Outwardly Peace Haven was a neat, clean, orderly religious community devoted to redeeming beautiful young girls who got into minor difficulties with the law. But behind the scenes it was a sink of vice and corruption, a semi-nude sex cult where lovely girls were recruited into a far-reaching white-slave ring and forced to serve the twisted lust and perverse passions of some of the most prominent officials of the state ... Its underground vaults contained torture chambers where the girls were sadistically whipped within inches of death for minor offenses ... and a vast storehouse of the most pornographic photos ever filmed ... To Mark Hanes it had all the earmarks of a lucrative racket, the product of a Satanic mind super-charged with madness. Who was this mysterious master-mind? That was the puzzle Mark Hanes had to solve.
CHAPTER ONE
He picked the girl up on a small feeder road leading to a main highway-he didn't know which one-and he regretted his generosity even as she was climbing into the Thunderbird.
Not that she was ugly or undesirable. Quite the opposite. Her legs below the white but dusty slacks were long, slim and alluring. Her slim waist sloped enticingly up to a pair of breasts with sharp nipples that appeared to be boring their way through her white cotton shirt.
Nothing wrong with the girl either physically or personality-wise. Her smile was certainly a promise of full payment for a lift, whether she meant to keep that promise or not.
Therefore, something must have been wrong with Mark. He thought about this in the back of his mind as the girl plopped down in the bucket seat next to him and expelled a big sigh of relief.
"Golly, mister. You're a life-saver!"
"Glad to be of service." Something wrong because this girl did not stir him in the least? Perhaps. Maybe permanent damage to his-to his what? His zest for life? That was as good a phrase as any.
With a quick flicker of memory he went back to the wild, insane Greenwich Village life from which he was fleeing. There was a mental flash of Candy posed obscenely on the bed that last time he'd seen her. His own strange reaction of sudden entrapment; the need to get away quickly as though the very air in the room were poison. His flight.
And the odd vacuum that left where the world once had been.
Love? God no! Of this he was sure. Not love of Candy. That was gone if it had never really been. Self-preservation, rather. A sudden fear and revulsion of the Greenwich Village world of sick sex that had come close to rotting away his soul and spirit...." I said my name is Carol Rice. I-"
"Oh, I'm sorry. Day dreaming, I guess. I'm Mark Hanes." In sudden irritation, he revolted even against the courtesies of normal human contact. Why did he have to give this girl his name? What difference did it make to her? And for his part, he didn't car whether she was Carol Rice or Suzy Schmaltz.
"I'm glad to know you, Mark."
Of course she was. She would have been glad to meet any jerk who came along, got her off her feet and onto her can. "Where are you headed?"
Carol stretched her long sleek legs forward, raised her arms, thrust her breasts forward like like a peddler offering a pair of melons to a customer. "Oh, pretty much anywhere. I lost a job in a restaurant back in a tanktown called Janesville because the owner's wife thought I was too much of a hazard."
"Were you?"
"Maybe."
"Is that your line? Restaurant work?"
"One of my lines."
"Boston. Not Back Bay, ordinary Boston. I'm on my
"Where are you from originally?" way to California-"
"-To get into the movies."
"Not me, mister, I'm not kidding myself." Mark thought that a touch of bitterness came into her voice at this point. "I know my good points and my shortcomings. I've got talent, sure, but men only want private showings-in bedrooms, not on public screens."
"Well, don't look at me," Mark snapped. "I haven't made a pass and I don't intend to."
Maybe he had misjudged the bitterness, Mark thought, because she gave him an impish side glance. "A woman hater, huh?"
"Not at all. I just wanted you to understand that you're under no obligation for this ride, so sit back, relax and enjoy it."
"Well, thanks. That's certainly a novelty in this day and age." Again the side glance. "What's your line?"
"I'm a painter."
"Houses? Barns? People?"
"I've done portrait work. Right now I'm interested in landscapes."
Her defensive hardness melted a little. "No fooling. You really an artist?"
"What's so fantastic about that?"
"Nothing I guess, but I didn't think they existed. I thought a man calling himself an artist was just a gimmick to get a girl in a room with her clothes off."
"That may be another definition of an artist." It was Mark's turn to glance over at her. "I assume the gimmick worked in your case."
"I guess it kind of did," Carol admitted ruefully.
Mark half-smiled in spite of himself. "Did the picture turn out well?"
"That all depends on your point of view. The quote artist unquote was pretty happy. Me-" She made a casually suggestive gesture toward her hip. "-I came out of it pretty sore."
Frankness, or plain vulgarity. It was really no problem to Mark because he didn't care one way or another. The girl's troubles and tribulations were her own. He said nothing and she continued on a different tack.
"If it's scenery you're looking for, you ought to head for some country I passed through about a month ago."
"Where was that?"
"Oh, about two hundred miles south of here and maybe a hundred miles east."
"That's pretty vague."
"I guess it is. I don't keep track of where I happen to be at any given time. But you could find this place all right. It's called Devil's Bend. That's the name of the town, and all around it are valleys and creeks and hills they refer to as the Devil's Bend country."
"There's something special about it?"
"There must be if I'd notice it, and I did. Me-I don't usually pay attention to such things. Desert or tropics, they're all the same to me. But I do remember the Devil's Bend country."
"It might be worth looking into. I'll think about it."
"There's something else there that made me remember it, I guess."
"What's that?"
"Some kind of a cult. Religious I think. When I hit Devil's Bend-the town-their sheriff or constable or whatever he was, accused me of being a member of the cult. He wanted to know if I'd escaped."
"Escaped? Good lord! What is it? A prison colony?"
"I can't say. I worked in a restaurant in Devil's Bend for three days to get money to move on and I heard a little about it but I didn't ask questions."
This last seemed curious to Mark. "Why didn't you ask questions if it interested you?"
"I've found from experience that it's best to keep your mouth shut in any strange place. Less chance of getting into trouble that way."
"But you did hear a few things about the cult?"
Mark wondered why he was asking all these questions. He really could not have cared less about this silly cult.
"Everybody in town took it as a joke," Carol said. "Those who weren't plain hostile and contemptuous of it. There was some talk about Purity Day-a kind of highlight with the cult, I guess-and some talk about people called the Kelps."
"Who were the Kelps?"
"I didn't find out much about them except they look like the Martins and the Coys out of the old song."
"Hillbillies? Mountaineers?"
"That was for sure. A couple of them came to town while I was there. They had long dirty beards and wore clothes right out of a Hollywood moonshine movie. They even carried long, funny-looking rifles."
"Maybe they'd make better material for me than the hills and valleys you tell about."
Carol shuddered. "Maybe. Everybody to his own taste. Me-I began to itch when they passed within twenty feet of me...."
The Thunderbird had long since climbed onto the paved highway and miles were spinning away under the tires. "What are your immediate plans?" Mark asked.
Carol shrugged. Then she turned her head and looked him straight in the eye. "One of two things. You can drop me in the next town and I'll scout the restaurants for a job."
"And the other?"
"I'll ride along with you until nightfall and go to a motel with you and pay you off for the lift."
The touch of wistfulness in her voice would have been a compliment to Mark if it had penetrated his preoccupation with his own problems. "Thanks, but I think I'll pass."
"You weren't kidding then?"
"No."
"And you're not going to California?"
"No. Not now at least." He straightened and took a less casual grip on the wheel. "As a matter-of-fact, I think I'll veer off-after I find a town for you-and take a look at that Devil's Bend country. If it's the way you say, I've got a hunch I might find some old mill wheels."
Carol laughed ruefully. "Okay. But it's the first time I've ever been turned down for a mill wheel."
Mark laughed with her. "Maybe there's something Freudian in that."
"Maybe." She ran an unconscious hand down her thigh. "But you certainly would be nice to travel to Los Angeles with."
"You're wrong," Mark said glumly. "I'm afraid I'd be pretty poor company...."
Half an hour later, Mark pulled up at the curb in a clean looking town that appeared-from its activity-that it might be a small city before long.
"How's this?"
"Fine. I'll have a job in an hour. Sure you won't change your mind!"
"Thanks. For a while at least, I'll stick to mill wheels."
They shook hands, Carol got out and waved to him as he pulled away.
Long legged dreamboats who pass in the daytime, he thought, as he headed for a station to gas up....
It was in a strangely empty mood that Mark Hanes reversed direction and drove back out of the town where he'd left Carol Rice. At the gas station, not as definite about looking for mill wheels as he'd sounded, he'd gotten a road map. He went over the map very carefully and sure enough there it was, an area by the name of Devil's Bend. No town marked, but this did not bother him. He was looking for country, not for settlements.
And now, on his way, the past from which he was fleeing suddenly caught up with him in a strangely objective way. New York City, The Village. The preceding six months no doubt had been the most crucial of his life. He'd come from moneyed parents and thus never worried about the key problem ordinary people face-that involved in making a living. His early routine had been a good prep school, four years at Harvard, and after that a year of European travel.
A shakedown cruise, his father had called it. "To get the wildness out of your blood." He'd meant women of course-Mark's fill of women before he came home, settled down and married decently and properly.
But it didn't work that way. Mark found no women who interested him. But in Paris he found what he hoped would be a new career. He gave the idea careful, methodical thought, quietly decided that he wanted to become an artist.
Thus, a law education would go by the boards and his father and mother would be terribly disappointed. They were disappointed. There were some pretty bitter words between father and son, but Mark was as stubborn as his sire and finally his parents threw up their hands.
Mark went into a Greenwich Village studio and immersed himself completely into his new career. To everyone's surprise, he did quite well at it. He had never been self supporting, but this was not necessary because over and above the money his parents gave him he had a sizable inheritance of his own from his grandfather.
He had a vogue among the North Shore set his family belonged to, did several portraits. Also he learned how glamorous his new career made him. One smart young matron asked him to do her in the unde. He learned shortly that this was merely a way to get her clothes off and climb into bed with him.
He accommodated her, but he could have done without it.
As he did others on canvas, he got mild pleasure out of feeling them quiver in his arms, hearing their cries at the climax, feeling their nails claw at his buttocks as it approached and sometimes listening to their spew of filthy words as they searched for release. Their choked: " ... Oh, deeper, darling! Deeper! Harder! Harder! Harder!"
But no woman ever really captured him until Candy came along.
Mark met Candy in a small Village club. She was standing beside a piano singing throatily. He bought her a drink and was excited by the way the candle light made the copper of her hair glitter. She wore a low-cut gown that came just to the upper edge of the nipples on her lush breasts.
He had seen beautiful women before, without becoming greatly excited. Normally he would have walked away from Candy and forgotten her. But somehow they came, after a walk in Washington Square, to his apartment and he asked her in for a drink. Dawn was just breaking over the city, coming in the window; and what happened also was a dawning to Mark.
Just how they reached the bedroom he never knew. But he was keenly aware of what Candy's hot tongue was doing to his ear as he laid her across the bed and kissed her. She had a magic tongue indeed and it was the first time in his life that Mark was not the aggressor in a battle of love. A not-too-greatly enthusiastic aggressor, true. But now he did nothing, Candy did it all.
She removed his tie, her tongue moving down over his cheek to find his mouth. Then, magically, his shirt and undershirt were gone and he was stripped to the waist. Candy's mouth never tired, seeking eagerly the taste of his skin as it ran over, his body.
Candy somehow managed also to undress herself while stripping him naked. Then her sleek head lay on his belly and from that moment on his body recorded new sensations. Candy didn't miss a single square inch of its surface. While her tongue explored him intimately he quivered from head to foot, every muscle responding to this new, shameless method of love making with which he'd heretofore been completely unfamiliar. He was glad Candy could not see his face as her tireless mouth caressed his body.
Little cat-mews of eagerness burst from her throat as she feasted on his body. At last, when she finally reached the ultimate goal he became aware of her body in close proximity to his own. She had gradually positioned herself so that the hot richness of her could not be avoided.
Fire stirred in his loins, a reckless excitment took command. He put his hand against her inner thighs, pressed outward, and her legs gave willingly.
She stopped what she was doing for a moment to whisper, '"Uh, darling! You're wonderful! Your body! Your lovely, lovely man-body! It makes me hungrier by the minute."
Then she went back to thrilling him, tearing at his every nerve, and the reckless feeling took complete command as, with a choked cry, he sought the nameless ecstasy that the pure woman-smell of her had promised.
And it became a magic world for both of them, the intoxicating promise of man and woman turning liquid and flowing into each other to become a part of both of them.
In a frenzy he entered her, his passion a clawing demand of his hand and heart until she writhed and cried, "Oh, harder, love! Hurt me!"
She screamed piercingly, and then it was over....
They lay in each other's arms. Candy's face against his, and her tongue came out to gently lave his cheek. Then she found his mouth and they lay joined thus, neither moving, for an eternity. Until Candy said:
"I love your wonderful body."
"I love yours."
"May I come again tomorrow?"
"Why leave? Why not stay?"
"Is it evil to admit to you that your body is what I want? Does that make me a tramp?"
"I'm glad you did admit it. I think your body is wonderful."
"But you've had lots of women. There are always women ready to love a body like yours."
He'd never before realized sex was so wonderful. It had served him adequately, but no woman before had ever taught him the delights possible from the physical act.
"No woman ever did to me what you do."
"I couldn't do otherwise. When I saw you in the club-when I was singing, I wanted to change my lyrics and sing just to you. I wanted to sing a love song like this:
I want to undress you beautiful man arid take you in my arms. I want to put my tongue on your body and lick the salt of your manhood and make it a part of me. I want to put my tongue to you and taste all of you. I want you. Please take me with you and we will give each other our bodies. "Was that a terrible song to want to sing to you?"
"I think it was a wonderful song." The morning was bright now and Candy shivered. "I don't want to go home, darling. I want to stay here in your arms. I want to sleep for a little while and then wake up and make love to you again."
"I never want you to leave." They slept and he was awakened by her mouth on his body again. Then, in sudden need, viciously and cruelly, he hurled her over on her back, separated her thighs and took her in a frenzy. She whimpered and cried as she clung to him, clawing at his body, her breath hot on his face.
He rose to a new heights of passion and a scream welled out of her throat. Because the room was not sound-proof he snatched a pillow, put it over her face and continued his frenzied attack while she struggled and writhed and her muffled screams came up to him through the pillow. Their bodies pressed together like two taut steel rods, they reached the climax together.
"My God!" he moaned, as he took the pillow off her face and kissed her.
She cried in his arms and went to sleep again. When she awoke it was dark out over Washington Square, But when the club closed he was waiting to bring she had to go back and stand by the piano and sing, her back and they actually ran down the street, so great was their compulsion to be alone together.
He undressed her in his apartment, carried her to bed and put his lips to her breast. She quivered and her back arched as she pressed the nipple into his mouth.
Oh, darling. It was hell being away from you. Take me! Eat me. Hold me! Never let me go!"
As his tongue teased the erect nipple, and the fire arose within her, she turned so that she could apply her own mouth to his body. And again she stoked the hot fire of desire into a dazzling flame, as though it would be the last taste of love they would ever have.
Then they lay in each other's arms and marveled silently at what they alone had found-this magic of man and woman in the heart of Manhattan's uncaring jungle.
They slept and awoke to make love again while life went on around them out in Washington Square....
"We'll be married as soon as your engagement is over," Mark said.
They were having breakfast in Mark's apartment. It was the third week of their acquaintance, most of which had been spent in bed.
"Married?" Candy looked up quickly as though the idea hadn't occurred to her.
"Of course."
"I didn't ask for it."
"Don't you love me?"
"I love you as much as I can love anybody, but-"
"You're saying that you don't, then?"
"I'm not saying that at all, darling. But let me ask you the same question. Do you love me?"
"I think of you night and day. I'm unhappy when you're not around. Isn't that love?"
"Not necessarily. Exactly what do you think of? Be honest now."
"I'll be perfectly honest. I think of having you in bed."
"Couldn't you think that way of any woman?"
"No. It's you I want in bed, not any woman."
"I'm flattered and I'd rather hear you say that than anything in the world. But there's more to marriage than going to bed. Suppose you grow tired of me?"
"I'll chance that."
"But I can't, Mark."
"I don't understand."
"Darling, you must have guessed it by now. I'm a nymphomaniac. Love is my life. Physical love. I can't get enough of it, I'm never filled."
"I think I'm capable of filling your needs."
"If one man only could!" There were tears in her eyes, he got up and took her in his arms. He kissed her and when her hungry mouth found his-when their tongues met and battled in frank, reaching intimacy, it was the same as always.
He carried her off to the bed, stripped her gown off and, as a new variation, she resisted ftim. "No, Mark, no!"
"Yes!"
He threw her savagely on her back and forced her Kicking struggling legs apart. He lowered his body to hers, held her with the sneer weight of him, lunging brutally to gain entrance while she twisted and writhed to prevent him. He succeeded finally, and her eyes bulged from the force of it. She cried once in pain and then the game was over, she clung feverishly to him as he charged her Ike a mad bull, grunting at each prodigious effort to reach further than ever before.
"On, yes!" she cried suddenly. "I'll marry you! I'll marry you! I never want to lose you! Oh, Mark my darling! I love you."
"You're damn right," he said savagely, his passion at its height. "You'll marry me or I'll follow you everywhere you go and rape you whenever I find you. I'll throw you down in the street and rape you in front of everybody."
She was in the rapture of climax. "Yes! Yes!" she panted. "Rape me in front of people. I'll yell and scream but no one will help me.. They'll only watch and let you tear me to pieces...."
A strange romance indeed but the marriage was even stranger. They went to Nassau for a honeymoon and came close to what Candy had asked for in that he took her one afternoon on the white beach with people in sight although probably two far away to realize a man and a woman were making love in public.
Then they returned and Candy finished her engagement at the club because she still wanted a career. Mark went back to his painting, working during the day while she slept, exhausted by his almost superhuman love making. He picked her up at the club each night, brought her home and they went right to bed.
It seemed they could not get enough of each other. When he put his lips to the rearing nipples she held toward him it was always as though for the first time, each coupling seemed a thrilling new adventure....
But then he began to falter. He noticed first that he was always tired-too tired to concentrate on his work. He discarded several half-finished canvases, one after the other.
His hunger was still there, though, and he made every effort to keep on satisfying her. But he began drifting off to sleep, even with her nipples in his mouth or her mouth on his body.
Then, gradually, the sex lure seemed to diminish. Candy sensed it and tried desperately to stir him just as he tried desperately to respond.
Then one night, in the midst of a great effort at love making, he suddenly got up from the bed. "I'm sorry. I can't. I just can't. I have to have a rest." She looked up at him in silence. He dressed, left the apartment, took a long walk and came back two hours later to find her asleep. But the position in which she had dropped off, the placing of her hands, told him that she had found a relief of her own-the only kind a lone woman can find. He picked it up, put it back on the dresser and went to bed.
The next night he did not pick her up at the club. He stayed uptown, came home late and found her asleep again.
But the third night was different. As he entered the apartment-silently so as not to disturb her, he heard sounds of passion from the bedroom. Breath taken in and exhaled in great panting gasps. There were sounds of male grunts punctuating extreme effort, and rhythmic squeakings of the bed.
Then Candy's voice. "Oh, my darling! Love me! Rip me! Tear me! I'm yours! I'm yours!"
Mark walked into the bedroom. They had not turned out the light. He saw the man in the classic love position and it looked ridiculous to him. A naked man lying on a naked woman, humping his body insanely up and down while she went mad under him.
The man was hardly that, a dark-haired youth, the kind he'd often seen hanging around the club. The youth saw him and panicked. He rolled off Candy to the far side of the bed, he stared at Mark with fear in his eyes.
This left Candy in the completely ridiculous position of having violent love made to her by nobody-her legs open, her arms around thin air, eyes shut tight and her head thrown back in an ecstasy of passion.
Suddenly Mark felt like an intruder. He had no right to do this to Candy. So he acted even more ridiculously. He turned toward the door saying, "I'm sorry I intruded. Go on with what you're doing."
As he closed the door after him he heard Candy's cry. "Mark! Mark! Oh, my God!"
He stayed uptown that night, at a strange hotel so she couldn't get in touch with him. He stayed away all the next day, returning to the apartment while-he hoped-Candy was at the club. His hope was justified. He put a check for ten thousand dollars on the table with a note:
Baby:
It's all right, I understand. You were not dishonest, you warned me. I guess a divorce is best. Go to Reno and get it. Settle the details with Sam Archer, my lawyer. He'll be fair. Again, baby, I'm so very, very sorry. I'll be going west immediately, but I'll be back some day. I'll see you around.
Mark.
He'd left New York City the next day, driving west at random; moving as the wind blew, as whim and the highways led him. The one clear thought in his mind was that he suddenly loathed and feared sex as something that had turned to a sickness inside him; a rottenness that might permanently scar him.
Candy? Their love? This did not bother him. What they'd had he remembered as a fever that he must eliminate from his system before his spirit was burned to a crips.
So there he was-seeking a country mentioned casually by a girl he'd picked up on the road. Devil's Bend. The name certainly did not indicate a place of any great beauty. But Mark shrugged inwardly. If it proved a disappointment, he could always move on.
The road spun under his wheels, the going got rougher. Night overtook him and there was no place to sleep except by the roadside. This did not bother him. He pulled over, inflated his rubber mattress and slept. The next morning he bathed in an ice-cold creek, shaved in the hard water, ate two chocolate bars and moved on.
Two hours later he came upon a weary, weather-beaten sign pointed left at an intersection. It read Devil's Bend-20 Mi....
CHAPTER TWO
The Thunderbird's high-pitched purr turned into a low growl as the rutted dirt road suddenly was surrounded by buildings and they were in Devil's Bend; a growl as though the sleek car resented its surrounding and preferred the open road.
Mark did too, for that matter, but he was still interested in the town. It was very small-a community of perhaps five hundred people, he estimated, with no more then half a dozen homes that really justified the term. The other dwelling places were dilapidated, weather-beaten shacks leaning at various angles of weariness and futility.
The balance of the Devil's Bend picture was in character; small, dirty, naked children played in the dust and dirt of the street. Slovenly women sprawled on steps and in squeaking rockers. Equally slovenly men took indolent ease on the benches and steps of the single business street. Had Mark wanted to be polite, he would have described the town as backward, which would have been a term of great tact and understatement.
He moved the Thunderbird forward very slowly, fearful that one of the urchins would suddenly dart into his path. Every eye within range glued itself to this extraordinary arrival and Mark interpreted his welcome as cautious and guarded-not as yet wishing to label it downright hostility.
He turned in beside a dun mule that could not have cared less and stared through the windshield at four lounging men who stared silently back.
Mark opened the door and got out, his movement matched by one of the men-huge, fat, dirty-who got up from what was probably a specially constructed chair and took three heavy steps forward.
"Good morning," Mark said.
"Morning." The return greeting was not spoken unpleasantly, but before giving it, the fat man glanced down at his own shirt upon which a five-pointed star proclaimed him County Sheriff. The gesture was either a warning or the man's own reassurance that the star hadn't been left home on the dresser.
"I'm Mark Hanes. I was just passing through, and-"
"That's a goddam lie."
He blinked and turned his eyes on the slat-thin man still seated who made this observation-made it in such a matter-of-fact, not-necessarily-hostile tone that Mark was definitely thrown off balance.
As he groped for words, the fat man spoke softly but with clear mockery in his voice. "What Fred means, mister, is that nobody just passes through Devil's Bend. The town is so blamed far from nowhere that you almost got to be looking for it. Nobody just passing through would pass anywhere near here."
Mark laughed as a concession to Fred's astuteness. This pleased Fred and he grinned. The village half-wit, possibly, Mark thought.
"As a matter-of-fact, I met a girl who recommended the country to me."
"A girl? I don't rightly remember any-"
"A girl named Carol Rice."
The fat man's mouth sneered openly. "Oh, her. She came in with a drummer that sells Bart's store. She stayed a while, God knows why, and worked for Sis Bennett in her restaurant."
"She was a tramp," Fred observed.
Mark felt heat under his color but saw no sense in defending a girl who was now merely a name and a memory-a lip smacking memory perhaps, for some of these men.
"She told me about the Devil's Bend country, so I looked on a map and came down this way."
"What's your purpose, mister?"
The sheriff's voice was still soft but his mouth shifted a trifle to reveal both suspicion and cruelty. Mark strove to control his annoyance. "The name is Mark Hanes," he repeated. "I'm a painter. I'm looking for scenes that lend themselves well to a brush."
"I'm Able Tate, Sheriff of Devil's Bend County. It's my job to keep the peace. I greet strangers when they come, which ain't very often." He paused to smile, a gesture no doubt meant to show cordiality, but all it did was heighten Mark's certainty that here was a cruel, ruthless man. "Welcome, stranger," Able Tate paid.
