbling, out of the room.

"You may go, Ivan. Tell Cook to give you something good to eat and some vodka, too. You can drink our health. Now close the door behind you and tell the rest of them we are not to be disturbed, no matter what," the Countess recklessly commanded, her cheeks bright with the glow of sensual desire.

As soon as the door closed behind the burly coachman, she turned to her young lover, trembling, panting, and drew him down beside her on the couch, and on this particular occasion it may be said that Dimitri Ushiskin did not require long preamble to be of adequate service to the haughty Countess Elisaveta Rademkin, though, to be sure, she would have scratched his eyes out had she known that the stiffness of his cock was caused not by her but by her waning charms but by the beautiful, naked bottom of virginal Nadia Morensko.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Much to Vera Dugashkin's disgust, handsome black-haired Boris Lukatieff did not ask her for a secret rendezvous after the meeting at 23 Petropolsky Street broke up shortly after midnight. All through the evening, she had taken an earnest and, she believed, intelligent part in the animated discussion between Boris, his roommate Alexei and the poet Vladimir Sokonikoff. Boris had made some tea and served it with a little black bread and goat's-milk cheese, and finally the four young students of the Polytechnic Institute had concluded by agreeing that some retaliatory act must be committed against the sinister chief of St. Petersburg police to teach him not to brutalize innocent students, as had been done with their ill-fated friend, Anastasia Stoskin.

Then Vladimir had excused himself and said that he had to trudge back to his own boarding house a good mile and a half away and that it was very late. And after he had bundled himself up in his heavy old coat which his mother had dutifully patched until it seemed entirely made of patches, Vera was left alone for a moment while Alexei, yawning pointedly, had said that he was going to bed and had wished Vera a drowsy goodnight. She had stood there for a long and thrilling moment, her heart in her eyes as she stared wistfully at the handsome young black-haired revolutionary. She could feel the nipples of her titties tingle and palpitate as he stood so close, and she was praying that he would read in her eyes the message that she wanted him to crush her in his arms and kiss her until she was nearly fainting and then carry her off to his bed and take off all her clothes and fuck her.

After all, good heavens, she was nineteen, at an age when many a Russian girl was already a wife and mother, but she'd kept herself pure waiting for the very right fellow. And here this stupid lout, Boris, with all his education, couldn't seem to sense that her full moist red lips were just begging to be kissed and that her thighs were crawling and twitching with the yearning to be spread widely apart for a good screwing. She had been very well bred, and she wouldn't dream of using such wicked words, but just the same she could think about them and, even more vividly, see in her mind's eye

J just what it would be like once that tall brooding-looking Boris, with his black tangled curls falling over one side of his forehead, sank his long sinewy fingers into her bottom and rode her with all the strength in his vigorous young body.

But all he had had to say was, "Well, it's late, dushka, and you'd better get back home before

J your mother tans your hide for staying out so late.

' See you at the institute on Monday, bright and early, eh?"

"Maybe you will and maybe you won't!" she had flashed, drawing away from him, her lips tightening with indignant fury at being a woman scorned. He'd be sorry one day, and one day maybe he'd want her, and then she wouldn't! "All right, you can at least get my coat and help me with it, Boris Lukatieff!"

So he got her coat and she slid her arms into the heavily lined sleeves and glanced back at him just ' to see if he was maybe relenting a little. But he'd patted her on the back, ever so patronizingly, and told her goodnight again and then begun to yawn. She would cheerfully have killed him! And then i, she had gone down the creaky old stairway, knowing that his gossipy and snoopy old landlady, Madame Luba Rostoff, would open her door just a crack to peek out and see who it was, and she had slammed the front door of the old three-story frame house as hard as she could just to show Madame Luba Rostoff and Boris Lukatieff and everybody else....

Her face swollen with tears, her bottom and hips throbbing with pain, Nadia Morensko dejectedly moved down the street away from the steps of the house of Countess Elisaveta Rademkin. It was at least two miles to her dingy little room above the shop of Madame Emalieff, and she did not look forward to returning to it. That termagant would doubtless be waiting up for her, late as it was, to harangue her on her stupidity and to assure her that she had got off quite luckily at getting only a thrashing from the noble lady who was one of Madame Emalieff's most cherished clients. At least, Nadia told herself, it was better to live there under her employer's thumb than to remain in the house of her cousin who had several times tried to open her bedroom door late at night and invite himself in. How she wished there would be some fine young man, someone perhaps as well-bred and handsome as that nice young lieutenant who had spoken up in her behalf during the whipping, someone who would say soft, kind things to her and tell her that she was lovely and that he desired her! But she had no chance for such liaisons, and still less for a beneficial marriage. There was no dowry from her poor father's estate, she earned only a few rubles a week, and Madame Emalieff even went so far as to charge her for the squalid little room she occupied. Not only that, but she was kept busy night and day, with only Sundays off-and even then her demanding mistress would wheedlingly knock at the door of her room and beg her to finish that seam or sew on that flounce, because, after all, she wasn't doing anything anyway and it would be profitable to the shop. Nadia sighed heavily.

Her thoughts were gloomy indeed as she painfully made her way back towards the distant shop. Here and there she heard the bells of the troikas as the rich people came from the theatre or the ballet on their way to some fashionable restaurant for a midnight supper. Oh, how her bottom hurt her! That dreadful brute of a coachman had whipped her nearly raw, and she oughtn't to have put her drawers back on at all, but it was so cold out that she needed every possible garment, and her coat wasn't too warm anyhow.

Lieutenant Dimitri Ushiskin was naked now and lying beside his equally naked mistress, while her hand toyed with his dwindled prick. She had unbound her hair to look younger, more feminine, and she pressed close to him, her other hand caressing his cheek. "Wasn't it nice?" she whispered, "Didn't it thrill you when you saw that wretched girl's white bottom turning so nicely red, my darling? How I longed to have you crush me in your arms right at that moment, and to drink in that stupid girl's cries and tears! Some day, my sweet Dimitri, when my stupid old husband is far away in Irkutsk, I'll have Olga give the birch to that new maid, that plump little shy thing Anna, while you're here in bed with me. Wouldn't you like that, my strong fine Cossack?"

"Yes, Veta, of course I would," he politely agreed, fondling one of her titties and taking mental note that the round globe was beginning to grow just a bit flaccid and to lose the firm elasticity which he had first admired when they had gone to bed together the very first time. What he really would have liked, and what he didn't dare tell Elisaveta Rademkin, was that he would have given a great deal to have followed that poor girl out into the snowy streets, to escort her home, to console her on the hurts she had received and to make an assignation with her for some future evening. Perhaps, if his luck had held, it might have been this very night, for well he knew that when a girl is whipped, her secret passions are inflamed, even though she be the purest of virgins. But of course he didn't dare leave Veta's bed now, and her husband had influence with the Czar, and a word from his noble wife could therefore advance his own career. No, he had to put up with Veta for a time yet.

Boris Lukatieff couldn't sleep. He'd flung himself down on his bed and closed his eyes, and he'd been tired enough, heaven knows, after the long excitable discussion over the cruelties of that bearded Dvorkin. But try as he would, sleep just wouldn't come. In the other room Alexei was already snoring away, dead to the world. With a grimace, Boris got to his feet, put on his heavy coat and squirrel-fur cap, and crept noiselessly down the stairs so as not to wake his landlady.

The snow had stopped, and now suddenly the moon and the stars were out. It was still bitter cold, but the wind had died down, and he felt suddenly exhilarated. A good walk would be just the thing to clear his thoughts. All he could see when he closed his eyes was the bearded sneering face of Alexander Dvorkin, and that was enough to give him a nightmare. The swine deserved to die and as quickly as possible.

Otherwise, there'd be more arrests at the Institute, and more decent young girls dragged down into that filthy underground dungeon and whipped and fucked and then turned loose with a warning not to blab or they'd be back for a good deal worse the next time. Why in heaven's name didn't the

Czar the man who'd been hailed all over Russia for letting the serfs go free, take the truble to investigate his chief of police right here in his own capital city?

He had reached the corner and decided to go west, along Buzhmir Road. The old porter who owned this building, bless his soul, had been out shoveling all night long, it appeared, for the walks were cleared as far as he could see. Yes, he'd go this way and see something of the city. Next week there wouldn't be much chance for recreation, not with mid-term examinations coming up at the Institute.

Clasping his gloved hands behind his back, frowning with concentration, Boris Lukatieff strode forward into the cold St. Petersburg night. As he crossed that street and went on westward, he observed a dark figure coming toward him from a distance. The streets were quiet, and he had no money in his pocket-very few students did these days, after they paid their rent and for their food. He shrugged and kept walking. As he crossed the next street, he could see that the figure was that of a woman walking slowly and with effort, pausing now and again to lean against an iron gate leading to some darkened old house. He hurried forward, just as the unknown woman, taking a deep breath, resumed her walk, and very nearly bumped into her.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss!" he exclaimed.

"It-it's quite all right. I guess I didn't look where I was going."

"Here now, I've bumped and hurt you. What a clumsy animal I am, after all! I did see you, but-"

"It's all right, really it is." Nadia Morensko raised her reddened eyes to his handsome face and her trembling lips curved in a shy little smile. "I can get along fine now."

"Where do you live?"

"Over at Durov Place, in the dressmaker's shop-that is to say, in a room above the shop."

"Well, that's not far from here, let me go along with you. It's terribly cold and it's very late, and a pretty girl like you shouldn't be out by herself, you know."

"Th-thank you, you're very kind. My-my name is Nadia Morensko."

"And mine, Boris Lukatieff. Do you work for the dressmaker?"

"Yes. I-oh!" she stopped a moment, for he had taken hold of her arm and was beginning to walk with his usual energetic stride. Unhappily, the movement only aggravated poor Nadia's still burning anguish, and she bit her lips as he turned solicitously back to her. , "What's the matter, did I hurt you? I told you I'm a clumsy animal, Nadia!"

"Oh no, it's not you-it's-oh dear!" and suddenly, woman-like, lovely black-haired Nadia Morensko bowed her head, covered her face with her hands and burst into hysterical sobs.

"Here now, you make me feel terrible! I swear I didn't mean to hurt you-"

"I-I told you it wasn't you-BBoris. It was well I-I took the Countess Rodemkin a gown for the ballet. It wasn't right, but it wasn't my fault, but the Countess had me b-beaten just the same."

"Had you beaten?" he echoed with horror. "But you're not a slave, you don't belong to that Countess, do you?"

"Oh no. But I'm Madame Emalieff's assistant, and I was to bring the gown for the Countess to wear at the ballet this evening. Only it was all wrong, it wasn't what she ordered, so she took it out on me. She had me locked up in a room while she went off to the ballet, she did, and when she got back, she and her-her lover-oh no, it's too dreadful, I'm so ashamed."

"Here now, take my handkerchief. Blow hard! You've no idea how lovely you are when you're not crying, Nadia. Now let's go back and you'll tell me all about it. The dirty, cruel aristocratic bitch, to treat a nice lovely girl like you like that! That's what's wrong with Russia, that and people like that chief of police who are on the side of all these accursed snobs of the nobility!"

Nadia stopped crying and looked up at him, a new hope in her widening tear-glistening eyes. Oh how handsome he was, like a young crusader! And to denounce Madame the Countess like that, without fear.

"I-I feel better now," she confided softly. "I'm ever so glad I met you, Boris. Yes, I-I'm not afraid now nor ashamed. I'll tell you what it was, because I hate the nobility too."

And thus fate brought together a young dressmaker's assistant who had been unjustly abused and a fiery young student who believed that he could right the wrongs done by oppression and tyranny and injustice. And out of all this was to come the nihilism which would destroy the Czar.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Just look at this latest piece of nastiness from those damned nihilists!" Alexander Dvorkin growled as he shoved a crudely printed placard across his desk towards Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky. "Just read it, Lumovsky. 'Death to The Police, Czar's Murderers!' So now those young swine are turning their attention to us, are they?"

"I suppose it was found near the Polytechnic Institute, Excellency?"

"Of course, where else? Now here's a school that our good Little Father himself does the honor of patronizing, and these ungrateful dogs are in constant rebellion! As you know, we've had a dozen incidents since last October, everything from scurrilous poetry to an open threat like this. The Czar's murderers, indeed! Faugh, it disgusts me. Lumovsky, I'm going to assign you from now on to that school. I want you to see if you can't ingratiate yourself with one of those pretty bitches, those insipid young blue-stockings who think because they've been permitted to get a little book-learning, they ought to be able to rule all Russia. I don't care what means you use, Lieutenant, but I want results."

"Naturally I'm not to wear my uniform, Excellency."

"Naturally." The bearded police chief looked up at his aide, winked and then guffawed. "You know, Lumovsky, you're not such a bad-looking fellow. You've a nice wavy brown beard, a rather kindly face, just the sort some impressionable little slut who's just beginning to feel an itch between her thighs is-likely to make a fuss about. Let me see now, what part should you play to attract the sympathy of one of these man-crazy little sluts?"

"Well, I can put on a pair of spectacles, Excellency, to look like one of those wretched intellectuals."

"Yes, that's very good, Lumovsky! Though I must say, you're a bit old to be a student. Thirty-four, aren't you?"

"That's right, Excellency."

"Hmm. Turn around and walk about a bit, let me think about this a moment. This is very important." Alexander Dvorkin tugged at his beard, his inimitable habit when deep in the processes of thought. Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky smiled and saluted, then turned slowly around and begun to walk. He was an inch under six feet in height, rather slender, with light brown hair, brown eyes and a rather prominent hawk-like nose. His mouth was fleshy and sensual, and he was still a bachelor. He had been attached to Dvorkin's corps for the past decade, and had risen quickly in the ranks because of his invaluable abilities as a spy and informer. He was also a confirmed sadist, and had often taken charge of one of the interrogations conducted in that subterranean dungeon to which the unfortunate Lydia Petrovna and Eleanora Vishnieff had been taken two weeks ago. His father had been a wealthy merchant, his mother a dancer, and their death had left him with a considerable legacy and their little house on Trigonoff Place, where he lived like a sybarite with a handsome thirty-eight-year-old cook, two pretty young maids and a crafty, opportunistic majordomo who at times procured women for his lecherous master. This legacy had served him in good stead to advance his own career under Alexander Dvorkin, for the chief of St. Petersburg police was not averse to a flattering bribe.

