"This isn't me, darling. I'm not-wanton!" That was what Glory Hart always said the first time. And the man always replied: "You know I don't chase women, darling. Something just happened to us!" It was a pat formula, a ritual, a necessary prelude to passion in the smart, sophisticated, promiscuous Jet Set, on wild weekend parties where beautiful but poor girls like Glory "made connections" with rich playboys ... On the odd, million-to-one chance that one of these brief weekend matings would turn into full-time marriage. Then came that terrible weekend on Count Valenti's estate in Italy, where Glory was forced to submit to the vile, degrading, perverse experiments of four international lechers ... Which brought up new questions: "Who am I?" and "What was I doing to myself?" ... The truth was hard to face....
CHAPTER ONE
"GLORY-OH, GLORY...."
The voice in her ear was husky, the tones passion-charged; entirely satisfactory when you're in bed with a man, but still, it bothered Glory at times.
Of course it was her name. She'd been christened Glory Deborah Hart but she was sorry she hadn't used the Deborah, because a man passionately whispering Glory could give the impression of religious rather than sexual fervor; as though he was being inspired by a revivalist rather than the love and the body of Glory Hart. This could be disconcerting.
But Glory had become tightly attached during her childhood back in Villa Forks, Ohio. It had followed her up the years, into bed here in Fort Lauderdale with Ralph Ackley, and it was too late to change.
Glory closed her eyes and moaned. "Ralph-oh, Ralph," she whispered back, "what's happening to me?" She passed a confused hand over his face, brushing his lips lightly with her finger tips. "This just isn't Glory Hart. Not me, darling. I'm not-wanton!"
You always said that the first time you were with a man. And the man always understood. Just before he buried his face in Glory's lush breast, Ralph Ackley said, "And I don't chase women, darling. You know that. Something has just happened to us."
He forebore the old cliche-It's bigger than both of u. That would have been too impossibly corny. But the amenities-the accepted structure of sophisticated intimacy-still left room for at least a gesture toward self-respect.
This gesture made, Glory surrendered with a sob as she pressed his face into her breast and went hard against him, her naked body writhing in a sensuous demand that supported her need for surrender.
But this surrender actualy had been made before bedtime.
It had been arranged and mutually agreed to earlier in the evening, out in the luxurious patio of Jim Guyon's fabulous Fort Lauderdale estate.
Glory had arrived from New York City in Jim Guyon's private plane with a party of six. It had been a gay, sophisticated gathering there at Idlewild Airport, with the necessary introductions handled smoothly and easily by Cary Martin, Jim Guyon's secretary. There was nothing employeish or in any manner subservient about Cary. He was free and loose and easy, acted like one of the guests. This was a touch that those who knew Jim Guyon would have expected of him, a part of the public image he wanted to present.
Everyone in the know was aware of the situation, of course. Jim didn't like women; Jim liked men. But this ugly fact had no more chance of intruding itself than an autopsy knife had of finding its way into a funeral service.
And Cary Martin was exactly the caliber of gem Guyon would find and append to his glittering public crown.
The take-off was thrilling-not in the accepted manner of a jet-lift gunning a group of excited people into the sky; not in that way because these were sophisticated, casually world-weary, international travelers.
But inwardly thrilling in the deference accorded the plane and the party by the people who ran the world's most glamorous air port: the quick, careful service; the alert regard for important people-Jim Guyon's party; the big trans-oceanic jets standing by while the sleek little silver bird rocketed up off the runway. Or at least,, that was the satisfying illusion produced by the take-off.
But underneath the competent gloss of sophistication which every member of the group achieved there was an alert, sharp-minded awareness-a studying, a classifying, an allocating.
Glory had accurately marked each individual's status before the No Smoking sign flashed on.
Of the six, excluding Cary Martin, two belonged and four didn't. The two who belonged were Dave King and Liz Bellamy. Dave King was the Beth-King Import heir, wtih eighty or ninety million waiting to drop into his lap in due time. A moon-faced, paunchy man in his forties who had been zeroed out by the gods, left in poverty of every talent except that of inheriting money.
By all standards he was unimportant, except that his vast fortune made him very important indeed.
Liz Bellamy was of a different cut. A seventy-year-old indestructable hag, she was also far up in the millions. But she had a sharp mind, keen intelligence, and-perhaps because of her money or perhaps not-she cared for neither god nor the devil.
Liz, on the basis of her own capabilities, was an asset to any party. Her frankness was "just too refreshing, my dear." Especially when she openly admitted:
"What male in his right mind would take me to bed without being paid? Of course I buy it, and it costs plenty!"
Liz was a positive scream.
Of the remaining four, three were female and one male. And they were all beautiful. As Glory accepted a martini from a smartly-jacketed attendant, she wondered vaguely about the male. His name was Brad Howell, he was the Frank Sinatra type. While Glory had never met him before, and knew nothing about him, she was willing to bet he would go away from the coming weekend with a sizable chunk of Liz Bellamy's money.
Glory had met all three of the females previously, Joy Valle in Rome earlier in the summer at Count Valenti's estate.
The fortnight at the Valenti estate. Glory winced at the recollection as Joy Valle laid a patrician hand on Dave King's arm in a gay, impulsive gesture.
"Oh, Dave, isn't it gorgeous? Wherever I go in this lovely world I always think of Manhattan as my town, and it always thrills me."
Dave King grunted amiably, and Glory felt a little sorry for Joy Valle if she'd made the import goon her target for the weekend. Dave would grin and take everything and promise everything in return and then an efficient young Madison Avenue hatchetman would contact Joy and tell her to get lost.
And if Joy had a tenth of the intelligence indicated, she would take the advice.
The sparkling brunette with the maddening legs was Moira Shane. Glory knew her from the Connecticut weekend at Mar Deegan's place. She'd created a sensation by getting tight and coming out of the pool dressed in absolutely nothing but the hair on her head.
But everyone had been so gay and marvelously drunk that her performance was classified as a delicious escapade. Moira was good. Glory had to concede this and did so, because to underestimate your competition is the height of stupidity.
Moira had a sense of timing that kept everything she did, even her most breath-taking stunts, in the realm of the acceptable. A pre-dawn fan dance with two playing cards as fans-Moira's hilarious contribution to the Fendrish weekend in Cincinatti-would have permanently ostracised any girl but Moira.
The other, Candy Welsh, was the blonde kitten type. Blonde kittens were somewhat passe? but they was still in demand if you did the bit well. Of course, Candy was equipped for nothing else, and her skill with this image had carried her around the world three times.
Glory met her during the previous winter at Thoat's ski-lodge in Vermont. Candy had been in trouble at the time: a devastating skin-rash, pure poison to blondes. She had to borrow money to get back to New York.
Now, with the jet kiting south, Candy carefully skirted the toy Sinatra and dropped into a chair beside Glory. She curled a foot under her smooth little bottom and laughed gaily as Liz Bellamy held her nose, tilted her head back and downed four gulps of scotch from the bottle.
Liz straightened and belched. "God, I needed that.
These flights are deadly."
"Isn't Liz a scream?" Candy purred.
Glory smiled affectionately. "She's a dear."
Candy put her empty glass on a waiting tray and said, "Darling, I missed you by an eyelash in Paris last month. We were at the Pierre and it wasn't until the very last day-Mark suddenly had to be in Rome, you know-that we heard you were with the Wilsons."
"What a shame, angel!' Glory dutifully replied. "If we'd only known, I had the whole afternoon free the day before. We could have chatted."
Mark: that would be Mark Standish, the dynamic hotel tycoon who picked a girl for a trip the same way he picked up his hat. And who sent a girl to the cleaners with the same casual gesture.
One thing about Mark, though: he'd have seen to it Candy had plane fare back to Manhattan.
The Wilsons? Wonderful people. A pair of real dears. A civilized and sophisticated approach to abnormality there. Lee Wilson didn't care for women, with Betty practically a nymphomaniac they had a nice comfortable marriage; a smoothly functioning arrangement through which, with a life-time of idle luxury on their hands, they were both highly satisfied.
They were dears, really. They both genuinely like Glory and enjoyed intervals of her company. Glory like them also, looked forward to being their guests. Thought of these times as vacation from the tension of 'he gold-plated jet circuit....
The landing was smoothly efficient, and the limousine that swept them up was chauffeured by a spotlessly uniformed young man with a George Raft face and a meticulously correct bearing.
Thus the party was carefully delivered into the sleek paradise that Jim Guyon called "the Florida Wigwam."
It consisted of thirty expansively-landscaped and carefully-tended acres in the center of which stood a twenty-room house. The swimming pool was in the back with all the bedrooms opening on a tropical garden interlaced with paths leading to the water.
Glory's room was in the main building, a pleasant surprise in that it set her a notch above the others housed in the wings. A subtle point, but important in judging one's status.
The great and ever-present dread was to find oneself in the last room on the left wing, in a setup like this.
The next stop could easily be oblivion.
Glory had stripped and taken a shower, not appearing at the pool during that first mid-afternoon. She heard laughter and activity out there but preferred not to seem over-eager, a luxury she felt she could afford.
So she'd rested in her room until there was a discreet knock on the door and a uniformed maid who told her that dinner would be at eight, in the barbecue patio....
It was to be quite a weekend, Glory discovered.
When she arrived at the patio for dinner there were about twenty-five people assembled. It was a gay, polished, international crowd some magazine writer had labeled The Jet Set, and the name stuck.
Glory quickly picked out the ones who belonged and those who did not. Those who belonged were rather ordinary-looking people. Paunchy men for whom tailored shorts and gaudy tropical shirts did little; middle-aged elderly women, the wives who managed to cling to their men and climb up with them.
And interspersed in the casual crowd, the beautiful people-the ones who didn't belong, the professional weekenders, the friends of friends.
These, the beautiful young people, were the glamor ingredients that kept the group from looking like exactly what it was-a gathering of the tired rich who were trying to enjoy their wealth while there was still time, those who had spent most of their lives working for it, and the idle, jaundiced rich with an inherent right to the luxurious life.
Glory, radiant in a plain white sport dress-in sharp contrast to the more spectactularly dressed women-wondered why cynicism had become the order of her thinking. Perhaps she was tired. It had been an active season.
That may have been the reason, but for almost a month now since returning from her last trip to Paris, she'd been gripped by an odd sense of futility-a sort of backdrop against which her mind functioned, an uneasy maze out of which her new, ridiculous classifications of things and people kept extruding.
She moved easily through the crowd, nodding to the people she knew, stopping for a quick warm reunion here, a pleasant word there.
But aware mainly of the scattered snatches of conversation:
"... Marina Cay was just wonderful, darling! There were of course only fourteen of us, and we had a glorious time...."
Marina Cay: an exclusive resort in the Virgin Islands. It accommodated only fourteen guests at a time.
"... Frenchman's Cove is really fabulous, but sometimes I think the service is just too overwhelming...."
Frenchman's Cove: a $2,000-a-week garden of Eden in Jamaica. Many of the beautiful would have given years of their lives for an invitation to the cove.
More names were dropped like glittering pearls into the jewel box of this gay gathering:
"... the Caribe Hilton...."
"... the Sandy Lane Hotel...."
"... the Warwick in Manhattan...."
Glory moved on toward the barbecue pit. Two cooks were setting out filet mingons and french fries, buffet style, on a table already crowded with a variety of food.
But she had no desire for food. A slight dizziness assailed her, she moved back toward the edge of the patio and waited for it to pass.
From this vantage point she watched quietly. Already the beautiful people were at work; at work, though the term hardly described it. They were practicing an art. Smoothly, casually, they were promoting the next invitation-looking forward, even at its beginning, to the time this weekend would be over; trying desperately to avoid having to say:
"The Spencers wanted me for their South American cruise. But darling, I just couldn't make it. I just must get back to New York.
That to the initiated meant: "I wasn't able to swing anything. Now it's back to New York on my own money, and God knows what. Until I get the nod again."
And the gnawing fear: Am I slipping? Are they looking over my shoudler at someone else?
Jim Guyon arrived, making the dramatic entrance he was noted for. A big vital wind of a man, he grinned in fifty-year-old boyishness and clasped his hands high over his head.
"Hi, kids! Everybody having fun?"
A quick, new charge of vitality swept through the group.
Candy Welsh, lucky in being closest to the spot where he appeared, squealed in delight: "Jim! Jim darling! Where have you been?" She jumped into his arms. He caught her and she snuggled there, kitten-like, while he kissed her.
But it was a quick kiss because Moira Shane and two sleek beauties Glory didn't know were moving in on Guyon. He greeted them all alike, with warm affection, then deserted them as he moved across the patio to where Liz Bellamy lay at ease on a lounge chair with the Sinatra type sitting beside her.
Suddenly Glory saw two Jim Guyons. Groping, she moved back into the safe darkness of the tropic jungle that surrounded the barbecue patio. That odd dizziness that had been bothering her....
Back until two hands touched her shoulders and a voice asked, "Are you all right?"
The smell of pipe tobacco should have been even more unsettling, but it wasn't. It was oddly comforting. Glory turned and saw, there in the dimness, a good-looking young man with an interesting face.
"I'm quite all right, thank you." Of course she could not admit to anything even remotely suggesting illness. That could mean social suicide. "The crush was just a little stifling. I yearned for a moment of peace and quiet."
She had seen the young man before, somewhere, and it annoyed her that she could not place him. Nor could she classify him. He could have belonged, but there was something that didn't quite ring true in this direction. Yet a man who had work to do would have been out in the middle of the party seeing to it, lining up his next weekend.
"Perhaps you would like to sit down for a few minutes?"
He took his pipe from his mouth and indicated a bench by pointing with the stem. "Thank you, I'd love it."
Glory dropped gratefully onto the bench and he sat down beside her. The sounds from the party were muted by intervening foliage, as was the background of Hawaiian music.
"It's a beautiful night," the young man said. He seemed in no hurry to introduce himself, and Glory-did not want to take the initiative.
"This is wonderful," she said. "It's like being in another world."
"Money can do that for you," he replied.
It was an odd thing to say. Envy, perhaps? But nothing in his tone indicated envy. It was a grave, quiet statement, and nothing more.
"Yes, I suppose it can." Glory's answer was carefully projected in the same tone. She was being a little wary while she groped for a lead. "Jim Guyon certainly has wonderful taste and marvelous creative ability. He designed the whole estate."
"That's what they say," the young man replied gravely. "I'm inclined to doubt it, though."
Even more mystified, Glory veered away from the subject.
"This garden reminds me a little of Count Valenti's estate in Italy."
The Valenti estate, the Valenti sojourn. Why did it have to keep coming back into her mind?
The young man drew on his fragrant pipe, then removed it from his mouth. "I've never been abroad," he said.
Who was he? Glory had to know. The question was on her lips but at that moment there was a sound of approaching footsteps. They came closer, and another man appeared in the dimness.
Glory extended a quick hand. "Why, Ralph! Ralph Ackley! How wonderful."
He was a tall well-kept man in his mid-forties, and he definitely belonged. Quite handsome, he smiled and showed the flash of extremely white teeth as he took Glory's hand in both of his.
"Darling, why are you hiding out here?"
Glory glanced to her right. The seat next to her was empty. The mysterious young man with the pipe had quietly vanished, leaving only the aroma of his tobacco to prove he'd been there at all.
Glory wondered again where on earth she'd seen him before, then gave her whole attention to Ralph Ackley who had dropped down beside her.
The familiarity and effusiveness of his darling brought a pleasant reaction from Glory. It bore positive indications because while she knew Ralph Ackley-one of the Ackley patent-medicine heirs, he had never before brought their acquaintanceship to a darling basis.
"I'm so glad you wandered this way," Glory said. "Think of it, I have Ralph Ackley all to myself!" Her tone was light and bantering, but his reply was more matter-of-fact. "I didn't just wander out, I was looking for you. I asked and they said you'd drifted in this direction."
"And now you've found me," Glory said demurely.
"I was wondering how your time schedule lines up."
"Bad," Glory said ruefully. "I should be in New York right now. I stole the time to indulge myself on this wonderful weekend. I really shouldn't have come but when Jim Guyon asked me he was so persuasive that I said to hell with obligations, I'm going!"
Jim Guyon hadn't asked Glory. The invitation was extended by Cary Martin, and he hadn't been particularly persuasive; friendly-even cordial-but if Glory had merely moved her head in the wrong direction, that would have ended it.
"Stout girl," Ralph Ackley said. She'd told him nothing because he hadn't expected any other answer. Nor did he ask her what of importance was calling her back to New York. This wouldn't have been sporting.
"I'm so sorry," Ralph Ackley said. "Ever since I met you at the Coral Reef Club I've wanted to get to know you better. I was planning to get in touch with you, but one thing and another came up and-"
"That's how things are these days, Ralph. But how sweet of you!"
"When they told me you were here, I rushed right out. I was hoping you'd join a small group I'm taking down to the Belmore Island Hotel next weekend."
"Oh, how wonderful! But tell me, how have you been, Ralph? I've thought about you, too."
It would seem that the invitation hadn't even been extended, that Glory had declared herself too busy and that Ralph Ackley understood this.
But he understood nothing of the kind. The invitation not only had been extended, but it had been accepted. And they both knew it.
Glory's dizziness had vanished. She felt refreshed and very much alive as she marveled at her good luck. She remembered the Coral Reef Club weekend-Barney Winslow's party-where she'd gotten herself attached to a junket Liz Bellamy happened to be running barely in time to get back stateside. She remembered wondering about Ralph Ackley. But he hadn't paid much attention to her, his interest at that time being in Moira Shane.
"... I'll never forget that startling one-piece white bathing suit you wore. With other women going around practically naked, you held to your principles. And the effect was devastating."
Glory doubted that she'd greatly impressed Ralph Ackley at that time. He'd probably given her hardly a second glance, so fascinated had he been with the two narrow strips of cloth Moira Shane called a bikini.
He'd gotten those off her in a hurry, and her reward had been a trip to Rio-one of the famous Ackley business trips that were a real prestige achievements for any girl who earned an invitation.
But now Ralph Ackley had passed by and come hunting for Glory. He had lifted from her shoulders any anxiety about being stranded in Florida after the weekend was over. She no longer faced the necessity of moving into the competition, battling for a future.
There were obligations, of course; they both understood that, and now Ralph Ackley delicately referred to them.
"I'd like to get to know you better, Glory. Perhaps tonight, after this shindig has quieted down-"
"I'd love it, Ralph."
He Mas telling her, in essence, not to let him catch her in bed with any other likely prospect.
Glory understood perfectly and accepted the proposition. So after the party was over and everyone had retired, she lay waiting in her room. As the minutes ticked by she wondered how the other girls had fared. A few of them of course had found bed partners, the hungrier men made quick selections.
Most of these matings would remain in effect for the whole weekend, although there would be some switching around, some of the girls would desert first mates for better offers.
But it would all be done so smoothly, so beautifully in such an accomplished and civilized manner.
And inevitably one or two of the less fortunate would head back north on a bus.
There was a light tap on the door, the knob turned, the door opened and Ralph Ackley came in.
Sitting up in bed, Glory raised the sheet in order to hide the breasts clearly visible through her transparent nightgown. She achieved a look that took skill and practice; one of surprise but not rejection, of reluctance and yet of invitation.
"I just couldn't sleep," Ralph said. He looked quite handsome in his custom made dressing gown, cravat and freshly clipped mustache. "I tried to read and that was dull too, so I thought-"
"That we might chat a while? Why of course, Ralph."
He was a kindly man, he made it easy for her and she was grateful. Not at all like Count Valenti-Count Valenti!
Why did he keep coming back, why couldn't she forget that night and what had happened?
Ralph approached the bed. He sat down on its edge and smiled as he touched her cheek with a gentle finger.
"You're very beautiful, my dear."
"Thank you, Ralph."
The preliminaries to intimacy were short but he was an accomplished lover, an artist who took pride in his work. After his first kiss, he drew back the sheet slowly, deliriously, reacting with pleasure at what was revealed. He stopped after uncovering Glory's breasts.
"They're lovely-"
She smiled and caressed his cheek.
And they were lovely breasts-lush, firm and utterly desirable under the rich brown skin produced b) nude sun bathing. The nipples were well-formed and stood proudly out from their deep brown seats.
Ralph Ackley touched one gently and it responded, coming up erect and hard under his finger.
"Lovely-"
He drew the sheet lower and Glory's golden brown torso was revealed. Her navel was deep and well defined, a faint line of hair started there and pointed downward as though promising greater riches below. The sheet came down off the lower edge of her short nightgown. Then Ackley threw it impatiently aside.
But still he kept his passion under control. Glory's knees were tight together. He teased her gently, scarcely touching her flesh, but the thrill stirred her nerves.
He ran teasing fingers down the top surface of her thighs, up and down, curving slightly inward with each stroke.
She lay back and closed her eyes. It was getting less and less difficult as her own passion awakened. Slowly her thighs opened to him.
She heard his husky whisper: "Turn over, darling."
She turned on her stomach, hid her face in her folded arms and waited for the touch of his hands. It came and her nerves quivered in response. Gently, almost respectfully, the teasing went on.
Then it became more intimate, more personal, more demanding. She again opened her knees but he asked more-wider, even wider, until she was a woman who no longer had any secrets from this man to whom she was giving herself.
But still it was not enough. His fingers played along the sides of her belly, lower and lower-demanding, gently demanding-
She responded slowly until only her wide-spread knees touched the bed. His hands slid gently over the round sleek melons of her buttocks, moyed slowly inward.
Glory suddenly was frightened. Count Valenti No-no. Please no!
But he was gentle, so very gentle. Gradually she began to trust him and offered herself up to the magic, teasing fingers.
When he came to the ultimate intimacy, he achieved in her what he'd sought-a wild, sweet sense of recklessness.
Until she could stand no more of it.
She whirled on her back, and just as magically he was naked. She pulled him down upon her.
"Ralph, please! I can't stand it!"
Now he was suddenly and wonderfully savage. His mouth was on hers, her mouth was open, and his mouth also. When she cried out in pain she cried "deliciously, because it was a delicious, needed pain. And for a few brief magic minutes everything was all right. There was no fear of tomorrow, or the years, or what would be brought down upon her by the years. There was a man's flesh on her flesh, his mouth on her mouth giving her the security of being a woman.
This was all within, the truth that permeated the mind-stuff of her consciousness.
Yet that same consciousness had to deny it. The conscious thought of denial had to be there. Why? She had never known, but it always had been like that. Denying while enjoying, wanting yet silently telling him to finish and leave. Driving him away and vet holding him.
"Glory, Glory, you're wonderful!"
Answering him: "Ralph, oh, Ralph."
Because of the act? Was that the need of her mental denial? Was she afraid that if she let go completely she would not be able to make the false declaration of virtue?
She was able to make it:
"Oh, Ralph, I'm not wanton."
But she knew that she was. She knew she was nothing more than a cheap, naked whore in the arms of a man-one of many in the past, and many more to come. But she would always make that first declaration to each new man.
"Not wanton, Ralph. You just-overwhelm me."
"You're lovely, darling-"
His eyes narrowed, his neck muscles stiffened. "Now-now, Baby! Now-Give it to mc!"
"Yes, yes, Ralph. Take it-take it-take it...." The old unbearable ecstasy. And then it was over....
CHAPTER TWO
Who are you, Glory Hart, and why are you here?
Lying in bed after Ralph Ackley left-not happy and not unhappy, drained pleasantly of the juices that ferment into passion, not asleep and not awake, not negative and not positive, as close to nothing and everything as the human animal ever gets, Glory Hart asked Glory Hart:
Who are you, and why are you here?