"Thank you."
"Staying long?"
"I really don't know. Tell me-can I travel the roads hereabouts in my car or will I have to make hiking trips out into the country?"
Able Tate turned toward his three cohorts as though in silent consultation. The slat-shaped man called Fred feaid, "Ain't many places you could turn that buggy around," and the other two seated savants agreed with solemn nods.
"Fred's right," Able Tate said. "If you want to gamble on meeting a team and wagon and figuring out what to do when it happens, all right."
Mark's logical question was, what happened when two teams met each other. But he held his peace, feeling the men might interpret that as argumentative. "Perhaps I'll risk a little exploration," he said. "And now I wonder if you could recommend a restaurant."
"Ain't but one. Sis Bennett's place. That's where your little friend worked." Able Tate pointed with a thumb and Mark followed it to regard a tumbledown building that looked a peril to life and limb.
"Sis Bennett sets a good table." Fred said, and for some reason Able Tate decided to introduce the man. "Fred Kelp," he said.
As he was turning away, Mark was struck by the tone of respect in Able Tate's words. Or was it fear? Mark paused long enough to say he was glad to know Fred Kelp, and moved off toward the restaurant. As he walked he felt many eyes upon him-a community gaze almost strong enough to lean against....
Sis Bennett proved to be an erect, cold lady of uncertain age, but as thin and dried-up as the bacon she served Mark along with his eggs.
She had little to say before the meal or while Mark was eating, but as he sipped the jet-black brew that passed as coffee, she said, "I hear you knew the girl that stopped off here for a spell and worked for me."
Trying at the moment to ward off strangulation, Mark could only nod as he downed the double-barreled brew.
"No better than she ought to be, if you ask me," Sis Bennett sniffed.
"I wasn't really acquainted with her," Mark said. "She was walking on the road, I gave her a lift."
Sis Bennett may have decided at that moment that Mark was no better than he ought to be, either. "Those leggy huzzies. Flaunting their lures before men. Just like those Jezebels out at Peace Haven."
"Peace Haven?"
"That outrageous cult over in Gilpin Valley where they walk around practically naked."
"I hadn't heard about it," Mark said diffidently. But obviously this was the cult Carol Rice had referred to. "A religious group?"
"That's what they claim," Sis Bennett said with a derisive sniff. "One of their ministers tried to give a street sermon here in Devil's Bend one day and they chased him out in a hurry you can bet. Standing there in that ridiculous white sheet spouting about peace and love and purity."
"Devil's Bend wasn't interested?"
She completely missed the sarcasm in Mark's question. "They sure weren't. Not his brand of love. We got our own ideas of right and wrong here in Devil's Bend."
Mark had enough. Perhaps if he stayed long enough, a possibility he was beginning to doubt, he could buy some outdoor equipment and do his own cooking out in the woods.
"How much do I owe you?"
"Dollar and a quarter," Sis Bennett said acidly.
Mark paid the check and wondered, as he left, what pleasure there was in being eternally sour.
He made a few short sorties into the woods that afternoon, hoping that Constable Tate would not let the town small fry loot his car by way of curiosity.
And he found that Carol Rice, whatever her inclinations and background, had an instinctive eye for beauty.
At one point he forced his way through a thicket and came out on a stone promontory that gave off over a long, lush valley. It was breathtaking. He had never before seen such shades of green. Down the center of the valley a phenomenal haze gave the illusion of a phantom river winding through a bed of richer green. He wondered if he would ever be able to duplicate the coloring.
He stayed on the promontory until sunset and for the first time, in his old life, the traumatic marriage with Candy, the Greenwich Village madness, seemed far away and unreal. Perhaps, he thought, peace of mind was beginning to come.
He returned to the ramshackle town and spent the night on one of Sis Bennett's corn shuck beds. It seemed that in addition to selling bad food she also ran a hotel of sorts--a place equipped even with a lantern to keep you from killing yourself on the way to the outhouse in the dead of moonless nights....
But sunrise the next morning made it all worthwhile. Mark observed it from the window of his room, a blaze of flaming glory that made his hand itch for a brush.
He left without breakfast, got into the car, and pointed it along a winding road that led in the general direction of the valley he'd seen from the promontory.
He discovered as he drove that the men of Devil's Bend had somewhat exaggerated the narrowness of the roads. They were hardly the kind of thoroughfares he would have chosen, but still there were many places to pass.
This seemed hardly necessary, though, because he met no one. At ten o'clock he stopped to empty a spare can of gas into the tank. He made other stops, ready to take out his easel and brushes, but always moving on in the hope of something more interesting. But he encountered not a single person nor even an animal.
Then, his eye wandering, he stopped suddenly and looked down into the valley below where his eyes caught movement. There were forms down there, people obviously, but too far away to even identify as male or female. The movement was such as would indicate running instead of walking and he watched for a while, not really paying much attention.
But a sharp movement of one of the runners focused his attention and he reached back for his binoculars. They were extremely powerful, fine navy binocs, sixteen power and carefully made.
He focused them and brought the scene below to within fifty feet of the car.
And got the shock of his life because three men were chasing a girl.
The girl had been trapped in a comparatively open area, a sort of lawn where only a few bushes broke the flat contour. The girl was young. She could not have been more than twenty, Mark judged. She was indisputably beautiful. Deeply tanned, her long, slim legs flashed as she dodged the outstretched hands of one of the men and came to bay with her back to one of the thicker bushes.
She wore a low-cut blouse and a skirt that had been ripped from hem to waist in two places and was thus little more than pieces of flapping cloth. As she turned and dodged, the torn skirt revealed luscious thighs as richly tanned as the lower part of her legs and the neck and bosom not covered by the skimpy blouse.
Also, one quick twist of her body momentarily uncovered the mark of rich, lush, brunette womanhood that proved her naked under the skirt.
In spite of himself, Mark felt a quick quiver of excitement as the action unfolded.
At that moment, the girl crouched on the alert, for all the world like a beautiful, healthy young animal-Mark was reminded of a graceful doe-trapped by a dog pack.
There was fear in her face, a face as arrestingly beautiful as the exciting body below it; fear and what might have been termed as a kind of resignation.
The three young men who formed Mark's fanciful dog pack were of a cut. Sloppily dressed as had been all the Devil Bend men Mark had seen. Their expressions were also identical. Grins and sneers, looks of lustful anticipation.
As Mark stared, the three moved in closer, the girl crouched to spring away when the time came to try to save herself again.
As Mark scowled through the binocs, realizing the drop from the road was too sharp to go to the girl's aid, one of the men lowered his hand, deepened his leer, and made an incredibly obscene pumping gesture against his body.
The girl's lip twisted in disgust. Then one of the men lunged in and almost got his hands on her. She dodged away and ran to another thick bush and the performance was again to be repeated. But the man was now holding the front half of her skirt and she was naked from the breasts down.
The girl was closer to being taken now. Actually, she had moved into a tighter trap and the three men were so confident that one of them laughed as he tauntingly exposed himself while the other two laughed hugely at the filthy action.
The girl's eyes widened as they saw what the action revealed. Instinctively, she crouched lower, cringed away, and pressed her knees tight together.
This reaction was her downfall because at that moment, one of the men lunged in, got a hand on her arm, and she was lost.
She reacted to this instantly, kicking and clawing like a beautiful wildcat. He got behind her to escape punishment from her finger nails and wrapped his arms around her waist. Grinning, he lifted her and the other two roared with laughter as they moved close from either side and she reared high and kicked out at them in either direction.
The added female charm this revealed made Mark gasp and he thought of Candy's last lustful, alluring, posture there on the bed back in New York.
But Candy was only a passing thought. What was taking place below was immediate and real. The man holding the slim, bronzed brunette carried her to the center of the open area. There, trapped by the three who stood in a circle around her, she was put down, again much like a doe encircled by three watching dogs.
But there was no pleading. Again she stood on the alert, crouched and ready to spring away. Except that now there was no direction in which to go. The circle was too small.
The girl turned slowly seeking a way out. As her back came around to one of the men, he stepped forward, his extended hand moved in a jabbing motion low down, and Mark's mouth dropped open at sight of such callous, cruel, obscene treatment of a helpless girl.
He saw the girl's eyes pop wide and her lips twist into a yelp of pain. He stared as the man followed her stiff-legged, clumsy forward hop-her reaction to the savage indignity. Her body arched from the hips and she reached instinctively backwards to fend off the vicious thrust.
Her action almost incapacitated one of the men from laughter. Obviously he thought this one of the funniest things he had ever seen.
The girl, in three agonized hops, got clear of the man's abusive hand and tried to dodge past the exposed tormentor. In odd clarity, Mark saw her eyes flash down at the obscene exposure as she moved past him.
Instantly the man stopped laughing, caught her in an outstretched arm and carried her, kicking, screaming, and struggling, a few steps backward.
This inadvertently brought him to a low bush which obstructed Mark's view of the place where the man threw the girl heavily to the ground.
Mark stiffened in indignation. Again he looked at the steep descent from the edge of the road into the valley. Perhaps he could make it. With a rope, he would certainly have no trouble.
But to his eternal shame, as he remembered it later, he was held a little longer by the spectacle he was witnessing through his binoculars. The bush was perhaps two feet high and the man had thrown the girl close against it on the other side.
Mark could see the man's head and shoulders and upper torso as he went down, obviously to his knees, over the girl. Her legs came up, spread wide as she kicked at him desperately, but merely flailed the air.
The man must have been holding her arms against the ground as he grinned down at her because the legs continued to thresh, much to the amusement of the other two men who had moved to vantage points and were looking down at the struggle.
Then Mark saw the girl's attacker seize her ankles and push them even wider apart and put forward leverage on them. One of the observers had gone to one knee, now, and was peering behind the bush at what this revealed. His reaction to what he saw was disgusting in that he looked up at the other observer, leered evilly, and licked his lips in appreciation.
Mark could see the girl's feet and lower ankles extending above the top line of the bushes approximately in the same location of her head-or where her head had to be.
Then the man lowered himself upon her and the story could be read in the straining movements of the girl's feet. The man's back could be seen rising and falling in rhythmic movement, the girl's legs straining each time it disappeared.
Mark, the rope and the road edge forgotten, sat staring, half-hypnotized by the even movement of the man's body.
This went on for several minutes, the girl's feet at times strained backward out of sight. The two observers were both hunkered down now, watching the rape closely, their faces a picture of concentrated lust.
Then the action quickened. The man's grip on the girl's ankles loosened and his hands dropped away. But the feet and ankles strained backwards of their own volition.
Mark's subconscious threw another memory picture up into his mind-the time when, drunk and wild, he had locked Candy's legs back over her head and under the rod in the headboard of the bed and then sat back and laughed at her struggles.
A wave of guilt swept him and he banished the picture. At that moment a high-pitched scream from the girl below, the first sound that had reached the high road, signalled an end to that particular attack, and Mark sprang from the car. As he did so, the man arose from behind the bush and staggered away. His place was instantly taken by a second man.
Desperately, Mark dug into the back seat and found the rope he'd brought along on the advice of the travel guide he consulted about routes.
He looked around for a place to attach it and found none. There was only the Thunderbird itself. For a few moments, he considered the risk of leaving the car there in the road. Then the ridiculousness of such a consideration while a girl was being raped down below came to him forcibly and he attached the rope to the axle of the Thunderbird.
From this point on he could pay no attention to the action in the valley below. He was too busy with the steep descent. The wall down which he moved was jagged and dangerous. He got two nasty bruises, at times he had to stop and hang precariously from the rope in order to get his breath.
Finally he reached the bottom and found himself in a thick, wide area of almost impassable undergrowth. He orientated himself and began struggling away from the wall.
The light for clearance took a good ten minutes and he breathed a sigh of relief as he came out of the underbrush and had nothing but open grassland between him and the scene of the savage rape.
But it had taken too long. As he ran into the open park and dodged through the bushes to reach his goal, he saw that the men had finished with their fun and departed.
Only the girl remained.
She lay where they'd left her. When she disappeared behind the bush, she'd been wearing a waist but even that was now gone and she was completely naked.
When she saw Mark, the fear returned and her eyes asked, Have you come to do it to me too?
The look tore at Mark's heart. "It's all right," he said, and he quickly took off his jacket and spread it over her.
She had been cringing away but now, her eyes questioningly upon his, she seemed to relax. Instantly, her nakedness came into her mind and she pulled the lower edge of the jacket down slightly.
"Are you all right?" Mark asked. The words seemed stupid and inane in his own ears. Of course the girl was not all right, any idiot could see that.
But she seemed grateful for his interest or perhaps for the sympathy in his voice and the safety it indicated. She dropped her eyes and as she did so, a bitterness came into them. A bitterness also reflected in her voice as she said, "Don't worry about me, mister. I'll survive. I'm used to it."
Mark stared in consternation. "Used to it! My God-"
Again she looked at him-as though really seeing him for the first time. "You're new around here, aren't you?"
"I was just driving through. My name is Mark Hanes. I'm an artist and I'm looking for something to-"
"To paint?" she cut in. "Why did you come out here to this ugly country?"
"Ugly? I'd hardly say that. Why, it's beautiful. The trees, the hills, the valleys-"
"Maybe it looks that way to you. But I don't think any place is any more beautiful than the people in it."
"You're very beautiful," Mark said and was immediately embarrassed by his own words. They seemed out of place. It was inane, complimenting a girl who had just been cruelly raped.
It seemed to please her however. He noted this as he smiled and covered the awkward situation with a show of briskness. "I'll gather up your clothes," he said. "Then we'll go to Devil's Bend and report this outrage to the sheriff."
"No. We can't do that."
Mark, reaching out to pick up the remnants of her skirt, turned back in a slow double take. "In heaven's name-why not?"
"The Prophet says we must bear persecution in silence."
"Look, I don't know who The Prophet is, but this is hardly persecution. This was a felony. Men are hung for this crime. We'll go to the sheriff."
"He wouldn't do anything."
"What do you mean? Of course he'll do something. You have a witness. I'll identify the men."
"They were Kelps."
"I don't care who they were. I'm only interested in the fact that they're dangerous criminals."
Mark had gathered up her torn clothing and she was dressing after a fashion. "The sheriff hates us. He won't do anything."
Mark had not been able to accept what she'd been saying. Now, realizing she was serious, he forgot about her nudity-forgot everything but the monstrousness of what she was telling him. He did not explode, however. Characteristically, he paused to choose his words and then said, "Let's get this straight. You say that the Sheriff of Devil's Bend Country would refuse to act in the face of a witnessed rape?"
"They were Kelps."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"The Kelps are a big and powerful clan. Sheriff Tate is afraid of them. But that's only one part of it. Sheriff Tate hates Peace Haven. He and the rest of them don't understand us and so they hate us. That's the way it is with some people. They hate what they don't understand."
"That's ridiculous. The law is the law. The sheriff is sworn to uphold it."
She was dressed now, the torn skirt and blouse revealing more of her beautiful body than it hid. But Mark could not have been less interested.
"But none of that matters," she said. "The Prophet forbids us to resist or complain about persecution."
They appeared to be back where they started, so it seemed to Mark like a good time to ask, "By the way, you didn't give me your name."
"Patience White."
"And I assume you're from the place called Peace Haven."
"That's right. I've been there for three years. I have another year to stay."
"You mean you are forced to stay?"
"I signed the paper. It was better than prison."
"There's a lot here I don't understand, but we'll get to that later. What I'm interested in now is reporting a crime." Patience held up a hand, but he dismissed it with a gesture. I'll make the complaint myself." He paused. "I think you said something about being used to it. That means it's happened before?"
"Yes."
"Are you telling me this is a common thing?"
Patience was trying to tie two threads together so that her beautiful breasts would be more adequately covered. "The Prophet says persecution is ever with us."
In exasperation Mark took her by the shoulders, turned her around and looked into her eyes. "This Prophet of yours-whoever he is. Does he actually know that you've been waylaid by this scum. Waylaid and raped?"
"The Disciple knows. He alone speaks with The Prophet on such subjects."
"And who is The Disciple?" Before Patience could answer, Mark again waved his hand. "Oh, don't bother to tell me. I'll find that out in due time. How far are you from Peace Haven?"
"It's two miles down the valley."
"Can I drive you there?"
Patience looked up toward the Thunderbird. "I can get home all right. I'll walk straight down the valley." She looked around. "Where is my basket?"
"I came down here to pick berries. That's why I was so far from Peace Haven."
Mark saw it-a wicker basket with the berries spilled out. He gathered them up and put the basket in her hand. "I think I can find Peace Haven all right after I have a talk with Sheriff Tate."
"I wish you wouldn't. It will do no good."
"There's something wrong with your thinking," Mark said decisively. "I don't usually meddle in other people's affair's but this is different. There's some kind of a deep, festering boil here-that's how this thing impressed me-and somebody's got to stick a knife into it and see what comes out."
"You will only find trouble. All those who resist persecution find grief and trouble."
"That may be," Mark said, "but it looks to me as though you've found grief by not resisting it...."
CHAPTER THREE
As he drove back into Devil's Bend, Mark was almost exalted with his new purpose in life. It was as though finding someone who needed him-whether she realized it or not-gave him a fresh vitality. All this of course he rationalized into rage and indignation.
Along with his anger was the intriguing question what the hell kind of an outfit Peace Haven was. The Prophet-he sounded strictly for the birds. Some sort of a fanatic? And The Disciple? Where did he fit in?
There was also the tantalyzing riddle conjured up by Patience's statement that she had another year at Peace Haven, and that it was better than going to prison.
But as the town of Devil's Bend hove into sight, Mark put these wonderings aside and concentrated his thoughts on Sheriff Able Tate.
He parked in the same spot. The mule was gone, but Able Tate was in his chair. This time, he did not arise. He sat vaguely enthroned. As Mark got out and approached it was, from the chair's position and Tate's oddly regal bulk, like a suppliant approaching a master.
"Evening, Mr. Hanes," Tate said. "Did you pleasure yourself rambling around our woods?"
Before Mark could reply, a third man appeared. He came from between the buildings and Mark got the feeling he'd hiked in from somewhere through the wooded country that pressed hard on the limits of the town.
He was a man of decisive manner-perhaps in his early thirties-and as out of place as Mark in that he wore a clean jacket and neatly pressed slacks. He glanced quickly at Mark-a strange look of intense interest, but only momentary. Then he pointed sharp gray eyes at Able Tate and said, "May I see you for a few moments, Sheriff?" His diction and tone also put him above and beyond the ordinary Devil's Bend citizen. Also, Able Tate's elusive aura of mastery vanished as he heaved up out of his chair and walked down the street with the gray-eyed man.
Mark watched. The man spoke sharply and decisively. Able Tate listened. Obviously on the defensive in .the conversation, he shrugged his shoulders and gestured with fat hands in a manner of one who would have liked to do whatever it was the other wanted, but was helpless.
Both Tate and the stranger glanced Mark's way several times during the exchange of words. Perhaps, Mark decided, he was not necessarily the subject of the conversation, but he somehow abutted on whatever made up the agenda.
After a few more shrugs and protestations of helplessness on Tate's part, the gray-eyed man turned abruptly and disappeared between two buildings, going off pretty much in the direction he had come.
Tate returned slowly to his chair. He sat down and turned his attention to Mark, but not again quite capturing the aura of mastery which his visitor had destroyed.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Hanes?"
"I've come to lodge a complaint against three men who attacked a girl a few miles down the valley this afternoon."
"How far down?" Tate asked.
"Perhaps ten miles, I'd say."
"No further?"
"About ten miles." This was obviously a great disappointment to the sheriff. "Thought maybe it might have been outside Devil's Bend County. Then I could send you over to Sheriff Wonderly at Salem."
"But is was in Devil's Bend County and I've come to you."
"Who's the girl?" Tate asked, but in a tone that revealed a complete previous knowledge of the incident and the principals.
"Her name is Patience White. She's from Peace Haven."
"You were there? You were where the attack took place?"
"I was passing in my car."
"Then you were quite a ways away?" Tate asked hopefully.
"The bluff cuts down sharply at the spot where I stopped. I had some difficulty in getting down-"
"Then you didn't see much?" Tate spoke with the air of a trial lawyer who had scored a decisive point.
"I saw everything."
"But from where you were-that's Blue Hollow Bluff-it's a long ways down to-"
"How do you know where I was?" Tate brought his vast shrug into play. "The way you describe it," he said innocently. "Only place you could have been. I know all the roads hereabouts."
"All right. It was Blue Hollow Bluff. But in my car you'll find a pair of high-power Navy binoculars. I saw the men clearly and I can identify them."
Tate looked at Mark after the manner of a father gently shaming a son for some transgression. "So you sat there looking through your glasses at three men attacking a helpless girl?"
"I did nothing of the sort! I-"
"That's what you said."
Choking anger crowded Mark's throat. He'd come to accuse and found himself on the defensive. "Look here. It wasn't at all like you're trying to make it. I went down the bluff and got to the girl as soon as possible. She'd been savagely assaulted."
"But the men weren't there?"
"They had time to escape."
"What did they look like?" Obviously Tate knew already or didn't care a damn.
"One was tall and thin. As a matter-of-fact he resembled the thin gentleman I met here yesterday.
"Fred Kelp?"
An association dawned on Mark and he was annoyed that he'd been so slow. Kelp. He'd heard the name prior to Tate's introduction of the beanpole. Carol Rice had mentioned the name in connection with the Devil's Bend country when she'd spoken of it.
And even when Patience called the Kelps a powerful clan, his recollection still did not function.
"If you're claiming it was Fred," Tate exclaimed eagerly, "Your story don't hold water. Fred was right there in that chair all afternoon."
"I said he looked like the man. A family resemblance perhaps. Just who are the Kelps?"
"They're a big force in these parts, if you want to know."
"I heard them spoken of as a clan. I suppose that means there are a great many of them."
"A right smart bunch when you come right down to it. Brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins. Yeah, the Kelps kind of dominate this Devil's Bend country."
"That's very interesting. But let's get back to the case in hand. When can you bring the men in so that I can identify them?"
"Look, mister. Ain't you taking quite a bit on yourself? It's the girl you say was attacked. What's your sudden interest?"
"The interest any decent man would have to see justice done."
"Seems to me the girl's the one to make the complaint."
"You just don't want to arrest a Kelp, do you?"
"Ain't had no proof yet that a Kelp done any wrong."
"I'm ready to sign a complaint to the effect that three men, one of whom greatly resembled Fred Kelp, savagely attacked a girl named Patience White from Peace Haven. I'm not saying he was a Kelp. I'm saying an investigation is in order."
"I'd nave to have that complaint from the injured party, mister."
"Suppose she refuses to make one?"
Able Tate turned his fat, ham-like hands palms up. "Then there's nothing I can do."
"But there's something I can do," Mark said hotly. "I'm well able and willing to go to the State Police, and if need be to the Governor of the state."
Able Tate's encased eye narrowed even further.
There was first what Mark interpreted as a flash of fear. Then anger overshadowed and Tate bellowed: "Listen here, mister, I'd advise you to keep your goddam nose out of other people's business. You go around stirring up trouble you're going to get trouble. You come here to daub color on canvas, you go ahead and daub-no-body'll bother you. But start talking big and making complaints about what's none of your business and things might thicken up a little."
Exactly what might happen to me?" Mark asked.
"You insult the Kelps and a broken skull might happen to you."
"You are afraid of them, aren't you?"
"I said mind your own goddam business!"
"You won't accept my complaint then?"
"You're damned right I won't. You got no grounds for a complaint."
It was Mark's turn to shrug. "All right. I guess that's that."
He turned and went back to his car. As he switched on the ignition, Tate took two steps forward. "Where you going?" Somewhere deep behind the words was desperation, but he covered it well with hostility.
Mark enjoyed this minor triumph. "To see the governor maybe."
"I wasn't fooling, mister. I meant what I said."
"Then I guess we both meant what we said." Mark gunned the motor and drove off....
Half a mile down the road-a narrow dirt strip between banks of thick trees-Mark was intercepted. He saw the man in plenty of time to decide whether to stop or not. Short, heavy-set, the man smoked a pipe. While not dressed like the gray-eyed stranger, he was still set apart by his clothing. He wore knickers that were somewhat out of date-the kind Bobby Jones wore when he ruled the golfing world. His hat would not have been out of place on Sherlock Holmes, and his pipe was of the short, thick bull-dog type.
Mark braked the Thunderbird; not through bravery, because if the man had been a hillbilly he was quite sure he would have run him down or made him jump. But the man who stood in the road, one hand lifted, did not seem dangerous.