"Stop, that's enough, you make me nervous," the bearded chief of police irritably waved his hand. "See what you think of this, Lumovsky. As I say, you're a little old to be a sympathetic student. But you're still a gay blade with the ladies, from all I've been told."

"I manage, Excellency."

"I'm sure you do. I'm told that even that fine cook of yours is as handy in bed as she is with a skillet, eh?"

The lieutenant chuckled and nodded. "Any time you wish, Excellency, I'd be honored to have you try her out, after she's cooked you a good dinner."

"I'll take you up on that, my boy, yes, I will, decidedly! But let's get back to business. You could pretend to be a minor official for the tax bureau-that's it! Exactly the part in which I think you'll convince these itchy little sluts that you're one of them in spirit, Lumovsky. Now let's see. You'll change your name, naturally because some of those smart young dogs over at the Institute might just decide to ask around, and they'd find out soon enough that Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky happens to be my right-hand man. So much for that for the first detail. You've been sent by your boss to collect taxes in the province of Rostoff-on-the-Don-that'll do splendidly, because it's far enough from here to prevent any bothersome inquiries. We have to think one step ahead of these revolutionaries, you know. And you've seen the wretched peasants and the impoverished boyars and your heart bleeds for them, so much so that you've written your boss a letter denouncing the corruption and the tyranny of the Czar's tax edicts. And of course you've been discharged in disgrace, so you're living on your inheritance, a few hundred rubles from a dear old aunt. I think that should do it, Lumovsky."

"It's easy to see why you're the head of this department. Excellency!" Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky fawningly praised his ruthless master.

"Tuttut, my boy. It's nothing at all. But I've had a little more experience than you in dealing with these young fools. However, I don't imagine I'll have to tell you anything about how to get into the bed of one of these pretty blue-stockings, will I, Lumovsky?"

"No, sir, I'll start on the job at once. I think it would be a good idea if I took a cheap little room near the Institute."

"That's good thinking, my boy. Next fall, there will be promotions, as you know. I think I can swing the rank of captain for you if you pull off this job the way I want you to. Find out who's behind all these letters and pamphlets and placards and the insulting poetry-it's the worst kind of doggerel, Lumovsky! But don't come back here to report to me. I'll send Vassili Turmanieff to see you every couple of days, just to find out what you've learned. He'll be in plain clothes, of course. When you've got yourself a lodging place, give some urchin a few kopecks and write a message in our code to be delivered to my house. You'll just tell him the address and not my name."

"That's most ingenious, Excellency. It's a pleasure working with a distinguished master of strategy like yourself, Sir." Lieutenant Lumovsky gave his superior a smart salute, clicked his heels together and left Alexander Dvorkin's office.

Golden-haired Vera Dugashkin had watched with dismay and then anger as her adored Boris Lukatieff began to be seen more and more frequently in the company of a lovely black-haired young woman, very plainly dressed. A week after the conspiratorial meeting in Boris's rooms, Vera spied him walking hand in hand with this unknown girl along Kiriloff Boulevard, and when she saw them stop and look at each other fondly before resuming their stroll, she closed her eyes and whimpered with frustration from her vantage point across the wide boulevard. And then just the other day, after classes at the Institute, when she'd boldly gone up the creaking stairs to knock at Boris's door, it had been Vladimir who had opened and told her that Boris was out for the rest of the day, that he'd come home very quickly and dressed in his best suit and said that he wouldn't be back until late that night.

It was Friday evening and this time Vera determined to confront Boris and to ask him to take her to the student ball, which was to be held a week from tomorrow. She knew that she was sacrificing her pride, but at this point she didn't care anymore. Here she'd practically thrown herself at him, given him all sorts of little hints whenever she had found herself alone with him to let him know that she wanted to be his, to be in bed with him and to feel his cock thrusting into her moist eager slit, and here he was mooning around like a love-struck calf over some black-haired trollop. She was quite sure that the girl wasn't a student, she'd got a pretty good look at her face and hadn't recognized her. Well, if that was the case, Boris wouldn't have to pay to make love to her, because she loved him so. Besides, he was so poor, where did he get the money to spend on a prostitute?

She opened the door of the old boarding house, carefully wiped off her boots on the thick rug-mat which old Madame Rostoff had left there as a patient reminder to her young tenants, and took a deep breath before she began the winding, tortuous stairs up to Boris's rooms on the topmost floor. To the left, a door suddenly opened and the old landlady's suspicious face peered out. Then she cackled, as if pleased with her spiteful knowledge: "Eh, my little dove, my galupchik, your fine young man isn't there. And Alexei isn't there either. So I'll spare you that long climb for nothing."

"Oh, dear!" Vera Dugashkin looked crestfallen, and hesitated, not quite sure what to do. At that moment, from the second-floor landing, a tall handsome light-brown-haired man began slowly to descend the stairs, dressed in a heavy frock coat and his winter coat unbuttoned over it. His eyes widened at the sight of the golden-haired young student, and at the same moment old Madam Rostoff looked up and called out, "Good afternoon, Mr. Vishnikoff!"

"And to you, Madame Rostoff," he courteously rejoined. Vera Dugashkin stared up at him, and then divinely blushed as she observed that his eyes were fixed on her in the most intent way. All of a sudden, an irresistible feminine impulse came to her: she would pay Boris back for his flirtations and infidelity, she would! She would show him that two could play at that game as well as one and make him jealous. My heavens, but this nice young man was terribly handsome. Of course, he was brown-haired and Boris was very dark, but that didn't really matter. And what impeccable manners! "Is this one of our lovely tenants, Madame Rostoff?" he called.

"Hee hee hee, oh no, your worship," the old landlady cackled, her body shaking with suppressed merriment. "She's just a student from the Institute, that's all, come to visit her fine young man, except that he's out-and I shouldn't be surprised if he were with another young lady, not that one!"

"Pshaw! How can you say such a thing, Madame Rostoff!" Vera Dugashkin gasped, her eyes stinging with tears. "Boris isn't that way at all, I know he isn't-"

"What a pity," the newcomer tactfully interposed, "that you don't live here, but then I shouldn't imagine that an angel would care to dwell even in Madame Rostoff's fine boarding house."

At this double piece of flattery, the old landlady snickered, bobbed her head and then slowly closed her door, while Vera blushed furiously and lowered her eyes as became a demure young virgin.

"My name is Illya Vishnikoff, and I've just moved in here, you see," he said with a charming smile as he stood before the blushing golden-haired student.

"I-I'm Vera Dugashkin. I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir."

"And I yours, Miss Dugashkin. You see, I've just come from Rostoff-on-Don, because I was sick of my job and hounding poor people just because they were poor and decent and honest."

"Oh?" Vera considered the stranger with greater interest than ever. "But what were you doing, Mr. Vishnikoff?"

"Alas, I was collecting taxes, you see. It was the only job I could find there, and then an old aunt of mine went to her eternal reward-peace be to her memory-and left me a few rubles, so I told myself that I was going to come here to St. Petersburg and find more fitting work, or at least something where I shouldn't have to persecute the helpless. And someone told me that quarters here were quite reasonable and very good, so, you see, I'm the new tenant."

"But I think you've lots of courage, to give up a job like that and come to this big city with no prospects, Mr. Vishnikoff!" the golden-haired young beauty fervently declared. Then, suddenly lowering her beautiful blue eyes, her thick golden lashes fluttering, she stammered, "Oh, you must think me dreadfully rude, because I'm telling you what to do and what not to do, when we've only just met!"

"But you certainly don't need to apologize, Miss Dugashkin. And I find your interest very welcome indeed. Now it's my turn to apologize, for I'm going to ask you a very presumptuous question. Would you think it rude of me if I were to invite you to the charming little restaurant down the block for some tea and perhaps a gooseberry tart?"

"Thatthat would be delightful, Mr. Vishnikoff. Thank you very much."

"It will be my pleasure. Here, let me open the door for you, Miss Dugashkin."

"Thank you again. I-I'm awfully glad I came here this afternoon."

"And this Boris?" the newcomer teasingly countered.

"Oh, him!" Vera's lovely eyes flashed as she gave a pert little toss of her head. "He's just a friend, just an immature boy, that's all. Now please do tell me all about what you used to do and especially what you feel about the common people. You see, I'm ever so interested in that. At the Institute where I study, Mr. Vishnikoff, all of us hope that there'll be an end to government corruption and the brutality of government officials. There's so much of it here in St. Petersburg, you see! It's just dreadful, really."

"I've been most fortunate in coming here, Miss Dugashkin. Not only have I found most excellent lodgings, but I feel I've made a new friend, someone whose sympathies are akin to mine. It has been a very fortunate day for me indeed. And you've made me very happy. Yes, by all means, I want you to tell me exactly what you feel about this wicked corruption. It was one reason I quit my job, you see."

Vera sighed happily. Boris Lukatieff was almost forgotten now as, glancing shyly from time to time at her new friend, the golden-haired young student walked down the street towards the little restaurant.

Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky smiled to himself. It had been ever so easy, this very first contact, and there wouldn't be any trouble about getting himself accepted on the side of these stupid young revolutionaries. It would be diverting too, especially with a sweet piece of cunt like this yellow-haired little bitch who was hanging on his every word and sending him the most coquettish glances even though they'd just met.

CHAPTER NINE

"Oh, Ilya darling, I-I shouldn't let you-oh, dearest, please be nice!" Vera Dugashkin gasped, her face flooded with crimson as she at last disengaged herself from the arms of her blond suitor. They were on an old overstuffed settee against the wall in the little antechamber which led to the bedroom that Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky had rented in the boarding house at 23 Petrolsky Street. From where she had been seated beside him, the golden-haired young student could very plainly see the outline of the large bed with its embroidered cover, and although a warm, sweet lassitude pervaded her voluptuous young body, she was trying her best not to succumb too quickly to this dashing young gentleman's advances.

They had been inseparable companions for the past week since their meeting on the stairway of the boarding house, and Vera Dugashkin had felt like the cat who swallowed the bowl of cream. Several times, after her devoted and attentive "Ilya" had returned from the theatre or the restaurant where he had taken her, she had seen Boris Lukatieff enter the boarding house and give her a startled glance, then go quickly up the stairs to his own quarters. And at the Institute several times, too, he'd even tried to talk to her. Why, only yesterday afternoon, as she'd come out of the Science Hall, he'd been standing there with Alexei and Vladimir, and he'd said something to them and hurried up to her and taken her by the elbow and muttered, "Dushka, is anything wrong? You don't even speak to me any more!" and she'd just given him a long hard look and then insolently retorted, "I thought you wanted it that way, Boris

Lukatieff! Besides, you don't need me, you've got that black-haired creature I saw you with on the boulevard last week." And then he'd blushed and bitten his lips and turned away to go back to his comrades, and she'd hurried back to the boarding house to meet her lover.

Her lover-the very phrase made her magnificent titties quiver with excitement and the lips of her pussy grow moist and begin to twitch until she was almost feverish from it. But dear Illya had been ever so gentlemanly, you could tell at once that he had good breeding and the finest of manners. Even though she'd daringly come up to his room after their second date, he'd sat very properly at one end of the settee and she at the other and they'd conversed, the way sensible, intelligent people did. He'd told her all about his working in the province and how he had visited several government offices here in St. Petersburg already and was very hopeful soon of finding a good situation.

But tonight, he'd almost made her swoon away when, just as soon as they'd sat down, he'd taken her in his arms and kissed her hard on the mouth, and one of his hands had caressed her hip and then her thigh till she felt waves of passion surging and had to clench her legs tightly together to hold back the frantic ecstasy that had begun to churn inside of her. She'd admonished him demurely, her cheeks scarlet, "My goodness, Ilya, you-you take a girl's breath away! Besides, I'm not sure it's proper to do that to me yet, I'm not even your intended!" and he'd laughed softly and said, "My little dove, you're so beautiful, only a blind or dead man could stay away from one so charming delicious. Are you really vexed with me, Vera cheva, because I took one little kiss?"

The sweet diminutive he'd added to her name, one which was used only by lovers, she knew, had thrilled her even more, but she tried terribly hard to be very proper and virginal-which after all she was. "Well, nno, Ilya darling," she finally confessed in a quivering low voice, "but just the same, I don't want you to.think I'm cheap and easy. I'll have you know I've had no lover ever, not even Boris Lukatieff!"

And then he'd said, moving closer to her, his hands cupping her cheeks as he brushed his nose against hers, "That's the nicest thing you could have told me, dushka! It means I have a chance with you and that Boris hasn't won you yet."

"Of course he hasn't, Ilya! My gracious, what a thing to say! I wouldn't be going out with you so much if that were the case, you know."

"I know, I know, little dove," he'd said soothingly and then kissed her on the mouth very tenderly till she felt her senses swimming again. "But what you don't know is how maddening you are, how absolutely delicious! I'd like to eat you up, dushka, Vera cheva!" And then, while she was blushing and lowering her eyes as befitted a maiden, he'd put an arm around her waist and kissed her so firmly on the mouth that she almost lost consciousness of what was going on until she had felt his fingers begin to unbutton her shirtwaist and then to slip inside her camisole to cup one of her pink-skinned pear-shaped surging young titties. And it was all she could do to break away from him, because already she felt her nipple hardening and tingling with the bittersweet torture of sensual desire for him.