The answer was a groping.
You are not the girl there on the porch that night in Villa Forks when Marty Lewis, his breath all catchy, put his hand above the belt of your skirt and his hand shook, asking-And you said, no, no, but at the same time yes, yes. And you pulled in your belly, and the hand went down, down, under, under to where you knew it was going. And you wanted it and you didn't want it, but it went and there it was. And you'd been touched by the first hand of your first boy and you wondered: Will he tell the others? Will he tell? Oh, please don't tell. But you never knew whether he did or not.
You're not that girl any more Glory Hart, but you are.
And in church during that strange little moment you'll always remember, when something happened. There was the light coming in the window through the stained glass, that straight single ray of light hitting the Virgin's statue like some kind of a miracle or something, and you were sitting there, and suddenly it hurt inside-inside your mind, not your body. And you wanted to be like the Virgin, the Mother of God. And for just a second you were, you were because you understood and knew how she felt. You wanted to take the whole world in your arms and comfort it, and your arms were big enough. Then the light went away, the ray, and whatever it was that you understood wasn't there anymore, and you felt so empty that you cried.
And your father-your father, rest his soul, dead now-he died when you were twenty-one. And you're twenty-eight now, and next come twenty-nine. Oh, God! But your father, scowling there at the table out from under his black eye brows, pointing his stubby finger all cracked (the cracks full of dirt because mechanic's greace and dirt always stays). Scowling and pointing and saying, "Little-Miss Stuckup is just too damned good for her parents, that's what's wrong. So we haven't got a place out on the lake, and no damned vacations in Florida and Canada, so we're just no damned good and that's too God-damned bad!"
Had it been that way? Had she hated her father for what he was? No, no, no! But yes, yes! Maybe. Because there were the magazines and the windows. Harper's Bazaar and Vogue and a magazine called The Sophisticate. Filled with beautiful glossy pictures of gorgeous women and dreamy men in sleek, shining cars in front of those fabulous New York restaurants, on big passenger liners, in airplanes ready to take off for Europe and Asia and the Mediterranean and the Caribbean and all those fabulous places.
But she'd only been dreaming, and can't a girl dream? Can't a girl stop and look into a window? All those marvelous vacation clothes in Maclin's-that darling peach-color. What girl wouldn't dream?
That peach color.
Maybe a little resentment at being born a mechanic's daughter. No, not really, not hating your own father. But yes, maybe for not ever wanting to be more than a mechanic.
And whipping her over the peach colored dress. Yes, she'd hated him for that, and maybe Mom too for thinking the way they had-she thought it too.
That beautiful peach color.
She'd only been looking, wishing, dreaming, looking in Maclin's window when the man came along and stopped. He was well dressed and you could tell he was more than the men around town who worked in factories and sat in taverns and bowled two nights a week. Big deal! Cheap taverns, bowling alleys.
Anyhow you could see he was somebody, even by the way he lit a cigarette and smiled and said, "It is beautiful, isn't it?"
What was the harm?
What harm in letting him say hello, walking down the street with him?
What harm in saving it was nice, and because he would only be in town for a couple of days and didn't know anybody there, having a drink the next evening?
And the next day, the last:
"If you dare drop up to my room I've got a surprise for you. A little appreciation gift!"
As lone as he'd put it that way, what harm?
And in his room, the peach-colored dress laid out there on the bed.
So beautiful.
He hadn't had to. She'd asked nothing. But after all, was a kiss wrong for such a beautiful dress?
And you wanted it. You wanted it.
He was gentle, so gentle. Not like the panting, clawing boys who revolted you. Smooth, sophisticated.
Was it wrong? Yes-but no, no! No, because the smooth sophisticated women in the ads-Is that how it was?
No. A man who'd been used to things like that wanting her. That had been it, maybe.
"... You don't belong in a quiet mid-west town, my dear. You've got more to offer than anybody around here appreciates...."
And he'd meant it. He meant it.
In his arms. Feeling his body. Frightened by his body. Attracted by his body.
His hands.
On your body. Not like Marty Lewis, not clawing and reaching down your belly, scratching. Not a sore spot on your inner thigh high up, way high up, you had to squat and find a mirror and it was his fingernail. All sore inside, too.
Not like that.
Like you were grown up and you were a woman and you were wanted.
The first time, Oh, God, the first time! Scared-scared until all you could do was trust him, and whimper like a baby, and say, "Please, oh, please don't hurt me!" Spread out there on the bed stark naked, but knowing how you got there. No, no-yes, knowing. Standing there while he undressed you, frightened and wanting to back down.
But the peach-color was so beautiful.
And later glad, yes glad you didn't. After the first pain and the fright you were being loved, loved--loved the way a man loves. A man excited and breathing hard, his neck muscles tight and so beautiful, his face tilted upward and his teeth clenched as he arched his body and drove smash, smash, smash, at you.
Hitting your bones, hurting, making you a little side at your stomach where his belly smashed against your belly: But wonderful.
So wild. So not-caring. So free!
The first time. Would it ever be the same again?
And the peach-color. You were afraid to wear it. You carried it home, and when your mother saw it she looked at you with a kind of horror. Yes, with a kind of horror. No, no, not that, because she still loved you. But weak and afraid of your father Yes, that was it. afraid of your father.
"... You didn't have the money." That was what she said. "You didn't have the money! You've got to get rid of it, you can't let him see it."
But why not? What right had she to take away the one nice thing you had? What right?
And you said you wouldn't, you wouldn't, he had no right. And your mother said, "I'll tell him I made it for you...."
But he said. "Are you kidding? Where the hell is she? I want to talk to her!"
And he came to your room, and swore like he always did. You were afraid of him and you didn't say anything. You almost wished you'd thrown the peach-color away, because when he got mad he was terrible.
And he got madder and then he grabbed you and sat on the edge of the bed, swearing all the time, and jerked your skirt up. And even that wasn't enough, not enough. He pulled your panties down. He pulled your panties down. Rough and hard, his finger digging down the middle, him not even knowing it. Jerking them off, and you thought of how almost reverently the peach-color man did it.
Down around your ankles with your skirt up, and his big hand whack, whack, whack on your bottom. Like a little girl, not like a woman of twenty. Just like a little girl-whack, whack, whack! Until it was red, and you kicked one leg out of your panties, fighting, and one leg fell off his lap. But he didn't stop for a long time. When he did he went to the door and turned around and looked, and there was something in his eves like he was sorry. But he didn't say anything because he didn't know how. He didn't know how to say he was sorry if he was sorry. He just left.
And you lay there crying, because what right did they have? What right to think you'd do anything wrong to get a dress? They had no right to think that!
Your mother said something about always home so late with boys and on the front porch late and all that-until the neighbors wondered and things like that. But what right did they have to think you'd do anything dirty just to get a dress?
They were your parents and if they didn't believe you, who would?
So you left Villa Forks....
Glory slept and there were no dreams that she could remember-only a vague feeling that there had been dreams if she could only recall them....
The subconscious kicking up. The doubts, the fears, the tensions trying to find outlets. The inner turmoil trying to escape from behind the calculated poise, the conscious control, trying to come out and mar the glamor-image of a beautiful woman.
And that would never do, because the beautiful people had a job-the job of being beautiful. And reflecting inner problems outwardly wasn't wanted. Those who make the glamor-life possible for the beautiful people-the rich ones-had troubles of their own. They too had worries and doubts and fears, they too grew old and hated it. They wanted reassurance from the beautiful people. If they didn't get it they provided themselves with other beautiful people, and the gold plated merry-go-round whirled again.
That, under the bright glow of the veneer of money, was how it was.
That and tomorrow, and the hope.
The hope. It was like the first prize-the million-to-one shot that sells the sweep tickets.
The hope of marriage.
Because once in a blue moon one of the beautiful people hit the jack pot. Married a millionaire.
So no doubt one of Glory's dreams was made of that material. But the time was growing short....
She awoke with a sense of dismay. Even before she opened her eyes, she knew it was going to be rough. His hand running gently over her cheek told her this.
One of those who liked it morning, noon and night, in day-time and darkness, that's what he was. And with the awakening moment not her best by any means, Glory asked herself the quick question:
Is it worth Belmore Island?
Just as quickly, almost automatically, she decided that it was.
She smiled lazily, opened her eyes slowly. The smile deepened, her look was one of pleased surprise. "Good morning, darling."
This pleased him. He stood with one hand thrust into his dressing gown pocket, looking extremely handsome. Freshly shaven and of course freshly showered, he was ready for whatever the day would bring, and his presence in Glory's room indicated the manner in which he wished it to start.
Glory drew her arms out from under the sheet and stretched gracefully. The sheet fell away and she made no effort to hide the beautiful breasts that stood revealed; the luscious breasts, one of which was rather sore from Ralph Ackley's attentions the night before. She hoped he would be more gentle with it during the coming session.
"I ordered breakfast on the terrace outside," Ackley said. "For two."
"How thoughtful of you!"
This would announce to all and sundry that Ackley had made his selection for the weekend, it would be sporting of the others to lay off.
This was a forlorn hope on her part, a hope dashed to bits when Ackley said. "Oh, it won't be here for an hour. You know I wouldn't rush you out of bed just to satisfy my appetite."
Glory smiled. As he sat down on the edge of the bed, she hooked her fingers around the nape of his neck and applied gentle pressure.
"You read my mind, darling," she said. And hoped he would be more gentle.
He was not.
His mouth on hers demanded immediately. She opened her lips to him, his tongue searched and his heart began to pound against her breast.
She closed her eyes and deliberately tried to arouse her own passion to let it boil up because then it took over and she could stop acting. :
His mouth slid off hers, went down over her throat and found a nipple. It was the sore one but it came erect under his tongue.
"Darling," he breathed huskily.
You lecherous bastard, her inner voice said. But he was again kissing her and her body trembled of its own accord as she whispered back:
"Oh Ralph! You're wonderful! How did yon know I like-"
Quivered in truth, her thighs and belly and all the rest of it. Her hands doubled into fists for a moment, then she extended her arms and found his head and clawed hard into his scalp.
His kiss was a thing of great skill. She quivered all over. Even as she inwardly whispered. Damn him! Oh, damn his arrogance. Damn him for taking an advantage he knows he has.
Even as her mind rebelled, her body responded until she cried out:
"Oh, Ralph, Please! I can't stand it! For God's sake, take me!"
He stopped what he was doing and lunged down on her. But even in his need and passion, there was a smug light in his eyes. He knew women. He could size up a woman quickly; her strengths, her weaknesses.
He already had discovered that Glory could be seduced even against her will. He had found the hot depths within her that she herself would not admit, that she dared not admit-the hot animal core that yearned for uninhibited freedom of action. It continually battled with her inhibitions; inhibitions and blocks inherited from a long line of decent conformists who, if they could see her now, would turn away in horror and regard her as a lost soul.
Ackley knew all this and even as he took her, even as they mounted together to a hot, wild climax he was planning interesting deviations for the future.
Glory knew what was going on in his mind.
And automatically there came to her, the old memory-image:
Count Valenti!
After the morning session was over, Ralph composed himself and waited on the terrace while Glory dressed. She put on a pair of white bermudas, a white sweater and sandals. As they sat down to the table on the terrace, under the watchful eye of a perfectly trained waiter, she looked fresh and dewy and desirable.
So much so that several of the males who belonged made a mental note to keep her in mind, their various thought-structures all variations on the same theme:
I'll bet that blonde Ackley's got is a demon in bed....
... There was swimming in the morning; a gay crowd bent on getting the weekend off to a good start. Glory dipped into the pool and then stretched out beside Ralph on a rubber mat. Ackley promptly dozed off and Glory was grateful for the interlude in which she could look satisfactorily beautiful and observe the scene.
She watched a race between Liz Bellamy and Moira Shane-the length of the pol and back. It was remarkable that the ancient Liz could display the stamina that allowed her to finish first. Or rather, to finish at all. Moira, Glory knew, had won cups for swimming.
Moira, an astute politician, climbed puffing out of the pool and complimented Liz as she gasped for breath.
A short time later Glory noted that Liz was getting competition from Jim Guyon for sole possession of Brad Howell-the Sinatra-type character. This gave her grounds for wondering? Which of them, Jim or Liz, was mistaken about Brad's sex inclinations? Neither, perhaps. Brad Howell might be one of those sex symbols capable of going both ways. In that case they could share him, Glory thought. She turned her attentions to Moira Shane's efforts to achieve an attachment. Evidently Moira had been one of the unlucky ones who'd slept alone the first night.
And a great waste, too, because she was known as one of the best bed companions on the gold plated circuit. Quite inventive, they said. There was the story of how young Merle Wilks ran screaming out of her room one night holding his middle. Nobody knew what had happened but it was the general consensus that Moira momentarily lost control of herself.
Glory looked over at Ralph and saw that he was still asleep. She closed her eyes and felt that touch of dizziness that had been bothering her lately.
It was short-lived however, she drifted off to sleep-To awaken later with a sense of time having passed. Ralph was gone." Glory squinted for the sun and found it farther to westward then seemed possible.
A white jacketed attendant approached. He gave the impression that he'd been standing by, patiently waiting for her to wake up.
"Mr. Ackley left a message," he said. "He joined a golf foursome and said that you were sleeping so peacefully he decided not to awaken you. He'll be back around five o'clock."
"What time is it now?"
"One-thirty, Miss Hart. Would you care for some lunch?"
"No, thank you." Glory got to her feet and adjusted her sun glasses. "I think I'll take a walk."
The attendant retired respectfully and Glory went to her room and changed into Bermuda shorts. Leaving the swimming pool enclosure, she pushed through the jungle fringe. Avoiding the barbecue patio, she moved off across a stretch of cropped lawn toward a more formal grove that even to her inexperienced eve seemed to have no excuse for being. Perhaps, she thought, Tim Guyon wasn't the architectural genius he was supposed to be.
But the place expresses his personality, darling....
She wondered where she'd heard that scrap of tactful defense, couldn't remember where, stopped to turn and look at a young man who sat comfortably against a the with a book propped on his knees.
His expression didn't change as he took his pipe out of his mouth and said, "I'm sorry if I startled you, Miss Hart."
Glory laughed. "I'm afraid you did, a bit. But it was my fault. You're just sitting there, minding your own business."
"That's what I try to do. Although sometimes it's difficult."
The remark could have been taken as challenging. But at that moment Glory remembered. "I know who you are now. I couldn't place you last night. But you're the chauffeur."
"One of them. There are three of us. After all, five cars you know."
"You're the young man who picked us up yesterday."
"That's right, Miss Hart."
He was on his feet now, but the transition was not made with any taint of servility. He merely closed his book and got to his feet the same way Ralph Ackley would have done it.
Glory's first instinct was to move on. After you "made an arrangement" on a weekend, it was not considered expedient to be found alone with another man; not if you wanted to play it completely safe.
Instead she took a cigarette from the case she was carrying and tapped it against her thumb.
The young man extended a light in silence. Glory drew in a cloud of smoke, exhaled it and thought, Good lord, he's only the chauffeur. How careful can you get!
She glanced at his book. "Projections. That's an odd title."
"It's a technical book, Miss Hart."
"Are you taking a course of study in something?"
"I've already taken several courses. Psychology. You might call this a sort of personal refresher course, and a vacation."
"Why that's wonderful. Working to better yourself."
It was a patronizing remark and Glory regretted it instantly. But the young man continued to eye her gravely, apparently took no offense.
He said, "That's the general idea. Both intellectually and physically. I got a little run down doing . post-graduate work and needed some sun and rest."
"What a marvelous way to get it."
"I thought so."
"And evidently it worked. The physical part is certainly apparent."
He was tanned a deep bronze, looked the picture of health. And while Glory's first impression had been that of a George Raft character, this was fast fading. There was a quiet gravity about this young man that erased the illusion.
"You seem to know my name," Glory said, "but I don't know yours."
"Rex Mason."
Glory extended her hand. "I'm happy to know you, Mr. Mason."
He shook hands, drowned hers and regarded her thoughtfully. "That sounds so silly, doesn't it?"
"What sounds silly?"
"Mr. Mason. I'm the chauffeur, you know."
"But not an ordinary chauffeur."
"I wish you'd sit down and I'm being purely selfish. I want to sit down, myself."
Glory dropped cross-legged onto the grass and Rex Mason slipped down against his tree.
"Now," he said, "just what is your definition of an ordinary chauffeur?"
"I-well, I really don't know. One who makes his living at it, I guess."
"I make my living at it. I have no money. I spent it all getting an education. If it weren't for my salary here, I'd starve to death."
"A psychologist. But you're so young. You can't be more than-"
"I'm thirty-two."
"You certainly don't look it."
"Thank you," he said quietly.
He was one of the strangest men Glory had ever met. On the face of it, from his projected image, she would have expected him to be dull and boring. But he wasn't. There was an illusive aura of quiet power about him. The fact that he made no personality effort normally would indicate an inability to do so; because everyone studies his own personality and tries to develop skill in projecting it.
If you go over well as the gay type, that is the direction in which you work. If you show talent as a good listener, you are fortunate indeed and work in that direction. Good listeners are very much in demand.
But Rex Mason made no attempt to project anything, and he got away with it. Evidently he found he had a talent in that direction, was making the most of it.
Still Glory was not sure of this, and the uncertainty bothered her.
"It must be tremendously exciting, being a psychologist."
He pulled on his pipe and thought that over. "I think it's tremendously exciting to do anything that interests one."
"What are your plans? I mean, when you leave here?"
"I have an offer from a clinic in New York City."
"But I thought a clinic was where doctors gave their services for nothing-so many hours a week."
"Many of them are. But some reputable ones who need a staff make financial arrangements. I haven't the money to go into private practice and I don't want to borrow. So I'm going into this clinic for a couple of years." He looked at his pipe, tamped a dead heel out against the tree.
"Over and above the necessity, I like the idea of two years' clinical practice. It will do me a great deal of good."
Glory picked a blade of grass and bit it in two with glistening, even teeth. Her teeth and her golden blonde hair were her best features, and she kept both on display.
"I never met a psychologist before."
"Nothing strange about us, we're human."
"I suppose you're looking right through me. You probably have me classified and catalogued already."
"Hardly."
He wasn't helping the conversation much and Glory began to wonder why she bothered. "Your words had a certain tone in them. Do you think I'm in need of psychiatric treatment?"
"Mental therapy, you mean? It's been said that a great many people who aren't getting it need it very much." He sat silently while Glory tried to think of an intelligent rebuttal. Then he got tired of waiting.
"And what do you do for a living, Miss Hart?"
"I'm an executive secretary."
"In New York City?"
"Of course," Glory said lightly. "Where else? We have offices at 58th and Park Avenue. I was very lucky to get this weekend off for this party. My boss is really an old dear."
He drew on his pipe and his regard was so thoughtful and completely impersonal that his eyes, while trained on her face, seemed to be looking through her.
"You've got the patter down perfectly, haven't you? The poise, the mannerisms."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"You're nobody's executive secretary, Miss Hart. Executive secretaries stay home and work. You haven't got a job. You live from one weekend to the next, ride along with the jet crowd by sufferance. You furnish these fat, skinny, ugly, tired people with what they have to have-youth and beauty."
Glory was stunned. The accusation, coming at her simply and quietly, had the effect of a club over the head. At first she didn't believe she'd heard correctly. Why, he wouldn't have the nerve! He-
"You're one of those gold-plated tramps that haunt the expensive islands and the plush resorts. It's a criminal waste and you should be ashamed of your-self."
He regarded her with the same abstract eyes-gray, she'd noticed earlier-and took his pipe from his mouth.
"A waste," he went on, throwing the words quietly against her helpless surprise, "because you ought to be contributing something to society. If that sounds corny, make the most of it. You ought to be raising some man's children instead of throwing yourself away on futility."
Glory sprang to her feet. The shock had worn off and her eyes blazed. "You cheap, impudent car jockey! I'll have you fired!"
"No you won't," he said quietly. "How would you go about it?"
"I'll-I'll-"
"You'd better sit down, Miss Hart. You're getting dizzy again. How long have you been having those dizzy spells?"
"None of your business!" Fists doubled, she faced him and stamped her foot. He looked down at the foot, then calmly raised his eyes to her face again. "What are you?" she demanded. "A doctor too, I suppose?"
"No, but I'm pretty sure the dizzy spells are psychosomatic. That means they come as a result of mental upset."
"Why, you sanctimonious little pipsqueak!"
The little pipsqueak bit was ridiculous. Rex Mason stood six feet and had a broad, well-muscled chest. But she could think of no words more contemptuous and devastating.
"I'd sit down if I were you."
"Don't you tell me what to do!"
But automatically, almost as though at his command, she sank to the ground. The dizziness hit her, she put her face in her hands and leaned forward.
"Straighten up," he said. "Take slow, deep breaths."
She did not obey him this time. Fighting the tears that were close to the surface-tears of rage, she would have classified them-she said. "Shut up! Mind your business!"
"In a way, this is my business."
"I thought psychologists had ethics. I didn't know they poked their noses into other people's affairs when they weren't asked."
"That's true," he said thoughtfully. "But this is a highly specialized situation. At least that's how I'm classifying it."
Glory moved her head slowly from side to side.
"You see," he said quietly, "I'm in love with you."
Glory lifted her face and laughed. "You're ridiculous! If you could only know how ridiculous you are."
"It may well appear that way to you."
"It does, and don't you forget it. I am going to get you fired. Don't forget that, either!"
"No," he said quietly. "I don't think you will. I don't think you'll say anything about this talk."
"Oh, won't I?"
"You would have to say I insulted you, made a pass at you. I don't think you're that unfair."
"I'll tell the truth. That's all I'll have to do."
"No, it would shame you too much. You can't go to Guyon and accuse me of saying what he knows is the truth. He'd fire me, sure; but the shame to you would make it not worth your while. You aren't really vindictive or vicious."
"You think not? Just wait 'til you find out the truth. You'll see how I am."
"I'm willing to bet I'm right. Put if not, it makes no difference. I'm leaving here at the end of next week anyway."
Glory doubled her fists and beat her knees in anger and frustration. "What kind of brute are you, shaming a girl-"
He was on his feet, looking down at her. "It does seem cruel, I know. But sometimes cruelty is necessary. Sometimes shock is the only thing that will help."
"Who are you to judge me-God?"
"No. I'll admit I'm assuming some questionable rights, but what I said earlier still goes?"
"That you're in love with me?" Glory tried as hard as possible to put a sneer into her voice. She succeeded to a great extent but he exhibited no more reaction than the tree he'd been sitting under.
"That, yes. But it is probably fortunate for you that you've met a psychologist. You're headed for a breakdown, you know."
Glory, through sheer will power, regained control of herself. The dizziness had lessened, she was adjusting her ability to rise to her feet and stand unassisted.
"I suppose that's a diagnosis. You've talked to me twice and I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. You should be getting a hundred-thousand a years someplace Mister Mason. You're a genius."
"No. But I have pretty good instincts, and I think I'm right. Some of these women make out all right, but they're tougher than you are. You've got a core of sensibilities that make you ill-fitted for this sort of thing. You're bound to crack up eventually. You've got a guilt complex that's making you miserable right now."
"I think you're a plain, conceited fool!"
Why was she even talking to him? Why hadn't she slapped his face? The dizziness-oh, yes, the dizziness. That had been her problem. But it was gone. She could get up and leave now.