Mark eyed him with no friendliness. "What can I do for you?"
"The man walked around beside the car. He took his pipe out of his mouth. "It's what I might be able to do for you, friend."
"I'm listening."
"Perhaps introductions are in order. I'm Dr. Sanders-Frank Sanders."
"Glad to know you. I'm Mark Hanes."
"I know. You're not exactly obscure against the Devil's Bend background." He glanced at the bucket seat next to Mark. "Mind if I climb in and rest my feet?"
"Please do," Mark said politely.
"Thanks." Sanders made a production out of it. Puffing a little unnecessarly, Mark thought, he dropped down on the cushions and said, "Overtaxed myself a little, I guess. While you were having it out with Tate, I hiked down the road to catch you. Figured that this far away we'd be undisturbed."
"What did you want to talk to me about?"
Sanders had clear, blue eyes and a sensitive, thoughtful cast to his face. The blue eyes smiled slightly. "Aren't you a little curious as to where I fit into this picture?"
"Frankly, I was wondering."
"I'm the Devil's Bend doctor. The old general practitioner. I tend their ailments-jolly them through their traumas-the usual thing."
"Then you must be completely familiar with things around here that I'm aware of only dimly."
"But your damned well going to find out about them-right?"
"Right."
"I may be of service in that area."
"Okay-you'll fund me pretty blunt. Today I saw a girl ravished by three men. The girl refused to complain. I took it on myself to protest officially-"
"And you didn't get to the wickets."
"I didn't even foul off a pitch."
Sanders laughed and yet there was no indication, thereby, that he was dismissing the gravity of the situation. "I'm English as you've probably guessed. Cricket's our game, but I get your point."
"Then tell me-one, why does this situation exist? Two, as probably the most responsible man in this area, why haven't you done something about it?"
"Because it's not quite as simple as that."
"Maybe the background isn't. I'm beginning to think there's a pretty rotten mess behind all this. But getting legal justice for outrage is still possible. Or is it?"
"Yes, and no."
Mark felt a surge of annoyance. "We don't seem to communicate. Let's see if I can make it easier with a few questions. The girl who was attacked made a couple of cryptic remarks that confused me. She said she had a year more at Peace Haven and that it was better than being in prison. What did she mean?"
Sanders had been sucking his cold pipe. He took it out of his mouth. "What you're asking me for is a background and an explanation of Peace Haven. That I can give you. Peace Haven is a religious cult started by a man I personally consider a fanatic-"
"Then why not fight him on that basis and root him out?"
Sander's annoyance was more restrained than Mark's but it was still annoyance. "Old man-why not file your questions for later asking. Otherwise, we'll get nowhere."
"I'm sorry."
"Quite all right. As I was saying. I consider John Basford a fanatic. If I could eliminate him I would. But I'm only a country doctor and this situation is not surface. It's deeply imbedded in money-a rich, tenacious soil that does not yield its sick, rotten vegetation easily."
"I see."
"Basford is in his middle sixties. A strange case. He came from a fine Boston family and seemed all right until he reached middle age. Then something happened. He got involved in a couple of sex deviation scandals and his lamily paid heavily to get him out. I personally consider him a sex maniac. Back in Boston, after the sex scandals, he went off on a fantastic pseudo-religious tack. And there was even more scandal. Finally, his family could bear it no longer. They read him out as the black sheep and ordered him out of their perimeter. In short, they gave up on him."
"You say it happened suddenly-the beginning."
"From what I can discover. At the dangerous middle-age point."
"Quite an interesting background."
"Isn't it? After that he drifted here and there, expounding a religious theory he cooked up. It's basis is peace through non-resistance. He contends that all injustice of any sort is persecution and to resist even torture and death is a sin."
"A distortion of Ghandi's non-resistance principal."
"Something like that, but I prefer to call it the device of a scoundrel."
Mark reserved comment. Sanders said, "This Bas-ford, incidentally, is a very deceptive fellow. A dual personality beyond all doubt. To meet him-which you aren't likely to do-you would be impressed by his zeal and sincerity. Peace Haven too, has nothing of the slovenly about it. It is kept neat and clean and bright as a new pin. But Basford's other personality-" Sanders shuddered. "-ugh, to put it very plainly."
"As you outline it, he certainly appears to be vulnerable."
"We'll come to that, and other things, in due time. As to your specific questions. Through a structure Basford has set up-unethical judges, greedy politicians, and the like-he has access to men and women accused and convicted of crime." Sanders paused to think a moment. "Also, he has gained 'converts' to his pseudo-religion from ethical and sincere jurists who have' been impressed by his zeal."
"What is the process?" Mark asked.
"After conviction, before sentencing, Basford turns up with an offer to help whatever poor unfortunate is on the docket. Invariably these people-the ones Basford wants to help, are young and attractive."
"And female?"
"In most cases, yes. He enlists some men, but they invariably are a more hardened criminal type. They are used as Acolytes, I believe the term is. Actually, they are jailers."
"I think I get the angle. An attractive young girl is convicted of a felony. Basford shows up. He offers a period of rehabilitation at Peace Haven in lieu of a jail term. The judge, with knowledge of the conspiracy or otherwise, gives the prisoner the choice. Thus is Peace Haven populated."
Sanders, with the air of a man whose job had been completed, sat back and lit his pipe. "That's the gist of it."
"All right," Mark said crisply. "We have the problem. Now what are we going to do about it?"
Sanders turned and eyed him keenly. "You're impetuous, my young friend. You rush in. There are other phases, other angles.
"You're right," Mark said quickly. "I'm listening."
"I expected you to ask about the Kelps."
"They hadn't exactly slipped my mind. I gather they're quite powerful."
"They rule this area. Sheriff Tate, while not a bad fellow personally, is a realist. He owes his soft job to them. If he displeases them, they are strong enough to vote him out next election."
"I suspected something like that. Are they moonshiners?"
"They obtain a great deal of revenue from illicit alcohol."
"Then it's a job for the Federal government."
"Eliminate the whiskey and they would still dominate the county."
"Not if a mob of them went to jail."
Sanders sighed. "Don't think I'm being fatalistic when I say that just can't happen. They have their so-called pigeons lined up to take the rap, as you Americans say. The government has tried to get at them several times before this.
"Are you saying that we're helpless to correct this situation?"
"Nothing of the kind. I'm saying that it's forminable. I'm suggesting that you do nothing about the ravishment case, however callous that may sound. I'm suggesting that you would get nowhere in that direction. Rather, why don't you walk softly for a while? Do not underestimate the perils here. When we move, let's move from strength rather than the weakness of mere indignation."
"That makes sense, I guess," Mark admitted grudingly.
"Of course it does. And now, you should ask yourself whether a stranger who accosted you on the road has any right to your trust and confidence."
"I have been wondering why you're here. You don't look the part of the kindly old country doctor."
Sanders thought that over pensively. "I suppose that's true. I look more like the British Harley Street practitioner, I imagine. But believe me, the cancerous growths I've outlined here are by no means the sum-total of Devil's Bend County. Frankly, I love these people. I feel I belong here whether I look the part or not."
"Then I guess I'll have to take you on face value," Mark said. "I'm more inclined to like and trust you than otherwise."
"Thank you. Let's say that I'm innocent until proven guilty."
Mark was surprised at how he'd warmed to the Englishman. "Both a British and American concept," he said. "I-" Quite suddenly he stopped and frowned.
"Something wrong?"
"No. Just a weakness of mine. A wigging feeling that I've missed something-some connection. You said something a little while ago that I should have picked up as having a meaning."
"I don't quite follow you, old man."
Mark smiled. "Actually there's no reason why you should. As I said, an annoying personal failing."
This explanation apparently was satisfactory to Sanders. He stared at his ugly little bull dog pipe and said, "By way of meriting your trust, I'm going to show you something I came upon not long ago. It's a short walk from here. Would you let me impose on you a little farther?"
"It's no imposition, I assure you."
They got out of the car and walked for perhaps five minutes. Then Sanders turned abruptly and said, "There's quite another kind of traffic going on in Devil's Bend County. A product somewhat different from moonshine is being sold. Just there-" Sanders pointed. "-behind that bush, you'll find the entrance to a natural cave that being used as a warehouse. I came upon it somewhat by accident. I'll explain how later. But I'd like to have you take a look for yourself."
Mark took several steps in the direction Sanders had pointed. He stopped when he realized Sanders hadn't moved. The latter was busy tamping tobacco into his pipe. "I'll have to ask you to go in alone, old man. I just haven't got the stomach for it on a fine day like this."
He turned away and studied the sky through a break in the trees. Mark was on the point of further inquiry. Then he also turned and walked toward the bush Sanders had indicated.
The cave entrance was ingeniously covered. Mark had to stoop only slightly to enter, yet it would have been virtually impossible to find by accident. There was something like a small anteroom where outside light penetrated, and Mark saw a lantern hanging from a peg. He lit it and pushed on in.
The interior of the cave was rock-walled, dry and quite large. Holding the lamp over his head, Mark peered around and was somewhat disappointed. He had no idea what he would find, but the orderly stacks of cartons lining the walls and filling a natural table of rock against the rear wall did not look particularly dangerous. He lifted the lid from one of the boxes. Still nothing to excite him. A box packed tightly with small packages wrapped neatly in white paper. He set the lantern down and opened one of the packages. His eyes widened. The package consisted of a stack of photographs; a posed picture of two naked girls. Their position and the action the camera had caught were absolutely obscene.
Mark was stunned. The pictures themselves, while disgusting, would not necessarily have brought on this shock. It was sheer consternation at what he'd found that almost floored him. Pornography in a cave amid a setting of such natural beauty seemed to add the heinousness of the cave's contents.
He opened several more packs and found variations of the original filthy concept. One photograph was of five girls forming an incredible human structure of sheer perversion.
Mark re wrapped the photos and put the box back. Then he checked others until the task wearied him and brought him, at one point, close to physical nausea.
The cave was a warehouse for such an incredible variety of photographed rottenness that even after verifying it with his own eyes Mark could hardly believe it. There was something here to cater to every type and shading of sexual aberration. Nothing had been overlooked. Those who gloried in sadism would have been held enthralled by what some sick mind conceived in the way of inflicting sexual pain and indignity upon helpless girls. One series of photos showed only the face of the girl being tortured. But whoever took them had caught a panorama of expressions that could not help but delight the sick minds of those who revel in visualizing their own obscenity from facial expression. There was wide-eyed surprise; facially demonstrated protest; an open-mouthed scream; teeth gritted against pain; tears and pleading; and finally, slack mouth exhaustion which ended the series and would indicate to the satisfaction of those who gloat on such cruelty that the girl could take no more.
The catalogue of the cave's contents ran from the grossest, most vulgar and obscene displays to the most subtle suggestions imaginable.
After stifling a temptation to set a match to the place, Mark pushed his way out into the small, dimly lit anteroom. He opened the lantern to blow it out, and even as the flame vanished he realized that a form darker than its surroundings had been crouched just at the lip of the inner entrance and beyond his range of direct vision. He whirled around but it was too late. A weight crashed down on his head. The darkness became complete....
Mark came to with no sense of elapsed time. But when he struggled to his feet, and noted the location of the sun, he estimated that perhaps an hour had passed. He'd been lying beside his car, still parked where he left it. He spat dust out of his mouth and cursed the deceitful Dr. Sanders for decidedly unprofessional conduct.
But as he touched the lump on his head, his inherent sense of fair play returned and he realized he might be doing the doctor an injustice. He had no proof as to who his assailant had been. Perhaps Sanders also had met with violence. Mark looked around, there were no other bodies strewn about.
He turned toward the car and stopped short. He frowned. There was something wrong. For a few moments, he could not put his finger on it.
Then he realized that the car had been moved.
He looked around, studying the shaps and contours, of the immediate area. No doubt about it, this was not the same place at which he'd stopped on Dr. Sander's signal. This realization was tantalizing as he had no proof other than his own feeling of certainty. He could not actually define any change in the setting-for miles the road was a monotonous meandering strip of brown between two walls of green. In fact, he could not have again identified the original spot. Still, he knew the car had been moved.
Painfully he got behind the wheel, but did not immediately start the motor. He sat there pondering instead, the significance of the attack on him. The reason seemed so obvious that he was suspicious of it at first. Dr. Sanders had shown him a secret someone didn't want him to know about. Therefore, he'd been slugged and moved. And now, he realized, he could not again find the cave no matter how hard he tried.
This he accepted. But it struck him also that whoever engineered the attack was intelligent enough to know that his mere removal to another spot on the road would be sufficient. This convinced him that no ordinary hillbilly was at the bottom of the puzzle. It didn't identify the mystery man but it certainly narrowed the field.
Another angle occurred to him. Sanders knew of the cave's location, and Sanders could not have been fooled by waking up in another part of the forest. Had he been done away with?
Somehow, Mark doubted this. Sanders had vanished for reasons of his own. Or he had been taken away by force.
Mark debated his next step. He could go back to Devil's Bend and file another complaint. But if Sheriff Tate refused to move on an outrage against a girl, he'd hardly be likely to have a trauma over a lump on Mark's head.
Mark started the motor and drove slowly on down the road. Peace Haven, that seemed his logical goal. After all he still had his head, even though it was decorated with a painful lump. Perhaps he ought to be thankful for that and go ahead as though nothing had happened. Actually, there was nothing else he could do....
As he drove on down the valley, Mark pondered the significance of the pornographic storehouse back in the woods. What did it mean? He was somehow sure that the Kelps had nothing to do with it. They might make moonshine. They might rape and ravish helpless girls and corrupt a county. But making money from the sale of pornography just wasn't their dish of tea. They wouldn't have the outlet for the stuff in the first place. Such traffic required expert, self-effacing salesmanship. Whoever master-minded it possessed the ability to come and go under the protection of some obvious masquerade. An apparently innocent profession or trade that allowed movement would be the key. A salesman, perhaps, of an accepted commodity.
Mark remembered that a grocery salesman had come to Devil's Bend. He'd given Carol Rice a lift into the strange town. Could he be the mysterious smut peddler? Somehow, Mark doubted it. He was reaching too far.
He gave off thus wondering and turned his mind to other aspects of the filthy cache. The creation thereof. Whoever created the hideous pile of filth had access to a great many desirable women. Where were these women? The answer to that seemed self-apparent.
At Peace Haven.
All right. What new light did that throw on things? None, really. Doctor Sanders said that John Basford, the self-styled Prophet, was a vicious sex deviate. Actually, the cave and its contents at least tended to buttress Sander's sory and prove he doctor's sincerity.
But above all, it certainly made Peace Haven a place of singular interest to a visitor....
Mark reached the entrance about half an hours later. It was a rustic gate with a small, unpretentious sign hanging from its ridgepole: Peace Haven. That was all. You could take it or leave it.
Mark pulled up to the gate and waited. When passage of time proved that he wasn't going away until he'd seen somebody, a huge brute of a man with a scowl and a beard came through the gate and approached the car.
The man looked forminable; also big enough and strong enough to pick up both Mark and the Thunderbird and toss them into the brush beside the road. And from his approach, it appeared that he was going to do exactly that. Instead, just as Mark was bracing himself for an attack, the man raised a huge ham of a hand, glared into Mark's face and bellowed. "Peace, brother!"
Before Mark could respond in kind, another man appeared. He was gray-eyed and a shade hostile, but dressed differently now. He wore sandals and a gown that was a cross between a Roma toga and surgical whites. He said, "Come in Mr. Hanes. I've been expecting you...."
CHAPTER FOUR
It occurred to Mark as he climbed out of the Thunderbird that during his whole conversation with Dr. Sanders he'd neglected to ask about the gray-eyed man. Back in Devil's Bend, when he'd first seen him, Mark felt he was somehow connected with Peace Haven. Maybe Dr. Sanders would have gotten around to him later. Mark felt a moment of uneasiness. Perhaps he should have followed through on Sanders-searched for him-made sure he was all right. But he'd felt, and still did, that even in anger they would not have harmed the only doctor in the area.
They? Who were they? He wondered momentarily, and then turned his attention to the gray-eyed man.
"I'm Gaylord Welch," the latter said. "I am The Disciple here at Peace Haven."
The Disciple. Of course. Patience White had mentioned him. Mark extended his hand warily, but Welch ignored it. He looked coldly at Mark and came righj to the point. "As you'll discover," he said, "I don't believe in playing verbal cat and mouse or beating around the bush, Mr. Hanes.
"Nor in ordinary politeness?"
"Call it by whatever name you choose-I suggest you turn around and go back where you came from. You're putting your nose into something that doesn't concern you."
"A helpless girl waylaid and abused most certainly does concern me."
"That is the concern of the Haven."
"So long as we're being frank, I don't think the Haven is doing a very good job in that direction."
"Are you in a position to judge?"
"Perhaps-perhaps not. At any rate, I've come for an audience with your Prophet."
"I'm afraid that's impossible. However, I've been instructed to make you welcome. So you may enter and stay as long as you please."
Welch turned and moved toward the gate. Mark fell into step beside him. The bearded giant pushed the gate open and made a clumsy, thoroughly ridiculous bow as they passed him. Welch ignored the man completely.
"If The Prophet insisted that I be made welcome, why will he not see me?"
"Did I say it was The Prophet's order?"
At this point, Mark got the feeling that Welch caught himself up sharply, as if his dislike for Mark had loosened his tongue beyond the boundaries of safety. But perhaps this was only an illusion.
"This is Peace Haven," Welch said somewhat unnecessarily. "A colony of hope and good will."
The place was deserted so far as Mark could tell. From his vantage point he saw rows of neat log cabins. The walks were wide and clean and the place had been tastefully landscaped. There were neatly-clipped lawns with well-tended flower beds and decorative bushes.
The general plan was circular, the cabins facing a central plaza upon which stood several larger buildings. The one in the exact center was much different than the rest. Obviously a temple of some sort, it was white but from the distance, Mark could not tell whether it was of stone or painted wood.
"A beautiful place," Mark said.
"Thank you," Welch answered, but in a tone that he didn't give a damn whether Mark liked it or not.
"Where is everybody? The Haven looks deserted."
"The faithful are all in the dining hall," Welch said. "The evening meal. Are you hungry?"
Mark could have eaten but he decided not to accept the curt invitation. "No thank you. I don't plan to stay long. If I'm not able to see The Prophet this trip, I'll-"
"The Prophet lives in seclusion. You might as well understand that right now. He grants no audiences."
Mark sensed that Welch was spoiling for an argument; that he was trying deliberately to get under Mark's skin. Perversely, he decided not to accommodate him. Mark said, "Hmmm. I wonder if he'd respond to a supoena?"
Welch's face darkened instantly. He controlled himself with obvious efforts and said, "In every great movement there are the devil's advocates-people who fight good because of their own evil nature. At Peace Haven we are supposed to forgive. I find it difficult, but I have only good will for you."
Mark almost laughed in Welch's face but any reply he formed went unspoken because at that moment the dining hall doors opened and those termed "the faithful" by Welch, filed out. This was an entrancing sight; a stream of beautiful young women clad in gowns that stopped mid-thigh. They wore thonged sandals, their bodies were tanned a rich gold, and while some were more beautiful than others, even the meanest would have been the target of male eyes on any street in the world.
But there was no joy or happiness there, nor-as Mark sensed-any inner peace. There was instead an invisible but potent blanket of sullen resentment. The exit was orderly, the girls moved in various directions single-file. But all eyes were on a half dozen bearded men who superintended the departure from the dining hall. A man stood beside each of the diverging paths that led toward the various cabins and it seemed to Mark that the girls cringed as they passed by.
Then one of the men reached out and took a girl by the arm. He drew her out of the file and waited. Another man made a selection, then a third. When the files had passed, six girls had been selected. As the balance of the faithful moved toward the cabins, all eyes were turned in the direction of the half-dozen girls who now stood in a sullen, silent group.
One of the men, evidently a leader, spoke in tones too low for Mark to catch and four of the men went about their business, the other one accompanying the bevy of girls along with the leader.
They approached one of the central buildings in the same sullen silence. They entered and the door closed.
The whole operation was so fraught with invisible tension that Mark involuntarily expelled a breath when it was over. But if he expected to be enlightened as to the nature of the ceremony he was disappointed because Welch made no reference to it whatever. Welch turned to the right and walked rapidly and Mark had to increase his pace sharply to keep from being left behind. Striding along as though in pent-up anger, Welch turned in abruptly and opened the door to one of the cabins.
"This will be yours for as long as you want to stay."
Mark stepped inside. The place was neat as a pin, tastefully, almost gaily furnished with bright chintz curtains and comfortable looking hooked rugs on a well-waxed floor.
Obviously there was no austerity in the Peace Haven way of life. Mark almost commented on this, but instead said, "Thanks very much." He was beginning to enjoy the discomfort he was causing his guide.
Welch went to the door and pointed. "That building there is the common bath. You'll find all the facilities."
"Thanks again."
"Please stop thanking me," Welch said acidly. "If it had been left to me you wouldn't have gotten past the gate."
He left without another word. Mark checked the room again and then threw himself down on the bed to reassess the situation. To say it was weird seemed an understatement. He'd been ushered into this strange place called Peace Haven by a man who seemed to be authority but obviously took orders from someone else. The Prophet himself? Perhaps, but then why did The Prophet refuse to see him? And why would he accept a stranger and give him the run of the premises when, if he knew anything at all, he knew that stranger was at best a force of agitation and disruption?
None of it made much sense.
Mark's mind went back to the moment he first saw Patience White being attacked. Much had happened since then; much to dwarf the incident. Mark felt guilty at this thought-almost as though he were being disloyal to the girl. But he cancelled out this guilt by telling himself that until he got to the bottom of a few other things, nothing could be done to avenge the outrage on Patience White. He wondered where Patience was. He hadn't seen her in the lines of girls emerging from the dining room.
Then another angle struck him. All the girls at Peace Haven were in uniform so to speak. But Patience, at the time of the attack, had been wearing quite ordinary clothing. And if this place were what it seemed to be, would they let an inmate-if that was the correct term-wander off several miles to pick berries?
Mark's mind circled the many questions again and again. After a while he wearied of the merry-go-round and remembered that he'd been given the run of the place. Why not take advantage of it?
He went out onto the small lawn that fronted his cabin and stood there a few minutes, half expecting-no matter what Welch said-that one of the bearded men would pop up and order him back into his cabin. But none appeared.
There were girls singly and in groups moving aimlessly about, and Mark sensed himself the center of interest. He was being discussed, eyed, and giggled over until he felt a little uncomfortable. Also, a little hungry.
Wondering about his chances of getting fed, he moved across the lawns to the dining hall. The door was closed but unlocked. Mark entered and saw three long tables apparently already set for breakfast. He looked about uncertainly until a door opened and a blonde girl came out into the main hall.
She wore the short, toga-like costume of Peace Haven but looked a trifle ridiculous in the tall cook's cap she was wearing. Otherwise she left nbthing to be desired. Her legs were long and tanned and shapely. The breasts that were hidden by the loose blouse of the costume lay heavy and enticing against the white cloth.
"You didn't have dinner with the others?" she asked. "I'm afraid I got here a little late."
"If you come into the kitchen I'll get you something."
"You're very kind."
He followed her into a spotless kitchen where she set a place at a small table. "Everything is put away. Would ham and eggs be all right?"
"That would be fine," he said, and hoped they'd turn out better than the last ones he'd had at Sis Bennett's.
The girl worked expertly with her back to Mark. At one point she bent over lithely-from the hips with her knees stiff like a trained model-and the back of the thigh-length skirt came up above her posterior. Underneath she wore a pair of skin-tight panties, quite thin, and under the tautness was a revelation that Mark viewed objectively: the rich, luscious flesh of the girl's buttocks with the panties tight to the crotch, so tight and transparent that the actual flesh was revealed in all is firm, exciting warmth. The soft, blonde badge of lush woman hood formed a cushion that seemed eager to escape its prison.
Then the girl straightened and Mark felt a little guilty at being stirred. Only a short time before, he had found himself wearied and disillusioned by such things.
A few minutes later the girl brought him ham and eggs. As she bent to place them before him, the front of her blouse fell open at the low neck and he saw her smooth, tanned breasts with ample brown nipples on the seats of deeper brown. They hung so invitingly close that the smell of them was in his nostrils.
He thought the girl trembled a little as she set his plate down, but then she drew away and the moment was over. As he picked up his fork, she stood watching. Mark said, "Sorry I didn't introduce myself. I'm Mark Hanes."
"My name is Linda Barnes." She flushed. "I'll get your coffee.
She brought it and again stood by uncertainly. This made him nervous. He smiled at her and asked, "Won't you have a cup of coffee with me?"