Now, for the sake of form, she rebuked him: "That was awfully bold and naughty of you, Ilya dear! I'm really not that kind of a girl, you know."

"Dushka!" he rose from the settee, his eyes wide with astonishment. "Do you think I was behaving to you as I would towards a woman of the streets?

How you misjudge me, my little Veracheva! But what you've just told me has given me hope-you say I'm not even your intended, but if you'll let me be, then we can exchange the sweet kisses which a fianc'e gives the man she's going to marry."

Vera Dugashkin's eyes in their turn now widened with astonishment and the color rushed furiously to her cheeks as she put a trembling hand to her lips and stared at him for a speechless moment. "You-do you really mean that, Ilya?" she finally quavered.

"Of course I mean it, little dove! It's love and desire for you that make me say this, because truly I don't have the right yet, you see. Here I am, with only a little money left by my poor old aunt, and not even a job yet so I could support you. Your parents would never let you wed a penniless vagabond."

"Oh no, you're not that, dearest Ilya!" she protested, going to him and putting her arms around him as she looked up into his anxious handsome face. "My father's a grain merchant, almost retired, because he's getting quite old and sick. And Mamushka is nearly blind and very frail and she; needs a nurse about her all the time. You see, my parents didn't marry until my father was nearly fifty and my mother nearly forty, Ilya. Though they were sweethearts ia little village many versts from St. Petersburg, my father was too poor then to think of marriage. And then finally a good kindly boyar took pity on him and brought him to St. Petersburg to work for him, and my father went to school and learned how to keep accounts and finally became a grain merchant. And my mother had already married a drunken brute of a farmer who beat her terribly so the doctor thought she could never have a child again, and finally he died, and my father sent for her."

"What a tragic and yet lovely story, my little dove! And it shows your tender heart," the brown-haired lieutenant gently murmured as Vera's golden head cradled on his shoulder and his slim fingers, as soft as a woman's, caressingly stroked the nape of her neck and her lissome back. He could feel against his chest the agitated swelling of those firm pear-shaped titties of hers. But he hadn't forgotten the reason he was here, not for a minute. This little golden-haired slut was so transparent, it was child's play to deceive her. And having done this, he would next make her his mistress and then she wouldn't be able to hold back any secrets from him. That was the way it was going to work.

"Besides," she now confided with a long sigh, "I couldn't bring you any dowry, really. Papa has spent so much on the nurse and on the hospital for Mamushka-"

"My little darling-I would be unworthy of your love if I concerned myself about a dowry! Do you think I want to be paid for the privilege of making you my beloved wife? You could be a beggar maid in rags, my little Veracheva, and I'd still adore you!"

"Ohh, Ilya-yyou would? Do you really mean it?"

Her beautiful large blue eyes were moist with tears now, and her lips were trembling. Again he cupped her flushed cheeks and put his mouth to hers, and Vera Dugashkin, with a little moan of happiness, surrendered herself in a long and passionately feverish kiss by which symbol she gave herself to her idealistic and handsome courtier.

Then, suddenly her eyes widened because her "Ilya" had gently broken off the embrace and stepped back, shaking his head sorrowfully.

"What-what's the matter, Ilya dearest?"

"No, I'm a beast. I haven't any right to make love you yet. My little dushka, I mustn't take advantage of you. Now it's almost nine o'clock, and your parents will be worried about you. I'm going to take you home, I'll find a droshky on the street and take you home safely."

Vera Dugashkin's eyes were radiant now as she moved towards him, confident in her love. Oh, he was so much nicer, ever so much nicer, than that clumsy oaf Boris Lukatieff! "Darling, no, they won't be worrying about me. The truth is, they're off to that little village where they both used to live long ago. It's a kind of rest for dear Mamushka. I told them I'd stay with Tatiana Kilov, she's my best girl friend at the Institute, you know. I've often done that in the past, so they didn't say anything about it at all. They left last night, Ilya darling. So you see, I don't have to go home right now and you don't have to rush out into that cold street to hail a droshky for me."

"Veracheva, droshky, my little dove, my beautiful sweet wife-to-be!" he breathed as he took her in his arms. And now his mouth fused to hers, and for the first time in her life the golden-haired young beauty felt the sensual poignard of a man's tongue sweetly stabbing between her lips in search of her nectar. Her thighs began to tremble and her knees to give way beneath her, and now his adroit hands grasped her voluptuously rounded hips and pressed her tightly against him while his lips and tongue besieged her. Her arms locked round his shoulders, her eyes closed, her nostrils flaring and shrinking, her cheeks exquisitely flushed, Vera Dugashkin quiveringly offered herself, on the brink of that nirvana-like abyss into which until this moment she had never sought to plunge. But now all her senses, wakened and kindled, urged her to the total surrender of her maidenhead. And even as she experienced the languorous, delicious sensations of carnal desire, she told herself that now, triumphantly, she could flout her lackadaisical suitor Boris forevermore, because now a mature gentleman loved her and was going to make her his wife.

"Then it's settled, my little dove?" he thickly murmured as at last he ended the kiss, that so far as Vera Dugashkin was concerned, could well have gone on throughout eternity. "Will you accept my humble offer of marriage? Will you do me the great honor to be my wife, knowing that as yet I don't have a situation but that I'll work my fingers to the bone for you, that I'll do everything that I can to make you happy?"

"Oh Ilya, Ilya, you don't have to ask, oh my dearest, oh love me, take me, I'm all yours now, yes, yes, yes!" Vera Dugashkin tremulously breathed.

He stooped and lifted her up in his arms and bore her into the other room where he laid her upon the bed. Then swiftly he began to undress her, kissing her stifled gasps and innocuous little protests-again for the sake of form-into ecstatic silence and submission, as she even aided him to drag down her drawers, to draw off her shoes and to leave her only with her gray lisle stockings and the cloth garters tied so snugly at their tops, until at last her voluptuous young body lay on that bed like a living statue of young Aphrodite. His eyes feasted on it, devouring the warm pink-satiny skin of her nudity, studying the tumultuous surging of her pear-shaped titties with their narrow dark coral aureoles and their saucy little buds which had now flirted in the erogenous awakening of this her moment of virginal surrender. On the thick dark-golden cluster of pussy curls which shrouded the soft fleshy lips of her maiden slit, on the soft delicately curved belly with its wide and shallow kiss-nook, on the lovely classically proportioned thighs, slender at the knees and gradually broadening into delicious curves that merged into the upstandingly rounded cheeks of her resilient behind.

"How beautiful you are, my little dove!" his voice was hoarse with lust now, and Vera's misty blue eyes, lovingly turned towards him, saw the massive thrust of his priapic spear against the fly of his breeches. "Ohhh!" she gasped, and promptly crooked one lovely soft pink-sheened arm over her eyes, while her blushes spread down to her very throat in the tumultuous and naughty excitement of this male phenomenon.

"My little dove, I'll be tender with you. This is our wedding night, you know, Veracheva," he crooned, to ease her fears. "It's true, by this act of love tonight, my little dove, we are as one, married under the heavens who look down upon us and bless this moment."

"Ohh, Ilya, Ilya, how poetic you are! Oh hurry, don't keep me waiting, I'm dying to be held by you, to be loved by you, my dearest husband!" she groaned. Her last fear had gone now and she held out her arms to him, her body quivering and readied for the sacrifice.

He too was fair-skinned, with surprisingly little hair on his body aside from his pubes and his armpits and the mustache which gave his blandly handsome face a kind of sophisticated insouciance which had immediately appealed to the gullible young beauty. But her eyes could not leave the thick fleshy spear which bobbed menacingly as he came now to the bed and clambered upon it. And she closed her eyes with perhaps the last vestige of maiden modesty as she felt his hands grasp her, felt that imperious weapon prod against the satiny warmth of her naked thigh.

Cunningly, he did not hasten his conquest of Vera Dugashkin. As he caressed her titties and her belly, he placed kisses here and there all over her shivering body until she was nearly mad with the sweet torment of this Tantalus. With gentle words and honeyed phrases, he praised the exquisite facets of her nakedness till Vera, who had heard only the impassioned revolutionary poetry of Vladimir Sokonikoff, moaned and arched and twisted on the bed like a cat in heat. And only his sly forefinger tickling her mount and edging the rims of those coral portals to learn of her tumescence, when he sensed that she was burning with an unswerving lust to measure his own, virgin though she was, did Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky at last mount between her trembling spreading thighs and press his vigorous organ into the citadel of Vera Dugashkin's maiden cunthole. At the same time, his mouth merged to hers and again his tongue plied between her lips to find her own vibrating, quivering membrane and rouse her to abandoned passion. And her groan of mingled pain and joy as he thrust himself through her maidenhead was muffled and he drank it in with her panting breath and the sweet ambrosia of her saliva as he felt himself thrust into her to the balls and felt her stockinged legs clench wildly over his buttocks.

She had never known such bliss, such utter fulfillment, and the glory of being needed and desired thrilled her like a paean sung in a great cathedral. Now she was a woman, no longer a child, accepted by the students and left on the fringe while they had their own secrets and thoughts, tolerated simply because they found her an attractive decoration to their gatherings. No, now she had a handsome mature man, who must have known many women in his day, and yet he preferred her and wished to make her his wife.

And so, in a perfect frenzy of ecstasy and self-surrender, Vera Dugashkin gave herself to Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky.

And hours later when, spent and reveling in her sweet lassitude, she lay beside him, as his gentle fingers caressed her belly and titties, she did not think it odd that he murmured to her, "Now you are my little wife, dushka. And now you've given me the inspiration to find a really important situation, to do something that will end the persecution and the oppression of the masses for all time to come. I want to be part of you, my dear one, I want to know what your friends who feel as I do about tyranny and injustice are planning, because perhaps I can be of service to them in the cause of freedom."

And that was why, as she tenderly caressed his head and gave him her lips again, she whispered back, "Oh my lover, my husband, my darling Ilya, of course you'll be one of us. You're so wise and clever and so much older than they are, you can help them too."

CHAPTER TEN

It might have comforted Vera Dugashkin and justified her passionate abandon to the handsome, attentive light-brown-haired "Ilya Vishnikoff" if she had know that Nadia Morensko and Boris Lukatieff had become lovers only a few days before.

The fiery young revolutionary had fallen deeply in love with the gentle, timid brunette dressmaker's assistant, and perhaps his immediate interest in her had been intensified by the knowledge that she too had been a victim of the tyrannical injustice which seemed invariably to be practiced by the rich against the poor and the helpless. When he had learned that the Countess Elisaveta Rademkin had actually had the lovely brunette horsed on the housekeeper's back and birched by the boorish coachman, he had been furious at this new sign of ruthless servitude into which the aristocracy enjoyed plunging those who had of necessity to serve them in order to keep alive. And the knowledge that Nadia was practically a slave, rather than an independent employee able to bargain for herself and to glean a decent livelihood, under the domination of the greedy Madame Emalieff, roused all the most idealistic instincts in his being. From this, physical passion came swiftly and inevitably, because Nadia was deliriously beautiful, lonely and herself possessed of an idealistic romanticism that made this casual acquaintance on a dark wintry night turn into her longed-for knight on a white charger.

What made it still more ecstatic for Nadia was the discovery that Boris, for all his crusading doctrines and air of a sophisticated man of the world, was just as virginal as she herself. It had happened that Alexei and Vladimir had decided to go out that particular evening to find a source for the dynamite and the fuse to be used in making a bomb whose target would be the detested chief of police Alexander Dvorkin. So after a frugal supper at a cheap little restaurant not far from the boarding house, Boris and Nadia found themselves alone together in the former's rooms. They kissed, and Nadia trembled and blushed and kissed him back, and she found the awkward, adoring caresses of his hands on her swelling young titties and hips and thighs so reverent and yet so rousing that she joyously whispered to him, "Oh my darling, love me, just as I want to love you!"

And when, blushing and closing her eyes and turning her face away as she lay naked on the bed, he had come to her, she had learned from his frantic kisses and caresses and then his almost anguished hesitance in that moment which had come for possession of her ardent young body, that this was truly the first time for him with a woman.

And this had seemed to her an incontrovertible sign that they were destined for each other, and if perhaps their first embrace did not have the delirious carnal pleasure which golden-haired Vera Dugashkin enjoyed in the arms of her treacherously expert lover, theirs was assuredly the more sublime a meeting in spirit as in flesh.

On the very night when Vera lay with "Ilya," beatifically deluded into the belief that she was to become his wife, Boris Lukatieff succeeded in urging Nadia to give up her squalid quarters with Madame Emalieff. "Look now, my sweet one," he'd told her. "I must be honest with you. I've an old uncle who clings to life the way a drowning man does to a straw, and the way things are, he may even outlive me. But he's my only hope of any inheritance, though the old scoundrel-likes me in his crusty way and he's promised me a little money in his will. When that happens, Nadia dushka, I swear on the ikon I'll take you to the priest. But in the meantime, I've just enough for my rent and food and some cigarettes every now and then, and you know how little that wretched woman pays you for your slavery. Out of that she takes nearly half for that miserable room which isn't fit even for rats-now don't you say anything till I've finished! You've a perfect right to live where you choose, so long as you do her work. I wish I could tell you to give up that miserable job, my darling, but it wouldn't be sensible yet, you see that, don't you?"

And Nadia Morensko, cradled in his arms, had smiled and nodded, her soul in her eyes, trusting him with her very life because he was so dear to her, so understanding, so gentle for all his fiery speeches and his vehemence against the oppressors.

"Then it's settled," he told her emphatically. "We're just as good as married, and I'm going to be the master in my own household just as I will be when the priest says the words over us, dushka. So you're going to give her notice and move right in here. All we have to do is put up a curtain over part of the room and Alexei won't mind at all. He's a decent sort, he won't even know we're here, with all his books and his letters. Besides he spends a lot of time with Vladimir, because all of a sudden he's decided he wants to be a poet too-after we've finished getting rid of that murderous swine Dvorkin!"