"Certain cases," he said solemnly, "have classic symptoms. No psychiatrist in his right mind would treat on such sparse grounds, of course. But I'm not treating, I'm only observing, I'd say something traumatic happened to you back along the way. You were probably all right when you started this game. You wouldn't have had the courage to take the plunge if your basic guilts had been there then. I'm willing to bet that you were doing fine. The pay-off comes far in the future when you start to lose your beauty, arid a sense of true insecurity sets in."
"Are you enjoying yourself?" Glory asked sarcastically. In a moment, she would risk the dizziness and get to her feet. But she would do it alone, she would not let him help her or even lay a hand on her.
"Something happened and not too long ago. A shame in front of your friends? A humiliation? A slug square and hard into your ego?"
Count Valenti!
"Shut up-shut up-shut up!"
"I thought so," he said gravely. "I'll leave now. But please remember this. You'll get back to New York eventually, and by that time I'll be working at the Julia Hays Memorial Clinic. If you get into trouble, come and see me."
"I'd die first."
"Come and see me," he again urged gently. Then he put his pipe into his mouth and walked out of the grove.
Alone, Glory didn't hurry. She sat there on the ground and tried to collect her thoughts. But they refused to collect. She told herself she hated him, that he was contemptuous, arrogant, a fraud, a sadist.
And she believed what she said. But the thoughts were not really a part of her because her innate mind-her true being and consciousness-was too forlorn from shock to do anything but fling synthetic invective, go through the symbolic gesture of indignation.
In her true heart of hearts, she had never felt more; lonely and miserable in her life.
CHAPTER THREE
Belmore Hotel in the Netherland Antilles was divine. The cabanas facing the oddly-shaped swimming pool was done in restful green. It gave off onto the ocean; all you had to do was raise your eyes from the drink that was always ready and waiting to see the deep, sheer blue of the ocean beyond.
Ralph Ackley's party was a gay one, and definitely international. There were quite a few who belonged. and some of them were not unbeautiful. Cia Martin-ini, the new Italian picture star who had become a rave since she appeared in Fontanel di Vita, the picture that raised the ire of the stuffy American censors....
"My dear, isn't she marvelous? They say that sequence-the seduction scene, when the camera played only on her face-was taken in the entire nude. The whole film still is in existence."
"Honestly! Lean a little closer, darling. When I was with Dave King's party at the Bellefonte-Dave insisted that I go-there was a very nice Frenchman there who saw me in a bikini and got amazing ideas. He amused me, really, and I played along. Well,-darling, we ended up in his room. Later I told Dave about it, and he got a great kick. But anyhow we got to the Frenchman's room, he and I, and he asked me if I'd like to see some color films of European scenery-that film was shot in color, you know. Well anyhow, he set up a projection machine and there was Gia, without a stitch on, darling. Absolutely nude! Well, it was the original scene with an extra she chose herself.
"Honestly?"
"Honestly! It was really a scream, darling. The poor Frenchman sitting there in positive agony watching the screen and hoping it was having the same effect on me. But I was laughing my dear, positively laughing!"
"It must have been hilarious."
"Absolutely the funniest thing you could imagine. And when it was over and he was perspiring with eagerness out of every pore, I looked at him and yawned."
"You didn't"
"Honestly. I yawned and said it had been a very nice evening and I'd have to be going. You should have seen his face as I walked out!"
The girl who told Glory this wore a green bikini and had an arresting figure. The lower edge of her bra showed wear-just the faintest line on the extreme lower edge. But it gave eloquent testimony that other girls with even more arresting figures had been getting the nod. The worried lines around her soft, beautiful mouth gave the same evidence, as did the nervous way she had of covering the pool and surrounding area with quick eyes as she talked, continually alert for an eligible man standing alone and thus vulnerable.
Glory knew the true story of the Frenchman incident; or at least another version. Joy Valle had told her at Palm Springs a few months earlier.
It seemed that this brunette-her name was Lisa Pine, and she was a veteran of the gold plated jet circuit-had been dumped by Dave King for paying a little too much attention to a Boston financier on that trip. Lisa was looking desperately for a new anchor and had picked the Frenchman.
She went to his room with him-he was a pornography addict-watched his films and went through the whole bit. But the next day it turned out that he was a third assistant cameraman with a stranded art picture group, who had pushed in on the strength of the private shows he put on for certain selected guests.
The next day he left; but the story got out, and Lisa got a sudden telegram she sent to herself asking her to please come to Hollywood to help a dear friend doctor a sick script. She "accidently" dropped the wire in the lobby before she left, and everyone was positively hilarious over the poor girl's efforts to save face.
Lisa saw William Kinnaird climb out of the pool and head for a vacant table. She laid a quick hand on Glory's arm and said, "Pardon me, dear I want to ask Bill's advice on some investments I have in Porto Rico."
Glory watched Lisa circle the pool in the direction of her quarry. But her luck was bad. She was out positioned; a lanky ex-fashion model dropped into the chair opposite Kinnaird. Lisa turned on a dime to mount the diving board and arc gracefully into the pool.
Glory felt a quick little wave of thanksgiving wash through her mind. She had been in Lisa's position, knew what it was like. She was grateful for not having to hunt a way out.
She had Ralph.
She lay back, closed her eves and let her mind wander. It wandered back to Florida, and Rex Mason asking:
Exactly what is the hire of luxurious places?
She hadn't answered; but now she allowed her mind to ponder the question. It was a rather strange mental gambit. As thoughts flowed, an impersonal part of her consciousness observed them-like a doctor analyzing a patient's disease. But she was both the patient and the doctor. She was a patient discussing an imprisoning disease, knowing it was a disease and seeing all the advantages of not having it. But still the disease was there. Silly--
She jerked her mind out of this trap. What was she doing that was so wrong? She'd seen the world, she'd traveled to heights far beyond the reach of ordinary girls. She'd taken what assets she had and used them wisely. That wife and mother bit was an old cliche. She was willing to bet this sanctimonious phony who called himself a psychologist wasn't able to show her a single brat-ridden housewife who wouldn't change places gladly with Glory Hart.
Besides, there was plenty of time. She was only twenty-eight. In a couple of years she would find a husband. But he wouldn't be a mechanic-not a frustrated, bitter, trapped man with nothing to look forward to.
Actually, that was what she was training for right now-to make a successful, sophisticated, wealthy man a good wife. One who could travel in all circles and help him. And when the time came, she would give him everything-everything!
Anything you haven't given other men?
Those damned illogical little thoughts that sneaked into her mind when she was tired!
And Glory was tired. For almost a year she'd been tremendously successful. Back to New York and 76th Street only twice in that whole time.
Naturally she was tired. But she'd rested in Florida and she would get a good rest here on Belmore Island.
She took a slow, deep breath and smiled.
She had Ralph.
She looked toward the pool, and let the breath out suddenly.
Did she have Ralph?
He was coming up out of the water, with Gia Martinini locked tight in his arms. Her mouth was just coming away from his. As they broke water Ralph turned his head and she whispered something into his ear, then opened her mouth slightly, closed her eyes sensuously and showed him her tongue.
Glory felt a little dizzy. She closed her own eyes against the slightly distorted sway of the pool, was glad she didn't have to look.
But she was going to have to do something about that. Losing a man in the middle of a weekend was a disgrace.
She got up from her lounge chair and approached the pool. Ackley and Gia had dropped, laughing, into a pair of poolside chairs. Glory dropped casually down on the arm of Ackley's chair and ran her fingers through his wet hair.
"Enjoying yourself, dear?"
Ackley glanced up as though trying to identify her. "Oh-oh. yes. Beautiful pool." He made no reciprocating affectionate gesture, and Glory saw the smug satisfaction in Gia Martini's beautiful dark eyes.
"How are you, darling?" Glory said coolly. "Let me congratulate you on your latest picture. Are there any private prints?"
Gia Martinini's eyes changed. They threw daggers sharp enough to cut flesh. She laid a possessive hand on Ralph Ackley's arm and spoke to him as she said, "As I was telling you earlier, sweet, most of that picture was shot on Bellin's estate in Sicily. It is a marvelous place, and they have a private pool, you know."
The word private was delivered straight at Glory along with a stream of sparks that said, On your way, tramp. You haven't got a chance.
Desperately Glory clawed for an advantage. She brushed Ralph Ackley's hair back and said, "Too much sun is not too good for you, dear. How about a drink and a nap inside?"
The bid had been desperate indeed. An open challenge, a foolhardy, direct attack; bad generalship, because she gave Ralph a chance to announce the new order of things then and there.
And he took the opportunity. He said, "Oh, I'm quite comfortable, thanks. Why don't we meet in the bar for cocktails at six?"
Her skin tightened under Gia Martinini's smug look of triumph. It had been so easy for the Italian tramp! She'd won the fight without even flexing her claws.
"Very well," Glory smiled. But the smile was a grimace of embarrasment and frustrated anger. Still it went off very well. Her laugh sounded amazingly genuine.
"Fine, darling. I have some people I want to see. Jacque Fantine is in from Europe, and we haven't seen each other since Capri."
She lifted her gorgeous body off the arm of his chair. But if he cared, he concealed it very well-so well that an observer would have gotten the impression he couldn't have cared less.
Glory went to the bar, got two stiff drinks, then strolled around the far end of the long white hotel and sat looking at the sea.
She sat there for a long time, hurt and bewildered by a new experience .This was the first time a man had ever thrown her over. She had terminated relationships, of course. After all weekends, excursions, parties must each in due time come to a finish. But no man had ever found her wanting as a companion and a lover, there had often been repeat performances.
But now she had been clearly and coldly thrown over for another woman. The hurt and humiliation beat at Glory until the bright blue sea no longer looked bright and blue-just pale and drab and brutally sun-washed.
Then the fear. It had happened! There was always a first time. Then what? The second? The third?
But I'm only twenty-eight. I'm young, I'm beautiful.
I've just had it too easy, I haven't had to get in and fight.
Gia Martinini is twenty-two. Nonsense! All nonsense!
There had been a dizziness, but now it was going away. The fear and panic had come with the dizziness, but as the rocking, insecure feeling passed Glory felt better. It was time, she told herself firmly, to look to practical things.
How to get home.
But that would be no worry. Ralph Ackley wasn't so cold-blooded that he'd leave a girl stranded. He couldn't, word would get around.
No, the problem was one of procedure. What should she do-get a sudden call back to the states? If necessary, she could demand plane fare from Ralph. He would have to give it to her.
But suppose he didn't? There was the four hundred dollars in her savings account at the Chase Manhattan in New York. But it was pitifully small, with transportation to be considered.
The last of the Count Valenti money.
Glory shuddered openly, got up and moved back toward the hotel.
She didn't stop at the desk. Perhaps if she had, it would have been better. She went right on to the Ackley suite and walked in-
Gia Martinini straightened from unpacking her bag, turned to frown in annoyance. "What are you doing here?"
A faint red haze glowed against Glory's mind. "That's my question, isn't it?"
Gia looked ravishing in an orange sport dress pulled tight over her famous breasts, revealing in detail the famous nipples, sloping down over the famous hips with the famous, almost obscene bulge at the apex of her legs. And amply exposed everywhere, the famous Gia Martinini complexion that jumped off the color movie screens and made men drool.
"Didn't he tell you?" Gia asked imperiously. "Tell me what?"
"That there were reservations complications, sweetie. Some quick moves had to be made, and you were one of them. You have a single on the other side now. A maid packed your things and moved them for you."
It was probably the imperious air of the little bitch that did it. At least, that was the terminology and motivation Glory put to it. If she'd smiled, been even half-friendly and said, "Sorry, honey, it's the breaks," Glory might have taken the defeat in good grace.
But instead there was a quick touch of dizziness. It passed almost instantly, then Glory-went slightly insane.
She lunged at Gia and dug deep into her shining black hair. She jerked.
In the process, she turned into both an outraged female and a fishwife. "You cheap, two-dollar wop whore! Who the hell do you think you're dealing with?"
Gia's eyes widened in sudden terror, but she had little time for eye-widening as she came sidewise half over the bed, and hit the floor on her back with a leg on each side of the comer.
Her skirt went instantly above her hips to reveal the famous Martinini navel-so deep and well-defined and plain sexy.
Something else was also revealed: Gia's possible anticipation of someone's arrival? Or perhaps the dress was too tight to accommodate panties. At any rate, she was stark naked from the waist down. Or from the waist up in her present position.
Glory's hand went to Gia's throat, blocking; off a scream. It came out as a grunt and a gargle, Gia kicked her legs high and wide in an effort to get clear of the obstructing bed.
"You cheap bitch! When I'm through he won't want what's left!"
Gia fought in sheer panic. A couple of obscene Italian phrases escaped through the restricting fingers, hut Glory's raging voice drowned them out.
"You conniving little bitch! How many men do you need to sleep with? Do you have to throw your tail in every direction? Walking in here as though you owned the place!
In sheer desperation Gia-who had been a creditable dancer before entering films-flung her torso upward, stood momentarily on her head, then came down in a somersault.
Losing her grip on Gia's throat, Glory reached for the next most convenient hand-hold. This proved to be the low bodice of her dress, and as the Italian girl descended in the downward arc of her somersault, Glory twisted aside and jerked.
Gia hit the floor with a grunt as she came down hard on her breasts and belly. She was completely naked now except for her shoes. Glory was on her knees beside her with the torn dress in her fist.
She threw the dress aside, straddled the girl and again went for her hair. For a moment Gia had been able to scream, but this again was cut off as Glory pulled her head upward and back until her neck was taut.
Gia gritted her teeth and clawed at the floor in rage and terror. Her legs frogged out, she kicked backwards in a grotesque effort to swim out of her difficulty.
Getting her knees under her for leverage, she heaved upward. She found strength in her desperation-enough to hurl her opponent off her back.
Glory went over on her back, was unable to orient before Gia twisted around and grabbed her by her ankles.
She kicked out viciously, loosing one ankle, but Gia grabbed it again. Glory had twisted over on her belly and now Gia had her in a vulnerable and undignified position: sprawled on her belly with her legs wide-so wide her panties were as taut as though they had been painted over her strained buttocks.
And Gia was ready to take advantage of it. She grinned. No need to scream now. Her grin stretched into something ugly and evil.
"Now who's a bitch?" she taunted. "Let me up!" Glory raged.
"Like hell I will. You asked for it, sweetie. And you're going to get it!"
Believing she could read Gia's dirty little mind, sensing what the fiery little actress probably was thinking, Glory tried to find comfort in the fact that she still had her panties on. They were some protection; at least she hoped they would be.
"Uh-huh," Gia gloated. "Now you're going to get it."
Glory felt a little dizzy. But she fought and it went away as the image of Count Valenti superimposed itself against the backdrop of her consciousness.
She fought that too, drove it out with the more potent image of present peril.
But she would not scream. Even in this desperate position, her pride held fast. She would take her beating, whatever diabolical idea Gia had in mind, but she would not scream and she would not beg.
Was this something she had learned at Count Valenti's estate?
Again she pushed the thought away but with one even more frightening in view of this situation. She remembered something she'd said to Gia:
"When I'm through with you, he won't want what's left!"
What part of a woman was a man most interested in? What part of her anatomy was exposed to Gia's tender mercies?
And the fact that Gia's thoughts lay in that direction became apparent as she gloated aloud: "Just between us girls, I came up the hard way."
Glory bucked and struggled and kicked, until Gia jerked her legs ruthlessly apart and snarled, "Lay still, you bitch, while Gia tells you something."
Glory subsided, and the sharp pain in her spread legs lessened. She lay flat on her belly, breathing heavily. Then, to alleviate the pain even more, she pushed herself backward until she was up on her spread knees. This helped a little. She remained in that totally helpless position on her face and knees while Gia said:
"I spent a year in a reformatory, just between us, and I learned a few things. I learned what guards do to girls just for their own amusement. Did you ever see a guard in the bull pen with a naked girl?
I did. The guard had a hose-high pressure. Two other guards held the girl, and you know what he did with the hose? You know what happened? I bet you can guess. That girl climbed right up the wall, right up the bare wall!"
"Damn you! Damn you!" Glory raged.
"I wish I had a hose," Gia said. "I'd make you climb a wall, you bitch!"
Sadly for her state of mind, Gia had lost her shoes. She considered this. She could not let go of Glory long enough to put them on. So what damage she planned had to be done with her bare feet.
She extended one foot. She grinned and wriggled her toes. Glory shivered and writhed.
"You dirty bitch!" Glory grated.
And through her mind ran an incredible doubt that all this was happening. It was a mad dream. How could two civilized women turn into animals this way? How thin was the veneer of civilization?
This isn't you, Glory Hart, here on your hands and knees like an animal in the power of another animal.
Count Valenti.
But that was different. There were men involved. There was lust. Men are cruel, but women shouldn't be.
I'm sorry for what I did, for starting this. But I won't beg. I won't cringe and crawl. Oh, my God!
Regardless of what your mind wants, there are limits to what your body will take-and not respond. Oh God!
Gia's toes wriggled.
Glory writhed and bucked and twisted.
Tiring of this sport, Gia drew back her foot and kicked. She did not risk hurting her bare toes on the bones of Glory's pelvis. Instead, she kicked underneath Glory's elevated buttocks, the flat top of her foot arching deep into Glory's belly.
Glory squalled in sudden agony. Her knees came up off the floor, she shot her legs out straight and came down on her belly.
"You tramp-you bitch-you cheap harlot!" Gia intoned in a croon of satiated rage.
With superhuman effort Glory jerked loose. She rolled to her side and doubled over on her belly, clutching it.
Gia grinned and aimed a kick at her rump. But Glory, her outrage suddenly revitalizing her, grabbed Gia's ankle and twisted. Gia went down.
Glory came to her knees, again buried her fists in Gia's hair.
The tables now turned, Gia's face reflected pure terror: terror at the insane rage that spewed down on her from above. She knew that any triumph over this insane blonde tigress was out of the question. She had lost.
Glory slammed her head against the floor. Again. Still again.
Then her fists loosened. Dizziness welled up from somewhere within her and the room began to sway. She leaned back, dropping her hold.
In a frenzy of relief Gia came to her feet and ran to the door. She flung the door open and ran, stark naked and screaming, out toward the swimming pool.
Glory fell back against the bed and closed her eyes. It was over. They would come for her now, only heaven knew what would happen. Would she be thrown in jail?
It didn't really matter. Ralph Ackley, Glory knew, would find means to avenge her attack on his new favorite.
There was nothing to do now but wait.
Glory sat there with her eyes closed. She never wanted to move again. She was very tired. A few moment's rest, they wouldn't be back for an instant.
She heard Gia still screaming out by the pool. It would take them ten minutes to catch her, Glory thought. That seemed funny. A naked brunette running around a swimming pool with everybody after her. The laughter Glory heard was her own. .
She felt dizziness and closed her eyes....
CHAPTER FOUR
Glory felt trapped; trapped in a delicious drowsiness that she knew was wrong. It was as though she hadn't slept in days, the lassitude that came over her was the answer to all her problems. At the same time she was frightened. This was not natural. She fought the weariness of mind and body.
Then came the sound of approaching footsteps, and she wondered why it had taken them so long to come after her. But she realized it had not been long at all, that she indeed had dropped off to sleep, but only for a few moments. Too long, though, because now there was no time left to even grab the coverlet to hide her nakedness. They would find her like this, sprawled obscenel-
The door opened and Liz Bellamy, ugly as sin but never more welcome, strode into the room.
And for once in her tempestuous life, Liz Bellamy was awed. Her eyes widened as she viewed the scene.
"My God! What happened?"
"Hello, Liz-"
"Good God! That little Italian bitch came kiting out of here with nothing on but her hair. What happened, did you try to rape her?"
"Liz-please!"
Practical, earthy Liz reverted to type. Her glance indicated her next statement: "Well, if she tried to rape you, she didn't quite make it. What happened?"
"We had a fight."
"What a brawl!"
Liz' eyes were sparkling now. Jeez, you beat that baby, you licked her. It couldn't have happened to a stinkier little bitch."
Caught up in reaction, tears came to Glory's eyes. "Liz, I'm miserable. I-"
"Thank God I got here first," Liz Bellamy said.
New footsteps approached, running, heavy ones. Glory cringed.
But Liz, now in her element, snapped her fingers. "Get up and get decent, pet. There's nothing to worry about.
A fist hammered on the door. Liz opened it partially and blocked the way. "What do you want?"
The face of an angry man, one Glory recognized as Mr. Spence, the resort manager, appeared momentarily. But Liz Bellamy's back straightened and she narrowed the peering space to a crack.
"What's going on in here?" Spence demanded.
"None of your God-damned business," Liz snapped. "Get back to your sheets and pillows and quit trying to snoop in guest's rooms."
"I'm Mr. Spence, the manager, and-"
"-and if you want to get thrown off this island, just try walking through this door!"
Mr. Spence was a man who merited sympathy. Caught in a powerful vise, he was being squeezed by the outrage of Ralph Ackley and a popular picture star on one side, and the equally solid weight of the Bellamy millions on the other. He did not have to be reminded that Liz Bellamy could buy the resort, if she were so inclined, and do exactly as she threatened.
On the other hand, Ralph Ackley was not without influence. Gia Martinini was nothing, of course. Neither was Glory Hart. It was just Mr. Spence's foul luck that they'd both found powerful champions.
Mr. Spence gulped and said, "Ah-if the lady is not dressed, I certainly wouldn't-"
"You're damned right you wouldn't. Now get the hell back to your cubby hole, throw whoever's in the room next to me the hell out of it and get it ready for Miss Hart."
"I'm afraid-"
"No, not you, buster. I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel my two-weeks reservation and find a place where the manager takes orders."
Mr. Spence did a quick mathematical calculation. Fourteen guests multiplied by two weeks, erased by a cancellation, added up to a huge, frightening nothing. And the men up above were more inclined to be critical of big nothings on the reservation sheet than they were of hair-pulling contests between a pair of excited guests.
"Very well, Mrs. Bellamy," Spence said stiffly. "I'll see what I can do. But I would appreciate it, when Mr. Ackley inquires, if you would tell him that-"
"I'll tell him to go fry himself," Liz said as she slammed the door. She turned and smiled wickedly at Glory. "My dear, do get up and get dressed. You look as though you've just had an orgy."
Glory laughed. Not that any of this was funny. But triumph had been snatched, by sheer good luck, out of the black hole of abject defeat. Her guardian angel was back on the job. Of all the people she'd expected to see when the door opened, Liz Bellamy had been the absolute last. And to have Liz hate Gia Martinini's guts, what a tremendous stroke of pure good fortune!
She got to her feet without the slightest sign of dizziness. She had never felt better in her life. Excitement and a sense of well-being sizzled along her nerves.
And the reaction was visible. Liz Bellamy dropped into a chair, her expression reflected awe. "God, you're beautiful."
"Thank you, Liz."
"Those bubs-those legs. Jeez! I'd give all the rest of my life for one weekend with your chassis and a hot man. The way they must go for you!"
Any instinct in Glory to be embarrassed was washed away by the thought that this was Liz Bellamy, famous for the direct approach. This was her stock in trade. She'd been known to walk up to a strange gigolo, inspect him frankly, and state, "What a sweet hunk of flesh!"
That was Liz, and to have her as a champion was heady wine indeed.
"What did happen, baby?"
"We had a fight."
"I know that. Give me the hot poop. We pulled in an hour ago, and all I heard was that little Italian bitch had crawled into Ralph Ackley's pants and pushed you out."
"It's already gotten around, then?"
"Gotten around? Everybody was talking about it. And then, whammy! She came slamming out of this room as though she'd just been raped by an elephant. This will be the sensation of the season, baby!"