As though she'd only waited to be asked, she went to the stove, poured herself a cup and sat down opposite him. She sat complete silence, staring at him.
He smiled again. "This ham is delicious."
Without returning the smile, she replied, "All the food is very good here."
"Peace Haven is a beautiful place."
"I guess it is. I was surprised when you came in. We very seldom have visitors in the daytime."
What did that indicate? The question leaped instantly into Mark's mind. But, perversely, he decided he'd been asking himself too many questions. Maybe he was becoming chronically suspicious. He said, "I wasn't really invited. I just drove up to the gate and Mr. Welch-"
The name seemed to frighten her. "The Disciple," she cut in positively.
"-The Disciple was gracious enough to welcome me. All in all, I find the place overwhelming."
"It's kept very clean," Linda Barnes said, but there was no enthusiasm in her voice.
"Have you been here long?"
"Eighteen months. I have another year."
The same prison-like response as Patience White had given him.
"Do you like it here?"
She shrugged. "It's all right."
He'd hoped to start the girl talking but he was having no success. Now he wondered what to say. "The cabin I'm in is most attractive. Finding such nicely furnished places out here in the deep woods was a real surprise."
"I saw you standing in front of your cabin. I was hoping you'd come over." She had beautiful white teeth and if it had not been for the look of sadness and resignation on her face, it would have been quite lovely.
"You flatter me."
"I was lonely. It gets lonesome in here."
"Do you have to stay here all the time?"
"I leave in two hours and go to the bath house. Then I have to go right to my room. I'm doing penance.
"You certainly don't look like a sinner to me."
"I disobeyed. The man was fat--ugly-" A look of disgust came into her eyes, succeeded immediately by one of fear. She sprang up from the table. "I have to lay napkins," she said. "I'll come back and wash your dishes when you've finished." With that she hurried out into the dining hall and Mark could hear the rustle of paper.
"The man was fat-ugly-" He certainly wasn't an alarmist for wondering about that statement. What on earth was going on in this strange forest refuge? Mark finished his meal and went out into the main hall. Liuud tJarnes was at the far end of one of the tables laying napkins.
"The ham and eggs were excellent," he called.
"You're a wonderful cook."
She went on with what she was doing as she called back.
"You can have more for breakfast if you like."
"It's a date."
He hesitated, wanting to approach her. But when she went on with her work he turned and went out into the plaza.
Darkness had fallen and all the faithful had gone inside. He stood looking at the white shape of the temple-like center building. Three windows glowed yellow, standing out because all else was dark. All except the rear windows of the dining hall. What mysteries could be solved in that white, silent building? He wondered, thought of trying to enter it under the cover of darkness and decided to wait. No use pressing his luck.
As he stood there he heard the sound of an approaching car. He stepped back into deeper shadows and after a while headlights gleamed and the car came through the gate beyond which he'd parked the Thunderbird. He watched its approach. It threaded the circular road and stopped beside a small door in the white building-a door its headlights had previously picked out.
The headlights dimmed and vanished and in the total darkness, Mark heard the shuffle of footsteps. The door opened and several human forms-he missed the actual count-slipped through in single file. Then the door closed.
Mark leaned against the wall of the dining hall and wondered what his next step should be. Earlier it had seemed that a trip to Peace Haven was not only in order but that it would solve many riddles. Perhaps it had been in order, but all he'd done was add many more questions in his own mind.
Was he at a dead end here? Maybe he should go back to Devil's Bend and find out what had happened to Dr. Sanders. As he stood there, Mark felt that he was about the most clumsy and inept investigator since the art of investigation began. He'd started out in a fine froth of indignation-an outraged knights storming around to correct a great evil. Now here he was standing in the dark in the heart of the enemy's camp being ignored. He wasn't bothering or endangering any entrenched evil interests. Nobody was afraid of him. He was being treated with contempt.
This made him mad, but he didn't know exactly what to do about it. He felt suddenly like opening his mouth and yelling, "Just what the hell is going on around here?" But that was silly. So he went back to his cabin, dropped down on the bed and scowled at the ceiling. Tomorrow. That was it, wait until tomorrow and then insist on seeing The Prophet. If they believed in non-violence they certainly wouldn't clobber him. Ihey might throw him out of the place on his ear but he wasn't getting anywhere anyhow.
With this determination in mind, he dozed....
... To awaken later with a sudden feeling of Where am I and what's going on?
He recalled where he was, but nothing was going on. The dead silence was not even broken by the booming of frogs nor the chirping of crickets. He'd heard that on certain nights, when conditions are just right, this phenomenon of utter silence occurs. He got off the bed, yawned, and undressed. He realized he'd been without a bath for some time. The dirt on his legs-dust picked up while he lay unconscious-rolled off his skin under the pressure of his palms. He wondered if he could find the bathhouse in the dark, decided to try. Slipping on his shorts and shoes, he went out into the night.
The bathhouse wasn't hard to find. Its long, squat shape loomed before him. He found the door, opened it and fumbled for the light switch just inside, feeling that in all sanity there had to be one.
But he found instead a soft hand that touched his arm and then drew him inside.
"Don't turn on the light. Please, Mr. Hanes, or an acolyte will come and make me go to my cabin."
"Linda Barnes!"
"Yes. I'd just turned out the light and opened the door when your door opened. I was hoping you'd come here."
"Filthy," Mark muttered in confusion. "Needed a bath."
"I don't care. J don't care at all!"
It was an odd remark, but odder still was the tension in the girl's voice. And far more startling was the manner in which she took his hand and laid it palm down against her breast; pressed it against her breast until the nipple stiffened and rose to kiss his fingers.
"Just a moment-"
"Please, mister! Please! I'm hungry-hungry--can't you feel it? I've been doing penance for such a long time. I need a man! Please!"
She was on her knees with her arms clutched around his legs. She pressed her face and mouth into his body and he felt the hot breath she poured out against his skin, felt the quick intake of breath as she drew him into her nostrils.
'Please, mister!"
Never before had Mark heard a girl beg a man to take her. Even in his wildest sessions with Candy there had been nothing like this. .
"I'll do anything you wish-anything? I want you! Just take me, let this awful fire run out of me!"
"Linda, for heaven's sake-!"
He put his hands under her arms and raised her to her feet, but she pushed her head forward and her hut tongue slid up his body as he raised her. Good God.' He'd fled halfway across the country to escape ono nymphomaniac, and run smack into another!
Her body'was against him now, her breasts hard on nis, her hips grinding and pushing her belly against his loins. Her mouth found his, forced it open and her tongue drove in to find a response from his own.
And there was response. A stone man would have responded, and for all his sex weariness Mark was not a stone man. He drew her to him even harder. He held her face hard against his with one hand while he slid the other down her back and onto the exciting bulge of her buttocks.
Desire welled in him. The lower hand pressed in and then pushed sharply-perhaps in deep-seated protest that women could not let him alone, perhaps with a subconscious desire to punish her while wanting her, wanting her most fiercely by now.
A quickly smothered yelp of pain was his reward. Then, as though afraid she would drive him away, Linda Barnes pressed the soft, lush glory of her womanhood even harder against him. Her tongue, playing frantically in ms ear, withdrew and she whispered; its an right! Do it again! Harder-deeper if you want to! I don't mind. It feels good! Only please love me!"
He picked her up in his arms and she whispered, "No! Let me lead you. There's a rubber pad over here."
So he put her down and she led him to the right until his feet touched the pad. Then she pressed him down and as he came to his knees she swung lithely around, pulled him on top of her. "You're wonderful! You're beautiful!" she exclaimed in a choked whisper. "You beautiful, beautiful man!"
Thoroughly aroused now, Mark wanted to see the beauty he held in his arms. He'd never cared for love in the dark. But as he half-rose, the girl pulled him back. Seemingly aware of what he had in mind she whispered, "No! Please don't! I'll die of shame if I have to look at you. In the dark I can be this way, but in the light-I'd-I'd die!"
"All right, darling," he said in a choked whisper of his own. "All right." Again he took her into his arms.
But she slipped away. "Not yet-please-not yet." She pressed him down on his back and turned her hot, wet body. He felt the touch of her ravening tongue and shivered at the contact, at the shameless, mad need for his flesh. He shivered again, put his mouth upon her body and they lay for a while, quivering, their arms wrapped tight around each other. Somehow, Mark found an affinity with Linda Barnes' need. He understood the pain and shame this wanton act, this begging, had cost her. He realized he was not dealing with a whore, a tramp, that here was a sweet, sensitive girl in the grip of forces too great for her to control.
And he rose to the need. He kissed her very gently. "You're lovely," he said.
She snuggled into his arms like a grateful kitten. For a moment or two her own lips were soft and gentle too. Then she pressed her mouth against his ear and whispered, "I love you. I love you very much. I'll prove how much I love you."
He was decent enough and understanding enough to take these words at their true value, interpreting them in the terms they really represented. "I love you, too, my darling."
With a contented little laugh she turned again into a wanton, and with the justification and permission of that tender moment they took each other like two sex-crazed animals.
Again Linda Barnes' hungry mouth explored his body shamelessly. Deep went her tongue and her fingers, bringing him a pain that was not pain. He replied in kind and felt her body cringe and writhe from the punishment of love.
Then, almost angrily, he threw her on her back, pulled her legs cruelly apart and lowered his weight upon her. He was not gentle now. He was so rough that she cried out in pain against the palm of the hand he pressed over her mouth. Then her cry was transformed into a mumur of words!
"Oh, yes-yes! Now! Now! Oh, now-yes-yes-yes!"
Again the cry and the wild wrenching of her body until nerve and flesh could stand it no longer, nature took pity on them and burned away the core of desire in a flame of pure mutual ecstasy.
And it was over....
Linda Barnes lay in Mark's arms and cried softly. He was hardly aware of her tears for a while, they seemed a part of the exquisitely perfect whole-the pattern of fragile perfection they had just completed.
But now he turned her face in the darkness "Hold it. Take it easy, darling. It wasn't that bad was it?"
"Please don't call me darling," she sobbed.
"Of course not. If you don't want me to."
"It's not that. The word should mean something. It should" not be cheapened by-by this."
"Will you stop it?" he said gently.
"You think I'm a tramp. You think I'm-wanton."
He stilled his urge to laugh. "I don't think anything of the kind." tier hand gently brushed his cheek. "You're wonderful."
"nave it your way, but I'm also very curious. I want to ask you some questions. That is, if you think it's sate. I don't want to Keep you here too long."
She seemed to recall where she-was and he felt her Doay become tense. "The acolyte. He will come. They win punish me."
"men you'd better slip out. You can certainly get past mm in the dark."
She got up and moved away from him and he knew she was gatnering her clothing. Then she returned and her hand tound nis. "Will you come with me?"
"Would it be safe?"
"Safer than here. I don't think the acolyte would enter my cabin. It's against the rules. He'll only flash his light, and we can hear him coming and you could hide...."
They crossed the dark lawns hand in hand. Mark was struck by the unreality of the situation; walking naked, hand in hand, with a naked girl. Unreal!
But the cabin was real enough. And the bed Linda Barnes led him to. They stretched out on its length and Linda Barnes snuggled up to him contentedly, like a child, without passion. "Stay with me-please-for a while."
He was certainly going to stay until he got some answers. Devoutly hoping she had them, he said, "How did you get here, Linda?"
"I stole some money."
"You were in financial trouble?"
"No. If you mean was I framed, I wasn't. I didn't have a sick; mother or a crippled brother or anything like that. I just wanted some pretty clothes and I worked in place where I handled money and I thought I could get away with it."
""I didn't mean to pry."
"You aren't prying. You asked me and I told you. My boss hied a complaint, there was a trial and I got three years."
"Was it a first offense?"
"Yes."
"Then I'd think the sentence was pretty harsh."
"I had it coming, I guess. Anyhow, then The Disciple turned up. He-"
"Welch, that is?"
"Yes."
Mark was struck by the fact that both Patience White and Linda Barnes had been conditioned to speak in terms and titles synonomous with the religious aspects of Peace Haven. Was this a forced conditioning, he wondered? Or did they actually have a basic respect for the cult?
"He turned up from somewhere and talked to me in the judge's private office with the judge there. He told me about Peace Haven, and how nice it was, and what it would do for me. The judge said he would put me on probation if I signed an agreement to stay here for as long as I'd be in jail."
He was very conscious of the warmth and desirability of the body lying so close to his own. One of his hands was on Linda's thigh, and the other on her breast. The breast was placid and soft but he knew that with a little urging, Linda would again respond. He was careful to do nothing in this direction. In fact he would have gotten up and put space between them, but he sensed that the intimacy would be broken and thus their ability to communicate might cut off.
"How has it been, here?" he asked.
"It's a terrible place," she said simply.
He decided to arbitrarily challenge this. "Why, it's a beautiful place. The cabins are neat and modern. You said yourself that the food was good. How could it possibly be as terrible as you say?"
"That's the way they want it to look. Rumors of what it's really like get out and investigators come. They see it the way you do and feel the same way. So there's never any real investigation."
"All right. Exactly what makes it so awful?"
"The girls have-to entertain men. They have to do what men ask them to. Otherwise, they're punished. The girls have to pose for pictures, too. Filthy, dirty stuff."
"Does Welch know about this?"
"How could he help knowing? He runs the place." . "What about The Prophet? I'm sure he wouldn't tolerate-"
"Nobody ever sees The Prophet. I'm not sure there actually is one."
"You've never seen him?"
"Nobody has seen him. At least none of the girls I've ever talked to."
"Who are the men the girls have to entertain?"
"Big shots. Politicians-judges-men like that."
The ramifications of evil hidden behind the neat lawns and cabins of Peace Haven broadened in Mark's mind. "Were you actually faced with a situation in which you refused to have sex relations with a man-did it become a face-to-face matter, or were you asked to do so?"
Mark felt a tensing of the soft body in his arms. "They pushed me into a room and there he was-a fat, hideous man. He grabbed me and I screamed. Nobody came, though, and I fought him off. He threw me on the bed and hurt me terribly. He wanted me to do-something, and he tried to force me but I bit him and ran out of the room. They sent me back to my cabin and then told me I had to do penance."
"Who told you this-Welch?"
"No. The Disciple never speaks to any of us personally. The acolytes relay his messages."
It seemed an odd contrast to Mark that Linda Barnes could be so avid for sex in one situation and fight it so violently in another. But he didn't give the thought much attention. He said; "When I was driving out here the first time, I happened along when three men-hillbillies, from their appearance-were attacking a girl. Do you know Patience White?"
"Yes. But I haven't seen her for a couple of days."
"The three men raped her near a place called Blue Hollow Bluff a few miles from here. She was afraid to say anything and I talked to the Sheriff in Devil's Bend. He would do nothing."
"I haven't heard anything about that. But then I wouldn't hear. I think though, that she might have been sent there."
"Sent there!"
"Yes. The men you saw were probably Kelps. They hate Peace Haven."
"Why?"
"I don't know, they just do. And they're strong enough to make trouble. I think The Disciple buys them off."
"If Patience White was sent to them, it was a weird way to pay blackmail. Why didn't they come here like your judges and politicians."
"I think maybe they're too smart for that. They're afraid of a trick. I know some of the politicians had their pictures taken with the girls."
Blackmail? No doubt about it, a new reason for Peace Haven's invulnerability had come to the surface.
Quickly, Mark recapped his new-found knowledge. Taking what he'd learned as fact, Patience White had been sent to the Kelps as an offering-to stave off harrassment. The girls of Peace Haven were virtually prisoners; they were used as prostitutes and forced to pose for pornography. The cache in the cave was thus linked to the place. While the Disciple Gaylord Welch was definitely in evidence, the Prophet John Basford was pretty much of a phantom. Obviously there was or had been such a person because Dr. Sanders had his background. But did he still exist? And if so, why did he remain completely isolated?
All in all Mark sensed an unknown personality in the mysterious picture, an unknown master who deliberately remained hidden behind the scenes. Welch took orders from this person or these persons, but did so sullenly and resentfully. That meant he was held in line by fear. Therefore, the person was powerful. Mark ticked off names. Sheriff Tate? Fred Kelp? Dr. Sanders?
None of them seemed to fit the role.
He wondered about the pornography. He was unfamiliar with the commercial value of such stuff, but common sense told him there must have been a great deal of money in it if smoothly-working outlets were available.
Again came the nagging feeling that he had missed something; that something he should have taken as significant had gone over his head....
"Are you asleep?" Linda asked.
The words startled Mark. "No-oh, no, I was just thinking." One of his arms was numb from the weight of her body. He drew it out and flexed the muscles. "I think I'd better get back to my own cabin," he said.
"Kiss me first."
He drew her face to his and kissed her but it was a gentle embrace without passion on either side; a strangely satisfying moment of tenderness.
"Thank you for what you did," Linda whispered.
"You're very sweet."
"You're very wonderful...."
Back in his own cabin, he got into bed and stared open eyed at the ceiling for a long time. Then he drifted off to sleep....
CHAPTER FIVE
Mark awoke that morning from a dream of Linda Barnes. This was surprising because he could not remember when he'd last had a dream, and he'd never had any as violently sexual as this one.
He and Linda were in a wild uncharted country, for no reason apparant in the dream, and she was laughing at him. In anger, he threw her into a nearby lake which turned into a swamp and then into dry land. Linda was buried up to her waist. Mark tried to dig her out but the dirt kept filling in and soon he was exhausted. Linda put her arms around him and said, "Now see what you've done. You can never have me again."
Mark tried again to pull her out but it was no use. Then he ran away because of some strange, unexplainable fright. Linda's voice came to him down the wind. "I want you-I want you-and I can never have you again...."
She was of course sharply in his mind as he awoke, and the fright stayed with him. Then reason stepped in and he was wide awake. He went to the window and looked out. The girls of Peace Haven were very much in evidence and Mark understood why the place looked so neat and well kept. They were keeping it so. Tanned golden, looking like background characters out of an old Greek play, they were trimming hedges, cutting grass, sweeping walks. They also were in evidence around the cottages and cabins, washing windows and generally making Peace Haven shine.
Mark dressed and went to the bathhouse. Two girls were scrubbing the brick floor at the far end but he found a shower room unoccupied. He showered and shaved and got out as soon as possible. As he left a tall blonde goddess entered with a bucket in her hand. She smiled, looked Mark over boldly from head to foot as she passed.
He left the bath house and went directly to the dining hall. There were a dozen girls working there. Floors seemed to be a compulsion at Peace Haven, scrubbing them a way of life. And the short skirted girls on their hands and knees made the process attractive. He'd had never seen so many exposed posteriors in his life.
But the girls varied in personality. One luscious little brunette deliberately turned her rear toward him, spread her knees far apart pushed her rump out lewdly and appeared to be daring him to do something about it. He passed her with averted eyes and heard her whisper, "Coward!"
Some of them ignored him completely while others turned away and tried to preserve as much modesty as possible.
He went on into the kitchen where he found Linda alone. She blushed as he entered, and he knew what was going through her mind.
He should of course have sympathized with her and saved her embarrassment by keeping it impersonal. Instead he grinned, winked and said: "We ought to be ashamed of ourselves-but I'm not."
Her blush deepened. "Please-you're being cruel."
"Why am I being cruel. Are you sorry?"
Her eyes turned defiant. "No! I'm not in the least sorry."
"Neither am I. We'll have to do it again sometime."
"You wouldn't-"
"Wouldn't what?"
"Take advantage of me would you?"
"If I got a chance."
"You are cruel."
"That's beside the point. Are you going to give me a chance?"
The blush faded and there was something desperate in her face. "How can I help myself if you stay around here-if I keep seeing you?"
"Do you want me to go away?"
"No."
"Then that's settled. How about some more ham and eggs?"
They were as delicious as before. When he'd finished and was emptying his third cup of coffee he said, "I'm going into Devil's Bend this morning."
She turned quickly and her fright was genuine. "You're not leaving. You will come back."
"If they let me in."
"Please come back. I'd-I'd miss you."
He set his cup down and reached for a napkin. "Linda, do any of the girls ever escape?"
"Escape? You mean run away?"
"Yes. It looks easy enough. There aren't any guards at night. The place is pitch dark."
Linda lowered her voice.' "A few have tried."
"They weren't successful?"
"It's not as easy as it looks. The woods around here are thick and the underbrush is impassable in places. They have a roll call every morning and when a girl is missing they go out with the dogs. They always find them. Then-" Linda shuddered.
"Then-what?"
"Let's not talk about it."
She picked up some dishes and hurried into the kitchen. Mark waited a while but she did not return, so he left the hall and moved toward the exit gate where he'd left the car. There several acolytes watched the progress of the work, breaking up groups that drifted together. They watched Mark with more hostility, he thought, than otherwise. But none of them challenged him. He passed the giant at the gate with a nod and a good morning. Neither was returned.
The Thunderbird was where he'd left it. He turned it around with some difficulty and headed back the way he'd come. As the forest closed in around him he had difficulty in believing he'd ever seen a place called Peace Haven. Did it really exist? In assuring himself that it did, he was thinking mainly of Linda Barnes; of her avid, hungry passion so like Candy's. Candy and Greenwich Village.
Candy? What had happened to her? Where had she gone? So far back into his mind that she too seemed a dream, and The Village a dim-place he once had passed through in another life.
Candy and Linda. So alike, yet so different. Their hunger so alike and yet so different. Candy's so madly frantic but so sick, so sad, so terrifying. Linda's? Madly frantic too, but young in yearning and eagerness. Not sick, but terrifying in its need for fulfillment. Yet clean-so very clean....
Mark drove on and after a while Devil's Bend came in sight.
An urchin wearing a shirt and nothing else directed Mark to a small cottage he'd overlooked earlier. He knocked on the door and was not surprised when Dr. Sanders answered. He found himself annoyed at the calm manner in which the Doctor took his pipe out of his mouth and said, "Oh, Hanes. Come in, old man-come in."
He entered and found what he as an Englishman would have called "comfortable diggings." Sanders waved him into a comfortable overstuffed chair and asked: "A spot of scotch, perhaps?"
Mark ignored the offer as he looked around. "My office is out in back, if that's what your looking for," Sanders said.
"I could have used your services the other afternoon," Mark answered crisply. "I had quite a bump on the head."
Sanders seemed honestly concerned. "Oh, is that so? Let's have a look." He got up, crossed the room and peered at Mark's skull.
"It looks quite all right now." Sanders went back and sat down. He sucked thoughtfully on his pipe. "I suppose it happened when you went into that blasted cave."
"When I came out. i'm not saying it was you there in the shadows, but somebody-"
"Me? Good Lord, man! Why would I hit you on the head?"
"I spent a little time trying to think of a reason."
"I'd have no cause."
"All right then. Let's quit dancing around. I'd like to know what happened."
Sanders lowered his eyes. He shifted uneasily in his chair. "The hubsand of a patient of mine found me and told me his wife was in labor. Of course-"
"Do you expect me to believe that?"
"No-not really, I guess."
Mark got angrily to his feet. "Now listen here. I've had enough of this. I trusted you. I came here willing to listen to a reasonable explanation. But for God's sake, you can't expect me-"
"Of course not, of course not. In plain terms, old man, I was ordered away. So I left. But believe me, I didn't think you'd come to any harm. I didn't think they'd do you bodily violence."
"You were ordered away? By whom?"
"We were being watched. Not being much of a woodsman, I didn't realize this. But that man Welch had a couple of his bully boys on guard."
"They ordered you away? They told you to leave a public place out in the woods and you meekly obeyed?"
"I had to, old man. You see, there's something I-well, something I'm ashamed of."
Disgusted with Sander's evasion, Mark got to his feet. "I guess I'm wasting my time, old man. I'll run along now. If you ever decide to be honest, let me know. Maybe we can talk."
Sanders raised a hand in a gesture of deparation. "Just a minute-please! I-"
Mark waited but Sanders dropped his hand and turned morosely away. Mark went out, letting the door slam behind him.
As he passed through the center of the town, Sheriff Tate got up out of his chair and walked into the street. Mark pulled up, scowling. "What do you want?"
Tate didn't anger. He looked the Thunderbird over with a kind of musing calculation. "People spoiling for trouble usually get it, mister."
"I'm not spoiling for trouble. You stopped me. I asked you what you want. Is that asking for trouble?"
Tate didn't answer directly. "You know there's a law in Devil's Bend that you got to have a man or a boy not less than ten years old walking in front of any automobile on the main street to warn people of the danger?"
Mark didn't laugh. He didn't feel like laughing. "What's the penalty for breaking this law?"
"Just about anything Fred Kelp-he's the J.P. around here you know-about anything Fred Kelp wants to levy. The law's a little vague about that part."