Madame Emalieff did not receive this news amiably, but, just as Boris Lukatieff had guessed, she could hardly prevent her best assistant from wanting to have some little freedom, so long as the girl continued her industrious work. And even she had had a grudging prick of conscience in realizing that it had been her mistake and not Nadia's which had cost the latter that humiliating thrashing at the hand of the Countess Rademkin's coachman. So after grumbling a good deal, she had finally given her consent.

So, on this night when Vera became the "intended bride" of the police spy Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky, Boris and Nadia lay together naked renewing their love and this time, because they were truly enamored of each other and the first shyness had passed, they discovered the wonders of Cythera and Nadia groaned aloud in her joy at feeling her young lover's virile cock drawing the deepest, most hidden ardors from the depths of her eager young cunthole.

As she lay beside him, her head fitted into the crook of his shoulder, while he turned to kiss her beautiful swelling breasts, she murmured, "I'm so much yours now, my dearest Boris, it's as if I were born again, as if nothing had ever happened until now! I want to share everything with you, my dear one, I want to help you. But isn't it terribly dangerous, what you and your roommate and your friend Vladimir are planning? Why, if the police find out before you've a chance to throw that bomb at that evil man, you may all be tortured, executed-and then I'd lose you forever! No, you'll need as many as you can to help you with the plot, and they won't suspect a little seamstress. Tell me what I can do, my beloved Boris."

His hands cupped her breasts as he put his mouth to hers in a long, rapturous kiss. And then, staring at her for a long moment, he finally said, "Yes, I'll tell you. But not too much, because I won't endanger you. If they were ever to seize you and take you to that fortress of theirs, down in the depths of Lublianka Prison, they'd do unspeakable things to you, my lovely Nadia. And the less you know, the less danger you'll be in if that should happen. But you can help, if you will. If you could go, perhaps on Sunday when you've the day off from that old slave-driver of yours, and ask some questions of the storekeepers near the prison. Most of them know a lot about the fellows working for Dvorkin and about Dvorkin himself, and I don't think they care for him too much in spite of the trade those brutal swine give them. They have to pay some of it back in bribes just so they won't get pinched for the pettiest violations. Those police are vultures, and they prey on the poor, just as your fine Countess does, and even your old dressmaker."

"What shall I try to find out, Boris?"

"We think there's going to be a riot at the Institute, dushka, about the first week of March," Boris Lukatieff explained. "And the week after that the Czar himself is going to the Church of St. Gregory to hear mass said for the twenty-seventh year of his reign. Naturally, the chief of police and his best men will guard the Czar's carriage in that procession through the streets. They'll have to turn at Petrogradny Square to reach the church, and it's a wide turn, so that Dvorkin, who will probably ride a horse behind the Czar's carriage will be at a distance from that carriage and rather near the crowd for a few moments. That's when Alexei is going to throw the bomb at him. And I'm to be in the crowd with a pistol in case Alexei misses, so we'll be sure to put an end to that murdering swine's filthy life."

"You, Boris? You with the pistol? Oh dear heaven, oh no, you mustn't! I'd die if anything happened to you! Isn't there any other way?"

"I don't think so. But that's why I want you to go talk to the storekeepers. But be sure not to arouse suspicion. Flirt with them a little, buy a few kopecks' worth of tobacco or candy or anything you choose, and go back again as soon as you can, as often as you can, till you're familiar to them and they accept you. Oh they'll talk, they're always gossiping. I know, because we had this idea six months ago, although we had to call it off because Dvorkin was sent for a month to Moscow to work with the chief of police there against some of the student agitators."

"I'm so afraid, my darling."

"You mustn't be. The crowd will be huge for the procession, and I can get away even if I have to fire the shot should Alexei's bomb not go off or miss its target. I'm strong and I can run well and there'll be such an uproar when it happens that they'll never find me. So don't you fret, my little sweet. But what I mean is that maybe the storekeepers will hear something about Dvorkin, because lots of his men go there and talk big, you know how they are. Maybe Dvorkin'll have some parade or something else to attend to before March the thirteenth-that's the day of the Czar's mass, you see. Well, I'd much rather do him in all by himself, without any danger to the Czar. Heaven knows he's a good ruler, as Czars go, only his ministers keep him from seeing what's really happening to the poor people under swine like Dvorkin. Now do you understand what I want you to do, my sweet one?"

"Yes, Boris. I'll do it. I pray to the gods that perhaps they will avenge all these cruelties and take Dvorkin's life in their own hands, so that you won't be in danger. But I'll do what you wish because I love you. And now," her voice died away to a husky whisper as she snuggled closer to him, turning to him, her eyes shining, "Show that you love me again, my dearest, my lover, my husband!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"I got your message, chief, and I'm glad I had a chance to sneak away from that scummy boarding house and that simpering little yellow-haired whore and see you again," Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky chuckled as he shook hands with the bearded chief of St. Petersburg police. It was the first day of March, and a cold, dreary rain had followed the wintry blasts of wind and snow. Inside the elegant house of Alexander Dvorkin, all was luxury and comfort. Dvorkin wore a silken dressing gown and silk pajamas, his feet bare, as he lolled in an armchair, reaching out to fondle the breast of a chestnut-haired young maid of about eighteen, who wore only her chemise, a lace-trimmed cap, a little apron, black stockings and high-buttoned shoes as she served the two men vodka and caviar. "You're very nice tonight, Ilonka," Alexander Dvorkin chuckled as he squinted up at the saucy-faced girl. "You know, Sasha boy, this little bitch is really fond of me, even when I thrash her. She'll come crawling all in tears, with her big bottom covered with nice red welts, begging me to fuck her because she's got hot from the thrashing. Isn't that so, Ilonka girl?"

"I try to please my master, always," the maid demurely replied, lowering her eyes and kneeling down beside the arm chair so that her master could slip his pudgy hand inside her chemise and squeeze one of her naked titties.

"That's the way I like to hear a bitch talk, Sasha boy! You know if those damned blue-stockings over at the Institute would get really smart and try to be as obliging as little Ilonka here, my job would be a lot easier, and so would yours. Now then, Ilonka, get out and when I ring the bell, you can come back wearing just your stockings and boots, understand? And I want you to take particular pains with my right-hand man Sasha here, understand me?"

"Yes, master. Thank you, master." She sinuously rose to her feet and, sending Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky a bold smile, hurried out of the salon.

"Now then, what have you found out so far? Have you got that little Dugashkin bitch eating out of your hand?"

"Better than that. Shell even eat between my legs, Excellency."

"That's very good, ha ha ha, that's excellent, that is!" Alexander Dvorkin guffawed as he slapped his thigh. "All right, besides the joke, just how far are those miserable bastards going with their nihilism? Is it all talk, is it just arguments and placards and lousy poetry, or is something more serious in the wind?"

"I've got a feeling that a lot more serious things are being planned than just mutiny outside of classrooms and curses at our men when they march by, Excellency. Don't forget, I've been living at that boarding house with a bunch of fine intellectuals. The Dugashkin girl used to be very sweet on a certain Boris Lukatieff. I've had a little chat with some of his professors too, Excellency. He's a real firebrand, that one. And I've been keeping my eyes open."

"I know, I've read all your reports. So far, my guess is that they're just grumbling and waiting for a chance to put on a show. But do you really think they're going to try to assassinate anybody?"

"If you want my honest opinion, Chief, I just think they might. They're hotheaded enough, and you know they've aimed those signs at you. It's all over that Anastasia you had down in the fortress."

"I remember that one. So that's their little game, is it? They think they'll frighten me just because I didn't treat one of their blue-stockinged bitches with kid gloves. All right, Sasha boy. I think maybe you ought to pull in your little bed partner. I'm afraid she's going to be rather shocked to find out that her husband-to-be is really my trusted lieutenant, but it ought to be amusing for the two of us, don't you think?"

"It certainly will be, Chief. She's a passionate little whore, she does everything a man could want. She's used her mouth on me, her fingers, just about everything except taking it in that little brown crack of hers."

"Well, once she's down in the fortress, we'll let you, her husband who has every right over her, take that jewel from her too. By the way, I've decided to cancel all maneuvers between now and March 13th, Sasha. There's no sense in my exposing myself to danger. And of course when we escort the Czar to the Church of St. Gregory, we'll have every man available horseback as well as plainclothesmen in the crowds, covering every possible angle. One thing's for sure, they might try to get at me, but they're not going to hurt the Little Father so long as I'm chief of police!"

"I'm with you, Chief. When do you want me to bring in Dugashkin?"

"Make it this Friday afternoon. I've nothing special planned for the weekend, and I could stand a little taste of new young pussy. I sent Corporal Kuprin off to Moscow yesterday to be at the disposal of the chief there, and give him the benefit of some of our experience. You know, they're getting some of these damned student uprisings even at the Conservatory! I don't know what's got into people these days, I don't, Sasha. Well, it's for Friday then. Meanwhile, keep your eyes on Boris and his friends."

"There's just one complication about Boris, Chief. He seems to have taken himself a mistress, a good looking black-haired bitch by the name of Nadia Morensko. I've done some investigating and I find that she works for the dressmaker Emalieff, who has been commissioned by the Countess Rademkin to make ballet and theatre and special occasion gowns for Her Ladyship."

"That's really good detective work, Sasha! You'll be a captain before you know it at this rate. Countess Rademkin, eh? Now I remember. She's the one with the cranky old husband-he must be getting close to sixty by now-he's the one doing special diplomatic work for the Little Father."

"The very same, Excellency!"

"Hmmm. You know, I've heard rumors that the Countess hasn't exactly been lonely while her old husband's been traveling all over the provinces. You might just investigate that. The Czar doesn't care to have any scandal coming out of the better families, not these days with all the unrest and the agitation we're running into. It's bad for the morale of the masses, Sasha. It wouldn't do any harm to keep an eye on Countess Rademkin. Who knows, maybe that cute little bitch who's sleeping with Boris Lukatieff now and working for the dressmaker may have some connection in that household. In my business, Sasha, you have to suspect everybody until they prove themselves to be innocent. Well, that's enough shoptalk now. Let's have Ilonka in now, and I'll show you how hot the bitch gets after she's had her bottom thrashed a little. You'll be the lucky recipient of her favors tonight-"that is, if you don't mind my watching your performance?"

"I'd be honored, Chief,"

Alexander Dvorkin roared with laughter as he rose from the arm chair, went to the wall and tugged the bell rope, and immediately the saucy-faced chestnut-haired young maid returned... this time in only her black stockings and high-buttoned boots, bowing her head before the two important police officials.

She shivered a little as she watched Alexander Dvorkin reach for a braided leather whip lying on a tabouret beside the arm chair, but she didn't flinch as he beckoned her to him.

A few moments later, with her knees on her palms, her head bowed down to the floor, she was gasping and squirming as the leather whip cut into her lower back and the sides of her squirming hips, while Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky, his eyes glittering, hurriedly undressed and waited impatiently for her to service him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Boris, my darling, I just don't like that fellow. There's something about him-what it is, I just can't put my finger on it-but I don't trust him at all."

Nadia Morensko had turned on the spigot of the old samovar which Boris's mother had given him long ago for the day when he would set up his own housekeeping, and let the strong hot tea rise to the brim of the battered tin cup. Her black-haired lover leaned back against his chair, his wiry fingers holding a thick piece of coarse brown sugar through which he would sip his chai. "Well, now, dushka, since you've brought it up, the fact is I'm not too keen on the tenant myself. It's true that he's very well-mannered and he seems to have quite a gift of gab about the suffering of the peasants in the province of Rostoff-on-the-Don. And of course Vera Dugashkin is head over heels in love with him, any fool can see that. Now I trust Vera almost as much as I do you, my darling, but for a very different reason; she's really a little bourgeois who's getting her first taste of life as it really is and of course she's idealistic. But she doesn't have really the brains or the courage for what we've got in mind, not the way you have, my darling Nadia. And that's why I didn't let Alexei and Vladimir open their mouths too much about what we've planned for the celebration of the Little Father's anniversary on March 13th."

"I'm so glad you didn't tell him what you've already told me, my darling Boris!" Nadia set down his cup before him, and flung her arms round his neck and swiftly seated herself on his lap, giving him her lips in a long and fiery kiss.

"If you keep doing that, darling, our tea will certainly get very cold," Boris teasingly warned. "Now I don't suppose you've had any luck getting an hour off from that slave-driving Madame Emalieff-"

"That's where you're wrong, my dearest one! She's come down with a very bad cold, and so yesterday afternoon all of us were sent away so that we wouldn't catch it."

"That wasn't out of tender concern for your health, my poor Nadia, but because the old woman's so greedy that she's afraid if you all got sick you couldn't go on slaving for her for those paltry few kopecks she gives you. But go on."

"If I do, you mustn't put your hands on my legs or my breasts, you wicked rascal you!" Nadia giggled, adorably blushing as she glanced down to see her lover's hands caressing one breast and stroking one lovely thigh through her chemise. "But as I was saying, I did go down towards Lublianka Prison later yesterday afternoon, and then again this afternoon because she's still quite sick and confined to her bed. I bought this tea that's getting cold now, if you must know, and some soap and a candle... a candle we can burn to say a prayer to that one day soon we'll really be husband and wife and not have to live in fear and danger, my dearest Boris."

He interrupted her with a passionate kiss, and as his left arm curved round her waist, his hand moved up to press against the outer curve of her swelling tittie, while his right hand glided under the hems of her long chemise to clamber over the coarse lisle stockings till at last he reached the warm ivory flesh of her naked thigh. "And what did the storekeepers say about that bastard Dvorkin, my sweet little dove?"