Glory had an uneasy moment. In a world where everything had to be carefully evaluated, she wondered how this would affect her fortunes. A scandal, after all, was a scandal. But in a world where the only important thing was whether or not they spell your name right, some evaluations were difficult to make.
But with Liz Bellamy as a sponsor-"What happened, baby?"
"I came in and found Gia had taken over without even letting me know."
"The little bitch!"
"I would have considered it the fortunes of war if she'd been decent about it. But she got nasty. I saw no reason for that, so I lost my temper."
"You must have really gone off your rocker," Liz said with admiration. "To strip her right down to her hair-"
"That was an accident. The dress was all she had on."
"Natch," Liz said, hauling out a cigarette. "She never put her pants back on after the first time. She's afraid she might meet a man in a hurry sometime."
Glory didn't know why Liz hated Gia Martinini as she did. No doubt, the girl once had gotten between Liz and something she wanted. But other than observing that such a blunder automatically made Gia stupid, Glory had no mental comment. She didn't care.
"The way she looked," Liz said gloatingly, "you must have had her on the floor a few times."
Obviously Liz wanted a description of the fight. Glory didn't feel like going into that. She tried to veer away from details by saying, "As a matter-of-fact, she won most of it. I was lucky."
Liz shrugged. "It doesn't matter if you lose all the battles. The important thing is, you won the war."
She was right. The important thing was to win. That was the creed, the code, the law of life. Take care of yourself!
Win.
Dressed now, Glory pulled a comb through her hair and drew another compliment. "God, you look gorgeous. Come on, let's get out of here."
Glory's promenade from the Ackley suite, along the swimming pool and to Liz Bellamy's end of the hotel was as close to a triumphal march as any she would ever achieve. Word of the battle had gotten around, and the variety of rumors that were circulating bordered on the phenomenal.
One story had it that Gia had forced lesbian attentions on Glory, and been repulsed with violence. This was but one of several variations on the same theme. Another rumor had the attack and the attackee reversed. A third version said a bellboy had been there to help Gia, and Glory had clobbered him too. Someone who heard that one embroidered it before passing it on, to the effect that Gia in search of a-
He laughed. A big, bluff, handsome man only slightly gone to paunch, his ten-day weekends were famous over three continents.
"You've got to plant a little seed to reap a harvest, Liz." He turned brilliant blue eyes on Glory, then swung them back to Liz Bellamy. "I hear you're a new sex thrill-had been helping the bellboy rape Glory, but the bellboy became suddenly partial to Gia; her precipitous exit followed when Glory and the bellboy joined forces to introduce her to a new sex variation.
Another rumor put Ackley into the role of referee in a knock-down-drag-out fight between the two girls for the favors of his bed. This in airy disregard for the fact that Ackley had been in plain sight beside the pool during the whole time.
But regardless, everyone was waiting for the entrance of the new champion. All eyes followed her, she would always be able to say that for a brief time the great Liz Bellamy walked in her reflected light.
Later, at a table on the cocktail patio, the parade of well-wishers started. Leon Fromm, famous as a free-wheeling financier, dropped into a chair at the table of his old friend Liz Bellamy and said, "Where the hell have you been keeping yourself, Liz? I looked for you all over Europe last month."
"I haven't been in Europe since Christmas. I hear you've been losing a bundle all over France and West Germany." fight manager now."
Liz grinned. "Do you want to take on my champion?" .
Fromm lifted an arm in mock defense. "Me? I'm just an old codger who buys ringside seats." He smiled at Glory in a polished manner that told her not to be insulted; they weren't talking as though she were a piece of property. that they were including her.
"By the way, Liz, I'm going to have a few days to myself up at my place in Vermont next week. Wondered what you were doing?"
"Can't make it, darling. Unless you promise to go to bed with me."
"You'd tear me to pieces. Can't risk it."
Liz Bellamy emptied her scotch glass and grinned, showing teeth capped so long ago they were again dingy.
"The sad truth is, I'm going to be tied up in Mew York for a solid week starting Tuesday. The auditors come in to count the money once a year and I have to be there to shoo off thieves."
"Too bad." Smoothly he veered his attention to Glory. "I suppose you'll be tied up too." He made it sound like a tribute.
Liz raised her hand for another scotch. "I may be wrong but I think it's the best offer Glory's had today. And let's not kid among old friends-she's the one you came after."
An odd train of thought drifted through Glory's mind. They aren't really like this, she told herself. Underneath they're hard, practical people. And that's the difference between us. To us hangers-on, this is a way of life. With people like Liz and Leon Fronim, it's nothing but a break in the routine. They can afford it, and they can turn away from it to go back to work. With us, there is no work. This is it, this is our life.
And it's tragic.
Where on earth had she gotten such an idea? Here; when she was supposed to be enjoying the greatest triumph of her career, she was getting sick thoughts like that. It was ridiculous. Who could tell but that Leon Fromm, a widower, might ask her to marry him? Or maybe some other millionaire at his weekend, or some other, might decide she would make a good wife.
It had happened before.
So she wasn't a bum, she wasn't a tramp. She was intelligently trying to better herself-the only way a girl in her station in life could reach the top.
She smiled and said, "As a matter-of-fact, I promised to stop off in Porto Rico on the way back to the states. But-"
"Then that's settled," Fromm said easily. "Why don't you meet me for cocktails-both of you-at 21 around six next Tuesday?"
"I'll make it if I can," Liz said. She twisted her mouth in disgust. "Have you noticed how bad the scotch is getting lately? I've got a special bottle in my room."
Thus Liz told Fromm that Glory was his, got up and pushed her ugly old legs toward the hotel.
He ordered two more drinks and said, "They tell me Ralph Ackley is wallowing in frustration."
Glory had seen neither Ackley nor Gia since the battle. She almost said, I'm glad. He's got it coming. But instead she smiled and replied. "Ralph is a dear boy. I'm sorry he's upset over a trifling argument between two friends."
Leon Fromm laughed much louder than the reply justified. "You're wonderful, he said affectionately. "How about a swim...."
They went into the pool, and Glory felt the warm satisfaction that comes from being noticed. Aware that all eyes were on her, and the whispering was about her, she reacted to the excitement and felt alive, vital, and wonderfully happy.
So she'd had a low spot. But this wasn't one of them, so why not enjoy it?
Follow her fortunes, do what came naturally.
* * *
What came naturally ended in Leon Fromm's suite at one the next morning. They danced until midnight, then took a walk under the tropic moon.
"It's lovely," lie enthused. "That silver path over the water."
"It is lovely."
"It's been inspiring sweethearts since sweethearts were invented."
He put his arm around her, bent down and kissed her tenderly.
Glory's heart lifted.
Was this it?
They moved back toward the hotel and Leon veered in toward the door to his suite.
"How about a nightcap, baby?"
Inside, they drank while looking out over the shimmering pool to the sea beyond. Then, setting down his glass, Leon turned suddenly and took Glory fiercely into his arms.
His mouth came hard upon hers, she felt his body shaking with eagerness.
Her heart lifted. This was Leon Fromm, the sophisticated man of the world. He'd known many women, but she could tell that she genuinely stirred him.
She returned his kiss with fervor. And when he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, she clung to him like a trusting child.
He laid her on the bed. Her fingers interlaced behind his neck, she murmured, "Glory, Glory Hart, what's happened to you?"
His mouth again came down hard on hers, and she kissed him fiercely.
"Darling," he whispered huskily.
Her eyes were closed. "What are you doing to me-I don't know myself anymore."
His hands were on her feverishly, under her skirt, seeking with a shamelessness born of ravenous need.
"Baby, baby, please-"
The great Leon Fromm, begging like a callow high school boy.
Glory's world was a mixture of passion and rose-colored happiness as she whispered back, "Yes, yes, darling. But hurry, hurry-!"
There was no smooth finesse, no careful lifting to the high crest of passion. The passion already was boiling. His breath coming raggedly, Fromm stripped Glory naked. Obediently, holding her mouth hard on his, she lifted her hips to allow him to finish the denuding. He flung her panties away with quick violence.
Still impeded, he ripped her garters away by sheer force, tearing her stockings, pulled her garter belt up until it was above her navel.
His weight came down on her with a thud, knocking the breath from her lungs. She was caught unprepared; she pulled one straightened leg away, but it was not fast enough for him, he pushed it savagely out of his way.
There was something terrible in his set face as he took her. Even as she lunged up to meet him thrust for thrust, straining so that he mounted higher and ever higher, her heart keened like a tight violin string.
He wants me. He needs me. He has found what he wants in a woman, and he'll never let me go.
As they approached the crest of passion her mouth searched blindly, found his open mouth with the breath coming out of it like a bellows. His breath poured and blasted into her mouth, into her throat. When she cried out, it was like crying into a high wind. The cry was lost in the wind, and then there was that sweet after-moment when satisfaction and weariness and a sense of contented futility blended into the answer of life.
But the moment always faded, the answer crossing over into terms the human mind could encompass.
She fondled his head and pressed it against her bosom. "My darling, oh, my darling-"
Her heart was saying: We found each other. At last we found each other....
He rolled over beside her, lay exhausted. And she did something she had never before done for a man. She went to the bathroom, returned while he lay exhausted. And when she was through he was as he'd been before, his clothing in order, his loins and body in no need of after-attention. She lay braced on one elbow and smoothed his hair back.
He opened his eyes and smiled. "Glory, Glory Hart. You're magnificent."
She kissed him. "I can't find the right word, kind sir," she smiled, "or I'd return the compliment. When I find the word for you that means everything, I'll answer you."
They slept a while. Then they awoke and Leon Fromm took her back to her room. She sat there for a long time, looking out of the window.
She felt alive, vibrant. The idea of a dizzy spell was ridiculous.
She could not really believe that she'd ever had one....
CHAPTER FIVE
Leon Fromm's place in Vermont was a masterpiece of sheer luxury, planned and executed by the best luxury salesmen in the business. Set in Vermont's beautiful green forests, the road to it was guarded by uniformed private policemen, and the chances of a wanderer straying onto the five hundred acres of virgin beauty were nil, due to high fences and alert protection.
The party consisted of eleven, and Glory noted that of all the girls she knew on the jet circuit, only two had made it: Moira Shane and Joy Valle.
Moira was her usual sparkling, desirable self, but Glory thought that Joy looked a little seedy. Joy hadn't been having much luck. She'd missed connections at Jim Guyon's Fort Lauderdale weekend and hitchhiked back to Manhattan with an airline pilot she knew, who had a way of smuggling her in on a commercial plane.
Glory wondered how she'd managed to jump from the inactive list back up as high as the Leon Fromm party.
But more important to Glory was her own changed attitude. She no longer thought of herself in the same terms as Joy, Moira and Candy. She'd gotten the big break.
Leon Fromm was in love with her.
He had not, of course, stated this in formal terms-not outside the arena of their lovemaking. But a girl could tell; a girl with Glory's experience with men could tell the difference between casual sex and the true passion of a man in love.
She no longer saw herself as one of the outsiders, and it was a delicious feeling. Instinctively it welled up into a warm gush of gratitude, a regard for Leon Fromm that was as close to love as she'd ever felt for any man. She wanted to please him, she wanted him to find her in all ways entirely to his liking.
Happy, her beauty glowed. There was no doubt about that, nor any doubt that Leon Fromm was her man.
And his attraction to her was clearly apparent. His bands were on her body at every opportunity, his foot touched hers under the table, his thigh was always against her when the opportunity afforded.
When they walked, it was hand in hand. On the second day of the weekend Leon took Glory down a rustic, winding path through a modern, steel gate and into a dreamy paradise where nature held sway.
But this paradise was not without discipline. An objective observer would have discovered the careful planning immediately, would have known that a great deal of money had gone into the effort of pointing nature in the right direction.
Glory, not being an objective observer, saw only the soft beauty of the place. She was enchanted by the feathery waterfall that spilled down over high rocks into the rustic pool. The startled fawn that raised its head from drinking and broke back into the underbrush in search of its mother was a thing of special significance to her.
"Oh, how utterly beautiful, Leon!"
He spoke deprecatingly. "I like it. It's my sanctuary. When I found it, I told myself that this would be mine. I've never allowed it to become overrun with people, guests or not. But I wanted you to see it."
"It's lovely!"
"And private. There is a guard at that gate back there. You didn't see him, but he's there. So we're completely alone."
He drew her to him and kissed her. She responded with all the fervor generated by her new trust and happiness. His kiss turned from light and gay to passionate. He drew her around facing him, took her into his arms, and she pressed her body hard against his.
"Glory! Glory!" He whispered. "You're wonderful."
His mouth opened and she boldly gave of herself and her skill in kissing for pure thrill. Her tongue entered and searched. She found his tongue and teased it as warm laughter bubbled in her throat. Her fingers dug into his back.
"Darling," she murmured. "Hold me, never let me go."
"Baby, baby-"
He pressed against her thighs and abdomen as his desire and passion mounted. And she knew, as a woman, the eagerness of man for woman made physically real.
In a gesture of inarticulate need, he released her mouth and pressed downward until she was on her knees, clinging to his thighs. He braced himself, held her head hard against his body.
His head was thrown slightly back, his neck muscles taut from the intimate contact. Then quite suddenly, he lifted her and looked longingly into her eyes.
"Baby, we're alone. Please, please-"
He was like a child trustfully asking a favor, a gift, with child-like trust.
"We are all alone," Glory said as though for delicious reassurance.
"Undress, darling," he said, his voice choked with urgency. "Please undress!"
His need thrilled her. This was how it would always be, she told herself. This need, this mutual hunger, this want for each other.
Because that was how real love was, a quick spark. It needed no long, slow introductions, no testing, no wondering if it were the real thing.
When it was real, you knew!
"You undress me, darling," Glory whispered.
As though handling a sacred thing, Leon took the lower edge of her sweater in his fingers and lifted it. Obediently she lifted her arms. It was a tight-fitting turtle-neck. He drew it up over her head and it formed a trap for her arms, a hood over her head, leaving her relatively helpless.
She was wearing no bra, so the lifting exposed her beautiful breasts. Through the tightly-knit cloth of her sweater she heard his passionate gasp of admiration.
Then she felt his hands on her, caressing her breasts, fondling the nipples. She felt his open-mouthed, devouring kiss. His teeth closed down and there was pain, but the pain was sweet and her body trembled.
A soft breeze touched the moisture on her erect nipple and she shivered as the nipple throbbed.
"Please, darling, please-"
Again he was begging-inarticulately-for something he wanted but could not put into words. And it was strange that she understood, inarticulately also, but she understood-through love, of course, how else?-that some need of her overpowered him, something he needed to do.
And trustingly, with an excitement-rising in her blood, she said, "Of course, my darling, of course-" She said this not knowing what he wanted, but ready to give because that was what love was: giving blindly with trust.
His reply was the sound of desire choking itself, screaming soundlessly for release.
His hands found the zipper of her slacks and pulled them down. He lowered her into the grass and pulled them off. Her panties followed. Then he lifted her and set her on her feet, and she was naked from her neck down, her head and face and arms trapped in the sweater.
Evidently he was bending or kneeling now, because she felt his two palms on the insides of her ankles. The hands moved upward, pressed out and out, and she could only respond. Up over her knees and higher, against the high, intimate surfaces of her thighs.
Until she stood with her feet wide apart in order to maintain balance. But this was not what he wanted, it was not part of his plan-only a preliminary in the doing. Because then he pressed her forward, holding her in the same spread-eagled position, until she was on her knees.
He eased her roughly forward still farther, until only her elbows, swathed in the sweater, kept her from resting on her face and widely-spread knees.
A grotesque, obscene position, the thought flashed through Glory's mind. But it was blurred and sponged away by a stronger thought.
He is my love. This is my love wanting and needing me. Therefore, nothing is obscene, nothing wrong with what happens between us here in our private paradise.
The rest was a very strange mixture of pain and delight, of fierce hurt and an acceptance of the pain because it was a product of his overpowering need of her.
The entrapment of the sweater was vaguely logical in her mind. Although she did not fully understand it, her instincts whispered to her of the elemental depths of men. Love, in Leon Fromm, reflected the primitive need to dominate his loved one, to rape the resisting female prize and carry her off to his cave.
But there was much she did not understand. Gritting her teeth and whimpering softly when the pain was at its worst, she could not rationalize the other. Not the whole of it. Symbolism left much wanting as Leon fulfilled his need....
In the end, Glory understood the need of the sweater trap. Without it she would have fought, she would have had to fight in spite of herself.
She was fiercely glad he had trapped her. It had been a means of allowing her to show her love for him.
Yet deep down in her mind, as it was going on, there flashed a wispy protest: This is mad, this is crazy.
But she brushed the thought aside, whimperingly bore the pain until it was over. Until he turned her on her back, pulled the sweater off and cradled her in his arms.
"Darling, you're crying!"
"I'm sorry, I-"
The tag-ends of spent passion still corroding his breath, its memory still bright in his eyes, he began kissing her tears away.
"Baby, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Glory smiled. "It was just that-that you surprised me."
"I'm a beast."
"No, no you're not."
His eyes darkened as he held her, a kind of sullen, little-boy anger dawned in his face. "Damn, why couldn't it have been different? Why couldn't we have-"
"-met sooner?" Glory suggested. "That would have been wonderful, darling. But that's in the past, we have the future ahead of us."
His eves cleared in what might have been an expression of resignation. This was a little confusing to Glory, but she interpreted it as annoyance for lost time.
"Darling," she said, "I'd better get dressed. We wouldn't want to scandalize that little fawn if it came back."
He laughed at that. "You're right. Get up and dress. Let me watch you."
She got up from the grass and dressed slowly under his eyes, happy and thrilled at the admiration that showed in his face as he watched.
Dressed, she made a little mock curtsy and spoke with coy demureness. "Did I please you, sir?"
He got to his feet and kissed her once, roughly. Then he said, "Let's get back...."
Glory was resting in her room around mid-afternoon when Joy Valle tapped on the door and came in.
She was low and dispirited; when she took a cigarette from Glory's pack and lit it, her hand shook slightly.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded Glory. "You look as though a rich uncle left you a million."
Glory laughed. She felt a little sorry for Joy. The fragile blonde's hair was not at its best. She was a little too thin-she had lost four or five pounds, Glory estimated-and obviously was filled with tension.
"Not quite that," Glory smiled. "But there are some things more important than money."
Joy glanced up. "What's more important than loot?" she asked. The question was completely sincere.
"Joy, you need a rest," Glory said. She laid a quick, friendly hand on the blonde's arm. "You've been going too hard, too fast."
"Too hard," Joy retorted. "You said it, honey. Just plain too damned hard, for too long."
Glory sensed a double meaning in Joy's reply, verified when the blonde ground out her cigarette savagely.
"I drew that Frisco degenerate Willis Ames, and Jeez ... Did you ever get him, Glory?"
"No. But I've heard-"
"What you've heard isn't the half of it. That guy's a sex maniac. Endurance? I've never seen anything like it! One after another, all night long with half-hour breaks. But they aren't even rest breaks, because while he's resting he experiments yet!"
Joy grimaced, and Glory visualized the poor girl in bed with the lean, ravenous wolf from San Francisco. She'd heard many whispers about his amorous capacities.
"You lie there, exhausted," Joy went on, "and this creep reaches over. You yelp and go straight up in the air, and when you come down he grins and says, 'I learned that one in Viet Nam, from a black-haired little heathen. Exciting, huh?' Exciting? Teez! So you smile pretty and say it was wonderful and roll over on your belly for protection."
Glory had once heard Willis Ames described as a devotee of sex who specialized in "instant orgasms" whatever they were. She decided that Joy evidently had found out...." So you roll over on your belly for protection," Joy said "and wham! You let out a squall and almost go through the headboard. Another little cutie he learned from a one-legged chippie in London."
"Poor baby," Glory soothed.
Joy's shoulders sagged. "And then before you recover from that one he's back in business again, and you just hang on and ride with the storm."
"But Ames never leaves a girl-"
"Oh, sure. He calls a hundred-dollar-bill a small tip. But you earn every cent." Sullenly, Joy took another cigarette. "If I didn't need the money-"
Then, quite suddenly, she brightened. Glory had noted this characteristic in many of the girls she'd met who rode the gold-plated merry-go-round: the tendency to complain bitterly about the bad breaks, hut also to surge back quickly and face the future with hope.
"I've heard some hot poop," Joy said. "There's going to be a big announcement."
"What kind of an announcement?"
"A wedding-marriage. Leon Fromm's going to get hitched."
Glory could hardly restrain herself. She wanted so much to expand the rumor for Joy, to tell her the wonderful truth. But she restrained herself.
"I wonder who the lucky girl is?"
"Not me," Joy said ruefully. "Can you imagine a break like that? Hooking up to ten million dollars."
"There's more to marriage than that."
"What else?"
"A little thing called love."
Joy was amazed. "Have you gone off your rocker? Who ever talks about love in this racket? Love is for the peasants. Love for the stupid broad who falls for the local plumber's son, starves to death and raises his brats."
"Maybe that's what she wants."
"You are going soft, Glory." Joy shrugged. "Oh, well, everybody to her own poison."
"Where are you going from here?"
Joy shrugged. "I don't know. Not to Ames' Canadian lodge, that's for sure. He's hinted that he'd like to continue his experiments up there. But honey, after this weekend I'm going somewhere for a rest."
"I don't blame you."
Joy got up and jabbed at her hair in front of Glory's mirror. "You take the love," she said, "I'll take the money. We'll see who's the last rat in the race when it finishes."
Love, Glory thought. It was wonderful. But love and money. How could one girl be so lucky?
An hour later Leon Fromm tapped on her door and brought in two martinis. Glory had just gotten out of the shower. She was wearing a terry cloth towel robe and was radiant.
"God, you're beautiful," Leon marveled. "Thank you, darling."
He set the martinis down, grasped the lapels of the robe and drew them back. Glory lowered her arms and the robe fell to the floor.
"So lovely," he said almost reverently as his eyes traveled down her body.
So much in love, it was wonderful. Her eyes were like stars, Glory said, "It's all for you, darling. From now on."
She got the feeling that his expression clouded. He went to his knees, put his arms around her thighs and pressed his face against her body, breathing deeply. She felt his breath against her skin, tingled as she ran her hands gently through his hair.
"I love you," she said.
A quick kiss, then he got to his feet and tilted her chin up. "I've got to make a quick trip to New York, honey. One of those things."
Her look of concern was quick. "How long will you be gone?"
"I'm not quite sure, but it won't be too long. And-" he kissed the tip of her nose, "I'll be thinking of you."
"I'll be miserable until you get back."
He appeared to have more to say. But he measured the words, and either could not find them or decided that they should go unspoken.
"I have to run," he said. Then he kissed Glory quickly, turned and left the room.
It was the last time she ever saw him....
But at that moment there was only heaven to contemplate through her loneliness. Even the loneliness was sweet because there was the time of their next meeting to look forward to.
She finished the drink in such high spirits that the gin was like so much water, it could not reach her. She laughed, dressed carefully, went downstairs and joined a cocktail group in the library.
Willis Ames looked her over and she could read his eyes. He was thinking about the possibilities of his unique sexual knowledge applied to her body.
Joy Valle sat on the arm of his chair, and for all the physical punishment she'd taken there was hostility as she noted the direction of his interest.
Moira Shane, seated on the piano stool close to Vic Healey-a rather mysterious playboy with enough money to buy anything he wanted-noted the direction of the male interest. She said, "Vic, honey, there's something I want to show you out in the garden. Come on, baby, I promise you a thrill."