"Anything up to life imprisonment?"
"Just about. Of course, a person might think the penalty too rough but-" Tate smiled and the smile said he might relish inflicting penalties on Mark. "-after all, my job's to enforce the law, not make it."
"Philosophically sound, Sheriff. But I'd like to meet the people who make it legal to rape defenseless girls and illegal to drive down your main street."
Tate's lip jerked spasmodically. A man who could hand it out but couldn't take it, he flared, "Keep it up, Hanes. Just keep it up. Next time, maybe, it won't be just a lump on the head."
So the sheriff knew of the attack in the cave. Satisfied with having gotten under his skin, Mark eased the car on down the street and out of town. As he drove, he wondered about Sheriff Tate and the pornographic storehouse. Obviously he was aware of its existance. Did that make him a partner in whatever rotten operation was involved? Possibly.
It did not occur to Mark to regard Tate as the mysterious Mr. Big. Even less so now, because of the Sheriff's incautious tongue. The power running this clever operation would not let anger jockey him into damaging revelations. In fact, Sheriff Tate now stood out in Mark's mind as a weak link in the invisible chain. He wondered if the master mind realized Tate's stupidity.
He turned his mind from this to wondering what his next move should be. Again came the anger of frustration. There was something terribly vile in this tight little world into which he'd blundered. Rottenness one would expect to finally disintegrate from the weakness of its own unnatural filth.
Yet this dark operation seemed to have a strength behind it and under it-supporting it. A Satan-power of some sort? A negative strength transferred from the devil's dark realms into the hands of some competently evil human?
All that sounded very poetic, Mark realized, but it was about the only way he could grasp the idea in his own mind. Still, poetic or not, the key question loomed. Who was the mysterious Mr. Big? Who was really running this show?
Mark was surprised that he so glibly dismissed The Prophet-John Basford-as a candidate for the sinister role. Without having seen the man or really learned much about him, Mark fitted him into too small a category to be considered a giant of evil.
Why?
Probably, he decided, because he felt The Prophet to be a phantom-a cleverly constructed ghost figurehead who existed only in the minds of those who looked upon him as real. Certainly both Patience White and Linda Barnes believed in his flesh-and-blood existance.
Mark wondered about this, but realized these ponderings were getting him nowhere in his investigation. He smiled wryly and conceded that as a self-appointed sleuth he was a good painter.
A painter! The thought struck him with such force that he involuntarily hit the brake, and the Thunder-bird answered his rudeness by throwing him forward against the wheel. Of course, that was the answer. In fact that was his mistake. To come barging in belligerently, showing his cards to anyone who wanted to know what kind of a hand he held.
That had been stupid. No wonder they'd him in. They were in no danger from a blundering, loudmouthed do-gooder who wasn't using the sense God gave him. All they had to do was keep him in sight, close certain doors to him, and let him run around braying at the moon.
What was that old saying? If you can't lick them, join them? Okay-he would join them after his own fashion....
The Thunderbird had been nibbling away at the distance between Devil's Bend and Peace Haven. Now only a mile or two separated Mark from his destination. He visualized arriving in a few minutes and began formulating his new approach-devising the process whereby he would try to create a new image of himself for Tate, the Kelps, Gaylord Welch and whatever invisible eyes were watching him. He would-
"Mr. Hanes-Mr. Hanes-Mark!"
Mark hit the brake and searched the closely banked trees and bushes for the source of the voice. It was not difficult to locate. A quick thrill went through him as he caught sight of Linda Barnes standing in the semi-shelter of some low bushes.
Managing a calmness he did not feel, Mark pulled the car as far to the side as the road permitted, got out and approached the thick undergrowth. "Good lord, Linda! What are you doing out here?"
Her eyes revealed what she tried to hide in her face. "I-I wanted to see you."
"But you said you were doing penance. Doesn't that mean-"
"That they'll punish me? I suppose so. But I don't care. I got to thinking that maybe you wouldn't come back. I'd have gone clear into Devil's Bend, maybe-I don't know."
He pushed through the bushes and the manner in which they went into a partial embrace-Mark putting his hands on her shoulders and Linda moving close to him-seemed natural and unavoidable.
"All right, darling," he said. "What did you want to see me about-what makes it so important?"
She didn't answer. Taking his hand she turned and they walked back into the woods, threading in and out of the undergrowth until they came to a small, naturally sheltered pocket. It was carpeted with thick, soft grass and reminded Mark vaguely of the spot where the three Kelp men had raped Patience White.
"I found this place," Linda faltered. "-I came through it on the way here-"
He turned her around and looked into her face. "What are you trying to say, Linda. What do you want?"
Her look was stark and pleading. "My God! Don't you know?"
He knew and he felt quick guilt for shaming her with the question. He drew her close and with a quick sob, she raised her mouth to his. At first the kiss was child-timid, child-clumsy. Then, in an instant, her lips became stiff and demanding. They pushed Mark's lips apart, her searching tongue drove frantically between his teeth, forcing them apart. Her body pressed against his and her hips ground hard against his thighs.
She murmured huskily into his mouth. "Oh, God, how I've wanted you. First there was shame. I hated myself for my thoughts, I was disgusted with myself. Then I didn't care-I just had to have you."
If Mark had been in a reflective mood he would have wondered how such a transformation as this could have come about in Linda Barnes overnight. As it was, he didn't care. The consuming heat in Linda was transferred to him and his flesh responded with a heat of its own.
She dropped to her hands and knees, her head hanging, her body trembling, and said, "Undress me-Oh, please undress me!" He did not hesitate.
Going to his knees, he lifted the back of the short Peace Haven skirt. He slipped his fingers under the elastic of the thin panties and drew them down over her quivering buttocks. As the creamy flesh was revealed, inch by inch, his own desire flared in ratio until he was completely avid for her body. She raised each knee, in child-like obediance, and he slipped the panties completely off. Then as he touched her intimately she whirled and came over on her back, her legs up and wantonly spread. "No-not yet-first-please-"
She suited action to the word by coming to her knees and fumbling desperately with his clothing. He helped her, involuntarily turned away. But she pawed at his legs and cried, "Don't, hide from me. Let me see, let me watch. You're so beautiful, darling!"
He stepped back and undressed under her hungry eyes, and did not feel embarrassed. Her eyes carressed his body, ate hungrily at his flesh. "Beautiful-so very beautiful!" she crooned. Leaning forward, she seized him and drew him down on top of her.
"Careful!" He voiced the warning as his knee almost jammed into her soft belly. He caught himself just in time, straddled her as she lay on her back.
She laughed. "It's all right, you can hurt me. From you it wouldn't be a hurt."
Savagely she hooked her hands around his neck and drew his head down, arching her back and pressing her bosom against his face. Her eyes were closed and it was again the gesture of a child as she searched with her nipple for his mouth. When she found it, she quivered, her lips parted, her pink tongue came out in quick, snake-like anticipation, she moaned softly.
The nipple, hard and bold, seemed to have a life of its own as it prodded and carressed Mark's tongue. Her eyes were still closed and her words came thick from her taut throat. "Oh, make me do things, make me do things to you. Anything! Anything you want, darling!"
He was in no shape to wonder at the implications of this plea-whether it had any special implications. In a sudden frenzy of his own he drew her breast into his mouth so she cried out as this sudden violence and pain.
"Oh, yes! Yes! That! Tear it out! Rip it out of me!" Now each individual act of their love-making became blurred into a montage of ecstatic movement. Uninhibited frenzy took over and there were no formal patterns any more. Observed, struggling there in the grass, they would have presented an incredible picture-a merging of the animal blended with human frenzy and inventiveness. These with occassional cries from Linda.
"Oh, yes. That's it-there! It's wonderful!"
"My darling-"
"Harder. Hurt me! Hurt me, lover!"
It ended in exhaustion. Climax merged with climax and unquenched flame until there were no dividing places, and Mark was conscious only of lying exhausted across Linda's body, feeling the heave of her bosom and the pounding of her heart. He turned and slid off, the sweat of their savage love-making moving him off her on the cushion of its slipperiness.
Linda was past reaction now, lying limp, and un-moving, her eyes closed, her mouth open and panting.
It was a little while before he realized that a change Mark lay likewise trying to recover his breath, had come over her, a subtle change of mood but clear enough to be sensed. So he wasn't too surprised when she quietly began to cry.
He cradled her gently in his arms, smoothed the wet hair back off her forehead. "It's all right, baby," he said.
She shivered as though the air had turned cold, didn't seem to hear him or even be aware of his presence. Even as she cling to him she looked off into space and there was a kind of far-away terror in her eyes. Mark's impression was one of wierdness--as though the transformation in Linda had pushed her into the realm of the unreal, the unnatural. Yet there was no basis for this except his instinct
"It was a long time ago," she said.
"A long time ago?"
She did not answer and the feeling of broken communication intensified.
"A long time ago-there were three of them."
"Three of what?"
This time, she answered him.
"Three men. I was at a lake place near the town."
He saw no point in asking what town, or which lake place. He had the feeling she was referring to the town she'd been brought up in.
"What happened?" he asked gently.
She shivered again and the look in her eyes turned even more glassy. "My date got mad at me. He drove away and left me and I had no way to get home."
"The three men took you home?"
"Almost all the way. After that I had to walk."
Mark wondered whether he ought to let her talk or stop her. Evidently some memory had risen from her mind to harrass her. Was it better to let it come out?
"So I went with the three men. It was dark and I knew I shouldn't have but I didn't want to walk all the way home so I went with them and they made me do things."
"Why talk about it? Why not just forget it?"
She didn't seem to hear him. "They made me do terrible things-on my knees, on the floor of the backseat while they laughed and held me. When I stopped doing the-the things, they twisted my arm and slapped me so I had to do them again. It was-terrible."
Mark held her close. "Linda, stop it! Stop thinking about it, stop talking about it."
"Things to the two men in the backseat, and then the man driving came and sat in the back and I had to do it all over again."
"Linda," Mark said sharply. "Stop it!"
But her emotion increased until she was on the verge of hysteria. "Then on the edge of town they threw me out of the car-naked, naked! I didn't have a stitch on! They threw my clothes after me. And-and they'd tied my panties in a knot, my bra in a knot, my dress in knots so I stood there naked in the dark trying to untie them!"
Suddenly Linda burst into wild, uncontrollable sobs. She clung to Mark, sobbing on his chest. He held her tight and said, "It's all right, darling. It's over now, it's ended. Stop torturing yourself with the memory."
"You don't understand."
"I do."
"You don't! The thing is that I liked it. Don't you see? It was the first time I'd ever done those things and as I stood there in the dark the only thought I had was-why don't they come back and make me do these things to them again!"
"Linda!"
She clawed at him in a frenzy of shame. "That's what's so awful. I'm sex-mad, I'm crazy for sex. Anything-anything anybody makes me do-I like! Oh, Mark, I'm a terrible, terrible person! Don't you see? I'm doomed!"
"That's nonsense," he said, shaking her roughly by the shoulders. "There's nothing wrong with sex. Everybody likes it."
"Maybe I'd never have known how much it meant to me if those three men hadn't-"
"We aren't going to talk about it any more. I like sex too. Didn't I just prove it?"
"But you're a man."
Mark laughed in spite of himself. "There's no law against women liking sex too. It would be a pretty bleak world if only men liked it."
Her agitation lessened somewhat and he took the opportunity to lift her briskly to her feet and say, "Now we've had enough of this. We've got to think about getting you back to Peace Haven without anyone seeing us."
"They've already missed me."
"Maybe not. Where would you have been spending the time you've been away?"
"In my cabin. I go to the dining hall at three o'clock."
Mark looked at his watch. "There's half an hour. We can make it. You can slip back the same way you came out."
She seemed hopeful and Mark picked up her panties and held them for her. She put her hands on his shoulders as she lifted first one leg and then the other. He pulled the panties up over her legs and her thighs. As he straightened he found her lips waiting, and he kissed her gently.
"All right, let's go. I'll walk you to the place you came out. Then I'll come back, get the car and drive to the gate."
As they threaded through the woods, Mark felt an uneasiness inside him. Somehow it seemed he had gone through all this before. The circumstances and the approach had been different with Candy, but the result was the same-an entanglement with a nymphomaniac. Was this indicative of his own deep-seated desires? Did he really have a deep attachment to the sick things he'd fled west to escape?
He wondered. Linda had been abused by three men, but subconsciously she had wanted the abuse. Do we all, he wondered, get what we really want, whether we know it or not? Do many of us know what we really want?
He barked his shin again a log and turned his mind to the practical business of following Linda through the thick, treacherous woods....
CHAPTER SIX
Perhaps I owe you an apology," Mark said. "And please apologize to The Prophet for me." He paused to note the reaction on Gaylord Welch. When there was none, he went on. "Or whoever my mysterious benefactor is--the one who extended me a welcome against your better judgement."
Welch was openly suspicious and definitely not in a placating mood. "Differences of opinion at Peace Haven are internal matters. Entirely private."
"Oh well," Mark said cheerfully. "I'll grant you that. But still I want to go on record as being grateful. Allowing me to use Peace Haven as a base is a privilege I won't soon forget. The scenery around here is beautiful."
Still wary, Welch gave a trifle. "I have no objection to having you around. Causing trouble, however, is something else again. We're quite capable of running our own affairs, and Peace Haven."
"I'm sure you are. I should have apologized to you when you assured me the attack on Patience White would be taken care of. I'm afraid you'll have to charge my indignation to a lack of understanding."
Mark wondered if Welch was really swallowing all this glib explanation. Probably he didn't care one way or another. Welch said, "You're quite welcome to use the cabin I assigned to you. Come and go as you please. I wish you success in your painting."
The last statement was almost friendly, and Mark was encouraged to the point of asking another question. "Do you have religious services here at Peace Haven?"
If Welch's defenses had slipped a trifle, they immediately shot back into place. "If you're implying that we are not really a religious organization-"
"I'm implying nothing of the sort. I took that for granted. I just thought I might possibly do some sketches of your chapel. The girls of the Haven are quite attractive. I thought a painting with the religious motif might be effective."
"All such services take place out of doors. Perhaps you would be interested."
"I'm sure I would."
"Our big religious festival is Purity day. That takes place in two weeks. The pageantry and the ceremonies are quite beautiful."
"I'll look forward to it."
"In the meantime, make yourself at home."
When they parted, Mark thought Welch was as close to being affable as a man of his nature could ever get. He returned to the Thunderbird and got his painting equipment out of the trunk; enough of it to make a convincing front.
It was a source of great relief to him that Linda had gotten back safely the previous afternoon. He'd left her at the south boundary of the property and watched with some misgivings as she moved off through the Peace Haven woods. Then he returned to his car and drove to the road entrance. He'd gone immediately to the dining hall and found Linda at her post wearing the ridiculous cook's cap. His relief was such that he almost took her in his arms. But he caught himself in time and asked instead for a cup of tea.
Now, enjoying his newly-confirmed welcome, he went to the dining hall again. He entered the kitchen softly and found Linda bending over, looking into the big brick oven where forty loaves of bread were baked.
In a sudden surge of recklessness, he put his hand on her beautiful rump and manipulated his fingers in a manner which, from a stranger or even a non-intimate friend, would have been insulting.
Linda's squawk of surprise was extremely unlady-like. She straightened up on stiff, wide-spread legs and both hands went instinctively to her posterior in a gesture of defense-to fend of the crude indignity visited on her private parts.
In an odd extension of perversity, from strangely exuberant feelings Mark persisted in his crude and vulgar abuse to a point where she turned and hopped stiff-legged across the floor until she came to the wall and showed every indication of trying to climb it.
Suddenly ashamed of himself, Mark seized her by the shoulders, turned her around and pulled her into his arms. "Darling, I'm a beast. I'm sorry."
"Mark! You. I didn't know who was-"
"It looked so tempting."
"I couldn't see you. I just wanted to get your hand out of-Oh, Mark-darling. If I'd known it was you I'd have stood still and let you-"
He sobered quickly. "Did you think it could possibly have been anyone else?"
"I thought one of the acolytes might have slipped in."
"You mean you're been abused by those hulking slobs?"
"No, but once in a while they corner one of the girls and make her do tricks."
Do tricks. The words, still fresh in his mind from Linda's account of the outrage at the hands of the three men, chilled Mark. One more charge against Peace Haven. A place where girls were also at the mercy of proven criminals who had the power of supervision over them.
"Darling," Mark said. "Again, I'm sorry. But it was me."
She kissed his shyly. "And you have rights. Just blow a whistle next time."
He kissed the tip of her nose. "How about a cup of tea?"
"Sit down. I'll get it for you."
Mark watched her prepare the tea. "Where did you learn to cook, Linda?"
"One of the girls was here with me for the first six months. She taught me. Actually, there isn't much to it. Most of the food comes frozen. Even the bread is frozen in loaves ready to be baked."
"You make a real cute cook."
She had been so serious, so sad during the time he'd known her that when she grinned, lifted the back of her skirt and flipped her rear at him in a saucily lewd gesture, his heart warmed. He grinned and said, "Huh! Just a brazen hussy after all."
"Certainly sir. Any little thing I can do for you while you're drinking your tea?"
"As a matter-of-fact, there is; but somebody might come in." posite him. She propped her chin on her hand and stared at him.
She set the tea before him and then sat down op-He sipped his tea, set it down and said, "Is there some dirt on my face or something?"
"No. I just can't stop looking at you. You're beautiful-sir."
"Thank you, madam."
Then his light mood slipped away. "Linda, what do you think my chances are of getting into the main building?"
"Won't they let you in?"
"I think perhaps they would, but under those circumstances I wouldn't find anything."
"What do you want to find?"
"Linda-I want to tear this place apart. I want to root out the evil that's buried here. I don't know how deep or broad it is, but I sense that Peace Haven is the head of an octupus that has its tentacles all over the state, and maybe even further. I've got a hunch that if the filth in this place is ever uncovered some men in very high places might go to jail."
"Why don't you talk to The Prophet?"
"I don't think there is any Prophet."
"Why that's ridiculous!"
"Is it? Tell me-have you ever seen him?"
"No, but-well, The Prophet never sees anybody."
"Doesn't that seem strange?"
"But he's their holy man, their gods-kind of."
"Holy man! What's holy about this place? It's a prison, isn't it? The girls are abused and nothing's done about it, is there? The so-called faithful have to pose for pornography, don't they?"
Obviously it had never occurred to Linda to doubt the flesh-and-blood existance of the Haven's spiritual head. But Mark's arguments were throwing doubt into her mind.
"But what would be the purpose of claiming he exists, if he doesn't?"
"I don't quite know. I'm just going by what appears to be logical. The reason is one of the things I want to find out, and I think I will if I can slip into the main building at night. There are other things, too. I want to find out who comes here-how important the men are who abuse Peace Haven girls and get away with it. I might find some evidence-some records."
Linda considered. "You might be able to get in through the basement. There are some windows at ground level on the north side, covered by bushes.
"Tonight, I'm going to try."
Concern was mirrored in Linda's eyes. "I wish you wouldn't. It could be dangerous."
"If I can prove there's no Prophet-"
At that moment the kitchen door opened and a bearded, scowling acolyte appeared. Linda sat rigid as he approached the table. Her fear angered Mark-the need of it-the fact that this oaf could walk into the room and frighten her. He scowled back at the slouching, ridiculously white gowned man.
"Well, what is it?"
The acolyte was thrown off-balance by Mark's crisp, unfriendly question. His own scowl faded and he stood there uncertain for a moment.
"Well, speak up. What do you want?"
"The Prophet sent for you. He wants to see you. I'll show you the way...."
It was with mixed feelings that Mark followed the hulking figure of the acolyte to the entrance of the big, white central building and in through the front door. His first premise-believe in the non-existance of The Prophet-was shattered. But he found that this left him no less suspicious than before.
As he followed the acolyte into the big white building the thought came sharply: Why are they letting me stay around here? Prophet, Shmophet, what difference does it make? The logical thing for them to do would be to kick me out. So why am I here?
And again the conviction: There's a master mind someplace behind this layout....
The Prophet was a tall emaciated man with the eyes of a fanatic, eyes that seemed always to be looking through and beyond. The room in which he received Mark was ridiculous-a high-ceilinged, heavily draped, stifling place with a sort of throne set in the middle.
The Prophet sat on the throne wearing a snow-white robe and as he indicated a chair his extended hand glittered with jewels. Mark wanted to laugh. He was also annoyed by the positioning of his chair. It was below the level of the throne and he was forced to look up at The Prophet like a suppliant come to ask a favor.
The Prophet had a beautiful, deep, resonant voice. "Welcome to Peace Haven, my son."
The my son bit cloyed a little but Mark passed it over. "Thank you. It was nice of you to take me in."
"Are you happy here?"
"I'm delighted," Mark said with an evasion he alone was conscious of.
"Have you been treated well?"
"I feel like an honored guest."
"And indeed you are. We want you to feel at home."
"Why?"
The Prophet lost a little of his benign composure. In fact he lost a great deal of it. Blinking at Mark, for a moment he looked like a confused old man in a snow-white robe. I
"I beg your pardon?"
"Why do you want me to feel at home."
"This is our way."
"Then I must apologize for my question. Perhaps I have lived in the cynical outer world too long. It has become instinctive with me, whenever anyone is inordinately nice to me, to look for an angle."
"You need seek no ulterior motive here. Peace is what me Haven stands for. We seek peace, we live peace."
"Your Haven is a most interesting place. May I ask a few questions?"
"Please do."
"Thank you. Do you have any followers who came to the Haven of their own free will?"
"All of the faithful come of their own free will."
"Technically speaking, I suppose that's true. But I understand the Haven is offered as an alternative to going to jail."
"That's true, but if you are suggesting that this is coersion, we disagree. We feel that these people need help the most, and we make the offer."
"You say these people. But your congregation, if I may say so, consists entirely of females."
"Not entirely."
"I think we may say it does, to all practical purposes."
"We have what we consider a very good reason for that. In this modern day, terrible temptations face women-particularly girls of the age of those to whom we offer the benefits of our Haven. We feel they deserve our help and love."
Mark could see that this was leading nowhere. To get anything of value from The Prophet he would have to look upon him as a hostile witness and question him accordingly. This he felt would surely get him thrown out. The riddle here was whether or not The Prophet had been kept in the dark as to what really went on at Peace Haven or whether he had full knowledge of it.
"I'm sure," Mark said, "that you have a right to these opinions. Actually, it's of little importance to me. My interest lies in my art. I want to paint and this is a wonderful place to capture beauty.
The Prophet warmed perceptibly. "Then by all means, paint. If there is any way I can help you, please send word."
"Thank you."
The interview was over. Mark rose from his chair, bowed slightly and turned toward the door. He went through the heavy curtains that cut off the audience chamber and, with no acolyte in sight, moved down the corridor. But he did not take the exit. Instead, without giving it any conscious thought, acting entirely on impulse, he tried the knob on a door he had noted on the way in. The door was only a few steps from the entrance to the audience room. It opened and he stepped quickly inside.
He was at the head of a flight of stairs, dimly lighted by a small window high in the wall. He descended the steps and discovered another passageway running horizontally along the length of the building. Mark moved forward. Somewhat out of his element, his nerves were tight, his senses alert. The faint cry of a woman jerked him to rigid attention.
He stood there for a few moments trying to locate the sound. It came again, more faintly, more hopelessly, and he moved on down the corridor until he came to the right door. He stood there for a few moments, not knowing quite what to do. Open the door and barge right in? That might be risky, touch off an alarm.
He turned to the next door on the left, listened a moment with his ear against the panel, then went in. The room was dark and he groped around after he shut the door behind him-not knowing quite why he had gone in there except that he was afraid to remain exposed in the corridor any longer.
He heard muffled sounds in the room next door, felt his way to the wall and found cloth in his hands. A drape. He pulled the drape aside. Light flooded the room. There was a window in the wall; a series of windows, he discovered later.
He closed the drape quickly, fearful that his presence would be revealed. In the quick flash of vision, he had seen three women in the next room.
A little cautious experimentation showed him that the window were really a one-way mirror and he was safe from discovery. Obviously, the wall had been constructed for exactly what he was doing-spying upon others.
He pulled the drape back and studied the three occupants of the room. They ranged in age from possibly eighteen to the middle thirties. The older woman was attractive but rather hard-looking-brittle was probably the word. She radiated a kind of cynicism, almost contempt for the others. Yet when she smiled, a pseudo-softness appeared.
The brunette seemed to be in her twenties. She had no outstanding characteristics except an ill-concealed eagerness. The other girl was perhaps eighteen, or a little older. She was golden blonde and exceptionally beautiful. Also, she seemed very confused and unhappy.