"Well, for one thing, there won't be any maneuvers or parades for a while. Old Mr. Zenkovicy, in whose shop I bought this nice strong tea-if we ever get to drink it!-was saying that some of the policemen were grumbling because they were looking forward to full-dress maneuvers. It seems they get paid a few kopecks more when they have to rehearse like that for the big celebration that the Czar is going to have."

"So, they've got wind of the danger, have they? It means that our cowardly chief of police isn't going to show himself on the streets of St. Petersburg until the very day when he has to protect the Little Father. Now we can really make our plans. The bomb is almost ready, but Alexei and Vladimir have still some work to do on it. You see, my darling, when it's thrown, it must be with a very short wick that will burn down to the fuse and explode just at the moment it strikes the target. It's a matter of timing and it has to be done very carefully. If the wick is too long just like with a candle, it won't reach the wax for a long tirpe. And so one of those policemen could stamp it out or tear it out and the bomb wouldn't go off. You've done wonders, my darling, and all of us are deeply grateful to you. And now you won't have to go back there anymore, because I've been thinking that if those filthy brutes see a pretty girl like you across the street from the fortress, they might just take it into their heads to drag you down there to the interrogation chamber and have some fun with you, and then I'd have to kill them all with my bare hands!"

"Oh Boris, Boris, how fierce you are, how handsome you are when you're angry! And how I love you!" Nadia Morensko whispered, as, with a supple movement of her lovely young body, she pressed herself tightly against him, her arms locking round his shoulders and surrendered her mouth in the full passionate abandon of her generous and loving nature.

"I want you to come with me, my sweet Vera cheva," Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky explained as he circled his left arm round the golden-haired young student's supple waist and, cupping her dimpled chin in the palm of his right hand, bent to kiss her moist red lips. "You see, dushka, at last I think I've found the situation that's just right for me. And I told my boss that-that is, the man who is going to be my boss if I get the job-that I wanted him to meet my fianc'e. I should have said, of course, my wife. But he's an important man and has ways of learning whether people lie to him, you understand. But I'm going to tell him that we shall be married just as soon as he adds my name to the list of workers."

"Oh, I'm so proud of you, Ilya!" Vera Dugashkin fervently exclaimed, as she kissed him back and cupped his cheeks with her soft hands, staring fondly into his crinkling eyes. "I understand about your not calling me your wife yet, my darling. But it will be soon, won't it, Ilya? I want us to have a baby soon-your baby, my dear husband. Oh, how happy I'll be, when we're all a little family like that, and nothing more to worry about, and when you can do work that will help the poor downtrodden people of Russia!"

"Believe me, dushka, this situation I'll have will make certain that the people who matter will be safe from stupid acts of violence," he suavely retorted. Alas, poor Vera Dugashkin did not understand the vicious innuendo of that statement!

"I'll hurry, then, it'll only take a minute and I'll be ready to go with you, Ilya!" she whispered, giving him a last lingering kiss, and then hurrying into the little cubicle which served as commode and washroom, she dipped her hands into a bowl of water, patted her face, then dried it with a towel and applied some rice powder to make certain that she would look at her very best for her lover's new employer.

"I think we can find a droshky, to take us there, for it's a very long walk," he explained as they went down the stairs together. Old Madame Luba Rostoff again opened her door when she heard the creaking of the old stairs, and peered out at them. "A fine day, Mr. Vishnikoff, a fine day indeed! How nice your lady friend looks today!"

"Thank you, Madame Rostoff," he courteously inclined his head. "And in the name of my fianc'e, I think you also for the compliment. And a good day to you!"

Vera stood on the curb holding onto his arm, a warmly affectionate smile on her red lips. How proud she was of her Ilya! How well he handled himself, making every one around respect him. Oh wouldn't it be wonderful when they were really and truly married. He'd been so ardent, too, she just knew she was going to miss her next monthly time. And it would be a wonderful start for their marriage, a child born out of their love.

"Here comes a droshky, droshky!" he said good-naturedly as he waved his arm toward the coachman. "Ah, it's a fine sturdy carriage, not so handsome, though, as the one in which I'd love to take you to the church when they say the vows for us. But well pretend, in a way, that we're going to the church now, shall we, my little dove?"

"Oh, my Ilya!" she breathed, starry eyed, as she held his arm very tightly and sat next to him, leaning her head on his manly shoulder.

"Where to, sir?" the coachman looked back with a knowing grin. If ever there was a couple that had bed on their minds, this was surely one, he told himself.

"Go to 47 Metropolitan Street, driver. It's just a few doors from there, and I'll direct you when we get there," Vera's lover explained. The coachman nodded, jerked the reins and, reaching for the long whip thrust into the holder on his right, cracked it in the air over his horse.

"Metropolitan Street?" Vera Dugashkin wonderingly echoed. "Where are you going to work, my dearest Ilya? I can't think what's around there-good gracious, around the corner there's the police station-surely it's not there where you're going to be working?"

"No, of course not, my little dove." He squeezed one of her soft hands between his own and smiled reassuringly. "Do you think I'd be satisfied with being an ordinary policeman, dushka?"

"Of course you wouldn't, you're my smart, wonderful, handsome Ilya!" she lovingly declared, and then closed her eyes and cradled her head on his shoulder again, a serene smile on her exquisitely sensual mouth.

But when the droshky halted along the street which "Ilya Vishnikoff" had indicated, he swiftly delved into the pocket of his fur coat and, producing a metal badge, turned it towards the coachman, who had peered round to inquire if this was the designated place. "There, driver," he softly exclaimed, pocketing the badge before Vera, who had almost been drowsing, could open her eyes and look around to see where they were.

Once again there was a crack of the whip, the horse started up, and the droshky moved on. "We're almost there, beloved," he said, his voice edged with sadistic impatience. "You'll find my boss a most interesting man, believe me, Vera cheva!"

Now the droshky had turned the corner and was making its way down the wider street on the left side of which stood the grim gray stone "fortress" of Lublianka Prison. And then the driver drew on the reins with a loud "Whoa, you stupid horse, whoa!" and, doffing his tall hat, thickly lined with several old dust rags which he himself had sewn in to protect him against the cold, announced, "We're here, Excellency!"

"Very good, driver. Come along, little dove!" Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky's voice had changed from that of the attentive lover to the insolent bark of an official used to having his own way. He tossed a five-ruble note to the beaming coachman, and then grasped Vera Dugashkin's wrist tightly as he ordered, "Come on now, stir your stumps, you little slut, we mustn't keep His Excellency waiting any longer."

"But-but what do you mean, Ilya? Oh, you're hurting my wrists-please don't-oh no, but this is the police station-oh-what does this mean-oh Ilya, why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because, Vera Dugashkin, student, instigatress, revolutionary, I, Sasha Lumovsky, Lieutenant of the Czar's secret police, do hereby arrest you for sedition and conspiracy and treason! Now come along or I'll drag you by force, do you understand?"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Here she is, Excellency! Hardly any trouble at all, except right at the very last. Veracheva, I want you to meet my boss, His Excellency Alexander Dvorkin, the chief of police."

The bearded man behind the massive desk rose with a greedy smile, his glittering eyes swiftly appraising the lovely golden-haired captive, who shrank back, her hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes enormous with horror and stupefaction, while the man who had been her lover and was now her Judas, continued to grip her by the other wrist.

"So this is Vera Dugashkin, eh?" Alexander Dvorkin drawled as he walked slowly towards the frightened young beauty. "I've had the most delightful reports about your talents, young lady. In fact, they interested me so much that I told myself I simply must have the pleasure of observing them displayed before my very eyes, and that indeed is why you're here today."

"Heavens! What have I done?" Vera Dugashkin groaned, lifting her tear-filled blue eyes towards the heavy ceiling of the private office of this man who had been nicknamed "The Monster of Lubkanka."

"What have you done, dushka?" Alexander Dvorkin tauntingly echoed. "Why, a great many things, from what I've heard. Many of them I'm afraid, we consider treasonable. Now we can't have young students going around trying to assassinate government officials and police officers, you know. Our Little Father would be most distressed. The next thing that would happen, he'd turn out the Cossacks with their whips and sabers against you hot-blooded young radicals, and then you'd really have something to cry out about, believe me. But don't be frightened, little dove. The two of us are going to go downstairs to a nice quiet little room where we can be all to ourselves, and if you're a good girl and truthfully answer all the questions I'm going to put to you, you may get off with not more than two years in a reformatory. Of course, they'll probably give you a good birching every week or so, and you'll spend some time on bread and water, but it's certainly better than being sentenced to the knout for everybody to watch and then sent off to hard labor in Siberia. Bring her along, Sasha!"

"You've tricked me-you abominable filthy, inhuman pig!" Vera Dugashkin hysterically burst out as she tried to drag free her wrist, and as she struggled, she kicked her seducer in the shin. With a snarl of rage, Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky drew back his right hand and slapped her across the cheek with all his strength, so that even though only his palm made impact with her face, the blow made her stagger back against a chair. Then, swiftly, seizing both her wrists and dragging them behind her back, he forced her out of the office, while the chuckling bearded chief of police followed, his eyes glistening with sexual anticipation of the sport to follow.

In a few moments, the struggling, panting, hysterical golden-haired captive found herself in the terrible subterranean interrogation chamber, where so many helpless girls and women had already expiated their "crimes" of being desirable and helpless before the lecherous police of Alexander II.

"How do you want her, Excellency?" the lieutenant eagerly demanded as he shoved the struggling, sobbing girl into the terrible dungeon, then slammed and bolted the heavy door so there would be no escape for her.

"Naked, of course, Sasha! You know, you've certainly a genius for description, my boy," the police chief lewdly chuckled. "So she has a mole on her lift hip, does she? And a tiny little oval birthmark just above the back of her left knee. Decidedly, you've made my mouth water with all these reports of yours, Sasha. But well begin gently with the little bitch. Fix her to that slanted scaffold in the corner and then let me see those charming marks on her naked flesh!"

The lieutenant again seized the unfortunate golden-haired captive, dragged her towards the end of the spacious interrogation chamber, forcing her in front of a heavy rectangular wooden plank which was set against the floor and made a forty-five degree angle to the wall against which the other end was solidly attached. Four iron manacles had been fixed into this slanting plank to hold the captive's wrists and ankles, and Dvorkin's ambitious subordinate now seized one of Vera's wrists, dragged it up to the open gyve, forced it inside and then swiftly locked it, thereby clamping the slender wrist in a cruelly chafing vise. At this, Vera began to struggle and kick and twist, but it was much too late; a moment later her other wrist was immutably secured, and then in turn each of her slim ankles, after which the two men stepped back to admire her ineffectual struggles and to savor her cries and denunciations.

Finally the police chief's lust could no longer be held in check, and he made an impatient gesture to his aide. The lieutenant at once began to undress the golden-haired prisoner whom he had so cunningly tricked with his offer of marriage. This time however, his fingers were not gentle as they removed her garments one by lingering one, as he ripped down her shirtwaist, then the camisole, leaving her naked to the waist, and then, crouching, tore away her skirt and petticoats, and finally the coarse muslin drawers which hid the glories of her voluptuous pink-satiny bottom and the twin orifices of her sexual parts.

She was naked now except for stockings and her high-buttoned boots which rose to mid-calf, her body stretched to extreme with her legs widely straddled and her arms forming a kind of X, angled forward so that the blows of a strap or a cane or a nagaika or the plet would visit tender naked skin exaggeratedly tautened by this obscene posturing.

"Now there's a magnificent bottom, just made for the whip!" Alexander Dvorkin pronounced, licking his bearded lips with sadistic relish. "What a lucky dog you are, Sasha, to have had a couple of weeks in bed with this luscious young bitch! Now I'm beginning to regret having given you the assignment!"

"You can kill me! I won't ever tell you anything, do you hear? Oh, you monsters, you filthy, horrible beasts, to trick me like this!" Vera cried as she turned her head over her left shoulder to stare through tear-blurred, dilated eyes at the man who had betrayed her and, she now knew with horrible despair, her student comrades.

"My, how heroic she is all of a sudden, Sasha!" the brutal police chief chuckled. "Let's see if I can find those marks you wrote about in your reports. Ah, here's the sweet little mole, a tiny black dot just at the top of her hip!" And his right palm lingeringly moved over Vera Dugashkin's satiny pink bottom globe, mounting from the base over the swelling curve of the summit and on to the slope of the lithe young hip till at last his fingertip prodded the little mole. Clenching her teeth, the naked captive ground her loins against the harsh thick wooden plank of her punishment scaffold, closing her eyes and steeling all her muscles in a desperate resolve to die under torture rather than let a word of Boris Lukatieffs plot escape the tightened young lips.

"And here's the beauty spot, too!" Dvorkin laughed as he squatted down and traced a forefinger back and forth over the tiny brown birthmark. "Such firm flesh, so elastic and springy! And such wonderfully soft skin, pink as a baby's, really exceptional! My envious compliments, Sasha!"

"Thank you, Chief. But of course, she's all yours, and I think I've broken her in nicely for you."

"I understand your loyalty, my boy, but I'm not overly fond of leavings. I trust you haven't enjoyed all of her very obvious charms yet-you understand me?" With this, the bearded police chief prodded his thumb against the tightened crease of Vera Dugashkin's shivering naked bottom globes, and the unfortunate girl gasped with shame as she comprehended his lascivious meaning.

"No, that's true, I haven't tried that place out yet. And so you see she'll have at least one virginity to give you. But I'm afraid I've used up the other two myself," the lieutenant sniggered.

"Well, in your place I'd have done the same thing, Sasha. But when one serves the Little Father as zealously as I do, one learns to be grateful for the smallest of favors. Now let's proceed with the interrogation first. Do you want to start, Sasha, or shall I?"

"You're the chief, and I'm here to carry out your orders," Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky ingratiatingly countered.