Vic Healey got up and they left together. And though Glory of course didn't know it, the first thing Healey said as they crossed the patio was, "Lord! Who's that gorgeous blonde?"
Moira changed the subject quickly.
The day and the evening passed quickly. Glory played bridge with Gaylord Trent, a sour, elderly financier who hated women. He was frankly there for the country air and an escape from tension. He and Glory won twenty-five dollars from Moira and Vic Healey. Healey, who wasn't playing very well, suggested that they change partners in order to "change the luck."
Gaylord Trent growled menacingly.
Glory laughed and refused.
Moira didn't enjoy herself very much.
Then the music on the radio stopped and a pleasant voice announced: "The eleven o'clock news...."
There was a break for a commercial, then:
"Society circles were surprised tonight when Leon Fromm, prominent Wall Street financier announced, from his suite at the Waldorf Hotel that he would marry Miss Grace Anderson of Boston.
"Miss Anderson, heir to the fortune of Horace Anderson, the restaurant magnate, confirmed the announcement from her own suite a few moments later. The marriage will combine two of the largest fortunes in America ... "
Glory Hart stood beside the moon-dappled pool in Leon Fromm's "sanctuary". The water that came light and feathery down the rocks above sent a gentle spray over her face and shoulders.
She felt dizzy and she swayed for a few moments, but the dizziness passed back into the stunned agony that had been a part of her since she'd left the library.
She wasn't quite sure how she'd managed the trip to the hidden pool. She did not remember making it. She recalled only the dull thud of the radio newscaster's words as, one by one, they pierced her consciousness and her mind. She recalled the feeling of unbelief, the sudden, sick panic that sent a trickle of sweat down between her breasts and into her navel.
Leon Fromm ... I loved him. And he did this to me ... why did he do it? ... Why? ... Why...?
Deep in her mind, at the level that never deserts realism, the answer was plain. One more sex binge, one more uninhibited session with a beautiful woman before he took a bride and turned from loose women forever.
Glory laughed with a touch of hysteria.
Loose women. Sleek harlots who follow the gold: plated jet circuit to sleep with the men for money and thrills and a sense of belonging. Sad, stupid, beautiful chippies who open themselves to men so that a glittering world will in turn open to them.
Stupid-stupid-stupid.
Oh, mi; God-
The dizziness hit again and Glory sank to her knees. The world reeled and turned. She wanted to cry. but tears refused to come.
Time passed. How much time, she did not know. But after a while she got to her feet, turned and moved away from the pool, out of the sanctuary. Why? Why?
When your heart refuses to accept the answer of your intellect, what do you do? You die.
No, you don't die. You live in a dead world for a while because this business about the heart and loving is stupid. The heart is a muscle, nothing more. It keeps you living when you want to die. The heart is a realist. It keeps you living....
"Glory, you roamer! I've been looking for you."
Vic Healey. He'd ducked Moira and came hunting for more interesting female flesh. Glory said nothing.
Healey fell in beside her and took her arm. "I wanted to talk to you about a South American jaunt I'm planning-"
"Take your hands off me."
Startled, he dropped his hand and stood looking at her.
He was partially blocking her way. "Glory! For heaven's-"
"Get away from me, you SOB, or I'll kill you!"' He stepped aside. Glory walked on....
CHAPTER SIX
In Paris, they asked:
"Darling, what ever became of Glory Hart? She seems to have vanished!"
"No one appears to know, sweetie. But I heard-mind you, I just heard it-that she entered into a positively disgusting relationship with a Vietnamese gambler."
"No!"
"Yes! I was in Buenos Aires with the Phil Kagen party-Phil just insisted that I go. We were in a delightful little club-very exclusive-and Betty Zeller came in-drunk as a louse, my dear. And she said...."
In Porto Rico, they asked:
"By the way, has anyone seen Glory Hart lately? I was in Manhattan last week and-"
"Oh, my dear, didn't you get the word? Glory had that perfectly delicious fight with Gia Martinini down In the Antilles. Well, you know Gia's nationality. And you've heard of the Mafia, I'm sure. Well, the word is that Glory was in Marseilles-a dreadful city, you know-and she walked up the wrong street one night-"
"No!"
"Yes. You know, there are many places where a girl can disappear forever. Some of those dirty South American and near-east cities. Well. I was in Stockholm with the Virgil Wayne company-they were doing exteriors for the new Gladstone Productions picture-and Virgil said-and these are his exact words, darling: 'In some of those places, they bring girls in like breakfast food and chew them up every morning after they're through with them.' That's exactly what Virgil said, and-"
"Good heavens, do you mean Glory Hart went into one of those bestial establishments where men go to-"
"Where there are absolutely no rules or laws, sweetie. Of course, Glory was no raving beauty. She was a dear friend of mine, and I'm being completely objective. But you'll have to admit she was-well, a little common!"
"Perhaps they didn't have to teach her many new tricks."
"I wouldn't have mentioned it. of course, but I always thought Glory cheated. If you know what I mean."
"I know exactly what you mean. After all, any woman can hold a man-for a while, that is-if she's willing to-descend to any level demanded of her. Not that Glory wasn't my very dear friend too. I'm really broken hearted that she had such bad luck, but-"
"Of course, my dear. We both understand." ... In Rome, they asked:
"Where on earth did Glory Hart disappear to?"
"The last I heard, she positively insulted poor Vic Healey at Leon Fromm's place in Vermont."
"Why, how terrible. Vic is such a dear!"
"I actually don't know a nicer person than Vie-really. But anyhow, Vic saw her leave the house after a bridge game-I think that was how it was-and she seemed ill. Entirely out of the goodness of his heart, he followed her to ask her if she was all right. And, my dear, she turned in her tracks and cursed him-actually cursed him!"
"Cursed Vic Healey? Why, she must have gone out of her mind!"
"That was what I heard last week in London. I was there with Clifford Hanes, helping him get some of the bugs out of his new book, the objective viewpoint, you know. Cliff always comes running to me when he finishes a new-"
"Yes, of course, sweetie. But this bit about Glory positively floors me. Vic is such a sweet person. When I was on the coast last week, he called me up-got me out of bed at three in the morning-just to ask me if I'd go to Alaska with his party. He said he would be desolated if I couldn't make it, and I just couldn't, because...." In Madrid, they asked:
"Where did Glory Hart disappear to? I haven't seen her-"
"Darling, didn't you hear?"
"Hear what, sweetie?"
"The Martinini affair."
"Oh, I heard about that. Who hasn't? But-"
"I doubt if you heard the end of it. It's all very confidential. I was in that delightful little fishing village in Norway with the Conovers-you've heard of them of course-"
"Darling, I know Cynthia Conover very well."
"I'm sure you do. But anyhow, the end of the Gia Martinini-Glory Hart story was so terrible that it's only being whispered to people who are very close. It seems that Gia had to have revenge. And a little while after the Belmore incident Glory was in North Africa with some party or other-one of those picturesque little towns. It seems that Gia's arm is very long. She had friends there-or at least her friends had friends there. And-"
"Darling, what happened?"
"I'm telling you, sweetie. The party left, but Glory stayed over to wait for-well, someone, a connection, you know. And-"
"Will you tell me, darling."
"I am telling you, angel. Glory was just picked off the street that night. She was taken somewhere out in that awful desert by three men and she was-well, raped and raped and raped!"
"Oh, my God!"
"With Gia Hatching, darling, gloating over it!"
"But wait a minute, darling. Gia has been in Hollywood since-"
"Oh, all right! Maybe Gia wasn't there. Stories can get mixed up a little. But the whole thing is absolutely true. They say that Glory, after three or four hours of it, was staggering around like a drunken woman. They say those men were positive wolves, my dear. And full of ideas-you know what I mean."
"My God. how awful!"
"They say Glory was screaming half the time. After all, my dear, when two men at a time-"
"Two men at a-My God, the poor girl!"
"They even say there was a-well, I just can't say it."
"Not human?"
"Not human, not a man. They say-"
"Oh, I'm sorry, darling. There's Frank Spade over by the roulette table. He called me twice yesterday! and I was just too busy to give him a moment. I'll see you later...."
That was what they asked and that was what they told each other on the gold plated jet circuit where each story, to he listened to, must be a little more sensational than the one before. Where sensation is food and drink, and the most skillful dealers in sensationalism capture the most avid audiences.
But what did happen to Glory Hart?
Glory got drunk.
On the afternoon that the lurid North African desert rumor-an embroidered variation of the slightly less lurid Marseilles dark-street rumor-was passing from one nameless rumor-monger to another by the pool at Rica's Cabanas in Jamaica, Glory Mart was drunk in her apartment on East 76th Street in Manhattan. She had gone straight to her apartment from Vermont-gone there pathetically, like a wounded animal limping back to its den-and more or less remained there.
East 76th Street is a desirable address. In the heart of the plush upper east side, it gives prestige and satisfaction to those who can afford it.
But the street is not all luxury. Most of the brown-stones have been redone to command high rentals, along with the new, plush luxury suites with their polite doormen and sleek modernistic facades.
At intervals, however, some of the brownstones have escaped the remodeling. they stand as they have stood for years with ancient, run-down facilities-leaky faucets, brown-stained sinks and bathtubs, sputtering radiators.
And it is places such as these that are sought after by the less financially fortunate girls-and men-who follow the gold-plated jet circuit. The address is all-important:
... "I have a small place on East 76th Street. It's terribly expensive, darling, but there just isn't any place else in New York City where one can live these days. Then of course, I'm not at home much. I have three rooms. Jacques Cabell decorated it and selected the furniture for me. You've never heard of Jacques? Oh, my dear, but he doesn't advertise. And so very tempermental. I have only three rooms of course-too small to do any entertaining. But as I said, it's just a small hideaway where I can be alone...."
Glory Hart was alone. She had a single room with a tiny curtained alcove of a kitchen, and a bathroom not big enough for a tub-it accommodated only a stall shower.
It was highly undesirable, and it cost only $71 a month.
It was to this "home" that Glory fled after Vermont. It was here that her telephone-a private number-rang and rang and went unanswered. It was here that her landlady, Greta Nelson, worried about her.
Greta Nelson was the exact opposite of the popularly-assumed callous, slovenly landlady-the kind who runs cheap establishments in TV thrillers.
Greta was middle aged and neat and pleasant, and she did her best to keep the decaying premises up with what little money ceiling rents afforded. She had been offered a fine price for her property and some day she would sell out, give up the struggle. But she was not yet ready to desert the home she'd known since childhood, nor the gentle ways she had learned as a child.
So she worried about Glory Hart.
"Glory was such a beautiful girl, so alive, so spirited. And to have her come home this way, just hide in there and do nothing-"
Mrs. Peck, owner of a similar place next door and Greta's afternoon-coffee companion, was less soft than Greta and far more cynical.
"So she went on a big bender. Some of those chicks can really tear one off when they get in the mood."
"Glory isn't that kind," Greta said firmly.
Mrs. Peck snorted. The snort served two purposes. It cooled her coffee and it expressed doubt.
"How do you know what kind she was? Never around, always off galavanting."
"That's another thing. I'm sure she's lost her job."
"What job?"
"She had a marvelous job as confidential secretary. Her employer traveled all over the world and she went with him. That was why she was never home much."
"How do you know she had that kind of a job?"
"Why, she told me!"
"A body can tell a body anything. She could have been a call girl, for all you know."
"Martha! That's a terrible thing to say."
"I'm just saying that you don't know. You're such an all-fired softy, Greta, it's a wonder somebody hasn't robbed you of your teeth!"
"I think most people are honest," Greta Nelson said firmly.
Mrs. Peck snorted again. "Greta Nelson, you're just not right for this world. I swear that-"
"The doorbell's ringing," Greta said.
"If it's somebody looking for a room, tell him to see me. You're full up, aren't you...?"
The young man did not want a room. He took his pipe out of his mouth and said, "I'm looking for Miss Hart. Is she home?"
Greta was favorably impressed. Mrs. Peck would have probably ticked the young man off as a call customer, but Greta knew this was not true. She thought he looked a great deal like George Raft; but when he turned his head so that she could see him better in the dim hallway, she realized this was only an illusion.
"Miss Glory Hart," he urged gently
"Yes-oh, yes. Miss Hart lives here."
"Is she in?"
"Yes, but-"
"I'm an old friend of hers," the young man said.
Greta took an uncertain step backward. "Miss Hart is in, but perhaps I'd better announce you."
"My name is Mason-Rex Mason."
"I'll see if Miss Hart is dressed."
Greta Nelson invited Rex Mason into the dingy hall. Then she turned and started up the stairs. Rex Mason followed. Greta wasn't sure that this was quite right. In fact she knew it wasn't. She should have turned and firmly told Mr. Mason to wait downstairs.
But there was something about him. Forceful. Quiet. Not belligerent or hostile, just forceful.
And so while they climbed the three long nights, she decided to be very firm if he tried to enter Glory's room.
She tapped on the door, and after the second series of taps Glory's voice came from beyond the panel. "I don't want any soup or tea or anything else, Mrs. Nelson. I just want to be left alone, please."
Greta turned to Rex Mason. "You heard her. I'm afraid she doesn't want to see anybody today. If you care to come back later-"
Rev Mason took his pine out of his mouth and regarded the door thoughtfully. "Has she been this way long?"
"Too long, really," Greta said. "I'm worried about her Mr-Mr.-"
"Mason," he reminded her.
"Mason. I certainly am. I think she lost her job, and well, she's been drinking a little."
"I'll have to have a talk with her."
"Oh, I wouldn't disturb her if I were you. She-"
His smile was brief, friendly, and authoritative. "It's quite all right. After a while I'll probably call down and you can bring a little of that soup."
He stepped to the door and put his hand on the knob. Greta Nelson took an automatic step backwards. She didn't like this, she didn't like it at all. But the young man was very nice, and certainly seemed to know what he was doing. Perhaps Glory would be glad to see him when she found out who it was. Greta could not imagine anyone not being glad to see a nice quiet young man like Mr. Mason. So she smiled and moved toward the stairs.
"All right, Mr. Mason. And do please see that she eats something, won't you?"
"I'll do my best."
He waited until her head disappeared below the level of the stairwell. Then he opened the door and went inside.
Glory Hart stirred. She'd been asleep when Greta knocked, and after ordering her away she went promptly back to sleep. She'd gotten restless around midnight the previous day, gone out for a walk. Her steps led her into a small neighborhood bar where she had a martini to quiet her and release her inner tension. She hadn't drunk much since she'd returned to Manhattan-the four she'd had in that bar were her longest binge. Actually she wasn't much of a drinker, and she was annoyed with herself when she staggered away from the bar just before closing time. Two different men tried to pick her up, but she found a cab and got home all right. Still, she hadn't been able to sleep.
Thus she was angry with Mrs. Nelson for waking her up.
But she slept again, immediately; now she was awake again, just above the level of unconsciousness, could not plunge again into the comfortable darkness of oblivion.
There was something wrong. A presence. Someone there.
She thought it over for a while, in the lazy lethargy of her dozing. If she kept her eves closed, maybe it-whatever it was-would go away.
But it didn't. She knew someone was in the room.
So she opened her eves.
"What are you doing here?"
"Waiting for you to wake tip."
"Who let you in?"
"Your landlady."
"Well, let yourself out again."
"Do you really want me to?"
"I said so, didn't I?" Glory passed a hand over her face. "What time is it?"
"A little past two in the afternoon."
Glory's drugged mind cleared a little. She looked down and saw the sheet laid squarely and neatly over her. She frowned at Rex Mason.
"I was naked when you came in."
"You're still naked."
"That's the way I sleep. Any objections?"
"None at all. You'd kicked the sheet onto the floor. I covered you up."
"Well; aren't you the gentleman!"
"I try to be."
"You know something? I couldn't care less."
"That I'm a gentleman?"
"That or anything else." She was wide awake now. "Tell me this, what the hell are you doing here? Tell me, then get the hell out."
"I've been looking for you."
"Why?"
"When you disappeared, I got worried."
"Why should you worry about me?" He put a liesurely fill of tobacco into his pipe, and lit it.
"Will you put that stinking thing out?"
He drew slowly and calmly until the bowl glowed. "It won't hurt you any. It's good tobacco, better than the booze you drank."
"You're insulting."
"I didn't mean to be. I was just stating a fact."
"Well keep your damned facts to yourself. And get out of here."
"Don't you want me to answer your question?"
"What question?"
"Why I worried about you."
"I know the answer. You're looking for a cheap lay, and gambled that maybe I'd be it."
"Are you a cheap lay?"
"God damn you, I've had enough of your insults!"
"You said it, I didn't. Besides, you ought to know why I'm here."
"So now I'm a mind reader!"
"When I met you in Florida, I told you I loved you. Isn't it natural for a man to keep track of the woman he loves?"
"Jeez, what crap! I thought I'd heard all the pitches, but-"
"The trouble is you don't know honesty when you see it, you've dealt with phoneys for so long."
"Stop insulting me!"
"I'm not insulting you, I'm insulting your friends. they were your friends, weren't they?"
Her frown deepened. "How did you find me?"
"It wasn't easy. It took a month."
Glory's reasoning mind went groggily to work. A month! Oh God, had it been that long? The money. the last of the Valenti money. It was almost cone.
"Will you quit answering my questions with other questions?"
"How did I find you? Well, after your Vermont crash-"
"Wait a minute! How did you know about Vermont?"
"When I want to find out things, I go to the right sources. I stayed on in Florida a little longer than I had expected. Liz Bellamy dropped in on Jim Guyon, and I heard her tell him that she'd seen you in the lobby of the Biltmore drunker than a louse."
That had been the other time she'd gotten plastered. But only on two. Her nerves. That was how it was sometimes, one or two can send you higher than a kite.
"I'd been expecting something like that", Bex Mason said. "I figured you were about ready to crack."-
""Well, of all the conceit! Who are you, figuring things about people, God or somebody?"
"No, but I thought it was pretty obvious down there in Florida. So when I heard that I came up here and checked things. I even went to Vermont."
"Nobody told you a damned thing in-Vermont. Nobody knew!"
"The staff," Rex Mason said, drawing quietly on his pipe. "I'm a chauffeur, remember? I've learned that when you want the real facts, talk to the staff."
"Very, clever. But why did you bother?"
"As I said, I've been expecting-"
"Expecting, expecting! Just who in the hell-"
"Shut up," he said calmly. "Those dizzy spells you had in Florida-they've been recurring?"
"That's none of your damned business!"
"they're strictly psychosomatic. You cracked up-at least partially-"
"I'll bet you're having a lot of fun, walking in here in all your smug holier-than-thou perfection and telling somebody else what's wrong with her."
"It isn't that way at all," he said in quiet, matter-of-fact tones. "I just don't believe in pampering a patient."
"I'm not a patient!"
Why do I put up with this? Glory asked herself. It blended in with her disgust, with the taste in her mouth, with the deep-blue color of the world, with herself.
And it was as though he'd read her mind. Because he got up from his chair, went to the kitchenette and returned with a glass of water.
"Here, drink this. Your mouth must taste like the bottom of a bird cage."
"Don't be so damned smart!"
But she was terribly thirsty, and she wanted the water. So she took it. Why not? "Don't gulp it," he said.
"God-damn you, quit treating me like a child!"
She finished the water and threw the glass at him, mainly because she wanted to see him cringe away. She wanted to see that quiet, smug control of his broken.
But it didn't break. He didn't move, and she missed him. The glass hit the wall and smashed.
He turned and looked. "Now that was silly. You'll just have to ask the landlady to give you another one."
"Damn you! Damn you! Get out of here!"
She was sitting upright. The sheet had fallen, forgotten, into her lap and she sat there outraged and beautiful. Except for messy hair and blotched makeup, her breakdown had not as yet reached her physically. Her lush breasts stood out proudly, matching the defiance in her eyes-angrily desirable, in keeping with the defiant twist of her mouth.
Rex Mason studied her thoughtfully. "You were well equipped for it," he said.
"Well equipped for what?"
"The kind of life you went in for. But you wasted your time, you were stupid."
"What are you talking about?"
His eves went down her breasts and stopped at her navel. He watched her belly pull in and out, her diaphram rise and fall with angry breathing.
"You weren't honest. You lied to yourself, consequently you came out on the short end. Why didn't you go into direct prostitution?"
"Now you're calling me a whore!" Glory raged.
"I'm saving an honest approach to things is best. If you'd gone into the call-girl game, you'd at least have something to show for your time. You'd have a bank account." He paused. "You are broke, aren't you?"
"That's none of your damned business!"
Why did she sit there and take it? Why did she take it? Noting her nakedness, she lifted the sheet to cover herself.
"You've got to live. So I guess I'll have to make it my business."
Her mouth twisted into a sneer of contempt. "And you call yourself a psychologist!"
"What's that got to do with it?"
"You talk like a brute, a boor and a sadist. You're gloating, that's what your doing. You-"
"That's nonsense, and you know it."
"A psychologist at least has some regard for a person's feelings. He doesn't-"
"You're referring to the men who take money from silly Park Avenue millionaire's wives for babying them. That's not exactly psychiatry, as I understand it." He was sneaking almost absently .as he regarded her. giving the impression he was saving one thing and pondering something quite different.
"What are your plans?" he asked.
"None of your business."
"Your hostility is childish. You realize that?"
"I don't care what it is. I want you to pet out of here and get out now!" Suddenly her eves narrowed. A faint, fixed smile touched her lips. "Either that or tell me what's really on your mind."
He waited, eyeing her clinically, quietly.
Maddeningly!
The fixed smile still on her face, she threw the sheet aside and lay back down on the bed. Staring at him with icy hostility behind the smile, she spread her legs obscenely.
"All right," she said, "shall we talk price?"
"If that's what you feel like doing."
"It's not what I feel like doing. You're the customer, and the customer is always right."
She ran her hands lightly over her breasts, down her belly. She raised herself slightly and drew her hands sensuously up the insides of her thighs and back to her belly.
"What would you say I'm worth?"
"Whatever price you put on yourself."
"Do you think I could be a hundred-dollar-call girl?"
He considered, took his pipe from his mouth, and answered as though she'd asked him his opinion on the price of a security she contemplated buying.
"I'm sure of it. Perhaps more. It would be a matter of the man involved-his desire, and his ability to pay."
They stared at each other for a few moments, the ice holding. Then Glory cracked. She snatched the sheet and jerked it over her body. The hostility that blazed out was not icy anymore, it was hot, almost hysterical.
"Get out of here, you SOB, or I'll scream. I swear I'll scream rape, and see you in jail."
He watched her quietly, not reacting in the least to her outburst. Then he moved slowly toward the door.
"Try and get some sleep. Would you like a sedative?"'
"Get out, you bastard!"
"Sleep if you can," he said. "I'll be back later."
"You stay out of here, or I'll kill you!"
He left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Downstairs, he met Mrs. Nelson. "You're very good to be so concerned about her," he said.
Greta Nelson clasped her hands. "She's such a nice girl, Mr. Mason. Always so sunny and pleasant. So now she's in some kind of trouble. A body doesn't just turn away."
Rex Mason's smile showed something rare, a quick expression of genuine warmth. "There should be more people like you, Mrs. Nelson." He took out his wallet. "Is her rent paid?"
"It-it was due the day before yesterday." She glanced at the wallet and drew back. "But she's a proud girl. I don't think-"
"And I don't think you should be without your money. How much is it?"
"The rent is seventy-one dollars a month. You see the house is under ceiling rents and-"
He extended the money. "Take this. If she pays it later, you can give it back to me. But don't worry about it."