Mark could not hear what was being said. He suspected that there was a switch somewhere that would bring in the voices of the women. He searched but could not find it, and returned to the window.
The room was furnished with a bed, a dresser, and several carefully placed mirrors, one in the ceiling and one in the wall at the end of the bed. The implications of these did not escape Mark. With a small shudder he recalled the time Candy had put a mirror in the latter position and had taken great pleasure in observing their sexual contortions.
He turned his attention to the tableaux that was being played out in the next room. The older woman used a handkerchief to dry the eyes of the younger girl while the raven-haired third member of the trio sat on the bed and eyed the young blonde with unmistakable hunger. The older woman laid her hand on the blonde girl's shoulder. Indicating the brunette, she spoke persuasively. The blonde looked at the other girl and shrank back.
The effort at persuasion went on for several minutes. Then, still talking, the older woman unbuttoned the blonde's blouse. The girl cringed but did not object. The blouse came off over her smooth, creamy shoulders, the older woman now appeared to croon persuasively. Putting her arm gently around the girl, as though fearing a quick movement would frighten her, she unhooked the brassiere and removed it.
The blonde girl stood naked to the waist. Her breasts were breathtaking. Large and beautifully formed, they were tipped by rich brown nipples that sat in circles of deeper brown. The brunette's hand went out involuntarily, her eyes glued to the breasts, her face aflame with her need for them.
Gently, the older woman unzipped the young girl's skirt. Mark wondered, was the girl not dressed in conventional Peace Haven garb? A logical answer occurred to him. Perhaps she'd just arrived and was being immediately trained in the routine to which she had been assigned. That brought another shocking thought. Men came at night to feast off the helpless girls in Peace Haven. Did women come also? Either that, or some of the girls were used for the pleasure of other Peace Haven inmates.
Now the older woman was gently sliding the blonde's panties down over her thighs. The brunette quivered and looked appealing at the older woman as though to say, I can't wait. The woman ignored her and concentrated on the blonde girl like a trainer attempting to subdue a beautiful leopard, moving slowly and skillfully to keep the animal from breaking the spell of control.
She took the blonde girl's arm and moved her toward the bed. Mark tried to make out words in the vague murmur that came through the wall; he was sure the woman was telling her what pleasure awaited her on the bed. The brunette meanwhile had gotten up, slipped out of her two-piece costume and stood waiting like a greedy child for a box of candy.
The woman gently forced the blonde down on the bed. But here she failed. As the girl turned her head and saw the naked brunette take a step toward her, she threw off the older woman's arm, cried out in protest and ran toward the door. The older woman's gentleness vanished. Losing her patience, she caught the girl roughly by the arm and threw her on the bed.
She gestured with a beckoning movement of her head and the brunette sprang forward. The young blonde fought desperately, but the older woman held her by the wrists. The brunette, her face twisted with carnal hunger, grasped the girl's head in both hands and held it firmly while she pressed her own lips to the ones that tempted her so greatly.
The blonde girl writhed helplessly in the woman's grip. Greedily, the brunette forced her lips apart, drove her tongue deep into her mouth. Instantly she yelped and jerked her head away. She appealed angrily to the older woman, exhibiting her bitten tongue. The woman scowled at the blonde, said something sharply. Tears formed in the young girl's eyes. She closed them in a gesture of despair, the squeezed-out tears running down her cheeks.
In a gesture of animal and carnal greed, the brunette girl licked the tears away. Then, with an evil grin she held her face an inch from that of her victim. She gave an order. The order was not obeyed. The brunette repeated it sharply. The blonde girl slowly opened her mouth for the brunette's kiss. Lying there with her eyes closed, she accepted the hungry exploration of the other's tongue.
Now the brunette fastened her attentions on the lush breasts. The blonde lay rigid to the touch of her mouth and her tongue. Hungrily the brunette satisfied her abnormal appetite on what may well have been virgin flesh. And Mark realized the blonde girl's embarrassment and shame when the nipples rose eagerly under the stimulation of the brunette's educated tongue.
Extending her triumph, the brunette ran her tongue lightly down the blonde girl's body, over her belly, gently tickling the pockets of her taut groin.
As the next target dawned on the blonde, shame overwhelmed her. Again she became the frightened animal, resisting desperately. The older woman twisted her arm cruelly. She cried out in pain.
The brunette caught each of the girl's ankles in her hand, bent her legs outward and upward until she Was helpless in the most obscene and defenseless position possible. The older woman took over one of the legs, giving the brunette the use of one hand. This she put to cruel but effective use, meanwhile watching the blonde's face intently for a reaction.
The reaction came in both face and body. The young girl's mouth opened in a scream, her body arched up hard against the restraints imposed upon her. The brunette applied a rhythmic, pain-producing pressure and the blonde's body responded in a grotesque counter-movement that made the other girl laugh.
Perspiration appeared on the blonde girl's face and body. The brunette, achieving great sadistic enjoyment, was panting, her eyes blazing. Then the older woman spoke a sharp word. Sullenly the brunette moved on to the next phase of the seduction-rape.
The blonde girl's reaction seemed akin to grateful acceptance. The pain having been removed, she took the abnormal love-making as the lesser of two evils. She lay supine and negative.
Until her eyes opened and a questioning look-a mixture of surprise, horror, and fascination appeared on her face. Her body began to quiver. The brunette, noting this, increased the pace of her activity. The blonde girl's eyes opened wide. Her tongue slipped out and began nervously licking her lips. Her eyes half-closed, languidly, she began to surrender to the magic of the brunette's mouth.
The older woman watched critically and impersonally. She saw the response rise in the blonde and smiled in satisfaction.
Now the blonde girl's body was moving in rhythm with the brunette's expert love-making; moving in rhythm until her eyes opened wide and all self-restraint vanished. Helpless now in the grip of rising ecstasy, her mouth opened, her hands went to the brunette's head pressing hard as though unwilling to let it end.
She screamed. The scream was searing, wracking, the outward expression of an ecstasy that took the girl over completely.
The brunette got to her feet and she and the older woman looked down at the quietly weeping blonde girl. They paid her no subjective attention, heir regard was completely objective, as though the blonde girl were an animal.
They were obviously complimenting each other on a job well done and satisfactorily completed. The older woman said something to which the brunette girl responded happily. The brunette's expression was most revealing. It said that she considered herself very good at the job to which she'd been assigned-seducing helpless prospects of abnormal lust.
The older woman now took a Peace Haven costume and tossed it on the bed. She said something and the blonde girl opened her eyes. The other two left. The blonde girl lay motionless for a few moments. Then she got dispiritedly to her feet and donned the garments.
Dazed, stunned, Mark turned from the window. His first thought was of self-recrimination-standing by and watching the girl take abuse; the second time this had happened at Devil's Bend. In the first case, he'd tried to do something about it. This time, he'd stood flat-footed and done nothing.
He tried to rationalize this with the thought that he would have ruined any possible effectiveness he might have achieved by interceding for the girl. But this was scant comfort. He still felt defeated as a man.
He left the room, moved up the hall and now arrived again at the steep, narrow stairway he'd descended. He climbed the stairs slowly and was halfway back to the upper door when he heard voices.
Again he searched. There was no door to open this time, but close examination of the wall revealed a series of small air vents running down vertically with the slant of the stairscase.
He placed an ear close to one of these and the voices came clearly....
"She will be back tomorrow."
Mark recognized the clipped tones of Welch, The Disciple.
"She has been away a long time." This was The Prophet; his voice beyond doubt, but much different now. A whining, petulant tone and timber had replaced the adult, well-modulated manner in which he'd earlier addressed Mark.
"I think she was very foolish," Welch said.
"Who are you to criticise?" The Prophet demanded. "Behind her back, you carp and become nasty. You wouldn't dare question her directly."
Mark visualized the contempt on Welch's face as he said, "Old man-why don't you keep your mouth shut. You've got what you want-women, whisky, idleness. That was what she promised you, and she delivered."
"But she didn't deliver for you, did she?" The Prophet taunted.
"Shut your God-damned mouth or you'll get your teeth knocked out!"
The Prophet chuckled. "You wouldn't dare beat me up now. The bruises wouldn't heal and she'd see them. She'd have you whipped."
There was the sound of a slap and a whimper, and Welch snarled. "I said keep your mouth shut."
"When she gets back-"
Another slap and the sound of a child crying. But it was not a child, it was The Prophet. Now Mark had a clear concept, of the role the old man played in this drama. He obviously was being used by whoever was behind it-used in a capacity which was originally valuable-probably a rallying point around which to originate the Haven, or as a front in the earlier stages of it. But he'd now become a factor of no importance and was merely tolerated. Was he being kept a prisoner? Possibly. No doubt it was thought best to keep him but of sight.
Also, it verified Mark's conviction that there was an unknown person behind the Haven-running it, fronting for it, headling its traffic and operation.
After the last slap, the voices faded as Welch and The Prophet moved farther away. Mark listened for a few moments and then went on up the stairs.
If he were intercepted, Mark decided to brazen it through. After all, he had been given the run of the place, so they could do little more than throw him out if he got caught.
There was no one in sight however, and he walked to the main door. The acolyte posted there nodded civilly enough. He could have no way of knowing that Mark had not just terminated his interview with The Prophet.
Outside, Mark took a deep breath. The air smelled clean, fie looked back at the white building which now had now become a symbol of filth and corruption. And he had a feeling that much worse would be uncovered before the drama was finished.
He crossed the lawn, stopped, and looked around; and again came that feeling of unreality. He had never considered himself particularly mystic, but he sensed something here-a feeling that the controlling mind of Peace Haven was not an ordinary mind-that it had a unique strength. He saw a group of picturesquely clad damsels walking two abreast. There was an aura of docilty about them that was not natural; as though they had submitted to a power they did not understand, but a most potent force nonetheless.
An evil force.
A mind supercharged with madness. But who of all the principals he'd met, possessed such a mind...?
CHAPTER SEVEN
So I admit, old man, that I haven't treated you fairly."
Mark sat on the edge of his bed smoking a cigarette. Dr. Sanders paced the floor of the cabin trying to hide the agitation within him after the manner of a true English gentleman. Mark had planned a painting trip into the hills next day, in the general direction of Kelp territory. He'd gone to sleep with this in mind and been awakened by a tapping on his door sometime later.
The time proved to be 2 a.m., the caller Dr. Sanders. The Englishman backed into the reason for his visit in true English-gentleman fashion. Now, here it was.
"Then I assume you're going to tell me the truth."
"Yes, and ask you to accompany me on a burglering expedition."
"Sounds exciting," Mark said sourly.
"They're holding something over my head," Sanders blurted out.
"Interesting."
Having finally taken the plunge, Sanders seemed to have an easier time of it. "Blackmail-pure and simple."
"Pornographic material?"
"Yes. Difficult as it is to admit, I have had my weak moments."
"Haven't we all?"
"Nice of you, old man. Anyhow, I was up here one evening about a year ago it was. Everything was very nice. Hostesses serving food and drinks-and a mellow atmosphere in general.
"But after I got a few under my belt, the rosy atmosphere prevailed so to speak. One of the nymphs did a dance as I remember. Then Welch disappeared. Also the other two chaps who attended the affair-can't recall their names. I was along with two of the nymphs. A few more drinks and-well, all my inhibitions vanished-"
"Somebody took pictures?"
"Quite."
"How did you find out?"
"I didn't for quite a while. Then later, when I objected to the whip lashes on the backs of one of the girls I was called on to treat, Welch trotted out the pictures and laid it on the line."
"Whip lashes? On one of the girls?"
"Nasty red slashes that made me boil."
Mark considered. "Have you treated many of the girls?"
"You might call me the house physician."
Mark recalled his earlier contact with Sanders. He tried to find discrepancies in his earlier story. "I begin to see it now. Your sense of outrage is as strong as ever, but your fears of personal exposure kept you from being entirely truthful. You were trying to ease me into the picture while still keeping clear yourself."
"That's about the size of it."
"Then showing me the pornography cache was pretty daring on your part."
Sanders shrugged. "I didn't realize they'd be on the alert to that extent.
"I understand ... now about the burglering bit."
"I think I know where they keep the blackmail material."
"In the main building?"
"In a small vault behind Welch's office."
A tangent though struck Mark. "Why do you suppose they keep the pornography in that cave so far from the Haven?"
"Quite simple. It's a commercial product. It requires picking up, delivering, shipment. They don't want all that activity here at the Haven."
This was logical, Mark conceded. His first idea had been that the isolated storage place protected the Haven from implication, even if it were discovered. But that wasn't true. The stuff could be traced back by merely examining it and comparing faces.
"The blackmail material must be in a safe. We could conceivably get to it, but could we open it?"
"I think I know the combination. Several times over the past few months, I've been in Welch's office while he opened the vault. I memorized the turns. If they haven't been changed I can work the combination."
"Do you have free access to the main building?"
"Not at two o'clock in the morning, old man."
"Then you propose we slip in and remove the damaging evidence?"
"Exactly."
Mark made up his mind instantly. "Okay, we'll give it a try."
"Good man!" Sanders said heartily. "Good show."
"We'll wait and see how good a show it is," Mark replied grimly....
One of the small windows Linda had described came up easily after the hook was broken, and both men managed to squeeze in. They dropped to a cement-floored corridor, and Sanders snapped on a pencil flash. It revealed a door and a stairway that gave onto the first floor and Sanders knew where he was.
Then, as he silently indicated a turn to the left, a sudden, high-pitched scream-the scream of a woman-froze them in their tracks. Mark was the first to react. The scream had come from the opposite direction. As he turned, it was repeated. Then the ripping, nerve-tearing sound dwindled off into muffled silence as though the woman had been throttled.
"I'm going to see about this," Mark said. "I'm damned if I'll stand by any longer and-"
Sander grabbed him fratically by the arm. "Hanes-you're out of your mind! Don't spoil everything."
"That's what I told myself yesterday while I watched them abuse another girl. The hell with it! I'm dealing myself in!"
"But Hanes-"
At that moment a door opened farther down the corridor. Both Mark and Sanders instinctively pressed themselves against the wall. A few moments later, a figure appeared. The dim light revealed little by way of detail except that it was a woman or a girl. Also, she seemed exhausted. She stood for a few moments with her head thrown back and an arm across her forehead as her body swayed from either weariness or high emotion.
Then as she turned to move away they saw, with horror, that she was dragging a whip behind her. She moved on down the corridor and disappeared through another doorway.
Mark pulled his arm out of Sander's grasp and followed her as far as the room from which she'd emerged. He stooped, wiped his finger across the floor, and shoved it under Sanders' nose.
"Blood."
"Right you are," Sanders said. He led the way into the room, but Mark was close behind and the sight hit them simultaneously. They froze.
The girl hung naked from an overhead beam, the feet an inch from the floor. Leather thongs cut into her wrists. Her body turned gently, the wrist thongs blending into a single strand fastened to the beam.
Sanders, the physician in him predominating, moved forward instantly but Mark stood flat footed muttering, "My God My God!" The girl's condition was enough to turn the strongest stomach.
She had been mercilessly whipped. The red gashes across her back were netted into a red skein by the little vertical rivulets of blood. The blood, after making its pattern formed a small river in the hollow of her spine and ran down between her graceful buttocks, dripping down her legs to the floor.
But that was not enough. Several vicious lashes had been applied across her breasts and belly. Blood from these had converged into her groin, giving her body a ghastly appearance.
Staring through a complete revolution of the beautiful body, Mark raised his eyes to her face. His eyes widened and the sheer horror of it struck him full blast.
"Linda! What in God's name have they done to you?" He sprang forward.
Sanders, swiftly checking the physical damage, threw a look of annoyance at Mark. "Will you stop your hysterics? It isn't doing her a bit of good. Help me cut her down."
Mark threw his arms around her. "Linda! Say something! Are you still alive?"
Sander pushed him roughly away. "Keep your hands off, man! Do you want to do more damage? She must be handled as gently as possible."
"Sorry," Mark mumbled as he tried desperately to regain some semblance of composure.
"Grasp her by the thighs," Sanders said. "Gently. Lift her now, while I cut the thong-right-that's it."
Mark functioned automatically, disregarding the blood that stained his arms and his shirt. "Baby-" he muttered. "Who did this to you?"
"Shut up!" Sanders said curtly. "This is no time for your blasted emotionalism. Help me carry her to that cot over there."
They moved slowly across the torture chamber, supporting Linda's slashed body as gently as possible.
"Lay her on her stomach-that's it."
Sanders straightened up. His face was cold and grim. He surveyed the damage for a few moments and then turned to Mark. "There's a first aid kit in Welch's office. I'm going to get it. I want you to stay here and keep your emotions in check. There'll be time enough for that sort of thing later. Don't touch her or talk to her, just wait until I get back."
Sanders left the room and Mark's respect for him rose sharply. Whatever he was as a man-weak, uncertain-he more than made up for as a doctor.
Mark bent over the still form of Linda Barnes. He felt his emotions taking over again and turned resolutely away, his mind seething. Who had done this terrible thing? And for what reason?
One of those ungraspable mental things nagged him again-the feeling he'd missed something he should not have missed. To this was now added the feeling that the shadowy form in the hall was someone he knew or had known. But whom? His quick impression had not been clear enough to say. Still, he felt that he should know. There was some chain of logic here that kept escaping him.
Sanders returned with a first aid kit. He walked to the cot as impersonally as a bank teller going to his-cage, and opened the metal case. Without taking his eyes off the job of work that lay before him, he said, "You'd better not watch this. Go over in the corner and smoke a cigarette. When she moans, ignore it."
Mark obeyed and as he took a deep drag off his cigarette he made another concession to Sanders. He was very perceptive. At a glance he'd realized Mark's attachment to the tortured girl, and acted accordingly.
Linda moaned. Mark doubled his fist, pressed it hard against the wall and vowed vengeance. He castigated himself for his earlier timidity. If he had moved resolutely at the time of Patience White's rape,, this might not have happened. No more of this stupid nonsense! Things were going to start happening now, and they would happen fast....
Mark turned at the touch of a hand on his shoulder. Sanders had finished. A little of the grimness had left his face. She'll be all right, old man. Some scars I'm afraid, but there appears to be no injury to any vital organ."
Mark's emotionalism welled up again, in the form of gratitude to Sanders. "Thanks-thanks a lot."
"Don't mention it. And now-let's get on with the business of the evening."
The words came as kind of a shock to Mark. The original business of the evening had gone up in smoke so far as he was concerned. He'd expected interruption at any moment during the last half hour. It seemed incredible that Welch or an acolyte had not come to see to the wounded victim of someone's wrath. Could they be so callous as to allow Linda to hang there indefinitely?
"We'd better forget the blackmail material," he said. "There's too much else to be done. We've got to get out of here and get help."
"Hold it, old man. Just where do you plan to go for help?"
"To the legal authorities-the police-the state troopers."
"What makes you think you'll get any action?"
Wrath boiled up inside Mark. "Look here-are you at it again? Stalling? Blocking me?"
"No," Sanders replied with a heat of his own. "You know damned well I'm not. I've gone too far to back down now. But there's no reason we shouldn't use our heads."
"If you-"
"Shut up and listen. You can claim I'm trying to protect my own skirts in wanting to get my hands on the blackmail material-you've got a perfect right to-but what better weapon could we have if we want action in high places? What would block us in this matter? People frightened to act because of what may be in that vault. So getting the material into our hands is the wisest thing we can do in any case."
Though it irked him to admit it, Mark realized that what Sanders said made sense. "All right. Let's get with it. Where is the place?"
Sanders carefully opened the door. "This way, old man."
"And let's hope they're as callous or stupid around here as they appear to be. Personally, I doubt it."
"We can only try...."
They made Welch's office without trouble, something Mark did not expect to do. As they entered, his sense of unreality heightened. How could these people-with so much to protect-be so careless?
Sanders went to the vault and dropped to his knees. The pencil flash glowed and Mark heard the tumblers in the vault door turn.
Suddenly they heard the sound of approaching footsteps. "This is it," Mark whispered. "What shall we do-jump him as he comes in?"
"He's got to be stopped somehow," Sanders answered. "That's your problem. Get a weapon. Find something-quick."
Marked picked up a standing ash tray. It was heavy and unwieldly, but it would have to dp.
The steps grew louder. Mark crouched beside the door, drew back his cudgel.
But the door did not open. The footsteps clumped on by and diminished. A moment later there came a shout which was answered farther away by a second shout.
"What's going on out there?" Sanders asked.
"I think they're looking for us," Mark said. "They must have spotted us in the other room and then lost track of us when we left."
"None of it seems to make much sense," Sanders muttered. Then the tumblers clicked into place, he grunted in triumph as he opened the vault door.
Mark followed him inside. There were ledgers and account books on a rear shelf, the other two walls of the vault were given over to rows of drawers.
Sanders began opening them one after another, closing them when they proved unrewarding. "Try the other side," he said.
The drawers were not locked and slid open soundlessly. Mark went through half a dozen with no more success. Then, just as he was about to close the seventh one, a name on a small, white-wrapper package caught his eye. He jerked the drawer open and stared. Could it be possible?
He snatched the package out and tore off the wrappings. It contained a series of snapshots-no doubt motion-picture stills blown up into card-sized glossies. The one in his hand showed a man and two women. All were naked. The man lay on his back while the women jointly performed an act of indescribable obscenity upon him. The most horrible aspect of the photo, however, was the expression on ..the man's face. Expertly angled and completely clear, the male face in the picture wore a look of bestial satisfaction. The eyes were strained far open; the mouth was twisted into a leer of obscene delight.
Silently, Mark turned to Sanders-touched his shoulder-held the picture before his eyes. In the overhead light which had gone on automatically with the opening of the door, the photo was starkly outlined. Sanders gasped. "Even-" He was about to pronounce the name but he stopped. "Even that high?" Good lord. Now you can see what would have happened
"You're quite right," Mark said. "The rest of the stuff is on this side, I think."
He went through the adjacent drawers until they had a pile of white packages on a shelf. When he came to the one marked Dr. Sanders, he handed it over without looking at it.
"Thanks, old man," Sanders said a trifle huskily, and put the package in his pocket.
"Why don't you burn it," Mark asked.
"I will-you can rest assured that I will."
"Why don't you burn it now? We might not get out, you know. They are looking for us."
"Good idea," Sanders muttered. "Wasn't thinking quite clearly. As Mark read the distinguished names on the other packets he heard the scratch of a match and caught the odor of burning paper and celluloid.
Sander's relief reflected in his voice when he said, "It seems stupid to put the negatives and positives in the same package. Not very smart, really."
"How do you figure people of this sort? There aren't any rules. What will we do with the rest of this stuff?"
"We can't burn it all. And, as you say, we might not get out with it."
"Let's put it back where we found it."
"But Hanes! Those poor devils!"
"Knowing where the stuff is can be our weapon. Some of the men listed on those packages are powerful enough to move in here and take over if they can be assured of getting what they come for. And if we can leave this place as we found it, Welch needn't know we got into the vault."
"What if they come looking for my package?"
"We'll give them no cause to. Even if they do, and find is missing they'd attribute it to some error."
Ten minutes later they were in the hallway. The tread of heavy feet echoed from somewhere in the building but the direction was questionable.
Mark said, "Let's separate. If we're taken together they might decide we've seen too much."
"That's ridiculous. They wouldn't actually hold us."
"How do we know what they'll do? We'll split. You go out as we came and I'll try to make a window in front. If we both get away-fine. If only one of us makes it, he goes into action immediately to blow the lid off this cesspool."
"Very well."
Mark waited until the doctor faded into the gloom. He wondered, if they were searching for intruders, why they didn't turn on the lights. It was as though his thoughts fathered the act, for at that moment the corridor lights blazed up. He saw Sanders duck into a cross corridor, then was suddenly occupied with his own affairs. Two acolytes came out of a cross corridor, saw him, and charged forward.
Mark ran in the other direction, then skidded to a halt as another white gown loomed up to block his path. He backed against the wall, an animal at bay. Though he fought savagely, they subdued him quickly.
It was a silent battle, no words being spoken. The acolytes dragged him to a doorway and through it into a room. Then, quite expertly, the began stripping him.
Silently Mark renewed his struggle to break away, but he was helpless in the hands of the three experts. While two of them held him by either arm, a third stripped off his shorts. Now he was naked except for his socks and shoes.
He felt his wrists pulled roughly together. The leather thongs were bound into place, his arms were raised over his head. They did not raise him off the floor, allowed him to stand as comfortably as could be expected under the circumstances on his own two feet.