"Thanks, my boy, I won't forget this. Well, just to begin with, so our charming little Vera will see that we're both reasonable gentlemen, I'm going to give her a good little spanking with my hand, just as a father would a naughty child. Then I'm sure she'll throw herself on our leniency and tell us everything she knows, eh, Sasha? Now then, you sweet little bitch, get ready!"

His voice hoarsening with lust, the bearded police chief stepped to the naked captive's left and, planting his left palm against the small of her quivering, perspiring bare back, began to apply the flat of his right hand in quick stinging smacks over her huddling bottom-cheeks. It was more humiliating than painful, precisely intended to shame and denigrate the young girl into the realization that for these cunning torturers, she was nothing more than a helpless puppet and plaything. At the first noisy slap, Vera Dugashkin lifted her head and caught her breath, her fingers clenching, all her muscles standing out along her shapely calves and thighs and bottom globes, as she prepared herself for her shameful ordeal.

The elasticity of her bare bottom excited Alexander Dvorkin. Pausing a moment after having given her about twenty slaps, he glanced over at his lieutenant and broadly winked. Then, still maintaining the pressure of his left palm against the small of the girl's back, he began to apply insidious little pinches with right thumb and forefinger all over the vividly crimsoned, flinching hillocks, making her start convulsively and jerk and twist as much as her manacles allowed, uttering stifled gasps and whimpering sobs of discomfort and shame.

When he at last terminated this lubricious interlude, Vera Dugashkin's naked bottom was uncontrollably twitching and contracting, the skin from her hip-slopes to the tops of her lithe, quivering thighs uniformly bright-hued, proof that her sensitive young skin had been exacerbated and her nerves brought to the flowering threshold from which true pain would ensue after this preliminary and humiliating discomfort.

"Now then, galupchik," Alexander Dvorkin purred, "you see how kind we are to you. My opinion is that you're a misguided girl who has mistaken the itch between those delicious legs of yours for patriotism. And it's really a wrongly aimed and stupid kind of patriotism, the kind your comrades are trying to foist off on the decent people of Mother Russia. Why, you children over there at the Institute have the blessing of a good education which is afforded to you by the Czar himself, may he have another twenty-seven years of glorious rule! And this is the way you show your gratitude."

"I have nothing to say. Kill me!"

"My, my, Sasha, what a dramatic little actress our Veracheva is!" the police chief gloatingly declared. "I've not the least intention of killing you, not with such a magnificent bottom, and I haven't even seen the rest of you yet. No, my dear, that's not the punishment for a naughty girl who takes up with those dirty nihilists because she's looking for a stiff prick to stick into her itching little slit. You've already proved that, besides, by being such a little whore with my worthy Sasha. So you see, galupchik, you don't have to pretend with us any longer. And we won't tell your comrades what you say about them, I give you my word and it's just as good as the Czar's, believe me! Well now, are you ready to tell us what that boy friend of yours and his other rascally friends are planning against us?"

"I don't know, I'm a girl, and they didn't want me to do anything. Besides, all they've ever done is talk. Are you dirty cowards scared of talk?" Vera Dugashkin, inwardly sick with nausea in her terror, nonetheless managed to defy her two torturers. For now she realized how wrong she had been about dear Boris, and how her stupid, feminine jealousy had led her into this fiendish trap. Perhaps she could not save herself, but at least she would try to make amends. Whatever Boris planned-and she had learned only that he and Vladimir and Alexei had been talking mysteriously about a bomb that would end the terroristic career of a brute-these two filthy swine wouldn't learn from her!

"She's still being a little actress, I'm afraid, Sasha. Would you hand me the nagaika. Now that her bottom's nice and red and just a bit unpleasantly warm, I think this short little leather whip which the Cossacks are so fond of ought to be just the thing to bring her to her senses. Whenever you're ready to speak, dushka we'll be listening."

The lieutenant handed him the instrument, and Alexander Dvorkin grasped the handle with a smirk of anticipation as he took his stance behind the shuddering naked captive. Slowly lifting the whip, he hovered it in the air a long moment to agonize the helpless girl, and then brought it down with all his might in a diagonal slash which sent the three leather thongs clacking across the ripest curves of both huddling naked hemispheres.

"Ahrrr!! Ohh, ohh, ohh, heavens!" Vera shrilly cried out as her body jerked fitfully from side to side.

A second lash instantly followed, backhanded and from left to right, once again sending the three thongs diagonally over the golden-haired naked girl's shuddering, reddened bare bottom-cheeks. Once again her shrill cry of pain rang out, as she arched and twisted against her gyves, her knees clattering against the heavy wooden angling plank which was her altar of martyrdom.

Alexander Dvorkin lowered the nagaika, contemplating his handiwork, his eyes feasting on the shivering back, the restlessly straining thighs, the flaming naked behind whose sporadic muscular tensions betrayed the mounting suffering of his victim. Then, grinding his teeth, he swept the nagaika's thongs with a sonorous Smack! over the tops of Vera's bottom, and then he instantly regaled her with an even harsher blow across the base of her jutting posterior. This time she shrieked in pain, jerking at her gyves, twisting her tearstained face back over her shoulder to stare at her executioner. Her Judas-lover mocked her: "He whips well, doesn't he, my little dove? But you'll see, he will fuck you just as nicely! Her thighs are very tender, Chief, and perhaps a few of the cuts ought to visit them just to get her to talk!"

"I'll take your advice, Sasha." Alexander Dvorkin lowered the short-handled leather whip and then perniciously swept it up between Vera Dugashkin's straddled, shaking thighs. As the tips of the three leather bands bit into her distended cunthole, the golden-haired victim uttered a wild, prolonged shriek, her head lifting, her eyes mad with unspeakable suffering. And once again the police chief swept the nagaika upwards to attack that tenderest spot of all.

Mad with pain, the unfortunate naked girl tore at her fetters, her body thudding against the heavy wooden scaffold, her eyes exorbitant and blinded with her tears.

But there was no respite for the unfortunate girl; Alexander Dvorkin stepped towards her left side and sent the nagaika streaking across the tops of her right thigh, and then one across her left, finishing with a third and savage cut full across the ripest curves of her inflamed naked bottom.

"Speak, you obstinate little bitch!" he said. "What's your boy friend planning for us, eh? I want the truth, Vera Dugashkin, or I'll flay the skin off that big backside of yours and Sasha here will rub salt into the raw flesh, do you understand me? Will you speak, or shall we have the irons heated and put to your bottom and titties!" In his rutting exasperation, the bearded chief of police now applied half a dozen furious slashing strokes over the upper and lower summits of Vers Dugashkin's naked behind, drawing wild, pathetic cries and babbled, incoherent entreaties from the helpless, agonized young beauty, whose hips twisted frantically from side to side, her loins rubbing lasciviously against the scaffold as if she were truly in heat, under the compulsion of the infernal suffering inflicted by this Cossack whip.

Dripping with sweat, his eyes bulging and glassy with lust, Alexander Dvorik flung down the nagaika and, unbuttoning the fly of his breeches, liberated his swollen ramrod. Then, sinking his pudgy fingers into the inflamed and lash-marked cheeks of Vera Dugashkin's shuddering body, he wayned them apart to expose the furtive, shrinking rosette of her virgin ass-hole. Pitilessly, he thrust himself against this dainty inlet, and now Vera shrieked like one demented as he brutally forced apart the resisting sphincter muscles and lodged himself within her narrow rectal chasm.

Himself lustily excited, Lieutenant Sasha Lumovsky retrieved the discarded whip and began to belabor Vera's naked shoulders, the nape of her neck, her tender side, so that at times the tip of the leather bands stung against the shuddering, panting outer curve of one luscious pink-sheened tittie. Her cries were raucous now, her eyes bulging from their sockets with the inhuman agony she was enduring, for Alexander Dvorkin was vigorously sodomizing her with deep eviscerating digs which chafed the tender channel way. At last, with a bellow of triumphant lust, he poured his essence into her bowels and then jerked himself out and stepped back, mopping his sweating face with a handkerchief, while his aide continued to flog her back and shoulders.

Then, as he again lowered the nagaika towards the flour and swept it up between Vera's straining naked thighs to attack her cunt, the golden-haired martyr uttered a last piercing cry and slumped in her bonds, mercifully unconscious.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was Tuesday, March 10th, three days before the mass at the Church of St. Gregory. The Czarina, a gentle, buxom woman, deeply devoted to her husband and their thirty-six-year-old son, the Czarevitch Alexander, had had premonitions, perhaps much as Calpurnia, wife of Julius Caesar, had feared the Ides of March. But Alexander II remained steadfast in his determination to lead the processional to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, where he would ask God to bless his reign and to extend it, that he might serve the people of all Russia....

When Nadia Morensko had returned that fateful Friday evening to her lover's rooms at the boarding house at 23 Petrpolsky Street, old Madame Luba Rostoff had come out of her apartment and greeted the lovely young brunette. "My, what a nice gentleman Mr. Vishnikoff is to be sure!" she cackled. "It's a pleasure to have him as a tenant, he gives the house style, truly he does, girl! And I think he's really stuck on that yellow-haired chit who used to pester your Boris all the time. He took her out and got her a droshky, no less, and away they went, she clinging to his arm as if she were going to a wedding, hee hee!"

Nadia Morensko frowned. "He went away with Vera Dugashkin, you say, Madame Rostoff?"

"Aye, that he did, my girl! And they're not back yet either. I heard him say something, just before I opened my door to greet him, about taking his young lady friend to see his boss. For it seems he's found a fine new situation."

"That's quite strange," Nadia mused. "Thank you, Madame Rostoff. I'll go upstairs now."

"Oh, he's there, all right, your Boris. Well, how nice it is to be young, and don't I wish I were back again in Kiev and I had my looks oh, I had many a young lad even better-looking than your Boris after me in those days, I did! But we all must grow old one day, alas! Good evening to you, girl!"

Nadia Morensko hurried up the stairs and was soon in Boris's arms. After they had kissed lingeringly and tenderly, she told him of her conversation with the landlady. "Now that's odd indeed, Nadia dushka," he rejoined. There's something fishy about Mr. Ilya Vishnikoff, and I've felt it all along. That's why I haven't told little Vera anything about our final plans. You know, I've got an idea. Maybe he didn't lock his door when he went out with Vera. Why don't we go have a look at his room, and see if there's anything there to tell us who and what he really is?"

The two lovers went promptly down the end of the hall to the room which the supposed former tax-collector occupied, tried the knob and found the door unlocke d. Boris Lukatieff hastily began to search, under the mattress, under the bed, in the little closet, in the chest of drawers. But apart from a few articles of clothing, several old newspapers and a book of Pushkin's poems, there was nothing. As they turned to leave the room, Nadia's eyes suddenly fell on a little round piece of leather on the floor near the closet. "Wait a minute, darling-what's this?" she exclaimed. She stooped to pick it up, and then uttered a cry: "Holy Mother save us all, look at this, my darling! It's a watch fob!"

Boris took it from her hand and stared at it, and then turned pale, "Yes it's a watch fob and it's got an inscription in gold lettering-'To Sasha, faithful comrade from The Chief, A.D.' and whose initials do you think those are, Nadia? Those of the police chief of St. Petersburg, that's whose! Vera's boy friend Ilya is a friend of that infernal monster. Come on, we've got to get Vladimir and Alexei and move out of here at once. God knows what they're doing to that poor, silly girl. He's turned her head, and he's probably putting her to the question right now."

And so the quartet of young conspirators left the boarding house an hour later, to hide until the leaves on the calendar would mark March 13th, in an old ramshackle house belonging to Vladimir Sokonikoff's grandfather, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg....

And this same Tuesday, three days before the celebration mass, Count Paul Rademkin unexpectedly returned home after having spent three months in the provinces on business for the Czar of all the Russias. His coming was unannounced, and when Olga the housekeeper, opened the door, she turned pale and put her hand to her mouth as her eyes widened in fright.

"What's the matter, Olga? It isn't a ghost, it's your master!" the old nobleman chuckled. "Have your mistress attend me in the salon at once, I'm longing to see her, parted as we have been all this time."

"I-I-Your Honor she-she's in her bedchamber-"

"I expected that she would be, it's not yet eleven of the morning. But no matter, she'll be happy to see me. Go fetch her, I tell you!"

He moved to the stairway, and the gray-haired housekeeper hurriedly ascended ahead of him, glancing back fearfully over her shoulder. As she reached the landing, she heard her mistress's voice peevishly calling, "Olga, if it's a tradesman, for heaven's sake, send him away! I told you that Dimitri and I don't want to be disturbed. And have

Anna bring in some vodka and herrings and a little bread and salt, my dear one!"

"Yyes, noble lady-but please-noble lady, it isn't a-" the housekeeper frantically stammered, wringing her hands. For the Count, his eyes narrowing, his lips tightly compressed, had begun to climb the stairs and pushed her aside as, despite his infirmities and age, he moved towards his wife's bedchamber.

"Olga, didn't you hear what I told you? At once, at once! We're famished after a night of love-oh my God!" Countess Elisaveta Rademkin suddenly recoiled, her eyes bulging, her jaw dropping as she saw her husband confront her. Just beyond the half-open door, the naked blond young lieutenant lolled at his ease on the great bed, wearing only a night-shirt, smoking a cigarette, his hair tousled, his mouth stained with his mistress's lip-rouge.

"I see," Count Paul Rademkin said in a dead voice. "I might have guessed as much. You will have the goodness, Elisaveta, to get your lover out of my house. And then-"

But he got no farther. Suddenly there was a loud knocking at the front door, and the terrified housekeeper hurried down to open it. There were two uniformed policemen.

"What is it, gentlemen?" she gasped, believing that nothing more incredible could happen on this dreadful day.

"By order of the chief of police, we've a warrant for one Countess Elisaveta Rademkin," the taller policeman intoned. "If that's your mistress, have her dress and follow us at once. We've a carriage waiting g."