"You're a good man, Mr. Mason. A very good man."
He touched her shoulder. "There should be more like both of us, eh, Mrs. Nelson?" His grin was warm and friendly, an expression few people ever saw on Rex Mason's face....
CHAPTER SEVEN
Glory lay back, exhausted. A strange kind of exhaustion; while it was physical, it seemed somehow to stem from her mind. Her mind seemed weary and her body exhibited the same symptoms, but in a kind of rapport with her consciousness.
There is nothing wrong with me physically, she told herself. But the thought came with weariness itself, while she lay in listless lethargy.
The dizzy spells? They came, but then they left again. And when they were gone, she felt all right.
Her condition was more a surrender than anything else. She recognized this vaguely, but could do nothing about it. Her mind lay negative, open, it seemed, to assault from any direction.
Her mental guards were down.
She lay there motionless and realized vaguely, that her hand lay listless on her groin. An image of Leon Fromm drifted across her mental vision. Her lips smiled a smile her consciousness was unaware of. His words, out of memory, urgent, choked, demanding:
Like this, baby. That's how I want it. Like this....
The muscles of her hips flexed automatically.
God! Like an animal! But any different than Count Valenti? Yes! Different. Animals didn't do the things Valenti-
Her hand was moving on her groin, moving searching, finding. Nerves quivered deep inside her.
Count Valenti. The leering Swiss. The delicate Norweigan. The Spaniard. The evil quartette.
Leon. Oh Leon, why did you leave that way?
You can take it, baby. That's my girl. Hold on tight. Grip your teeth, baby. Brace yourself. Take it!
Oh, you bastard! You damned Swiss bastard! I can't stand it....
Leon. Valenti. The others. All mixed up in her mind. Color: red, blue, violet. But red, mostly red.
Nerves twitching deep inside. Her mouth open, her tongue out in voluptuous memory.
You'll like it, baby, once you get used to it....
No! God, no! That damned cellar of Valenti's. The walls so hard, the floor so soft. Feet and ankles all around her-naked male legs like bars of a cell.
The meticulous Spaniard, softly, so very softly: "Spread her a little more, please."
The Swiss: "So-?"
The Spaniard: "Thank you. Now gentleman, observe ... "
A yelp there from the floor. Surprise, pleasure-pain.
The smiles, the damned pleased smiles.
The Spaniard, pleased as an artist is pleased: "You witnessed something quite rare, gentlemen. Note the continued automatic action of the muscles. The body functioning automatically, as a result of the unique stimulus."
Oh, you bastards, you vile bastards!
Count Valenti: "She is in pain, but she smiles."
The Spaniard: "Pleasure, pain, they are one and the same really. She rebels and surrenders at the same time. She fears it but wants it, she hates it but loves it."
The Swiss: "You are a master."
The Spaniard, stepping back. Two less naked legs: "She is ready now, gentlemen. This I guarantee...."
Count Valenti: "Will she know? Will she remember?"
The Spaniard: "She will know. She will remember...."
Lying there in her bed on 76th Street, Glory remembered. But the memory was vague and distorted. Her two hands were remembering. Her mouth remembered as it opened. Her tongue remembered as it moved out from between her lips. Her eyes remembered as they rolled upward in ecstasy.
"Oh, God! I need a man. I need a man...."
She gritted her teeth as memory brought her closer and closer to the nameless yearning, the vague voiceless demand of her body-vague indeed, but demanding against a mind filled with despair and unanswered questions.
"Oh, God!"
Back in memory: screaming in that basement on the soft floor. Oh, give it to me! Give it to me....
Her body arched up in a frenzy, her teeth closed on her lower lip. The unbearable ecstasy. And the letdown.
Panting, her body streaming with sweat, she collapsed and lay exhausted. Her eyes stopped rolling, but she did not open them. As her breath returned to normal, tears forced themselves out from under her closed lids.
She cried.
And after-a while, she slept ... "What do you want?"
"I just wanted to see how you were doing."
"How did you find me?"
"I checked your apartment. Mrs. Nelson said you were out. So I began checking bars."
"You decided automatically that I'm a lush."
"Mow did you arrive at that conclusion?" Glory's eyes blazed with anger as she turned them on him full force. "That's a stupid question."
"Because I checked the bar? Lots of people come into bars for a drink. They aren't necessarily lushes."
"But you think I am."
"Will you quit jumping to conclusions and looking for a fight?"
"Will you put that damned pipe away? I'm sick of the sight of it."
"Sorry." Rex Mason put the pipe into his pocket. The barkeep came up and he ordered a scotch and water.
As the bartender went away, Glory said, "I could tell him you're bothering me and he'd have you thrown out."
"Certainly you could. Are you going to?"
"There's a question I want to ask you first. Then maybe I'll watch the bouncer kick you into the gutter."
"What's the question?"
"Where do you come off, paying my rent?"
"It was overdue."
"Is that any of your business?"
"All right, you can give it back to me. I need that money for other things. I'll be glad to get it."
"Then why didn't you keep it in your pocket?"
"Give it to me and I'll put it back there."
"I haven't got it."
"Then why bring the subject up?" She looked at him steadily. "I wonder if you know how much I just plain hate you."
"Why?"
"Why? Because I do. You disgust me. You're so damned smug, so sure of yourself."
"That's not true," Rex Mason said quietly. "I'm not smug at all. It's just that I'm not flattering you."
"You and your damned psychology!"
"Psychology is usually nothing but common sense."
"In a minute you'll tell me I don't hate you at all, that I'm in love with you or something."
"Love and hate are pretty tightly bound together. You hate me all right, but it's because I'm a symbol of your self-condemnation. In hating me, you're actually hating yourself."
"That's crap!"
"It's the truth."
She finished her martini at a gulp, turned and stared at him. Her lips formed a sneer. "Why don't you go--yourself."
He said nothing.
After a few moments Glory said, "All right, why are you still here? Are you so cheap you'll sit around with a woman who talks like that?"
"You said that only for effect," he replied unperturbed. "You don't talk that way, you're only trying to shock me into deserting you. That's stupid." If you call me stupid again, I'll slap your face." It was crude of me. I apologize."
She stared at him in mock amazement. "Well, I'll be damned. The great Rex Mason-giving out with an apology. This is a great day."
He took his pipe from his pocket. "I've apologized before."
Glory turned her sneer toward the mirror. Around the bar, several men were giving her their attention. They'd gotten no place with this doll, but the guy who'd walked in and sat down beside her at least was getting a reaction.
Glory put two dollars on the bar. "I'm getting out of here," she said. "Don't follow me. Leave me alone, I don't want to see you again."
Rex Mason said nothing. Glory got off her stool and moved toward the door. She walked straight and decisively. She was not drunk.
But she was not ten steps across the sidewalk when Mason's voice hit her ear: "When you were on your hands and knees there in the grass on Fromm's estate, completely naked, didn't it occur to you-"
The dizziness hit Glory like a blow from a club. She swayed, reached out for support. Mason was there and caught her. She lay in his arms as the world spun at a sickening rate.
He raised one hand and a cab pulled up. The driver looked a little dubious, as though he wished he'd had better judgement.
"Drunk?"
"You stick with her," the driver said grumpily. "I've been saddled with sick women before."
On the trip home, Glory cursed her luck. Why did she have a dizzy spell at the critical moment, when the last thing she wanted was to be dependent on Rex Mason?
She felt better when they got to her room, tried to leave Rex Mason at the door. But her determination was not great enough to stand against his quiet, matter-of-fact command of the situation.
He closed the door and pointed to the bed. "You'd better lie down."
"I'm all right now."
"You're far from all right."
"Look here, just because I happened to have a minor dizzy spell-"
Even as he spoke he piloted Glory to the bed and steered her onto it. Removing only her shoes, he nulled the blanket over her. "It wasn't a minor dizzy spell, and you're far from all right."
She closed her eyes and when she spoke it was more to herself than to Rex Mason. "What in God's name is wrong with me?"
"Would you like me to tell you?"
"I think I know what your explanation would be," she said wearily. "You'd blame the wicked life I've led."
"Do you think you've led a wicked life?"
"Oh, hell! Here we go again. Questions, nothing but silly questions."
He filled his pipe, lit it, seemed to be waiting for her to object. When no objection came, he said, "You're reversion is interesting."
"What in hell are you talking about?"
"Just that. The new projection. Are you aware of the radically different image you're presenting? Your resemblance to the girl I met in Florida is physical only. Your manner, your language, it's all changed."
Glory was too tired to react with hostility, so she fell back on negative cynicism. "All right, master mind. Why has it changed?"
"I'd say it's a form of surrender to your low opinion of yourself."
"Low opinion, hell, I think I'm-"
"In all honesty, you don't know who you are."
"Why don't you get out of here?"
He ignored the invitation. Drawing thoughtfully on his pipe, he stared at a spot just above her hostile eyes and said, "You have a terrible guilt complex, and now it's manifesting itself."
"I'm not guilty of anything except falling in love with a heel named Leon Fromm who was just playing me for-"
"The Leon Fromm thing was merely a trigger," Rex Mason said. "And you weren't really in love with him. It was your ego that was hit, not your heart."
For the first time since he'd walked back into her life, Glory's armor of hostility cracked. Tears appeared in her eyes. "Why are you so cruel? Why do you come around and kick me when I'm down? I've never hurt you. I never did you a wrong."
He remained unperturbed. "You're feeling sorry for yourself now. You're bidding for my pity."
Her eyes blazed. "I'm bidding for nothing! Not a single thing from you!"
He regarded her thoughtfully. "We won't go into that. But let's explore something else. Those dizzy spells of yours. What do you think causes them?"
"They aren't important. Nerves, tension, I'm run down. Everybody gets-"
He waved a peremptory hand. "Certainly, but we're talking about you. You and your dizzy spells. When a person is in the grip of a mental disturbance, a psychological upset, it often manifests itself physically in some manner or other. This is a somewhat oversimplified explanation, because the mind controls the body. The body in the broadest sense obeys the mind. Let me put it this way: When the mind is unhappy, the body cannot be happy either; a physical unbalance manifests itself. With some people this physical reaction takes the form of a headache. Others develop stomach trouble. Skin rashes are quite common psychosamatic manifestations of mental tension."
Lying there with her eyes closed, her mind basically unresisting and negative, Glory recalled the unsightly rash on Candy Welsh's face that time. Had it been because of some defeat Candy experienced? Vaguely, she wondered.
"In your case," Rex Mason was saying, "the physical manifestation is dizziness."
"That's nonsense," Glory said wearily.
Rex Mason appeared to be giving her objection thorough and thoughtful consideration. Then he took his pipe out of his mouth and said, "The facts do not bear that out. Are you of the opinion that they come on you by pure chance?"
"Of course."
"Then what would you say if I told you I can bring on a spell of your dizziness any time I cchose?"
"I'd still say nonsense."
He gave her the slightest of smiles. "Would you care to put your contention to a test?"
"Do you mean, am I afraid? The answer is no."
"All right. But you'd have to get up from the bed and walk toward the kitchenette."
"You mean that, because you decree it, when I get to the kitchenette-about a dozen steps-I'll be dizzy?"
"Yes."
"That's-that's idiotic!"
"Try it."
Glory considered warily as she searched Rex Mason's eyes, and found nothing to guide her. She was unaware of course of what was going through his mind. He was mentally commenting on the fact that intense momentary interest had driven the false image of Glory back into her subconscious. At the moment she was the Glory Hart of Florida. The harsh, vulgar projection created out of her guilt complex had temporarily vanished. But he did not delude himself into thinking it would not return.
Also, beneath the calm masterful exterior he was not quite the man she saw; not nearly as sure of himself as he appeared. He was well aware of the fact that he was violating ethics in his relationship with Glory Hart. A psychiatrist is not supposed to be subjective about a patient. It is stated that above all, to be of value to a patient, the psychiatrist must be objective.
But Rex Mason was an extraordinary man. He had his own beliefs and his own ethics. Tn short, he had decided to do something about the case in point.
He refused to stand by and let the woman he loved go to pieces.
The process of saving her, to a layman, would have been to take her into his arms and protest his love; a process of babying her. But all of Rex Mason's professional instincts cried out against this. He would hew to a line of therapy that might be cruel and brutal at times, but he was committed to the task and he would not shirk it.
This as a therapist, and its justification in the belief that as she was-moving because of false motivations, drifting aimlessly-Glory Hart was headed for the rocks.
He didn't want this. So he was trying to do something about it.
He watched as Glory made up her mind and lifted herself resolutely from the bed. "All right, I'll prove you're wrong."
He offered no help as she got to her feet and stood by the bed. She could have walked straight to the kitchenette and back in a matter of seconds. But the weight of the project bore down on her psychologically, she viewed it as an operation to be handled with care.
This in itself was her undoing. As she walked carefully toward her objective Rex Mason, speaking casually, said, "By the way, your performance there by the pool in Vermont was witnessed by-"
Glory froze in her tracks. She reeled visibly. She threw a protective arm across her forehead, reached out blindly with her other hand.
Rex Mason was there to catch her as she slumped down. He returned her to the bed and stood looking down at her. He was silent while she lay motionless, her eyes closed, shock and confusion in her face.
"Do you still think those spells come by chance?"
"That was cruel, so cruel-"
"Perhaps. But I don't believe in ignorance for either a patient or therapist. Some men subscribe to the theory that a patient can be rehabilitated from ignorance, through ignorance, into a more solid ignorance. I don't believe it. Perhaps in exaggerated cases, yes; hut mild traumas won't hurt you."
"What on earth are you talking about?" Glory asked. She had reached out, and he'd taken her hand. Probably she was not consciously aware of the contact, but she gripped his hand nonetheless.
"I doubt if I can make you understand. But perhaps what I just showed you bears some weight. It's my theory, and I'll stand or fall with it, that in knowledge there is freedom. I think most mental trouble stems from confusion. In physical situations, a person does not need to know. A doctor diagnoses, tells the patient his liver is at fault and that an operation will correct it. The doctor performs the operation on a fixed tissue, and it is either a success or a failure. But the patient does not need to have the doctor's knowledge.
"When dealing with the mind, it is a different proposition. The psychiatrist cannot operate on the mind, the patient must do the work. How can intelligent therapy come under such a situation, other than through knowledge?"
"I don't know," Glory said listlessly.
"The first thing to understand, my darling, is that there is nothing moral or immoral in the human mind when we are dealing with basics. There is guilt and lack of guilt. There is greed and selfishness and generosity and selflessness. But these are conditions, not moral aspects."
"You're saying I'm greedy."
"Everyone, in one aspect or another, is greedy. But right now the thing you need most is rest and lack of tension, and I'm going to give it to you."
"How on earth can you do that?"
"I'm going to hypnotise you and put the suggestions into your mind."
Glory flared. "Do you think I'm crazy? Do you think I'd let you do that to me?"
"I can understand why you feel that way. Most people have the wrong idea of hypnotism."
"I know all about it."
"You assume it is something sinister."
"A hypnotist puts you in his power."
"Not if you don't want to be put there."
"Well, I certainly don't want to."
"But suppose the hypnotist is completely sincere, that he wants to help you?"
"How?"
"By relaxing your tensions. By putting you into shape to get a good night's restful sleep."
"I can sleep by myself."
"With sleeping pills?"
"What's wrong with them?"
"Nothing. But they aren't necessary."
"I won't put myself under someone else's power."
"It isn't like that. Any hypnotised person can come out of a trance any time he desires. He isn't under a spell, it isn't like that at all."
"That's what you'd like me to believe."
"I'd like you to believe it because it's true. No hypnotist can put a person into a trance without his consent, in one form or another."
"What do you mean-in one form or another?"
"It would take time to explain. The important thing right now is for you to prove it to yourself."
"I don't have to prove it."
"Of course not. But even the proof is a therapeutic. It can relax you."
"What do you mean."
"Let me show you. Just lie there with your eyes closed and repeat to yourself. 'I can't be hypnotised, I can't be hypnotised, I can't be hypnotised.' It will work wonders for you. Rhythm is automatically relaxing. So you can relax and still be on your guard."
"Why don't you just go?"
"I will if you do as I ask."
"All right." Glory lay motionless for a few moments. Then she began repeating the words: "I can't be hypnotised, I can't be hypnotised, I can't be hypnotised-"
"Now you are relaxing," Rex Mason said. "I can't be hypnotised-"
"All your muscles are loosening up. You are beginning to feel better, your problems are fading away-"
"I can't be hypnotised."
"You are beginning to feel wonderful. You are sinking deeper and deeper in a quiet, wonderful sense of peace and security. All your troubles are fading away-"
"I can't-"
"All around you, there is a sea of quiet, comforting rhythm. You feel warm and relaxed, you are at peace."
"I can't be hypnotised."
"Of course you can't, unless you want to be. But it is so peaceful, so restful, so wonderfully relaxing. You don't want to come back just now, you want to rest and grow strong."
Glory stirred. "I don't want to-"
"You don't want to be disturbed and tense. You want to rest. And you are resting .Now when I touch your hand, you will go deeper-twice as deep-into soft, restful sleep. Soft-restful-sleep-"
Rex Mason leaned forward and looked closely into Glory's face. "You see a circle in the air," he said. "You are tracing the circumference of that circle with your eyes even though you do not open them. You can see the circle and you trace the circumference."
He looked closely and saw Glory's eves moving under her lids, moving in a slow circle. Still he was not satisfied.
"You are sinking deeper and deeper and deeper into peaceful rest. No one will hurt you, you are perfectly safe. You are resting-resting-resting-"
He paused and studied her face. "You must not speak. You must he there and rest. You will raise the index finger of your right hand to tell me you hear me and that you-trust me completely."
He waited a moment. Glory's right hand was resting on her thigh. He watched it until the index finger lifted.
"Now you want only to rest and sleep. I will undress you and put you to bed. You will sleep. You want me to undress you and put you into bed. Raise your finger again to let me know that this is what you want."
The finger moved again.
"Now I am going to undress you and put you to bed. But you will not be afraid. There is nothing to harm you. Do you understand this?"
The finger signified that Glory's subconscious understood.
Rex Mason put his pipe down. He raised Glory's skirt, pushed it up over her thighs, ungartered her stockings and stripped them off. He hung the stockings over a chair and unbuttoned her blouse. Glory was completely relaxed, but she raised her body and her arms in obediance to his demand. She remained partially erect while he unsnapped her brassiere, lay down again as soon as he took it off.
He stood for a moment looking down at her lush breasts, at the beauty of her upper body. Then he unzipped her skirt and removed it. Her hips rose automatically as he slipped her panties off.
Now she lay naked. He regarded her thoughtfully his expression revealing nothing of his inner thoughts Then he rolled her gently on her side and opened the bed to the sheets. He rolled her back and regarded her surrendered naked body for a few moments before he drew the covers gently over her.
Then he sat down in the chair beside the bed and studied her face. After a while, he spoke:
"You are very deep-very deep-in quiet, restful sleep. Nothing will disturb this sleep. You will lie there deep, deep in sleep and hear nothing until you hear my voice again. You will pay attention to no other sound but that of my voice. When you hear my voice again you will awaken and fee rested and wonderful. Do you understand that?"
The index finger of Glory's right hand moved under the covers.
Rex Mason filled his pipe and lit it as he studied her still face.
Then as a last, somewhat unprofessional gesture he touched his fingertip to his own lips, lowered it and with a faint but tender smile laid it gently against the lips of the woman he loved and was trying to save.
After that he let himself quietly out of the room and returned to his own apartment......" I thought things were all right again. That was when I awoke, when you came back this morning. But now-"
Glory turned sullen eyes on Rex Mason. The old hostility was there, but somehow there seemed no point in manifesting it. She was too tired.
And perhaps a little afraid.
Rex Mason had moved in on her so quietly, and yet with such inscrutable purpose, that he bewildered her. Glory knew men-this above all. She thought and acted always in terms of their motivations and reactions. Thus, Rex Mason being a man, she thought of him in terms of sexual desire. After all, that was what men were-walking bundles of sex. So far as women were concerned, sex motivated them.
There were variations in approach, of course. But the objective was always the same-to get a girl into bed. So why should Rex Mason be different?
In essence, life was a game between men and women-the love game-and everybody played it. A man looked at a woman and asked himself: What's the most direct route into her pants?
And the woman? That depended on circumstances. The woman was of course the quarry, her reactions and motivations were in that area.
All men had the same objective, but with a bewildering variety of approaches. These ran the gamut from the direct, brutal approach-that time back home when Glory had the date with a new boy and they got into his car to go home. All she did was cross her legs and wham! He had her. He must have studied anatomy to be able to get directly and surely to the vulnerable spot.
Once Glory had heard an obscene summation of one man's philosophy: "Get a girl by the-and you've got her cold." That had been this new date's philosophy, and it had worked. He had her cold. Of course she never dated him again, but he'd taken what he'd come after.
From there to approaches hidden in the smoothest, most sophisticated forms of misdirection. As though sex were the last thing in the world the man was interested in, it came about as a complete and wonderful surprise.
All men are bastards.
But Rex Mason seemed to have a new approach. Either that, or he was unaware of his talents. Because he'd gotten practically on top of her and then walked away.
Or had he?
Glory turned sudden, suspicious eyes on him. "What happened last night after I went to sleep?"
He drew on his pipe and regarded her thoughtfully. "I left. You slept on through the night."
"Of course you left. You just came back. But what happened before you left?"
"If you're asking me whether I attacked you, the answer is no."
"You undressed me!"
"I didn't think you ought to go to bed with your clothes on."
Glory paused, marveling. "I felt so wonderful when I woke up. I felt as though I'd slept for days, and all my problems had vanished. But as soon as-"
"Of course you felt wonderful. You couldn't have felt otherwise."
She had been speaking mainly to herself and when Rex Mason cut in on her she turned on him angrily.
"What do you know about it?"
"Everything. I arranged it. I hypnotised you."
"You what?"
"I put you under. It was the only thing to do. You were in a hell of a shape, and you needed rest. It was the quickest and the most logical way to give it to you."
She turned hard and vicious and vulgar. "I'll bet you gave it to me! I'll bet you gave it to me good while I was out and unable to protect myself."
He refused to ruffle. "Now wait a minute, let's use some common sense. Do you honestly think I could have had sex relations with you last night without your being aware of it when you awoke? It would be impossible. After all, nobody can take liberties with another person's body under any conditions without leaving discernable evidence. And you know very well I didn't touch you."
"Well, why didn't you?"
This came out, ridiculously, as an accusation. Rex Mason considered the question and answered at his leisure:
"Now your ego is speaking. That's the peculiar thing about egos, and about people whose psychological habit patterns are totally controlled by ego: there is no logic in the procedure."
"What are you talking about?" Glory demanded with a kind of sudden but sincere honesty.
"I'm saying that both your questions came from your ego. First, you were indignant at being attacked while you were helpless. This was instinctive. Then, when you found that you hadn't been, your ego was hurt. It demands that you be physically attractive to every man you meet. This is the source of its strength.. Therefore it saw only one reason why I left you alone-because you aren't attractive to me. This in turn shook your ego's confidence in itself. Because it would prefer to have me rape you out of desire than turn away from you from lack of desire."
"Oh, shut up!" Glory snapped. "You and your smug double-talk. Why are you here? Why do you-"
"I'm here because I want to help you."
"I don't want your help. Can't you understand that?"
"I think I understand your need to make the declaration. And perhaps we've come to the point where I'd better find out if I'm wrong."