Their job completed, the three acolytes looked it over briefly and seemed satisfied. Two of them turned toward the door, but the third, in a quick vicious gesture, avenged the kick he'd received from Mark by smashing a doubled fist into his body just above the crotch.
Mark squawked in sudden pain. His eyes bulged and his mouth flew open. His legs flew apart as they left the floor and his body jerked grotesquely in reaction to the abuse.
The acolyte laughed. The other two turned and scowled their annoyance, much as adults would scowl at the antics of a child. Then the three of them-left.
Mark hung suspended for almost half an hour. When the flame in his groin subsided, he was able to concentrate on his situation. What would happen to him next in Peace Haven! Perhaps he was slightly hysterical; the irony of the name struck him, and he giggled. The sound coming from his throat was enough to snap him back to normality, he wondered if Sanders had gotten away.
He had a short time to wonder. The door opened and two women appeared. They would have had to be classed as beautiful, but there was a maturity about them that set them apart from the rank and file of Peace Haven faithful. Also, a hardness that was not apparent in most of the others.
They looked at Mark, glanced knowingly at each other, and approached him. He reddened with embarrassment. "Would you please have the decency to leave?" he asked desperately.
One of the women, a tall, deeply tanned brunette, laughed. "He has inhibitions. Isn't that a shame?" The other, an amply breasted blonde, inspected Mark critically. "He shows a lot of possibility."
If such a thing were possible, Mark's sense of unreality would have sky-rocketed. But it was already in Never-Never Land and could go no further. "Who's behind this madhouse?" he blurted out." Who's running this insane asylum? I want to talk to him!"
This brought a gale of laughter from the two women and Mark realized for the first time that both were drunk.
"He wants somebody to talk to," the brunette giggled.
The other shrugged comically. "Who wants to talk?" They moved away together, their arms around each other, seemed to have forgotten Mark by the time they reached the door.
He furiously jerked at the leather thong. It did no good, the leather held. Exhausted, he hung for a while.
Then the door opened again. He raised his head and all his weariness, all anger, all embarrassment vanished in sheer shock and amazement.
"You-he blurted out.
The girl in the doorway smiled. "Whom did you expect, handsome?...."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Carol Rice sat comfortably in a chair, her beautiful legs crossed, smoking a cigarette and regarding Mark with amusement. "You just jumped to a lot of conclusions, handsome, that was all. Because you picked me up on the highway, you assumed I was a hitchhiker. You accepted everything I told you."
"I didn't give a damn one way or another," Mark replied hotly.
"That's right. It so happened that my Cadillac convertible was parked on a side road a mile back. I ran out of gas and was trying to find a station."
"Then why did you lie to me?"
She stretched like a lazy cat. There was no weariness reflected in this action; more an overflowing vitality and her satisfaction at a victory.
"I have a rule," she said. "Never tell the truth when a lie will do. That's a good rule, don't you think?"
"I think you're out of your mind!"
It was as though he'd hurled a vile insult. The blood left her face. She sprang to her feet, walked over to where he hung helplessly and slapped him viciously, backhand and forehand, several times across the face.
"Don't you ever say that to me ,again, or I'll kill you."
She stared into his eyes for several moments, and he could see madness lurking in her eyes. He said nothing, and she gradually regained her self-control.
"You know why you're here, don't you?"
"No. As a matter-of-fact, I don't."
"Because you turned me down when I offered to go to bed with you. Nobody turns Carol Rice down, mister. When she makes an offer it's an honor, and people had better regard it that way."
Mark remained silent, studying her. He could see now that she was considerably older than he'd first thought. Another case of not observing too closely. At least thirty-five, her beauty and vital personality enabled her to appear much younger. But still that was a remarkably early age at which to wield such power, either good or evil, and to have built up an institution like Peace Haven.
Then again, Mark thought, perhaps not. Many geniuses flower at an early age. Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Chopin, all exercised their particular talents very young. And while he couldn't compare Carol Rice with them in any other way, she certainly possessed some kind of evil genius.
"What do you think of my little place?"
"It's fantastic. I'd like to know more about it."
And at this point, Mark Hanes rose to a level of at least a minor genius himself. In a matter of minutes, he came to a decision. There was no point in fighting this woman, she held all the weapons. Moral indignation would get him nothing except a beating and possibly a quick death.
She was insane. Therefore the thing to do was cater to her insanity, to play it with calculation and intelligence. But would he be able to assume such a false role, and do it so convincingly that her razor-sharp mind would not see through the pose? He could try.
"You whipped Linda Barnes, didn't you?"
"She had it coming."
"Why?"
"Illicit relationships with men are not allowed at Peace Haven."
Illicit relationships indeed! What she meant was any relationship that roused her own jealousy. Mark was now aware that she considered him her property. She was the one he had spurned during the pickup. He had shown a preference, later, for Linda. This got Linda a whipping. Also, it put him in line for a whipping.
"Do I have to hang here naked? It doesn't show me off at my best, you know."
She smiled coyly. "Maybe it does."
"What's the plan? Do I get whipped too?"
"I may do it," she said thoughtfully. "I'd like to make you scream. But you probably wouldn't scream, would you?"
"I'd try not to."
He watched her, realizing the whipping hung in the balance as she rolled it around in her mind. Again there was a sense of unreality, but this time he drove it out ruthlessly. His own situation was very real. The whole thing was illogical but not in a sense of a dream. His questions would be answered in an incredible realm but the answers would not be fashioned out of dream stuff.
Questions such as: How could an insane mind have built this wierd place without its falling to pieces somewhere in the building? What motivated the pattern of its functioning? What had happened to Carol Rice to make her what she was? What were the twists and turns-the inner workings of Peace Haven? What had Carol been doing at the place he'd picked her up? So many answers to get and somehow he must get them.
Carol Rice finally shrugged and walked up to the beam where Mark dangled. She reached up, jerked the thong, and he was free. While he undid the thongs from his wrists, he said, "You were watching us, weren't you?"
"You were spotted almost as soon as you entered the building."
"There are mirrors in that room. You saw Dr. Sanders working over Linda."
"Of course."
"Why didn't you show yourself?"
"It amused me to watch."
"I'm sure it did."
She slapped him casually. "Be careful."
As a matter-of-fact he was being meticulously careful measuring each question and observation to see how far he could go. The slap was informative. He Would go slow and try gradually to broaden the scope of his inquiry.
"Were you going to let us leave as we'd come?"
"Yes. But my oafs lost track of you, and when you stayed in the building I lost patience."
"It was no longer amusing?"
She looked at him sharply but did not slap him. "It would have been amusing to whip you."
Here, Mark knew, was a monstrous ego-no doubt the core of Carol Rice's madness. But the predominating thought in his mind was on something else-the sheer luck he and Sanders had encountered in getting away with the raid on the vault. He was sure, now, that Carol's "oafs" had missed this.
"All right," he said. "What's next on the agenda?"
Carol eyed him narrowly. "You were pretty indignant when you found that trollop hanging from her wrists."
Mark shrugged. "I suppose. But what's done is done. I won't say I approve, but-" he put on the appearance of searching for words. "-but, well, I guess I am a realist. And what can I do about it?"
She seemed convinced. "Let's go to your apartment," she said.
"Like this?"
Her eyes danced with merriment. She was wearing a two piece suit. She unzipped the skirt, stepped out of it and handed it to Mark. "Here, put this on."
"Oh, for crepes sake? Not so fast-"
His annoyance amused her. "It's that or nothing."
He pulled on the skirt and felt like an idiot as they left the room. He blessed the darkness of the night and tried to cancel out the haunting sense of unreality with the knowledge that he was dealing with a madwoman, and under such circumstances anything normal would be the exception. He wanted to ask about Linda but decided not to risk irritating his dangerous hostess. He wondered whether Dr. Sanders has escaped; he fervently hoped so.
When they got to his cabin, Mark's hope for privacy was dashed. Carol Rice preceded him through the doorway and snapped on the light.
"You certainly have all the modern conveniences out here," Mark said cheerfully.
"Generators aren't too difficult to obtain," Carol replied. "Do you like your cabin? Have you been treated well?"
"Excellently. I'm very grateful."
"Then why did you impose on my hospitality by seducing one of my girls?"
"You mean Linda, of course." Mark spoke while seeking an answer to the sudden and unexpected question.
"She was the girl you laid in the bath house wasn't she? And it was Linda that you helped back into the Haven, wasn't it?"
Mark felt a slight chill. Were Carol Rice's invisible spies everywhere? Then the paradox of the situation struck him. He had been seen in pitch darkness in the bathhouse-yet the watchers had lost track of him and Sanders between the torture chamber and Welch's office. Or at least Mark had hoped they'd lost track of them.
Carol crossed the room and sat down on the bed. She wore a short slip, and as she crossed her legs, the rich tanned flesh of her inner thighs was exposed clear up to the tight-fitting black panties which revealed far more than they hid.
Mark said, "In the first place, what happened in the bathhouse was hardly a seduction. The other thing-well, all right, we did get somewhat intimate. Is that why Linda was whipped?
"I told you why she was punished."
Feeling ridiculous in the skirt, Mark opened the suitcase he'd brought in from the car and searched for a pair of slacks.
"You won't need them," Carol said.
"I won't?"
A shade of danger flicked behind her eyes. "I'm giving you a chance to correct the error you made when you didn't want to go to bed with me the first time."
Mark thought swiftly, closed the suitcase and turned to her with a smile "Okay, the first time was a mistake, maybe. But you can't blame me for going a little slow under the circumstances. After all, now I'm dealing with the power behind Peace Haven-with a woman who can string me up and have me whipped."
He hoped for a reply that would bolster his belief in Carol Rice's position as top dog in this weird circus. She did not deny it, and he had to be content with that. She got up from the bed, slipped out of her jacket and ran her hands invitingly over her body.
"Let's get with it, handsome."
Mark approached the bed. He took her in his arms and kissed her. The kiss was lazy, brazenly carnal. She opened her mouth and drove her tongue in between his lips. For a while, her tongue searched the inside of his mouth. Then, quite casually, she pulled his lower Up in between her teeth and bit down on it.
Growling with pain and surprise, Mark pulled away. Quick anger flared. "God damn you!"
She laughed tauntingly. "Don't tell me you can't take it."
"I can take it. I can dish it out, too."
He hooked his fingers under the elastic of her slip and jerked downward. Only when he bent over to push it down over her ankles did he realize he'd gotten the panties too and the lush fork of her body, the smooth warm contour of her sloping belly, were practically in his face.
She laughed and pressed forward, looking down at him with the look of a hot-eyed Medusa. "Too rich for your blood?"
He straightened and hurled her back on the bed, jerking the skirt off as he did so. She kicked viciously as his groin but he avoided the blow, locked her legs down with his knees, and jerked at her brassiere. The hook snapped and he tore it off. She snarled at him, clawed at his eyes. He caught both her wrists, forced them back against the bed and drove at her breast with his teeth. There was a hard, erect nipple in his mouth and Carol's curses in his ears:
"You SOB, is this the way you raped Linda?"
He closed his teeth on her nipple and heard a squawk of pain as her body surged up against his.
"Uh-huh. I help her down and raped her until she yelled for mercy. Thas was what brought your spies, wasn't it? Linda howling for help?"
"You bastard!" she snarled again, trying to reach his face with her teeth.
But he stayed beyond range, and looking into her eyes began teasing the nipple with his tongue. His eyes grinned lewdly at her and her struggles; knowing eyes that said, You like it, you nymphomaniac bitch. You want it but you want me to take it away from you. All right, I will. I'll rip it right out of you inch by inch.
Carol Rice's body quivered, and though her teeth were still bared her eyes took on a half-closed, languor-out cast.
Mark lowered his body to hers. He forced her legs apart with his knees and hammered his belly down contemptuously upon hers. A strange contest ensued: a silent battle of strength as their eyes met inches apart and they hurled unspoken insults at each other. In Mark's mind he said, You sex-mad torturer! I'll take you the way I'd take a cheap, two-bit whore. I'll use you the way I'd use a street-walker, and then kick you out of bed!
Sure of. his grip on her, he moved with tantalizing leisure; moved and shifted his body deliberately until she relaxed for a moment. Then he drove hard against her, showing his teeth in a wolfish grin.
Her eyes popped open from the cruel force of the deep contact. Her body jerked from sudden pain. Her mouth fell open and he brought his own mouth down against it, holding her teeth apart with his own as he lewdly duplicated the lower motions by the movement of his tongue.
The pain of first contact subsided and Carol gave herself over by the rising heat within her. It no longer was necessary for Mark to hold her down with his knees, nor with even his body, because now her hips arched up greedily for what he had to give her. She gritted her teeth, her eyes were tightly closed, she dug her nails into his back, the muscles of her neck corded. Her slim, lithe limbs came up to lock around his body and low, quiet sobs issued from her constricted throat.
Now a stream of indescribable obscenity poured forth. She described the filthy, rotten things she would do to him in return.
Even in the pitch of passion to which he had risen, Mark was stunned. Here was a paradox: he wanted this wholly desirable woman, and yet he loathed her. This contradiction entered into his love making. With one free hand he moved down the small of her back and between her buttocks, felt a fierce satisfaction at the sudden squawk of pain and the writhing and flopping of her body that his sadistic punishment brought forth.
Again she hurled out obscenities. Again he tortured the tender parts of her body, silently wreaking vengeance for the whipping Linda had received. Carol screamed, hurled herself upward and they rolled off the bed onto the floor.
But Mark held her firmly, rolled over her and continued to rut her. The sweat poured from both their bodies, and as his attack became even more vicious she raised her head and set her teeth into his neck. He bellowed deep in his throat but the pain seemed somehow perversely good, he drove into her with a ferocity that moved them across the floor.
"You rotten bitch!" he snarled I'll-"
They rose to a mutual climax that poured ecstasy into their bodies. He gave one last brutal thrust that brought a scream of delight from her throat.
"You son-of-a-bitch!" She gasped. Then she collapsed from sheer physical exertion, and they, lay motionless....
"We're pretty good," Carol said, her mouth pressed against Mark's wet chest.
Her hair was in his face. As great shuddering gasps tore from his lungs, he pushed the hair out of his way and said, "I hope you weren't hurt when you fell."
"You're a liar. You tried to tear me to pieces. You wanted to hurt me from the beginning."
"Maybe I did."
"You had your chance. You'll have other chances. Now get off of me. You're heavy."
Mark rolled off and lay looking up at her as she crossed the room to get a towel. He watched as she sensuously wiped her lush, tanned body.
"All right, so you weren't a hitchhiker. I made a mistake. What were you doing there on that side road?"
"I was taking a short cut."
"You travel a lot?"
"I'm on the road a great deal of the time."
There was an electric presence about her that only now did he begin to feel. Her age had become apparent. She was at least thirty-five, he decided. But that still left much to be answered that was remarkable.
"What do you do?" Mark asked.
She walked over and stood looking down at him. "Not so fast. Let's get a few other things straight first."
"Such as--?"
"I'm thinking of replacing Welch."
"Why?"
"He's getting too-well, possessive."
"He's in love with you?"
She smiled and it was a most deceptive smile. It could have been charged with madness, or it could have been genuine. Mark wondered which as she demanded, "Isn't everybody?"
He realized he was playing a dangerous game. But he had to know. "Of course not," he said flatly.
There was a slow deepening of her color, the muscles of her face tightened. It was a part of her madness.
Mark shrugged-a difficult thing to do lying on his back. "You don't know everybody."
The color faded but the sneering, hostile look stayed on her face. "You think you're pretty smart, don't you?"
"I was kidding."
"Be careful, I haven't got much of a sense of humor."
"Okay, I'll be careful."
Mark was being more careful than he realized. He was trying to stay on the thin edge of danger without stepping over. Subservience, he felt, would have put him at too much of a disadvantage. Perhaps he would learn nothing from her, but he had to simulate a brash, inquisitive personality even to try.
"You say you're thinking of replacing Welch. Wouldn't that be dangerous?"
She stepped over him, her feet straddling his chest as she looked down into his face. Mark had to admit that the view up her legs and thighs, over her belly, between her sculptured breasts and into her narrow-eyed, calculating face, was breathtaking.
"Dangerous? Why?"
"If I answered that you might get angry again."
"All right-answer. I won't get angry."
"Well, from what I see, there are a number of things you have to cover up in this operation. Maybe Welch would talk and get you into trouble."
Her sneer was almost good natured. "Do you think I've come as far as I have by letting punks like that get me by the tail?"
"How far have you come?"
She waved an arm. "All this is mine," she said fiercely.
"But exactly what is it?"
He knew he was continually angering her; but he also knew that she found him intriguing enough not to call a couple of acolytes and having him whipped.
"You've seen it."
"But just what is it?"
"A goldmine."
"Okay-you're thinking of tossing Welch out of your gold mine. I grant you can do it. Am I a candidate for the replacement?"
"It's possible."
"That doesn't make sense. You've found out all about me-what I've been trying to do. The most logical thing would be to get rid of me."
She sneered. "I've seen you and your kind before. Out to smash the other guy's racket. But give you a piece and everything's great."
Somewhere back in this girl's life she'd been horribly used, terribly twisted. Madness was one thing, Mark reasoned, but madness slanted like Carol's-there had to be something behind it.
He tried to make his grin convincing as he said, "All right, don't rub it in. What do I do to qualify for the post?"
"Keep your mouth shut, your ears open, and obey orders."
"That sounds simple enough."
Balancing dexterously on one lovely leg, she ran the toes of her other foot through his hair. "One more thing. Does that broad mean anything to you?"
"The one you whipped?"
"Have you been playing around with any others?"
"No, there's nothing personal between us." He looked up boldly at the woman who held the power of life and death over him. "She was just a good lay."
"I'm better."
"That's right."
'Your first order: You haven't enough to go around, so save it all for me. Understood?"
"No problem."
Mark's mental calculations were not apparent. Somehow he had to get a psychological advantage over this woman, achieve domination and try to expand from that point. What was the logical manifestation of male domination over females? In the realm of sex.
Acting on this thought, Mark grasped Carol's ankle. "Okay, baby, I've got plenty saved up right now."
He jerked, and Carol came toppling down on him. Her belly pressed hard into his face. He turned her with a heave of his body and pushed her face down hard against his flesh. He felt her teeth. "Damn you!" he barked and rocked her with a doubled fist to the ribs. "God damn you! Do it right!"
Perhaps his destiny hung in the balance at that moment. Perhaps he was frightened. But then the scales, if they really existed, tipped his way. For a moment she lay rigid. Then, from a natural appetite for such abnormalities, or from an acceptance of his domination, she settled down to the degrading act he demanded of her.
Mark lay back and enjoyed a sense of triumph. Then, as his nerve ends began to tingle, and the sweep of sheer animal pleasure engulfed him, he seized Carol's head and roughly jammed it against his body. She protested. Enjoying his new mastery in conjunction with the pleasure she gave him, as Carol struggled in his grip, the almost unbearable sensation exploded into ecstasy.
It was over, and again he felt a touch of fright. Had he gone too far? Would his back be ripped and torn to shreads by a whip wielded in sadistic fury?
He did not know for sure as she rose slowly and looked down at him with a mixture of anger and studied calculation. Suddenly she laughed.
"You handle your women rough, mister."
"A habit of mine."
"And you complained about that Patience character getting a workout."
"Oh, you heard about that."
"I hear about everything."
"Complaining seemed the gentlemanly thing to do." Her smile was a leer. "Because you weren't getting it?"
A quick sickness hit his stomach and passed as the depths of this woman's obscene madness struck him almost forcibly. And a new resolve was born. He had to find out what terrible thing in her past had contributed to make her the creature she had become.
"Maybe," he said easily. "But wouldn't it be good-" He was going to say sense but he dodged the word. "-good business to do something about that?"
To his surprise, she turned serious, scowled at the floor for a few moments, and then sat down cross legged beside him. The action opened her thighs and exposed her body in a way that both revolted and fascinated Mark.
"The Kelps are my main problem."
"How so?"
"I can't get a damned thing on them. I've got no club over their heads."
"Exactly who are they?"
"A clan that ran like lice over this country before I founded the place. They hate us."
"Why?"
"It's their nature. They hate everything and everybody."
"Okay, I can understand that."
"And they're big enough and strong enough to wipe us out if they want to. Or if they even feel like it at any given moment."
"They can't just walk in and wipe you out. There are laws-legal protection."
Carol grinned evilly. "We can't depend on the law."
"They hate you too?"
Her scowl was quick and reminded Mark of a sudden, deadly dash of acid. "I don't like that you. I would much prefer us. Unless you're declaring yourself out."
"I didn't know I was in yet."
"Assume that you are. I'll take it from there."
"All right. Why do they hate us."
"I'm holding a club over Tate and he's the law. He can't move against us. But he wouldn't raise a hand to stop anyone else from doing it."
"What's the club?"
"Dirty pictures."
It was chilling to hear the matter-of-fact manner in in which she answered. She could have been saying, A mortgage Tate's house. To this madwoman filth and corruption were part of her way of life.
"Tell me, how far up the line do your clubs extend."
"Right to the top." She paused, caught the look on Mark's face and instantly became hostile. "Don't you believe me?"
"Of course. It's just hard to realize that the men way up would be stupid enough to let themselves get trapped."
The twist of her lips was contemptuous. "They're men aren't they? Show me a man who won't go for a naked broad when he's got a few drinks under his belt."
Mark raised a defensive hand. "I'll buy that. But I'm wondering about something else. "You're in this for money, aren't you?"
"Of course-partly, that is."
"What else?"
A smile was her only answer. It said for power over others.
Mark read the smile and required no further enlightenment in that direction. "I'm mainly interested in the money," he said. "Where does it come from?"
"South American sales pays off pretty good."
"South American sales?"
"That's where I'd been when I met you on the road. Out meeting contacts and arranging for a shipment. That makes my work a little hard. All personal contact. Nothing on paper."
Mark sensed something more in Carol, now. Preoccupied with her obvious madness, he'd overlooked something else. He realized now she, was telling him too much too fast. He felt slightly deflated by the knowledge that he had not trapped or beguiled her into confidences. She was proceeding exactly as she'd planned-declaring him in as a result of her own decision, no his.
The implications brought a new tremor of fear. Being no fool in spite of her insanity, she would realize that she ran certain risk if her estimate of him proved wrong. Therefore she had protected herself. How? There was only one way because she held no other weapon over him.
"What do you ship to South America?" Mark asked almost absently.
"Girls. What else?"
Mark tried not to show that this startled him. He'd been thinking of the pornography as the main commodity of Peace Haven. But great wealth was indicated here, so there had to be more. Selling dirty pictures would not be lucrative enough. In fact, now that Mark knew the principle source of Peace Haven's revenue, he wondered why Carol bothered with the secondary traffic.
"You know of course," he said, "that I had a look into your storage cave."
She shrugged. "Oh, that. Sanders steered you."
"Is Sanders a problem?"
"He's gutless. And he's useful."
"About the stuff in the cave-does it pay much?"
"I don't sell it, I use it for premiums."
"For premius! Good God! Mark wondered if he'd ever get used to matter-of-fact, business-like manner in which this woman regarded filth.
"Then I guess I've got the basic picture," he said. "The rest will have to come gradually."
"It will come as I see fit to give it to you."
"Of course. A man has to grow into a job."
Mark got up and got a cigarette off the bed table. "When are you going to tell Welch."
"Not for a little while. We're going to need him to arrange Purity Day."
"I've hear of that. Just what is it?"
Carol turned so that Mark was again looking between her forked legs. Yet she seemed unconscious of the gesture. "The setup here," she said, "has two advantages. It's tax free because it's religious, and the religious angle also gives it prestige. That helps a lot."
"Not with the Kelps."
"The Kelps are a different kind of problem."
"About Purity Day. You were saying-"
"The religious aspect needs some religious symbols. Any religion does. So I dreamed up Purity Day. There are other smaller gimmicks but Purity Day is the king pin. We start at dawn and the whole day, right up to sunset, is given over to religious pageantry. The program is a kind of mixture between Christianity and some old pagan rites I found in a book. Nobody eats during the day. There are twenty-five different prayers and ceremonies. "As a matter-of-fact, the girls really enjoy it."
"And you need Welch to handle it."
"That's right. By next year, you'll know how to do it."
"Okay now one more thing. Why did you pick me to succeed Welch?"
There was a long pause before she answered. "You think because I picked you out of nowhere, that I'm erratic-unpredictable."
"I didn't say that."
"I'm really the exact opposite. I didn't build this place by acting on the spur of the moment."
"Then why did you pick me?"
"Because I need a man. I'm oversexed. I've known this for a long time. Maybe I'm a nymphomaniac, I don't know. But I'm tired of jumping from one man to another. I want to stick to a single mate. I want to be true to him."