"But why? In the name of the Czar, what has my poor mistress done?"

"That's our business, woman. But if you must know, she's suspected of treason against the Little Father himself. Now will you fetch her, or do we go up into her bedchamber and drag her out?"

Bursting into tears and wringing her hands again, Olga Kirvshoff ran up the stairs, sobbing. "My God, noble lady, it's the police, they want you, oh my God!"

"Stop your caterwauling, woman!" Count Paul Rademkin angrily commanded. "Get her dressed and down to them at once. Ah, here's the romantic young lover!" For Dimitri Ushiskin, sheepishly, head bowed, eyes averted, had just stumbled out of his wife's bedroom, having hurriedly donned his uniform of the Czar's own guard. "Perhaps you'll be gallant enough to escort your paramour down the stairs to those gentlemen who are waiting for her," he told his young rival with a sardonic smile. "And you may tell their superiors that I, Count Paul Rademkin, am in no way responsible for the actions or the seditious thoughts of my former wife."

"Your-your former wife?" the young lieutenant gasped.

"Of course, Lieutenant. You're welcome to her. I shall have the Czar himself declare the marriage annulled. She will inherit nothing from me, so you may take her and provide for her if you still desire her. I bid you a good morning. And now, Olga, will you have the cook send up some tea to my room? I have a report to write for His Majesty."

* * *

"I demand to know how you dare to have me brought here to a common police station to be questioned like a serf!" the Countess angrily exclaimed, her eyes flashing with indignation as she stood before the desk of Alexander Dvorkin.

"Gently, noble lady," he sarcastically drawled. "This is no time for histrionics, but for the truth." He leaned forward across his desk, his eyes cruel and narrowed: "This concerns itself with a treasonable plot to assassinate some important government official-for all I know, his Majesty the Czar himself!"

"Assassinate the Czar? But you are raving mad, Mr. Police Chief!" the Countess cried. "What have I, a Rademkin, to do with such a frightful accusation? Is not my husband a diplomatic courier for the Czar himself?"

"That is true, noble lady," Alexander Dvorkin chuckled, as he turned to let one of the two policemen who had brought thee Countess to his private office whisper into his ear. "Hmm, yes, very interesting, Drushenko." Then, turning back to stare with a mocking smirk at the indignant beauty, he resumed, "But you see, noble lady, your husband's position doesn't exempt you from suspicion, especially since I have news that you are no longer in favor with the Count Paul Rademkin. He has divorced you in the presence of witnesses, and I'm sure that the Czar will respect his desire. You are therefore brought here to answer by yourself and for yourself against the charge of giving comfort and aid to known conspirators. There's a certain dressmaker's assistant, one Nadia Morenso, who three times brought to you a gown for alteration, isn't that so?"

"Of course it is, but what does that have to do with treason?"

"Because, Elisaveta," gloatingly he now addressed her as he might some humble peasant woman in his inimitably sarcastic mode, "this girl is known to be very close to a certain young hotheaded student at the institute who with his friends have long been a thorn in our side and who have been heard in the past declaring they would avenge the tyrannies of the police, and hence by that very act defy the Czar himself. And since the Morensko girl has been missing thee past week and was last seen visiting your house, Elisaveta, I'm afraid I shall have to question you at some length concerning what you discussed with this young nihilist."

The handsome mature Countess had listened to this with horror-stricken agitation, her magnificent titties heaving, her face scarlet with the shame of this unjust accusation. And now she burst out, "I shall appeal to His Majesty! I am a Countess, my name is one of the oldest in Russian aristocracy, and you, a mere petty official, dare not insult or abuse me!"

"Correction, if you please, Elisaveta," he said in a taunting tone. "You married a Rademkin, and you are no longer his wife. That much is clear. Therefore your appeal to the Czar will gain you nothing, because before you can make it, I shall have determined the nature of your guilt or innocence. You still refuse to answer my questions?"

"I do! I demand-ahhh! my God-what is-oh no-stop-I'm falling-help!"

He had touched a button at the side of his desk, and the section of the floor on which Countess Elisaveta Rademkin was standing suddenly began to descend. Taken by surprise, she could not move until it was much too late; and as the dumbwaiter-like device suddenly stopped, she felt rude hands seize her ankles and cord them tightly, binding the cords in turn to solid metal rings set into a plank on which the base of this ingenious device had come to rest.

Alexander Dvorkin rose from his desk and moved around it to stare down at the frantic noblewoman. She emerged from the trapdoor from her waist to her crown, her lower body now being hidden under the floor, where his torturers were expertly and swiftly at work. Suddenly she uttered a shriek: "Oh stop it! Your excellency, make them stop-they're undressing me-they've no right-oh how horrible-the Czar will hear of this-Oh God, help me-oh Paul, Paul, what are they going to do-Oh God, not my drawers too, oh please not my drawers!"

Below the two officers, both underlings with tastes in women flesh, peered eagerly through the dimness at the fancily dressed half-body which they had been expecting. But not, they whispered quietly, so rich and noble an ass. Petroff, the younger man eyed the well covered posterior with growing delight, thinking that he would enjoy the privilege of taking this one's clothing off; while Uralenka, the older and more experienced detective had passed such young notions in favor of the cringing of flesh from the whine of his tools for he enjoyed making people grovel before him-or his master-either way, they groveled.

Uralenka grunted and nodded at Petroff, who smiled with satanic delight as he expelled his held breath... he could de-robe this one by himself. This would be a nice memory, he told himself, a very nice memory, indeed! He reached forward, his two hands gliding ghostly in the semi-darkness, toward the wiggling buttocks just in front of him.

The countess screamed as she felt a pair of hands touch her hips lightly, one on either side, sliding lightly down her legs as though feeling the heaviness of her ample but shapely legs. The hands moved slowly all the way down to her ankles and began coming up again, this time under her skirts on her stockinged legs. As the hands moved up to her knees, her screeching became incoherent, rendering her almost apoplectic with commingled rage and horror, feeling the two hands and ten fingers as they wiggled snake-like dexterously along her smooth white flesh. The higher the hands moved, the more of the officer's arms also rose, slowly raising her skirts, which let the drafts against her legs.

She began shivering with chill as well as the fear and anger, which was fading into intense horror of Alexander Dvorkin, standing before her, tall and stern from her belittled position.

Having to look up to him, literally, quickly humbled her and her answers were becoming less demanding, while more whining and pleading, she was not admitting to the charges arraigned against her.

Petroff, beneath the trapped woman, came to the lace and ribbon-decorated silk drawers, delicately adhering to her plump ass cheeks. The sight of her flesh peering at him from behind the thin fabric screen was more enticing to his woman-hungry manhood than all the naked behinds he had seen, being only revealed enough to stir his imagination of what he could not clearly see. Visualizing her veiled beauty sent his penis throbbing, jabbing into erection, shoving annoyingly at his uniform trousers, keeping him aware of his great desire.

Slithering along her widening flanks, his eager hands sought her hidden flesh beneath her dainty drawers, slipping slowly up her flesh, over her garters, which he deliberately paused to pull, letting them twang back into her plump flesh. She jumped and screeched as she felt the sting of her imagine garters snap against her flesh, smarting her legs.

As the hands roved higher, she squirmed uneasily, feeling her body tensing as though a lover were caressing her flesh in the growing heat of lust. Even her outrage, fear, hate, these died slowly before the pressing wiggle of the officer's inquisitive fingers, as they ascended under her lace and silk toward her curvaceous buttocks. Squealing as his fingers tickled her sensitive flesh on her ass, pinching the plumpness, she jumped slightly while Alexander Dvorkin stood stolidly above her, his calculated ordered rape of a woman known to be sensually inclined to an ultra high degree.

Sweating with her maddening desires swelling inside her stomach, Countess Elisaveta Rademkin, trembled, her breath coming in shorter gasps, the blood beginning to pound through her veins. Her face, pale before with fear and rage, flushed from excitement, her eyes glowing brilliantly, shining with anticipation of the unknown knowledge the hands sought from below.

Up, closer, nearer, she felt the ten fingers crawling, searching her cunt, homing in quickly along the curves of her groin, penetrating past, to her shock. The hands did not stop at her inviting vulva, traveling further up instead, reaching over her softly rounded belly, digging ticklishly into her navel for a short second, before continuing up to the waist of her lace panties.

Shocked into realizing the true intention of the lecherous paws, she screeched anew, "Horrible lecherous monster," she yelled at the top of her voice. "You do not even send your filthy pigs to rape except that they must do it for police matters! Swine!" As she screamed her abuses, the fingers found their goal, the tie-strings on her undergarment. With a single pull she knew her flimsy protection was almost gone, the waist being loosened began to sag, slipping almost unfelt and silently down the length of her quivering thighs, dropping over the rounded flesh of her hips with small aid but that of her jellied quakings, to rustle to her ankles, and lie still, warming her feet, which she did not care about now.

Petroff was warming to his work, inspired now, he stretched up under her naked flanks, bringing his mouth close to her slightly spread thighs. Getting his hands to move slowly back down over the mound of her belly, he tangled his fingers, hand by hand, into the curly muff of her pelvis, tweaking the hairs some, giving her added excitement. This having the desired effect so that she bent her knees, exposing more of her heavy pink vulva to his waiting mouth that formed into a wrinkled bow. Getting her where he wanted her, he blew into her separated lips, riffling the sensitive flesh there, making it hump into small goose flesh as she squealed again, more this time with delight.

From his belt, he took a special handle, encased in leather. Removing the leather carefully, he revealed a small wooden handled brush with bristles imbedded in the upper third of the wood all the way around its circumference. Smilingly he laid the bristled end against her vulva halfway between her puckered red ass, smelling slightly of fresh excrement, and her slightly fluttering cunt hole, just beginning to become excited.

His free hand slid down across her hip bone and around to her wrinkled cheeks, taut from the strain, to rest lightly on the upper edge of her crack, before it sloped down into the cut of her box, curving prettily around to her bushy pubic hairs in front. Reaching his desired destination, he stopped his hand, holding it in that spot while he readied the brush, thrusting it against her flesh and poking the bristles into her soft wet insides, each bristle seeking her twat.

Jumping as the pointed bristles worked into her skin, digging sharply, the countess snatched her legs together, pinning the brush effectively between her thighs, just where Petroff wanted his 'tickler' for the moment. Getting a firm hold on the handle, bobbing below the curve of her ass, he twisted it viciously, shoving it at the same time hard against her body, almost lifting her from the dropped floor boards.

Countess Elisaveta Rademkin leaped high in the air, her skirts flying wide, rising to show her silk clad legs and naked buttocks, red where the bristles irritated her milk-white flesh.

"Do you wish to make a full confession, Countess?" Alexander Dvorkin asked with suave patience. "I am ready anytime you are," he added, smiling down at her sweating face. "You know," he continued, "I don't know what there is about a woman perspiring, but it always cheapens her in my eyes."

Wide-eyed, she stared at him, only slowly realizing that he had called her a slut, a whore, a streetwalker, and all manner of uncouth things, most of which she would die rather than be associated with, she believed.

But the most reply she could make was a gasp for the policeman, availing himself of the sudden shocked slack in her muscle tension and the slight bowing of her legs, drove his 'Russian Tickler' into her dark hole, through the throbbing entrance and straight up her sensitive cunt flesh until its heavily bristled end jammed into the back of her hole.

Holding it there, he got a good grip on it again, and began twirling the tickler round and round, swinging it around one way, only to stop and come back the other way. The countess knew that she should be bleeding by now, at least her amount of pain said she should be streaming red liquid. That she was not, she couldn't know because she could not see. Had she known, she would not have been in the least afraid of the rubberized tips that coated each separate bristle, for the inspector wanted his victims frightened enough to confess, not mangled. They wouldn't look good walking to their just deserts if they crawled, limped, dragged, or walked spraddle-legged in the public eye.

Nonetheless, Petroff applied his instrument with vigorous zeal, painful enough to make the unseeing interviewee think she was being mangled, and would talk with greater facility. Now it was being held still while she gyrated around and on the painful spines-rubber or no rubber tips.

Now, the police brought more equipment over to the half exposed body, placing it near at hand so that they could get to it quickly. Petroff's hands came back up to her waist, this time aiming for her undermost petticoat, slipping it over her naked flesh. It was soft, falling easily from her still trembling body. The only thing left was the harshly starched petticoat which rubbed against her flesh, irritating it red with the iron-hard tiny bulges of lace-tatting.

Her legs were scratched, for this petticoat was left on till the last, the rest being unfastened first, sliding to the floor. Even before the stiff skirt, her dress skirt was ripped from the bodice, dropped to the floor, and remained unnoticed until after her inquisition with the inspector.

The heavier one, being still on her body, the two officers began caressing her flesh through the scratchiness of the tatting. Soon her white legs were scored with multiple scratches, big and small, from the constant contact with the petticoat. She was breathing in small gasps only, her heart throbbing, she thought audibly, the blood pouring from her body into her vulva, swelling her flesh until it turned purplish with gorged fluids and sated flesh.

Now, her flesh exposed completely but for the tatted skirt, which was pulled from her body in a harsh and scratching manner, she felt her flesh pimpling from the undue exposure to cold air currents, wafting about the room. Her shivering showed to Alexander Dvorkin above, standing watching with avid interest disguised in his light eyes, piercing, keen, missing nothing, always analyzing, probing. He would get what he wanted from this female, if he had to make mincemeat out of her pride and humiliate her until she seriously thought about killing herself, but she wouldn't be allowed to-like that other rebel slut.

His mind went back to the girl, Vera Dugashkin, unflinching and closed mouthed to the end. He remembered going to see the dead woman, killed by her own hand, as she lay with her slashed wrists in the dark cell, blood dried brown on one of the jagged shards from the shatters of her nightly stew bowl. He knew the real reason she killed herself... himself.