Rex Mason got to his feet and stood looking down at her. He put his pipe into his pocket and spoke quietly. "On the chance that I've been mistaken, give the order again. Say to me: Get out of here and don't come back. Say that and I'll leave and it will be the last you see of me."
"Haven't I said it a dozen times already?"
"Say it again."
"You wouldn't do it."
"Say it."
Glory pulled a sullen hand through her hair. "All right. But before you go, you might as well make yourself useful. Get me a glass of water. I'm thirsty."
Rex Mason went to the sink, brought the water, watched her drink it. She handed the glass back and said, "Isn't it unethical for a psychiatrist to hypnotise a person without his consent?"
"It's considered so."
"Then why did you do it?"
"I felt justified."
"Then you're saying that you have no ethics."
"I have my own ethics."
Glory was about to retort caustically, but a thought sidetracked her. "Why did I feel so good when I woke up?"
"Because I put the suggestions into your mind when you went to sleep."
"Rut it didn't last."
"Hypnotism has its limits. It eliminates only symptoms-not causes."
"What do you mean?"
"It's quite simple. If a man is suffering from cancer, I can convince him through suggestion that he does not feel the pain, and he won't feel it. But I can't cure the cancer or keep it from killing him."
Glory lay back and closed her eyes. She waited for Rex Mason to go on, but he was silent. She heard a match strike, smelled his pipe, was on the point of complaining. But the smell of the tobacco was soothing, and her mind returned to hypnotism.
She had always feared it because of the things she'd heard about it. Once at a party-an uninhibited affair with everyone high-there had been a discussion of hypnotism, furthered mainly by an accomplished practitioner of the process.
This man, an amateur entertainer and a person Glory disliked intensely, was quite frank in his revelations :
"She said she couldn't be hypnotised, bragged about her power to resist. So I decided to teach her a lesson. I put her under, and then we had a little fun. After I brought her out of it she wondered what everybody was laughing about. She didn't know she'd been down on her hands and knees with her skirt up, her pants down, her tongue hanging out, panting like a bitch in heat. Later someone told her and she...."
Glory opened her eyes and asked, "Can you make people do what you want them to when they're under hypnotism?"
"No."
"I've heard differently."
"No doubt. What have you heard?"
"What difference does it make? You'd say it isn't true."
"Have I lied to you so far?"
"No, I guess not. But-"
"Then what right have you to think I'd lie to whatever question you ask?"
"All right. I've heard that a good hypnotist can make a girl do anything he wants her to do."
"That isn't true."
"I heard one tell a story once about what a hypnotist made a girl do." Glory repeated the incident, then asked, "Was he lying when he said he was able to do that?"
"Not necessarily."
"Then he was able to do anything he wanted. That makes you a liar, doesn't it?"
"No. I said that no hypnotist can make a subject do anything the subject does not want to do-anything that is not a deep, inherent desire down in the subconscious. Perhaps, if your man was telling the truth, he'd selected his subject carefully. He suggested that she behave in a certain manner, no doubt told her that she was alone in the room and would not be subject to the embarrassment of witnesses. With this assurance, under hypnotism, she did something she inherently enjoyed-she acted like a bitch in heat.
But if your man had tried that on a woman whose nature would be revolted by the idea, she would just come out of her trance automatically."
"What about me?"
"What about you?"
"Do you think you could make me do something dirty like that?"
"I don't know."
Glory looked at him slyly. "Why don't you try it?"
"If you must have an answer, before we close the subject, let's say that it would revolt me."
Glory lapsed into silence. She lay for a while with her eyes closed. Then she whispered, "Rex, Rex, what's happened to me?"
"You had a mild crackup. You've been living too fast and too hard, and you ran emotionally thin. So thin that what would normally have been a setback which you could have handled, didn't work that way. It triggered you into a state where you're on the border of a crackup."
"You mean I haven't cracked up?"
"You should see a real collapse sometime. It's not very pretty."
"Why are you here, Rex?"
"Let's not go into that. There's no point. Let's just say I want to help you. Are you convinced of that?"
"I guess I am. It's either that or you're an idiot; and I'm pretty sure you're not an idiot. But you can't do anything for me. A person has to live her own life."
"Of course she does. I have no intention of living your life for you. I don't intend to baby you, either. As a matter-of-fact, our relationship could get pretty rough."
"Why?"
"Because I believe in telling the truth."
"I know the truth," Glory said angrily.
"I see. Then you're aware that the basic cause of your upset is not the Vermont incident, it lies farther back in your life."
"How far?"
Rex Mason's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "First, let's talk about whether or not you trust me. At this stage, it's important. Can you accept my reasons for being here?"
Glory shrugged. "What difference does that make? You're here. I'm more interested in just how sick I am."
"I don't necessarily like that word."
"All right. Suppose you go away and don't try to do anything for me. What will happen to me?"
"I don't know. Possibly you'll come slowly back to normal and go on with your life. Right now you just don't give a damn, you're emotionally worn out. Personally I think that if something isn't done you'll deteriorate, follow the path of least resistance, at the very least lose a lot of valuable years."
"You say, at the very least. What about the very most?"
"At worst," Rex Mason said quietly. "You could end up in a mental hospital."
Glory shuddered. "That would never happen!"
"I'm sure it wouldn't. But that's not the point. What I want to tell you is this: If I get your okay to go ahead, I won't let you back out if the going gets tough. I'll insist that you stick to the end."
"You do have your own ideas about psychiatry, don't you?"
"You've just got to be convinced that I have your interests at heart."
"How will you know when I'm cured?"
"So far as I'm concerned you'll be cured when you say, entirely of your own volition, the right thing."
"And that is-?"
"Let's wait until you say it."
Glory regarded him narrowly. "You think there's more wrong with me than you're saying."
It took a little time before Rex Mason decided to answer this. Then he shrugged. "Yes. In my opinion, for reasons I'm not sure of myself, a second personality is manifesting itself in you. A dual personality-two people in one-is not uncommon. In many people the second, weaker personality is there, but is unable to rise out of the subconscious."
"Then you think a second personality is coming out of me?" Glory shuddered and waited for his answer.
"I think so," he said quietly.
Glory lay back and considered this. When she made her decision, it was quick and positive. "All right, I'll put myself into your hands."
Rex Mason leaned forward. "Open your eyes," he commanded.
Glory opened her eyes and found herself looking into his.
"You talked a little while you were under. You made a reference."
"I did?"
"Yes. Who is Count Valenti?"
"Glory's eyes turned vicious. Her mouth twisted. "Leave me alone, you SOB...!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
"You PUT YOURSELF IN MY HANDS," Rex Mason reminded Glory.
"That was yesterday. Today I'm telling you to go to hell."
"Not me-you."
She looked at him, confused. That damned, quiet, pipe-smoking face. The eyes that looked as though they gazed only on reality, and nothing else. God, how she hated him!
"What do you mean-'Not me, you.'"
"You're the one who's going to hell."
"Then let me go."
"I can't."
"Why the hell can't you?"
"Because it isn't you who's telling me to."
"You're an idiot," Glory sneered.
It was a different bar this time. They had gotten nowhere the previous night. Glory refused to answer the question about Count Valenti, and Rex Mason finally left.
Alone, Glory had lain exhausted from the emotional effort of her ordeal. Then, as she quieted down, her reaction was languorous. A feeling of voluptuous warmth came over her, a strange new sense of recklessness that was hard to define. It was almost as though her ego were saying:
You're damned, you're finished. You've gone to pieces and there is no hope, so why suffer? Guilt no longer is important, nothing is important. Nothing except what pleasure there is left. Take what you can get.
Whatever the source of the urge, she smiled lazily and wriggled out of her sweater. She removed her bra and lay there for a time, naked to the waist, running her hands over her breasts.
But they were not her own hands, because her mind had gone back into sensual memory. Not back to Count Valenti, but to a pleasurable experience. Once when she had been in just the right mood, when the man she was with meant nothing to her personally, but was physically attractive, she'd had this same free, wild feeling.
The man?
She spent a moment trying to remember his name. William something-William Sloan? She wasn't quite sure, but it was in Mexico. They'd left the place where they were weekending, drove into the hills and came to a deserted hacienda of some kind. There was a big yellow moon over it. Yes, yes, a big yellow moon. And that sudden craziness because neither of them had mattered to the other. He was penniless too, this William something-or-other. So maybe it was a kind of rebellion in both of them against the ugly ones-the rich ones-who owned them for the weekend. Yes, that was it.
This William something-or-other-what was his name-well, anyhow he said, "She's a fat, ugly slob. Making love to her is like making love to a cow!" , They understood each other for that crazy, mad moment. And Glory remembered-yes, she remembered now-it was like two cooks eating in the kitchen while the rich ones waited for the food to be brought to them. A crazy idea, but that was how it seemed.
He was beautiful, too beautiful a man to waste on a stupid, fat cow of a woman who could buy him. And it was the same with her. Dean Ventor had been her weekend date, and he died a year later of alcoholism. So you can imagine, making love to a man like that.
But William-what was his last name? Well, anyhow, he got the mad feeling; too. He actually got it first because he suddenly ripped off his shirt, looked up at the moon and howled. Then he looked at Glory and said, "What are you waiting for, baby?
We'll probably never see each other again. So what the hell!"
Thinking the same way she was thinking. Rebellion. The moon, the sensuous dark, velvet sky....
And he was naked there against the light of the yellow moon, in profile. Virile Apollo, a beautiful young god. Yes, a beautiful young god, his need and his love twisted into something savagely wonderful when he said-yes, he said:
"Strip down, you bitch! Strip!"
Yes, she was up off the grass and out of her clothes, except her panties. He took them off, throwing her to the ground and grabbing them and pulling them down her thighs and legs while she was drunk with the mad, electric excitement of it-of the whole it's-the-end-of-the-world-so-what-the-hell feeling that came down to them from the moon.
Two cooks in the kitchen while the fat rich ones waited....
Yes, his wonderful brutality. She was naked and he was naked and he sat on her, sat on her belly and laughed down into her face. He rubbed his hands over her breasts and sneered at her while he really loved her because they were in rapport-that mad, crazy free feeling like a cloud out of the moon around them.
He sat on her and told her what he was going to do to her. She fought him and kicked at him with her knees from behind, but wanting it, yes wanting it; wanting to be told, wanting it described, wanting to wallow and roll in it, smell and taste it with her mind and all the sensual soul inside her.
Sitting there on her, telling her how he was going to degrade and defile her with love. And her reply was laughter on the inside and a snarl of defiance on the outside. But he knew and understood. When he threw his head far back to laugh, she pushed him and he went over backwards, and they were reversed.
Yes, there in the mad moonlight with the sudden craziness, she was straddling him. Looking down at him, her body on fire with the hot wonder of fife, there on the silent desert where they'd gone crazy.
Looking straight down into his unturned facedown between her breasts, along her belly, laughing at him, knowing somehow that she looked like the devil's wife there in her wild, lustful abandon. Degrading him, defiling him, looking straight down into the eyes that glowed up at her, telling him how rotten he was. But that was love too. The female degrading the male, but what the hell, they were two naked bodies there on the desert. The swift idea went through her mind in the midst of the exquisite pleasure-pain of the degrading that by some minor freak of nature-some little accident-they could be two skeletons and nothing more. A small moment of time, and people coming could say, Look! Two' skeletons. Are they men or women?
And who would care what had gone on there before?
Yes, who would care? A thousand, a million years from now they wouldn't even be dust, and who would care?
A crazy thought, she wanted to tell him. But the degrading was too magically delightful-defiling the male while she looked down into his eyes and felt the nerve-tingling ecstasy of the way she degraded him.
Yes, man is proud, but he can be defiled. Yes, yes!
Oh, my God! The mad, crazy ecstasy of it....
But he was stronger than she, as it should be between male and female. And when he forced her to submit to defilement, he added laughter deep and booming with words that defiled her soul as well-writhing, wonderful, terrible words of pure delight, calling her things she had never heard before.
And she was unable to speak under the impact and force of his body, her soul and her mind and her quivering body filled to choking with fear of his manhood. Knowing it would come as sure as the sunrise, but enduring because she was a woman defiled, and there was no escape.
Glory opened her eyes. She was confused and frightened. Desperately, she asked herself where she was and what had happened.
She smelled tobacco and saw Rex Mason sitting beside the bed. Her eyes turned fearful and wary.
"Where did you come from?"
"Come from? I've been here."
"You left yesterday, last night." Glory peered around in confusion. "I was in a bar. You were there, I ran away from you."
"Don't try to figure it out," Rex Mason said. "Just believe what I'm telling you. It's all been a kind of hallucination. You haven't been anywhere."
Glory remembered stripping, but she still wore her sweater and skirt. He had to be right.
She closed her eyes. "I'm going mad," she moaned. "I'm going out of my mind!"
"No you're not," he replied quietly.
"But I'll swear that a whole twenty-four hours passed since-what time is it?"
He looked at his watch. "3:30 a.m. You've been out for no more than an hour."
"But it was so real, it seemed-"
"You rebelled. I asked you about Count Valenti and you blocked the world out. You went into compulsive sleep."
Glory frowned. "It was crazy. I had a dream. But the dream was a memory of something that happened."
"That something didn't really happen at all. You dreamed it as a memory of reality, and in the dream you were sure of it. But now that you're awake, you know that whatever it was, it never actually happened at all."
Glory put her hands over her face and moaned. "Good lord, I am going mad! In a dream I see reality.
Then I wake up and see it as only a dream. How can I really know? How can I tell a dream from reality? Am I awake now? Maybe I'm still dreaming."
"You're awake."
She regarded him with open anger and hostility. "I don't understand any of this. But I know one thing: you brought it on me. I was all right until you came along!"
He thought that over with his maddening, meticulous attention to mental detail. "Do you mean since you met me in Florida, or since I turned up again here in New York?"
"Oh, I don't know! I just don't know. But as long as you're here, and so terribly smart, tell me exactly what's wrong with me."
"I thought I told you."
"You said something about there being two of me. But that was so silly."
He studied his damned pipe, and again he looked like George Raft. Her unreasoning hostility was such that she blamed him for this. He had no right to look like George Raft!
He was saying, "One of the dangers of explaining a condition to a patient is that it may be taken too literally. All things are basically concents. You define something in symbolical or allegorical terms so that they can be understood, but the greatest problem of the human animal is that of communication."
Glory kicked viciously at the sheet. It had become entangled with one foot. "That's all double-talk.
He thought that over. "I'm sorry it appears that way to you; because if that's your reaction, it means that my methods of communication fail."
"It doesn't mean anything of the kind. It means I'm stupid."
"I was wrong in presenting the schizo aspect as I did. You have every reason-to see two people in yourself-two separate persons. Which, of course isn't true. These are just two aspects of your personality."
Glory suddenly appealed with her eyes. "I want to understand."
"The thing to do is try to find one solid aspect we can both understand and agree on. Perhaps I could put it this way: In Florida you were competent, healthy, and reasonably happy. Right?"
Glory could only nod.
"Now you are comparatively less competent, certainly not as healthy as you were, and definitely unhappy."
An unreasonable desire to cry smote Glory. She fought it as she nodded again.
"Fine," Rex Mason said. "Then we can assume a change took place. This brings up the question of what change and for what reason did it come about? So far as you are concerned, you were disappointed in love. You were in love with Leon Fromm, discovered that he was not in love with you. This is your rationalization of the situation. Whether or not I agree with you is not important, from your standpoint."
"Don't you agree?"
"To this extent: that you suffered a great shock, and the Fromm incident definitely was the trigger."
"Then you don't think I was in love with Leon."
Rex Mason studied Glory clinically. "The hostility you put into that declaration is quite revealing."
"Damn you, damn your smug attitude!"
"It certainly must appear that way to you. But one thing is certain: you went into this strata from triggered shock. And shock is all that will bring you out of it."
"I was in love with Leon Fromm."
He half smiled. "You used the past tense. Does that mean you aren't in love with him any more?"
"Of course not! Do you think I'm-I'm a doormat?"
"I submit that love isn't turned on or off that easily. I suggest that in truth you saw a way out of your uncertain, hazardous life through Leon Fromm; that in gratitude for this opportunity you thought you were in love with him. You would have given him everything because that's basically your nature. You would have made him a good wife, but not because you were in love with him."
"That's ridiculous. You're basing your assumption on the fact that I used the past tense."
"Not at all, that's only indicative."
Glory lay silent for a time. Then she said, "You just told me that only shock will bring me out. What kind of shock?"
Now his frown indicated deep earnestness. "I don't know. We play a thing like this pretty much by ear, I'll frankly admit that. But I don't think it will be any fun. I think it might be even a little-well, messy. It depends on what direction you take."
Glory put an arm over her eyes, honestly trying to follow along. "I understand that' psychiatrists do nothing, they just sit and listen."
"In a way that's true. But actually it doesn't work in that fashion. If it did, all you'd have to do would be to confide in a friend and get straightened out."
"What will you do, then? How will you go about it?"
It occurred to Glory that she accepted Rex Mason's proffered help without actually making any decision. When, she asked herself, had she made the decision? How had it come about?
She didn't ponder the question, her mind pulled away from the thought. He said, "In its simplest terms, I think you took on a mode of life-a sophisticated, broad-minded pattern of living-which you weren't inherently able to handle. Your deeply ingrained instincts toward conventional morality was lush ground for the tremendous guilt complex which finally reduced you."
"Then if I just admitted that, wouldn't everything be all right?"
"It isn't as simple as that. Admitting something intellectually is superficial, when you're dealing with deeply established habit patterns."
"I don't know what that means."
"In your case, it ties in with the schizo angle. Your naturally strong sex instincts, your love of luxury, your basically strong nature, have united to form this second personality." He stopped and smiled without humor. "We have to look upon her as a powerful force inside you. She's the person you're fighting, and one of you will win."
"If she wins-?"
"Then you'll be all right after a fashion. You'll return to the life you led. You'll wonder vaguely what all the fuss was about, and you'll go on to whatever destiny that life will carry you to. It's just that you've come to a cross-roads, darling-a time of decision. That's what the agony is about, which of you will win the fight. When the fight is over, then your trouble is over."
She stared at him. "You called me darling."
"Why not?" he replied simply. "I'm in love with you?"
This struck her as grotesque. "I honestly believe you are."
"And I hope you're in love with me."
Glory's whole mental being rejected this idea, to the point of passing it by without a glance, so to speak.
She smiled weakly. "Which of me do you think will win?"
"I don't know."
"How will you know?"
"When you say the right thing in the right way."
She was quiet for a long time. Then she asked, "Are you going to hypnotise me?"
He seemed to be searching for the right words, and for the first time since Glory could remember he partially avoided a question.
"We are going to lick that bitch by ignoring her."
"She's a bitch?"
"She's strong; and she's a fighter." Glory drew a deep breath. "All right, let's get started."
"Very well. The first thing I want you to do is go to sleep."
"A hypnotic sleep?"
"No. Just sleep."
"Then I'll have to take a pill."
"Perhaps not. Why don't you just close your eyes and relax your arms."
"I don't sleep with my arms."
"Yes, you do. Relax your arms. Think of them as loosening up. Relax them. Now relax your legs. Loosen one thigh. Now the other. Try to feel as though you are falling through the bed. You had such dreams as a child. Almost everyone has. Try to think of those times ... Your body is loose-so very loose-You have no problems, no troubles. Your neck muscles are relaxing ... relaxing ... loosening ... relax-relax...."
A quiet smile moved Glory's lips. "Will you rape me when I'm asleep?" she asked dreamily.
"Relax-relax-No, I won't rape you."
His voice had become a quiet, soothing whisper as he studied her face and saw it change subtly, almost imperceptibly-saw the pout form over the beautiful mouth.
"Then I don't think you like me," Glory murmured. "I'm not physically attractive to you."
"Relax-relax-" he soothed. "There is nothing to worry about. No troubles. Relax."
Glory fell silent but the sly, mischievous expression deepened. Then her eyes opened, and as Rex got up and walked toward the kitchenette they followed him.
And they were different eyes than those that had appealed to him moments earlier. They were confident, poised, and bright in their intensity as they went frankly over his body undressing him, admiring a visualized nakedness as he moved about.
He ignored her as he drew a glass of water from the tan and drank it.
"I'm thirsty," Glory said in a new voice, an imperious, demanding voice.
Rex finished his drink, set the glass down on the sink and walked back to the bed.
She pouted up at him. "Hello, handsome.
He did not reply. He nut his pipe between his lips and regarded her thoughtfully.
"You know where you can stick that damned pipe, don't you?" she challenged.
"You come out quickly," he said. "You're crazy!"
Glory smiled and stretched luxuriously, like a beautiful cat. The stretching moved the sheet, pulled it down off her breasts, down off her belly, her navel, just to the edge of the voluptuous V of her thighs. She looked down at it and smiled.
"Nice?"
"I've seen better."
The eyes blazed momentarily. "You aren't a man! I've had my suspicions of you.-You're queer!"
"All right. Then why are you going to all that trouble?"
"You aren't queer," she replied with total illogic. "You're just showing off. You want me so damned bad that you're drooling!"
"Do you see any sign of it?"
Glory knew exactly what he meant, frankly lowered her eyes by way of reaction. Then she raised her eyes again to his.
"I'll bet I could change that if I wanted to."
"No, you couldn't. I think you're disgusting."
The smile was Medusa-like in its evil intensity. "See, what did I tell you? You're queer! Women are always disgusting to queers."
"Women like you can also be disgusting to normal men."
She almost spat at him. For a moment, it appeared as though she would spring from the bed and claw him.
Then she smiled. I'll tell you all about Count Valenti and what happened on his estate."
She inflected the words as an invitation that required an answer from him. He put his pipe into his pocket and turned away.
"If you want to," he said indifferently.
"Well," she said, "they trapped me."
He turned quickly. "That's a lie. They didn't trap you at all."
"They did too. They trapped me and took me down into the basement under his house, or his castle, or whatever you want to call it-"
"You went quite willingly!"
Rage flared in her face. "You're calling me a liar!"
"Yes."
"You're saying that I wanted to, go but she didn't."
"Yes."
"You're not only a liar, you're stupid. There aren't two of us."
"I never said there was."
"You did too."
The sheet had come away completely now, and she lay naked. All the beauty, the pure sex lure, the lush promise of her thighs and breasts and belly and intoxicating womanhood lay exposed to his gaze. He regarded it all thoughtfully and took out his pipe.
"I have seen better," he told her casually.
"I'll bet you never climbed on a woman in your life."
"Don't put any money behind that bet."
Her hands had gone automatically to her thighs. Her fingers caressed the richly tanned flesh, but it was indicative that she appeared unaware of her action; it was totally and automatic reflex as she drew her fingers upward, along the inner sides of her thighs. Thus she gave the frightening impression that her hands always went automatically to that region when she was in the presence of a man.
"Well," she said, "there were four of them, and they lured me down into that room where you couldn't hear screams from the outside-"
"You mean you screamed in delight?"
"You rotten, filthy bastard."
He shrugged. "If that's your opinion."
"I tell you she doesn't exist. She's just around when-"
"When you're resting, no doubt."
"Something like that."
"Still, I want to hear the Valenti story from her."
"She'll he to you!"
"Maybe-maybe not."
She bared her teeth in a spasm of frustration. "God, how I hate you!"
"I don't care very much for you, either!"
"Why are you here sticking your long nose into my business? I didn't ask you. I'll get you out of here. I'll call the police. I'll scream!"
"No, you won't."
"You're so damned sure of yourself. I will call the police-when I'm ready. Right now, I'm only playing with you. It amuses me to see you stand there and drool. You want me, but you know-"
"You won't call the police," he cut in, "because that would be a defeat for you."
"A defeat for me?"
"Of course."
"And just how did your feeble mind arrive at that stupid conclusion?"
"It isn't stupid. Your ego can't take a defeat. And calling for help would be acknowledging defeat."
"That's idiotic."
"All right. Then call them. Scream."
"I said I'd do it when I'm ready."
"You can't, because you know you have to defeat me.
"All I have to do is get rid of you."
"No, that wouldn't be enough. You're too much of a gambler."
"And just what does that mean?"
"Simply this: if I walk away, you still have guilt to contend with."
"You were calling it she and me."
"It doesn't matter what I call it. The truth remains the same. If I go, that means she will be defeated for all time. And you think you can beat me."
"I know I can beat you."
"Then why don't you get at it?"
"You're so transparent," she teased. The sneer faded from her lips and they opened slightly. The tip of her red tongue appeared. It invited, promised delight and ecstasy even as her hands were indicating and promising it; even as her body moved sensuously and magnetically.
"You want some of that, don't you?" she whispered throatily.
"Not particularly."
"But you do want it."
"I said not particularly."
"A minute ago it was a flat no. Now it isn't quite as definite. You're giving in. You're giving in, because you can't help yourself."
"I doubt that."
It was as though she sensed an easy victory, a victory gained with one quick, all-out effort. She smiled at him through half-closed lids, and put herself on display shamelessly. Her legs moved in sensuous rhythm, her hips began to undulate, her eyes rolled upward and her mouth opened. Her red tongue was in evidence. Where it had coyly suggested, it now openly invited; it was a sex symbol, a beckoning finger. She drew it voluptuously into her mouth between closed lips, slowly, symbolical of alien delights. She lay there writhing in the graceless grace of sex, seemed to be delighting from the taste of her own tongue.
She pushed it out slowly, just showing the tip, then more and more of its red length became visible.
"You depend heavily on the oral aspects and symbols of sex, don't you?" he asked.
He could have been saying, You depend on your ears to hear what people say, don't you? He could have been saying something like that, so quietly and passionlessly did he speak.
Normally she would have flared at him in rage, but she had overstepped herself. In impersonating sex, she had become sex. The vivid imagination that had been stirred by her efforts to seduce him stirred, in turn, the glands and reactions of her own beautiful body. Her breath increased in tempo, her breasts rose and fell in more rapid rhythm than when she was merely being a temptress.
In essence the temptress had seduced herself; now she was trapped in the promise of personal delight. Her hands functioned shamelessly in substitution for the man she visualized as participating in the lewd exhibition. Her hips and thighs and legs moved in response to this phantom male.
"Enjoying yourself?" Mason asked politely.
She murdered him with her eyes, and when she spoke her voice was broken and jerky: "Get out of here, you SOB."
"I wouldn't think of leaving. I've never seen anything like this before."
"You-bastard!"
"Why are you so mad at me? I haven't done anything."
She seemed past hearing him. "Oh, God! Oh, my God!" she breathed. Her voice was a kind of obscene croak, a thing also beyond her control.
Her neck muscles tensed as she raised her body on her widely-spread heels and her shoulders. Her teeth clenched.
"Oh, God. Oh, Jeez!"
These were the mildest of the curses that spewed out of her beautiful mouth. Obscenities burst forth like brightly colored petals from some flower of pure, evil lust. She hurled vocal filth out of her mouth like rotten spume, making incredibly lewd suggestions and offers to her phantom mate, describing in detail the deviations she was capable of, how delightful they would be.
Rex Mason took a notebook from his pocket. The movement of his hands attracted her attention; and even in the midst of her ferocious ecstasy, she questioned.
"I've never seen anything like this before," he said. "I'm taking notes."
He spoke in a matter-of-fact, clinical tone. But she had vanished again into her self-made world of physical delight.
Her body arched upward, ever higher, her tortured thighs strained away from each other, her head bent backward; and the expression that strained her face was that of a person on the wrack, undergoing exquisite torture.
Then she strained her mouth open in a terrible, soundless scream that wracked her throat and body, made her breasts erect, brown nipples quiver in tortured sympathy.
She held this obscene, almost superhuman pose for some seconds.
Then she collapsed.
Instantly Mason was beside the bed, leaning down and looking into her half open eyes. When he spoke his voice was low and soothing, but a tenseness had come into it.
"You will go deeper and deeper into restful sleep," he said. "I will touch your shoulder. When you feel the touch of my hand, you will go deeper-twice as deep-into quiet, restful sleep. Nothing will disturb you, until the alarm of your clock goes off. You will stay deep in restful slumber until you hear the sound of your alarm clock. When you awaken you will feel peaceful and rested. You will feel refreshed and wonderful.
"And you will not remember anything that has happened You will remember nothing. You will only know that you slept well, are rested and refreshed."
When he touched Glory's naked shoulder, her body relaxed from head to toe. Her thighs came together, her hands moved upward to lie quietly crossed below her breasts.
"You are deep-deep-deep in sleep." he said. He drew the sheet and blanket up over her body.
She was breathing quietly and evenly now. Her eyes were closed, and the faintest of smiles appeared on her lips.
Rex Mason walked to the bathroom, came back with a towel. Gently he wiped the perspiration from her face and forehead. He patted the soft towel against her neck. Raising the sheet, he removed the sweat that had formed and run down between her breasts during her ordeal.
Only then did his face soften. He looked down at her for a long time.
Then he bent swiftly, brushed her forehead with his lips, and let himself quietly out of the room.
CHAPTER NINE
"WHY DID WE COME UP HERE?"
Glory looked out across the sand dunes toward the sea, then turned restlessly away from the window.
"It seemed a good idea," Rex Mason said gravely.
Glory shuddered. "I know. But I felt so wonderful when I woke up day before yesterday. I was all right. It was all over. You helped me-some way-and I was grateful. But now-"
"Only the symptoms were cured," Hex Mason said. "I told you that."
"I know what you told me."
The cottage was small and crude, on a lonely section of far-out Long Island beach near Montauk Point.
"I inherited this place from a generous uncle," Rex Mason had explained. "It isn't worth much in dollars and cents, but it was a priceless gift in terms of solitude. As you see the facilities are all out of doors, so it can be used only in nice weather. But if you stock up on groceries over in the village, it works out all right."
Glory didn't know why she'd come. All her instincts had been against the idea, she'd refused the invitation right up to the last moment.
Then she realized that she didn't want Rex Mason to go away and leave her. Somehow the city had become a vaguely frightening place. Even feeling well, the thought of sitting alone in her room or going from bar to bar frightened her.
"The good effects of your sleep would automatically wear off. I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did."
"Let's go back," Glory said.
"Not for a while."
"I don't have to stay if I don't want to, do I?"
"Of course not."
Glory wore her stunning white bathing suit with a beach robe over it. She had never looked as poised and beautiful. Only the tell-tale tightness around her lips indicated inner turmoil.
"Then I want to go."
Rex Mason, clad in a shirt and shorts, motioned toward the table with his eternal pipe. "There are the car keys," he said.
"I can't go alone!"
"Why not?"
"I-I just can't, that's all."
"Then it looks as though you'll have to stay," he said gently. "I'm not ready to go."
"When will you he ready?"
"When the thing we started works out, when it's finished and done with."
"Your therapy, you mean? Then we'll be here for God knows how long. Mental therapy takes time."
"Maybe. Perhaps not if we get down to it. That's what you're really afraid of, you know: getting down to it."
"But it's all so useless."
"I don't agree."
"Why don't you just go on hypnotising me? I'll hire you to do it every two days." He smiled. "What would you pay me with?"
"Well, you aren't getting paid now, are you?"
"Maybe I'm hoping to."
"Well, I guess you'll be disappointed. I'm broke, I haven't got a dime. You know that. You paid my rent."
"You're young. You could learn to wash dishes."
"All right, I'll wash your dishes for you for the next five years."
He smiled briefly, then turned serious again. "You may be shocked at how I proceed in this therapy."
She shrugged. "Didn't you say I needed shock to come out of it?"
"That's right. But I want something from you. I want you to tell me that you trust me."
"Isn't it pretty late in the game to ask that?"
"I don't think so. The roughest part of the game is coming up. I'm telling you that because I've been honest with you from the start. I believe in honesty. Many psychologists would disagree with me on that point, but I've got to stand or fall on it because I believe in honesty."
Glory smiled thinly. "You mean I've got to stand or fall on it."
"Yes," he admitted, "I guess that's about it."
"Okay. I trust you and I'll go along with you."
Glory did not even analyze that, as had become her habit. She accepted it because her mind was too tired from slamming itself against stone walls, too sore to want to be hurt any more.
"Let's take a walk along the beach," Mason said.
They walked out of the cottage and across the dunes to the water's edge. A narrow strip of beach extended in both directions. They walked perhaps a half mile, then Rex turned and dropped down into the sand.
"Come on," he said. "Relax."
Glory sat down beside him. Then she lay back and closed her eyes.
"It's peaceful here," Rex said. "Very quiet. Very peaceful. Here you can relax, there is nothing to fear." He paused. High overhead, a gull cried faintly.
"Here," he said, "you can get rid of the thing that is troubling you."
Glory still lay back with her eyes closed. He had come up on his elbow, was looking into her face. Under her closed lids he could see her eyes revolve, one of the unfailing signs of hypnotic trance.
"Here you can get rid of what troubles you," he repeated.
"What troubles me," Glory whispered.
"Yes. Tell me about Count Valenti."
Glory's hands stiffened. He saw this and said, "Relax. Deeper, deeper." The key words to which he had conditioned her. The hands relaxed, but that tight look was around her eyes and mouth. He considered this for a time, but did not send her deeper into trance.
"What happened at Count Valenti's estate?"
And now the therapy took the turn for which he had been waiting. The change, the almost magical transformation he had observed back in Glory's room.
She was coming back.
"No," Rex Mason said sharply.
Then he lifted Glory into his arms and kissed her. "You're beautiful," he whispered. "You're desirable. You are the most beautiful. You are the most desirable. Men want you, only you"
Glory responded. Her mouth worked against his. Her mouth opened and she gave him her tongue. His kiss was uninhibited and sensuous; and while he kissed her, he stripped the white bathing suit down off her shoulder and breasts until it was no more than the lower half of a bikini deep across the lower edge of her belly.
With a muted cry, he let himself go, allowed all the pentup need and desire for her to flood out. He buried his face in the lush depths of her soft breast, moved his mouth over it hungrily until he found a nipple-hot, erect, waiting.
Glory moaned. Her arms went around him, her nails clawed at his back, pulling his thin shirt upward until his back was exposed, then digging shamelessly, needfully, down below the band of his shorts as far as her hand would reach.
She moaned petulantly, as though annoyed that her arm could reach no farther. Then she sucked her belly in, quivering as his hand found her navel. His finder teased it until it quivered.
She breathed deeply, driving her hungry breast deeper into his mouth. She struggled to release her legs from the weight of his legs, to position them for what would come, for what had to come, for what was as sure and inevitable as sunrise.
Mason's hand moved lower, and it was the hand of a lover. No longer was he the objective therapist; he was a man taking the woman he wanted.
Glory's mouth opened and her tongue darted out to find him, but he was not there. She moaned and quivered as his hand found her, as the weight of his leg was withdrawn, allowing her to offer herself with an eagerness that was a trembling, an invitation of opening and giving.
He pressed his face deep into her belly, and it softened to the touch of his face and his tongue. Then it stiffened in reaction to the pain-delight that his hand produced from the tight nerves his fingers found.
His mouth went back to hers as he moved his body naturally and wonderfully into the place she had made for it by moving her thighs. She held her mouth against his for a time. Then, her lips still open, she drew her mouth across his face in an eloquent gesture of need and complete surrender.
She cried out, but it was a begging cry, asking for the hurt, demanding it, demanding the pain that was a part of the ecstasy that mounted within her, mounted within both of them.
And as he took her, as they took each other in a wild mounting frenzy, they were alone in the world there on a sand beach by the ocean; alone except for a high, wheeling gull that looked down and perhaps marveled at the strange ways of man and woman, then curved away to fade into the deep blue of the sky....
Glory had cried out-a high, clear scream at the crest of unbearable delight. Now she lay, relaxed and whimpering. But there was a contentment in the whimper, and even though spent her hands sought for him blindly.
Rex Mason adjusted rapidly. In five minutes he again was the quiet, impersonal therapist she had known.
He picked up the pipe that lay nearby and shook sand out of it. He had no tobacco, looked at the pipe as though somewhat at a loss. Then he said, "You can come out now," and put the pipe into his mouth.
Glory lay naked, exactly as she had been when he finished with her. Except that now her sprawled legs rested on the sand, as his arms and shoulders no longer were there to provide support.
Nothing happened as a result of his command, except that her legs drew together. He turned and looked into her quiet face.
"I said you can come out now."
He sat back and watched as the corner of Glory's mouth twitched. Then the subtle transformation again took place. There was the change in expression, the sullen droop of the arresting features. When the eyes opened, they too were sullen.
"You took her. You bastard! You made me watch while you took that puking little prude."
He looked indifferently off across the white caps that dotted the close waters of the sea.
"I like her better."
"You're in love with her. You have to be!"
"That's none of your business."
"It is my business. I'm better than she is. She made men sick. They wouldn't have anything to do with her, they sneered at her."
"Some of them did maybe. Not all of them."
"The ones that counted did. Who wants the others?"
"I don't know. I'm one of them, I guess. Why do you bother about me?"
"I think you stink!"
"I repeat, why do you care whether I'm in love with her or not?"
"You're an idiot! I don't care if you're a cretin. Do you think I'll lie here and let you make love to her? No man ever made love to her, except in the beginning."
"And that's when you were born-if born is the term."
"What are you talking about? Are you trying to say I don't exist?"
"You said that, I didn't."
"God damn you! Who do you think you are? Why-why I could kill you. I could get a gun and-"
"But you haven't got a gun."
He turned to look at her. There was contempt in his face. "You really aren't anyone, you know." His eyes traveled down her body to where her legs had instinctively opened. He pointed.
"That's all you are. That, and nothing more. Negative force. You don't really exist."
She came to a sitting position and her hands went out as claws, reaching for him. He had not moved but she could not reach him and she cursed him vilely. "You rotten, cheap, filthy bastard!" were the mildest terms.
"That's only an explosion of negative energy," he said.
She screamed wordlessly, clawed up a handful of sand from between her legs and threw it at him. The sand was wet, it became a solid ball in her grip and flew past his head.
She screamed and beat her thighs in childish fury.
He watched her for a few moments, then said, "You were nothing in the beginning but the reflection of a need in her; all her negative qualities formed into a pseudo-personality-nothing more. You formed" because she was unable to pay the price for the things she wanted. So you paid the price asked.
"I'm stronger than she is!"
"No, you're not. And now you have even lost your excuse for being. She can do what you did for her, and she does it better."
"No! No, you filthy SOB. You're just saying that, it isn't true." She leaned toward him in appeal. "Why, I know how to-"
"So does she. You taught her. She learned while she watched you. And she does it better because in doing it, she gives. All you ever did was take."
"You lie! You're a filthy liar!"
His voice suddenly smashed back at her in kind, like a club taken from behind his back and swung viciously.
"You don't exist anymore, don't you understand that? You-do-not-exist. All you were in the first place was a state of mind, nothing more. Now her need of you is gone. You-do-not-exist."
The reaction was sudden, in keeping with the suddenness of his attack; and violent, in keeping with its violence. She fell back on the sand, her face twisted, horribly contorted. Her throat worked as though she could no longer breathe.
Mason then did a seemingly unexplicable thing-unless pure degeneracy could be an explanation. But this was impossible; the serious, tense look in his face when he put his hand on her body totally denied such a motive.
His hand moved and worked. Her body jerked in reaction. Then her throat muscles relaxed, the strain vanished, a fixed, ecstatic look came into her half-open eyes. She smiled at him and her smile was a spine-tingling, mad, terrible thing in itself.
He continued to work, her body moving in answering rhythm.
Then she shrieked a nerve-tearing, agonized shriek as her body arched. With his other hand. Mason found the pulse in her wrist, and checked it. She tore her arm away, thrust it into her mouth, straining her mouth open wider and wider as though attempting to swallow the whole hand.
Her eyes bulged and the thrust fingers muffled that last ecstatic scream. A final effort of the greatest physical straining possible.
Then she collapsed. To die as she had been born. In the ecstasy of sexual climax.. And it was over.
CHAPTER TEN
Glory opened her eyes. She lay on the bed in the cottage and the sun was just lowering, its rays pouring in through the west window.
Nearby, Rex Mason sat with his pipe in his mouth. The cottage was fragrant from aromatic tobacco, calm with the silence of the sand and the sky and the sea.
Glory blinked. "I-I had a dream."
"What did you dream?" Rex Mason asked.
"I dreamed that we took a walk on the beach."
"Was that all?"
"No, something happened."
"What happened?"
"I-I don't know."
He studied her keenly without appearing to. "Try to remember. Sometimes dreams are interesting."
"I-we were on the beach, lying there in the sand.
Yes, you were there, but-but it wasn't you, it was somebody else. That doesn't make sense, does it?"
"Dreams make a sense all their own."
"It was you but it wasn't you. I was undressed, somehow-"
Glory looked down as though to make sure her bathing suit was on. It was. "I-I just don't know."
"Forget the dream. It was good for you. Whatever happened was good for you. Do you believe that?"
She looked at him, a little fearfully; tense but at the same time, trying to hide the tenseness.
"If you say so."
"Then you'll take my word that it was good?" I'll-take your word."
He searched her eyes for the sign he hoped to find there, but gave no indication as to whether or not he saw it.
"Relax," he said. "You're tired. Relax."
She lay back obediantly and closed her eyes. He noted automatically how she went into a light trance, instantly upon signal.
But this rime he did not send her any deeper. As she lay with her eves closed, her breath coming regularly, he said, "The dream was good. It eliminated forever the conflict that has been raging inside you. There will be no more conflict."
She accented the assurance in quiet silence.
"But that isn't quite enough," he went on. "The thing-the small thing that is plaguing you."
He waited. She lay quiet.
"The small thing," he repeated carefully and watched closely for signs of acceptance as he repeated the word small in three additional assurances.
"The small guilt thing."
"The small thing," she said.
He was satisfied.
"You must tell me."
"Tell you?"
"Yes. Like breaking a boil, like extracting the poison from a painful boil so that it can heal."
"Tell you-" she monotoned.
"You must tell me what happened at Count Valenti's."
Her body stiffened. He was beside the bed instantly. "I will touch your shoulder," he said. "Then you will relax. Relax-relax-There, now you are relaxing-you are relaxed.
"I am relaxed...."
But he drove on. "You must tell me what happened at Count Valenti's?"
She shuddered, but the light trance held. Her lips began to move:
"I went there for a week. There were others, a lot of people. I met Count Valenti and he liked me."
"What happened? Come straight to it." His voice was a little sharper now, more commanding. "What happened?"
"Count Valenti and three men took me into the basement. They were going to show me the wine cellar. We went down, down, down. The wine was-"
He would not let her avoid the issue now, would not allow her to deviate. "What happened?"
"They took me to this room. There was a Spaniard, a Swiss, Valenti-and-and another."
"Call them they" he commanded. "And use the term one. They and the term one. What happened?"
Glory shuddered. Her eyes closed. "They took me to that room and treated me like an animal. They didn't even treat me like a woman. they could have been stripping the clothes off an animal that had no feelings. I-I was standing there stark naked. Then they-"
"What happened?"
"I'm telling you, I'm telling you-"
"Not fast enough. You are evading. Tell it faster. And tell the truth!"
He was on his knees beside the bed looking tensely into her face. Her wrist in his fingers, he kept a steady check on her pulse as his eves alternated between her face and the rise and fall of her breathing.
"Tell it!"
"One of the men Grabbed me from behind. I jerked away and shrieked, but no one heard me. they told me no one would hear me. I broke away. ran into a comer and nursed the place he grabbed me. they laughed." Her voice rose higher. "They laughed. They grabbed me again. Two of them, and made me move like an animal-worse than an animal-to avoid what they were doing. Count Valenti laughed."
Glory's eyes rolled back. Her throat worked.
"Tell it," he demanded.
"That was it," she said with pathetic eagerness. "That was it."
"Not enough, not nearly enough. Tell it!"
And here Rex Mason's objectivity, hanging on by its fingernails, almost fell. His face became a mask of pity and love, he almost turned from what he was doing. But then his face hardened.
"Not enough. Tell it!"
"I was on my hands and knees," Glory sobbed. "One was down-behind me. He did something. I shrieked. They laughed. My hands jerked backward to protect-to protect-and I fell with my face on the soft mat. I-No! No! No!"
"Tell it!" he demanded, and he was like a man going through hell.
"I was on my back and they did things that-that made me act like an animal. I shrieked and shrieked. they-"
"Tell it!"
"There was a rope. They tied my ankles, and all the blood rushed to my head while I was hanging there. Then they did things-things. After it was over
-a long, long time-after it was over it was very early in the morning, and they took me to my room. Count Valenti took me to my room. He told me that no one would believe me if I said anything, that nobody would care. He put money on my dressing table-a lot of money. And I-"
She went stiff and tense. He bent close and repeated the key words until she again relaxed.
Her face was wet with perspiration, and he wiped it tenderly. But his voice was hard:
"Tell it. You haven't told it yet. The worst thing, whatever it is. Tell it;"
"No! No!"
"Tell it."
The agony in her face was reflected in his own. He saw defeat, he saw failure; and he realized that he did not dare fail.
In a flash of thought, he castigated himself for his arrogance-his playing god with the delicate inner structure of this girl.
It had all seemed so simple, he had been so sure that he could bring out the thing that would save her. He had half succeeded. He had destroyed the illusory but nonetheless deadly second person, the rationalization that made her life bearable by thrusting it clown into her subconscious. But that was not enough, there had to be more.
They had to go that last little inch, or all the miles they had come would be lost.
All the agony, all the suffering.
If they did not make that last inch she would best have been left as he found her.
He called himself a fool and a criminal, saw himself facing just prosecution for what he had done. There would be no prosecution except that which he would visit on himself. He would never practice again.
"Tell it," he said in one final try of pure desperation. This had to be it, she could stand no more.
Her lips moved. "There was money on the dressing table, but not all the money, not all. I hurt. I reached in to where it hurt and I found-"
Her eyes opened wide. "I can't, I can't tell it!"
"Why? Why not? Why can't you tell it?"
Her eyes were wide open now. "Because I love you."
"Why? Say it again."
"Because I love you, and I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed to tell such things to the man I love. Don't make me, please don't make me."
His eyes lighted up, he swept her into his arms and lifted her.
"That's all, my darling. You don't have to tell anything ever again. It's all so very simple when-"
She was almost out of the trance. Her eyes brightened. "I don't have to tell?"
"No, now there isn't anything. Don't you understand? It all vanishes. That's what love does. That's what love is. The power, the only real power. The strong power.
"I love you," she said wonderingly.
He laughed. "All shadows and phantoms vanish before love. It sweeps them away because it eliminates the cause-all the causes. Do you understand?"
She didn't want to think about it. She put her face into his shoulder and whispered. "Hold me, hold me. Never let me go."
He carried her out to the shore of the ocean, they sat side by side and looked toward the far horizon.
They said nothing, because now all was understanding. There was no need to discuss old phantoms, to route devils from the mind.
There was no room for devils now that love had entered.
After a while the moon came up and he carried her, sleeping, back to the cottage.