His eyes darkened, causing Countess Elisaveta to tremble before the blackening pupils of the staring inspector, his unseeing eyes boring straight through her.

She shivered with sheer terror, unmitigated by aught but slight sexual overtones now.

Lublianka Prison was the final destination of many the Czar feared, hated, mistrusted, or had no further use for, the place where Vera Dugashkin lost not only her life, but her honor to Alexander Dvorkin on the day he brutally fucked her wide open hole.

Having failed to get anything from the sulky woman, having used beating, tortures, the inspector decided to try his personal brand of torture on the golden-haired beauty. On his orders she was dragged from her cell, thoroughly scrubbed while naked by two of his most offensive wardens who had specific orders to do anything but violate her maidenhead on pain of slow death. Then she was tied, hanging from her wrists with wet rawhide, her legs hauled back and tied in place to reveal all the open delights of her vulva, and left hanging in chains for his pleasure.

When he arrived, he found her conscious, frightened, furious at this deliberate humility. He found at first glance, seeing her white and gold vulva for the first time, his own penis standing quickly erect, probing the serge of his uniform pants, pressing hard against it. Being alone with this tasty blonde morsel, he ripped his trousers open, allowing his prick full freedom, the sight of which made her eyes bug out from her face, her gaze fixed on his mammoth weapon.

"Yes," he said, "it's mine... all mine. And I've decided to share it with you because I prefer virgins-they're more a meaty challenge."

Her eyes transferred to his face, staring at his cruel mouth, thin with the edge of devilishness in his smile, and his cold colorless eyes, staring through her cunt, slicing it into the pieces he would sample. She shuddered, he ignored that, uncaring for her feelings or desires or humanity, being a hard-boiled law enforcer of a totalitarian country, steeped in the remnants of medieval darkness, Russia, of the Czars.

She was just at the right angle for his walk on fuck of her cunt and he decided to begin. Before she could begin to enjoy the pleasures he found most of them came to know after a while. Walking up to her, he deliberately poked his stiff forefinger into an area of her belly-her navel-pushing until his whole finger almost to the third joint disappeared.

Her face contorted, spreading with intense pain.

"Confess, slut!"

She did not even deign to reply by nodding.

His other hand, balling into a fist, leaped to her ribs, smashing into her already bruised flesh, driving the air from her lungs in a long gasping scream, dying into a hoarse whisper, fading with the last whistling of her expelled breath.

"Confess, bitch!"

But she was too dazed to answer.

When her eyes closed, he dug into his pocket, coming up with two decorator toothpicks, which he quickly anchored into her eye lids-top and bottom-holding them open. Her mouth, hanging open, showed him that most of her once beautiful teeth had been knocked out, leaving mostly the blood-blackened stumps, which must be painful. The soft uvula, that hung from the back of the throat, had been neatly severed, then cauterized, impeding her speech somewhat, and her fingertips, now that he bothered to look, were red and black soft mutilations. His men had been busy with pliers and tweezers, he noted, satisfied-likewise her toes he saw when he glanced at her tied back legs.

His finger was still deep in her navel, doing little good. Removing it, he pulled back his hand, contemplating where to act next. Her eyes stared straight at him from behind their wooden bars, helplessly staring out, slowly going blind without the beneficial bathing of tears, drying out, filming over, glazing.

A small trickle of blood followed his finger from her belly and red widened around her button, not from bleeding so much as from, bruising, internal damage must be severe in the small area changing color for it would not have turned so fast nor caused so much delightful anguish to distort her face, nor would there have been blood-any blood.

"Confess! Tell the truth!"

And again, when the dazed woman did not answer, and when he deliberately construed her silence as voluntary, he furrowed his brow, becoming furious. Sparks shot from his eyes, seemingly, and his penis stood at attentive erectness, quivering with the emotions of his enraged body. She must have caught the slight movement from part of her vision, for she trained her eyes painfully downward, focusing directly on his prick, bobbing as it still was below.

"You like that? You want some?" His leering voice contrasted vividly with his hate-filled face and his rage sparking eyes, making a contrast that if she had been in a better and more receptive mood, she might have found extremely entertaining. But she did not, for all she did see was his purple-headed dark-pink stemmed prick, jumping alive, as though it had a separate mind of its own.

"Well?"

Again, she did not answer either of his demands or his requests, and again he construed this as being a deliberation of her part.

"Then, you despise my gifts? You scorn my presents? They will be the last you do... I promise you because when I get done with you, nobody will even want to look at you... if you survive!" Throwing back his head, he opened his mouth, laughter curled from his lips, his thin sensuous lips, cruel in their contempt of all but himself.

Her tied body shuddered as best it could in her binding ropes, that as they dried, slowly cut through her flesh. First circulation was impaired, then the extremities began to tingle, then there was no feeling. Soon, the fetters cut in to deeply that they brushed flesh against the nerve and blood vessels, pinching and cutting-slowly cutting, deep, deeper, all the way through-if allowed, that is. She had felt nothing for a long stretch, even when he had first come in, now it was different. Subtly beginning, she was feeling the grinding force of the pinching ropes as they dug deeper, the very shrinking pull of them in even circles around her limbs.

Already the flesh of her toes and fingers-the very tips-was turning dark, darker than blood that had left them, He examined her limbs again, satisfied with his henchmen's handiwork before he turned his full attention to her vulva. Crouching down, balancing himself on one outstretched set of knuckles and his toes, he used his other hand to probe manually the dark interiors of her vulval passage. As she saw his fingers coming toward her flesh, not fast, she shuddered, drawing away again for a little as she could, which was not more than a fraction. With the failing of her strength, she tightened some of her muscles as she futilely attempted to draw her tied-back thighs together, all such futile actions, for his men knew their knots.

"You afraid? You should be, for I am a force in Russia to be reckoned with, as you have sadly found out. Had you cooperated..." He paused. "But I don't deal in maybe's, only reality. This is your reality-this-" The spread of his hand, momentarily drawn away from his ultimate goal, a gesture scoping the room and ultimately the whole of Lublianka Prison. "This is the last of your world, Vera Dugashkin. The small last portion belongs to me."

His hand came back toward her vulnerable hole and she shrank again from him, but to absolutely no avail, for his hand came into her private places, nonetheless, and he was the more cruel because of her fearful retreat.

His fingers dug into her soft moist flesh, gouging hot red grooves in her skin, drawing blood, plowing through the layer of mucus thickening in the constant exposure. He dug deeper, coming to her thickening beneath her labia, her clitoris where his thumb and forefinger pinched so cruelly and so hard for so long that he brought the bit of bloody flesh away on his fingertip.

"There," he sneered, "that is the first part of you I've taken. There will be much more before I'm through."

She recoiled, her face screwing up in an attempt to not see the small bit of her killed before her eyes, deliberately exterminated to show her that everything was useless, of no value without him. But it was too late, she knew, for her now. She was doomed, and she knew it, doomed as only the living dead can be... by the injustice of it all... the daily horror of living without life, without hope, without love... with nothing but fear and grovelling in the mud to the superiorly placed ones-the ones born that way.

No, she thought, to die from this existence is pleasure. You, she continued, would never know you hound of hell, for you're part and parcel to this monstrous addiction called living.

Almost she passed out, but not quite, and felt his hand when it probed closer to her most hidden of places, her twat, his fingertips probing and digging nearer with each new dull ache of pain. Then, he was there, poised on the entrance, fingering the fluttering edges of flesh surrounding her hole.

Why didn't he just go in and get it over with, she wondered as he slowly probed into her depths.

But he knew well enough, for if he worked slowly enough, he could get her aroused, even in her present location there would be reactions, things would happen to her that she knew not of yet, and he would get his kicks, his way and joy. And as it always had worked, it started on her.

At first, it was the basic stirring of her body, shown he saw not voluntary but reactionary. Her limbs working themselves in small contortions, especially her cunt and bush. Her upper thighs contracted spasmodically, the flesh surrounding her hole quivered ecstatically, the seeping knob where her clit had been wept with a small pulsing of out-flowing blood, heavier than before.

Within her she felt herself responding to his finger-now, fingers-up in her hole, where each tiny movement seemed to become huge to her strangled feeling, as though the Czar's cavalry were marching through.

Then the fingers disappeared from her range, completely. She turned her almost blinded eyes down, seeing his prick, coming nearer as it loomed closer to her, huge as it was, becoming larger, feeling the heat from his colorful member, knowing that he was going to drive that into her instead of his fingers.

She was correct, of course, for his intentions were exactly that.

When he saw it registering keenly in her tortured face, he delayed no longer, taking himself literally in hand, his hand on his penis, he began guiding himself toward her gaping black hole with the quivering madness surrounding it. Closer to his target, his penis showed itself to be far too big to enter her tiny hole without tearing her to bloody pieces, seeing that he was so monstrously huge.

He saw that, fucking well rejoicing that he would be able to cause her agony again, increased his pace, thrusting faster, coming at her like an express train.

When the first heat from his head caught her body, she gasped shallowly, before the brunt smashed into her body, his huge rounded purple head burrowing through the smallness of her opening, widening it as needed, which was all the way. Her screams echoed for a short time before dying into painful gasping silence as the blood poured from her ripped and torn cunt.

Satisfied, he pulled his bloody unshot penis from her smashed carcass, still miraculously alive, and shot his sperm straight into her gaping mouth and her seared eyes.

When she screamed again from the anguish it must have been to have her eyes burned by his manhood, he turned and walked from the room, pleased with his performance and hers.

The older woman half before him, half under the floor, was screaming... that had brought him back from his reverie of the slut in the prison-the Dugashkin slut.

Well, he thought, she's dead. Good and dead.

"Well Countess, will you confess?" he asked raspingly.

"I have nothing to confess about treason and plots and the like. What are you doing to me..." Her last word was long and drawn out as if it were a scream, a plea for mercy, which he ignored easily. All people, he realized would promise anything if the right pressure were applied. They would confess to anything.

The police each took a position next to their equipment and the younger one thumbed the wooden handle sticking from her ass. She screamed once, for it was getting painful. Hefting the broad strap with the iron hook attached to one end, he wrapped it lovingly around his hand a couple of times, stroking the wide tanned leather through his other hand as though stropping it like a barber would his favorite strop and blade.

More unfamiliar with this specific method, the younger officer imitated his elder with the wrapping, letting the strap droop from his hand, the iron tooth in its end toward the shivering nakedness he saw before him.

The older man, nodding his smiling face, raised his arm back over his shoulder, taking the belt with it. The younger man followed suit, imitating exactly the older man. Then, the older man swung his arm forward, bringing the heavy belt with it, swinging in a wide arc that smashed into the white jelly of flesh before him. The younger man followed almost as fast, for his reflexes were quick.

Almost simultaneously, two spatters slashed against the Countess Elisaveta Rademkin's quivering thighs, making them wiggle with the reverberation of the strength of the strokes. She screamed, partially from pain, mostly from surprise.

Two wide scarlet marks appeared on her flanks, marks that would leave no permanent marks but would be most painful nonetheless for their duration. As they swung for the second round, she felt the secondary burning beginning to take effect, raging like fire along the length of each mark, one on each side.

The men swung their whips again, the older man aiming for the same place, the younger not thinking, and going for only her large thighs, trying to make as much hurt as he could. He had not learned the secret of hitting in the same spot until it went purple, then moving on. For when it turned, it was almost assuredly numb, no further lashing would cause pain on that spot.

The younger man kept hitting as fast as he could, wearing himself out, becoming breathless, sweaty and tired as his muscles, unused to this type of labor, protested. The older man, surely wiser, kept a steady stroking lash, hitting as near the same spot until he felt it was not responding, before changing directions. He did not get too winded or overtired for he had been doing this for the inspector for many years and was in condition.

The countess was screaming her head off, crying as loudly as she could, unaware that there was no one within hearing who could or would, if they could, interfere to help, or to hinder, for that matter. "Please, have mercy! Please! I'll do whatever you say! Anything... only stop this... you're killing me! Stop!" But the inspector did not listen to her but ignored her and the lashing continued until her ass was swollen and crisscrossed with red slashes, smarting and burning horrendously, and she was in agony enough to do and say anything the horrible man wanted of her.

It crossed her mind, that this must be how so many people were convicted of crimes in Russia and elsewhere, bone jarring, muscle pulverizing, mind searing physical anguish! She began pleading again for surely, she reasoned, even death could not be so bad as this... this searing blistering fire that was poking her ass apart! For her this was the last straw of endurance, for with a mad shriek, she fainted dead away. Elisaveta Rademkin began to pay for her adultery.

It was a gray, somber day this March 13th in the Year of Our Lord 1881. The people crowded the streets all along the processional way and cheered the Czar. As the royal carriage made the turn at Petrogradny Square, a bearded young man suddenly hurled a black object towards it, crying out, "Down with the tyrant!" There was a tremendous explosion, and shrieks of terror and pain rose from the multitude. Alexander Dvorkin, on his black charger, raised his sabre, cried out, "Get that bastard, my God, he's killed the Little Father!"

As he wheeled his horse back towards the crowd, waving his sabre towards two of his sergeants who had dismounted, drawn their own sabres and were forcing their way through the crowd, Boris Lukatieff drew a pistol out of his heavy, tattered coat and fired twice. The chief of police reeled in his saddle, his sabre dropped to the cobblestones with a clatter, and then he fell forward, his lifeless arms still holding the reins of the champing stallion.

The police seized Alexei and Vladimir beside him, but Boris Lukatieff managed to escape in the hubbub, and to make his way back to the outskirts of the city where Nadia Morensko anxiously awaited him.

THE END
The Knout And The Nihilists ....(97k)    by A. de Granamour




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	"Double for Nothing!! Tricks for Free!!!"™ A MrDouble Production: mrdouble

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