Mark felt laughter bubbling up and quickly stifled it. Evidently, somewhere far down beneath Carol Rice's madness and rottenness, was a yearning for stability. But Mark wondered how long any man could furnish her with a full quota of loving without being worn completely out.
"I'm honored," he said.
"There's no reason you should be. You just happen to attract me, and I think you're one hell of a lover."
"Thank you."
Mark yawned and wondered how he was going to get in under Carol's skin and find out what made her tick-where her insanity and filthy thinking had come from.
Carol had turned away and was bending over, reaching down for her clothing, when she suddenly straightened and stared at the wall.
"Where did that picture come from?" Her voice was tight-filled with panic.
Mark followed her eyes and saw what seemed to be an innocent enough pastoral scene. Framed and hung on the wall was the print of a herd of sheep grazing on a green slope. In the background were mountains and sky. A sheep dog sat beside his master in one corner of the print. Overall, the picture reflected peace, beauty and contentment.
"I don't know where it came from," Mark said. "I suppose somebody liked it and hung it there."
Carol's eyes darted wildly around the room as though it had become a trap. "Who hung it there?"
"I don't know."
"Well, get it down."
Suiting action to words, Carol seized the print and slammed it to the floor. She looked down at it with hatred and loathing. "I'll find out who did it. I'll whip the pig until-"
She seemed unable to breathe. Another wild look and she turned and fled from the cabin, slamming the door behind her.
Stunned, Mark picked up the picture and looked at it. The scene hadn't changed except now the glass was broken and the frame split.
He laid the picture face down on the table as a new truth struck him. He had met Carol Rice at a crucial point in her life. She was deteriorating in the sense that her madness was winning the fight for supreme control. His instincts told him she could not long survive as a thinking, functioning person in the state he'd found her.
She was going to crack up.
He considered this. If Carol did crack up, wouldn't the end he sought automatically come about? Wouldn't Peace Haven crash with her?
He couldn't be sure. Welch was still a factor. If Welch ever saw his way clear to eliminate Carol no doubt he would take over. Could he run Peace Haven? Perhaps not, but Mark was very sure he would try.
This left things about as they were. Except that the mystery of Carol Rice was as tightly locked in her past as ever.
He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. He was very tired and wanted to go to sleep. But he had to know how Linda Barnes was. Even at the risk of antagonizing Carol, he had to go back to the main building and find Linda. She was in the building somewhere, suffering. And without medical aid. Dr. Sanders no doubt had done an expert job of repair, but now she was probably alone.
He wondered if Sanders had escaped. Perhaps he could find out something about that, too.
But as he dressed he wondered, principally, what there was in a peaceful mountain scene that had almost sent Carol Rice off the deep end....
CHAPTER NINE
It was morning now, and Mark stood outside his cabin breathing the sweet, clean air. That at least was one wholesome component of the cesspool into which he had fallen.
Around him, the Peace Haven girls, under the eyes of the bearded acolytes, were going about their duties. Perhaps they had been instructed on the subject because now they paid him no attention. In fact they seemed to make every effort to avoid him.
Maybe the word had gone out as to what had happened to Linda Barnes-how perilous it was to have contact with the new man.
Mark had found Linda the previous night.. She wasn't alone. The two girls in attendance in her cabin were honestly concerned with her condition. Also, they both were quite eager to have him leave. They didn't actually put it into words that they were afraid of Mark, but they obviously felt that if Carol Rice found him there it would go even harder with Linda.
So he'd left and gone back to his cabin. He'd slept but not too well and new he was tired, jumpy, and nervous. The puzzle of Dr. Sanders' whereabouts was still not solved. If Sanders had been taken and was being held prisoner, Mark's chances of finding him were rather slim. He was sure Peace Haven had facilities for hiding people.
Perhaps even dead people....
An hour later he drove into the village. He pulled up in front of the general store and looked around for Able Tate. The sheriff was nowhere in sight. Then Tate emerged from Sis Bennett's establishment picking his teeth. He approached Mark and the latter became instantly aware of a change in the sheriff.
Tate's manner was sullen and hangdog as he asked, "What do you want?"
"I'm looking for Dr. Sanders."
"I haven't seen him."
A change-yes, but exactly what kind? There was no belligerence whatever. Tate's hostility, the command of his presence as an officer of the law, had vanished. But something else had taken its place. A look of contempt and loathing glowed in his eyes, even though he seemed to be trying to hide it. It was as if he were looking inside Mark and finding filth. The same filth Mark himself found in Carol?
At that moment, Fred Kelp, the thin, sharp-tongued native Mark had met on first arrival, came out of the general store and saw Mark. Clear, undisguised hatred was reflected in his face.
Beyond doubt they had both heard the news-that Mark was now a part of Peace Haven.
"Have you any idea where Dr. Sanders is?"
"I've got no idea," Tate said sullenly.
Then, quickly, a change came over him. Everything in his face and manner indicated appeal. He raised a hand in a begging gesture. "Look, maybe you and I can make a deal."
"What kind of a deal."
"When you came here, you were against that outfit. You wanted something done about them."
"That's right-but you didn't."
"I did. That's honest! I did want to do something. But hell, you know why I couldn't."
So Tate was under the blackmail club too. Mark had known this of course, but this was absolute proof. Mark wanted to reach out, take the proffered hand, speak sincerely and honestly.
Instead he frowned and said, "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. If you have something to say, say it plainly and quit beating around the bush."
Even as Tate reverted to his former attitude, Mark struggled with the fear that Tate could be a trap, a test the satanically clever Carol Rice had set up to find out if Mark measured up in the realm of loyalty.
Perhaps this was not true, but Mark couldn't risk it. The stakes were too high.
"I'll look for Dr. Sanders elsewhere," he said, and began backing the car away.
As he pulled out of town, he could feel Tate's contemptuous eyes burning into his back and his flesh crawled in shame in reaction to that contempt.
If Mark had any reservations in his mind that he was actually dealing with a sexually degenerated madwoman, the illusion was dispelled an hour later. It came about some four miles out of the village. As he left the settlement, clouds that had been fluffy white earlier were darkening in the western sky. Thunder rolled far off, signaling a summer storm.
He had no idea what rain did to the dirt roads, and hoped to get back to Peace Haven before the rain came. But he did not succeed. Just as the first drops hit the windshield of the car a figure appeared in the middle of the road to block his way. He braked the car sharply, flashed the lights on in the lowering gloom and saw Carol Rice.
She stood erect, holding up a commanding hand. The yellow glow revealed the face of one in the preliminary stage of some evil ecstasy. She wore a dress that came slightly below her knees. The rain sluiced down and the thin dress was dashed, soaking, against her body, revealing that she was entirely naked beneath the garment.
She came around to the side of the car, opened the door and took Mark by the arm. He got out. Going from the shelter of the convertible top out into the rain was like stepping under a waterfall. The rain was roaring against the trees now, Carol had to put her lips close to Mark's ear as she said, "I saw the storm coming and so I went to meet you."
He did not see the connection, although he knew that what stared out at him from Carol's face was indicative. Her eyes glowed with a bright, hot madness, her lips were parted and seemed unnaturally red in the gloom, her body quivered. She put her hands on his body-brazenly, obscenely, unashamed.
"All right," Mark shouted. "You found me. Let's get in out of the rain."
"No! No! Don't you see? It's the rain that makes it." He didn't, but he was to get the idea soon. Carol took his hand, pulled him toward the forest wall, through it and between the trees. They came to an open place that looked like a pond.
When Carol pulled him into it he realized the whole area was a mud flat with the thinnest surface of water over it. In a frenzy she stripped off the dress she was wearing and stood naked in the driving rain, clawing at his clothing. His trousers fell down to his ankles, he went down on his back. Carol pulled the trousers off and threw them after her dress. As he struggled on the ground, she pulled off his shorts; tore the shirt off his back.
Now he too was naked and she looked down at him in completely uninhibited obscene freedom. She laughed, went to her knees, scooped up a handful of mud and began plastering it over his chest.
"Carol-for God's sake-"
Her voice was a snarl. "Shut up! Shut up, goddam you!" She threw herself into his arms, pulled him over on top of her. He rolled away in an effort to free himself. Then he understood this was what she wanted, to roll with him in abandon.
Then the battle-it could hardly have been called less-took on fantastic aspects: a man and a woman fighting desperately in the mud until they were covered from head to foot and no longer resembled human beings. In the struggle he felt her mouth and teeth and hands on the most intimate parts of his body. But mainly he could feel the animal lust rising higher and higher in the madwoman's body.
Spitting mud from her mouth, she began hurling words and phrases-filth beyond description, filth that made the mud seem clean-into his ears. Her verbal suggestions and demands made him want to vomit. Suddenly he found himself expertly locked in a position in which his leverage was gone. In horror he realized what she planned to do. He struggled. "No! No! For God's sake-No!"
"Yes! Yes!" Her scream was that of a lust-maddened harpie as she desecrated the beauty of her body by the filthy demand she made upon his. Expertly, using her fingers in an indescribably demented manner, she forced him, by pure physical reaction to comply to her degenerate need.
He clawed at the ground while his body functioned automatically. Tears of anger and helplessness came to his eyes. Then her face was over his and she screamed. "Take me, goddam you! Take me, you crawling animal SOB!"
And in a reactionary rage he took her, they were like two huge fish hooked together, splashing and flopping helplessly in the mud....
It was over. She lay motionless for a long time, as though he had killed her. Then she stirred. The driving rain had washed the mud off her upturned face, when she opened her eyes it was as though she'd just awakened and was wondering where she was.
"Are you all right?" Mark asked.
Her mind cleared and she laughed. "All right? I never felt better in my life."
"This is-" He was going to say crazy, but again he caught himself in time. He forced a grin. "This is the damndest kind of lovemaking I ever bumped into."
She rubbed her breasts again his chest. "But it was fun, wasn't it?"
He hoped his grin wasn't weakening-turning in any way sickly or uncertain. He tried to speak gaily. "You know me. Game for anything new. Did you ever make love in the middle of a river?"
"There's no mud there. This is better," she said matter-of-factly. Then, as the fever abated, she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "I'm cold."
"I'm not exactly hot, myself."
"There's a place back in the trees that's dry. We can build a fire."
As they slogged ankle deep out of the swamp, Mark thought she was not quite as gay and light as she appeared. The storm clouds had thinned, although it was still raining, and he could see a kind of dazed, set look on her face. The reaction from high emotional violence, he thought.
They came to a small log cabin set in a higher clearing. Mark pushed the door open. It was warm and dry inside. "This is a hiker's cabin," she said. "People can stay here but they're supposed to leave it as they found it."
"Somebody did," Mark asserted as he lit the lamp. The floor had been swept, the table cleared, there was a pile of logs beside the fireplace. "Shall I build a fire?"
"I think we need one."
They were naked, their clothes still back in the swamp. Mark pulled a blanket off one of the two bunks and handed it to Carol. "Dry yourself on this and wrap it around you. I'll have a fire going in a few minutes."
He stacked the kindling and the logs, looked for the matches. As he did so he glanced at Carol and was struck by the change in her appearance. Now she was like a tired, wistful child. All the arrogance, the cruelty, even the madness seemed gone.
And Mark found himself in the realm of unreality again. Was it possible that this cold, wet, shivering girl single-handedly had built a fantastic place like Peace Haven? Was it possible that she held the highest officials in the state completely helpless through blackmail?
It didn't seem possible. As he touched flame to the shavings in the fireplace, Mark had a feeling of utter futility. He was dealing with something he did not understand; he was wading into waters too deep and murky to be safe-waters fraught with peril, and he saw only chaos and disaster as the end.
But he shook these feelings off as he rubbed his hands briskly together over the flame.
"Come close and get the benefit of the heat."
She obediently came to the fireplace and sat down cross legged in front of it. Mark sat down beside her. "Where are you from, Carol?"
She looked at him quickly. "I told you-Boston."
And one of the things that eluded him-one of the things he should have connected into the pattern, flashed clear in his mind. Dr. Sanders' words concerning John Basford:
Basford is in his middle sixties. A strange case ... He got involved in a couple of sex deviation scandals ... I personally consider him a sex maniac.
Basford was from Boston. Carol Rice was from Bostion. Carol Rice had seduced Basford, used him, ruined him.
Mark was sure of this but he still wanted some verification. How to get it was another matter, though. He pondered openings, finally said, "Don't you think I ought to know something about The Prophet?"
He tensed himself for a hostile reaction, but it did not come. Carol Rice stared into the rising fire and spoke to the flames.
"His name is John Basford. I loved him."
"Tell me about him."
"He lived in a fine house, I lived in the slums. He was a lot older than I was, but when I met him in a tavern one night, I knew, immediately that I loved him. That was how it worked with us."
"That can happen." Mark spoke gently. He wanted only to keep her in her present mood.
"We were happy for a while. He didn't want to take me home to his family and I understood. I didn't ask that, I only wanted to be with him.
"Then you certainly loved him."
"Yes-yes I loved him."
Mark detected a faintly rising note in her tone; as though hysteria, like the summer storm, was forming far away on the horizon.
"They had a ranch in Wyoming-the Basford family-and John said we could go out there for a couple of weeks and be alone."
"Was the ranch deserted?"
She turned her head and looked at him as from far away. "There were other people, but we went camping up in the mountains. We took two horses and a pack horse and went up in the hills."
"That must have been wonderful."
She gave no sign of having heard. Her body stiffened slightly within the arm he'd put around her shoulders and he sensed that the storm was coming nearer.
"There was a lot of grass up there and some men brought a lot of sheep to eat the grass-"
The picture on the cabin wall.
"There were four men with the sheep and one day they came to where we were camping. They hadn't had any women for a long time. Maybe everything would have been all right if I hadn't been taking a bath in the creek. I was naked when they came and when I saw them I was afraid and started to run. They chased me, yelling like crazy men."
She paused and Mark said, "It must have been awful."
"I guess it was and then I guess maybe it wasn't-not then."
"What do you mean?"
"They chased me and one of them caught me and dragged me back across the grass to the tent. He dragged me by one leg and the others there whooped and hollered like crazy."
"They were drunk?"
"Yes. They were drunk from whiskey and from not having had women for a long time. They dragged me back and then they took-took turns."
"Oh, my God!"
"It wasn't so bad-not then. I could rationalize it. I saw they didn't want to hurt me and I felt sorry for them. Maybe I felt sorry for them because they had me and they were raping me and I thought that way in self defense. I thought, 'I'm a woman and they want a woman and so. they're taking me. It won't kill me to be taken by four men. I won't like it, but it won't kill me.' That was what I told myself while they kept taking me one after another while the others watched."
She was stiff against his arm. The storm was closer. Mark sat silently, waiting for the first splash of emotional rain.
"Then John came back. I'd hoped he wouldn't because I was afraid they might hurt him. But he came back."
"What did he do?"
"One of the men was raping me as he came into camp and he just stood there and watched. The man stopped raping me for a minute and all four of them stared at him, waiting for him to do something. But he didn't do anything. He just stood there looking and after a while the man on top of me started raping me again. He finished and got up and John just stood there and watched while the next man took his turn."
The air in the cabin had turned electric. Carol sat stiff as a ramrod.
"And while he watched, a change came over him. He became a stranger. I could see it in his face. He didn't see me as a girl he loved anymore. He saw me as a naked female on my back with my legs open getting gang-raped, and he began to shake.
"Then, when that man finished, John took his turn, all crazy and wild. I looked up into his face as he was raping me and saw a wild animal. I started to cry and that excited him more. He got up all sweaty and panting and then-"
"Then what, Carol?"
"Then he told the men a filthy thing they ought to make me do."
Her teeth were clenched and her eyes tightly closed. Her head was thrown back as though she were in great pain.
"He told them a filthy thing and one of them made me do it. Then the other. Then John. But that wasn't the end. He knew more filthy things and told them and they made me do everything to them and it was hell-hell-hell! Something inside my mind snapped. I knew it snapped, I felt it snap, and I knew it would never go back together again."
In pure emotional rage, Mark drew her hard against his side. "Oh, Carol-you poor kid."
"I did all the filthy things and then they went away. I remember I lay there looking at John and I saw him change again. It was over and he went to pieces. He started to cry-like a baby. Then he got down on his knees and crawled over and kissed my foot. I was too tired to do anything. I just lay there and pretty soon he was kissing me and slobbering all over me.
"I felt sorry for him. If you'd been there-if you'd seen him-you'd have felt sorry too for this helpless animal that could do a thing like that, then had to kiss my foot and beg forgiveness instead of killing me or killing himself or running away and never coming back."
"You-forgave him?"
"No. I just lay there looking at him and not saying anything. Then we went to sleep from exhaustion-both of us. When I woke up something had happened to me. It wasn't that I hated him. He was just nothing. But something had happened inside me. In my mind. That thing that snapped would never come together again."
Suddenly, she laughed. A high, nerve grating, piercing laugh.
"Carol!"
She jerked away from him. "God damn them all!" she shrieked. Goddam all the men ever born. And all the women! Goddam the women more than the men! The women weren't there to help me! They weren't there to take it like I did-from one after another-and do all the filthy things until I vomited! So I said, by God, I'd fix them! and I did!"
The awful explanation flashed through Mark's mind. A girl gone mad from abuse and humiliation and sudden degradation; from the brutal killing of her love for a man. But she needed men. She'd proven, ever since Mark had known her, that she could not live without men. But she could not go without avenging the terrible wrong done to her, so she had turned her hatred on women on the pretext that they had escaped her fate.
A rationalization that gave her revenge and still did not close the door to the sex she needed. Mark was astounded by this revealing glimpse of the deviousness of the human mind.
Carol was pressing her face against the wall, pounding her fists against the rough logs. Then she stopped and stood rigid, motionless for a long time.
Mark wondered what he should do. Comforting her seemed a futile gesture. It would have been like comforting a potential tornado. He sat and waited.
But the tornado did not materialize. After a while, Carol turned from the wall and Mark saw instantly that she was herself again! She blinked, as though she'd gone through some sort of a hypnotic spell, and now it was over.
"Let's get out of here."
Mark suited his mood to hers. "Sure. But what will we use for clothes?"
"We'll go back to the mud flat and wash our things and wear them wet until we get home."
Home. The word shocked Mark. How could anybody call a place like Peace Haven home. "Okay. Let's get going."
He realized he'd been under some kind of a spell; he'd lost all track of time. It was now dark outside.
As he eased the car slowly down the muddy road, Mark risked another question that could have been touchy.
"I heard indirectly that Patience White was sent to the Kelps by way of an offering. The girl in exchange for leaving Peace Haven alone."
"Not exactly," Carol said. And again it was cold business. "There was a vague understanding. I talked to Fred Kelp. He was drunk at the time and said the Kelps were going to raid Peace Haven and wipe it out. I told him a girl would be where Patience was, and when. He didn't say anything but-well, that's how it happened."
Perhaps, Mark thought, he was getting callous from contact with her callousness, but the hideous implications of what Carol said didn't seem to hit him as hard as it would have previously. No, he decided, he wasn't growing callous. It was just that after a while you go shocked out. You were just as indignant but your nerves refused to respond as violently.
"Are you going to send any more girls?"
"Not until he makes some kind of an overture."
"Would you like me to talk to the Kelps?"
This seemed an anger her at first. But after thinking about it for a few moments, she said, "What would you say?"
"I don't know. I'd just play it by ear. See if I could placate them-pacify them."
She smiled at him cynically, cruelty-the old Carol as she'd been before the incident of the cabin. "Make them love us?"
"That might not be possible. But I might make them fear us."
"How?"
"When somebody pushes you around and you haven't got a weapon, what do you do?"
"Get one."
"All right, When the Kelps invade our haven-if they do-we have the right to shoot them."
Mark's sense of shock returned. Why had he said that? Why had he actually-instinctively, without thinking-suggested violence? Was Carol's cruelty and viciousness rubbing off on him? Was he becoming so subjective about this thing that he was taking the side of evil?
He thought not. He thought he was probably saying that the men who'd raped Patience White deserved to be shot. However the words were out, and it was too late to take them back.
"Of course," Carol said. "Why didn't I think of that?"
"You believe in peaceful methods. And you're right. They are the best."
"But the Kelps are cowards. Threaten to defend yourself with a gun and they'll crawl away like yellow dogs."
"All the same, let me go and talk to them and sound them out."
"All right," Carol said uncertainly. Then she spoke sharply. "But you tell me exactly what they say. I'm still running this outfit and don't you ever forget it."
"Of course. You're the boss."
They drove in silence, Mark uneasy about his own reactions. He seemed, now, to be think along the lines of preserving Peace Haven rather than destroying it. Was this true?
He fell to wondering about Sanders. Had Sanders escaped?
Actually it didn't make much difference. In a short time he himself would have access to the material that supported Peace Haven. When he got that he would act.
CHAPTER TEN
The road to the Kelp stronghold was too narrow and too rough for a car, so Mark abandoned the Thunderbird some three miles from his destination and began walking.
The country was no different from that surrounding Peace Haven: thick forest along the road with occassional breaks that revealed the beauty of the valley.
As he trudged along, Mark felt both a sense of isolation and a feeling that he was being watched. Several times he turned quickly to look behind him, but never caught sight of another person.
The feeling persisted until the road widened and he approached a fence that was nothing more than logs piled on pegs long-since broken down. There had once been a gate, but it lay in pieces beside the entrance.
Mark approached. As he went through the gate, all hell broke loose. He thought for a moment, he'd unknowingly entered a jungle. But the sound clarified into the snarling, barking, and yelping of dogs.
His knees shook as he saw them charging down upon him-over a dozen, mangy, vicious looking brutes of various sizes and breeds. It was too late to run. Somewhere he'd heard that if you're doubtful about a dog, you should stand perfectly still.
This wasn't difficult because his legs seemed frozen. The animals thundred in and he became the center of a revolving circle. The dogs slavered and snarled and seemed to be begging him to make a move, to do something that would justify his annihilation.
He refused to accommodate them, and gradually human beings appeared. He discovered that he'd been watched from the colony, or whatever it was called, as he aproached. Now there were at least twenty-five people in view. Men, women, and children, they regarded him with a common, silent hostility.
The women and the children stayed where they were. A few of the men came forward slowly. Their approach was so leisurely that Mark, fairly certain he wasn't going to be torn to pieces by the dogs unless the men ordered them to do so, had a chance to look the place over.
It was as different from Peace Haven as filth is from sanitation. There was a cluster of cabins on the perimeter of a yard made up of packed earth. A few washtubs sat in front of doors. Bones and refuse and garbage was the decorative motif of the area.
Some of the children were naked, some wore shirts. They could have been cousins of those he'd seen in the village. And the women could have been sisters to the slobbish females he'd found outside the slovenly cabins there.
The only man he recognized was Fred Kelp. The lean, cold-eyed leader of the clan was cutting a slice off a plug of tobacco as he approached, his manner insolent, his attitude hostile.
"Good morning," Mark said, hoping his voice sounded pleasant. But at the same time he couldn't help thinking that these people hadn't changed much from the days when Huckleberry Finn road down the Mississippi on a raft.
Fred Kelp did not answer. He thrust the tobacco slice into his mouth and ground yellow teeth down on it. Then he asked, "What're you doing here?"
"Why, I just walked over-a neighborly gesture."
Kelp spat viciously, "If that's why you came, walk out again. You ain't no neighbor of ours."
"All right, then I came to talk. Is that possible."
"What you got to say?"
Various other male Kelps were standing about enjoying Mark's discomfort. There were grins and sneers in abundance. Mark looked helplessly at the wheel of dogs. "Can't we at least act as though it were a little more friendly? This is hardly-"
Kelp picked up a rock and threw it savagely against the ribs of the nearest dog. There was a yelp of agony and the beast went loping off. The others followed, looking back in terror for signs of another rock.
"You can set on that log if you're a mind," Kelp said with complete ungraciousness.
"Thank you."
Mark sat down and let his eyes circle the line of cabins. "Not good enough for you?"
Mark didn't answer. Instead, he asked a point-blank question. "Mr. Kelp, why do you hate the people at Peace Haven so much?"
"Cause they're a bunch of hypocrites-like you."
"What makes you think I'm a hypocrite?"
"You came to town all hell for leather about what happened to one of the Peace Haven girls. Now I hear you've thrown in with them."
"Who told you that?"
"We got ways of hearing things."
"You say I came to town looking for justice in the case of Patience White. You were there. Did I get help?"
Kelp's face darkened. "Who the hell are you to question me?"
"If we can't talk on reasonably equal terms, what's the point? I may as well go."
"Then get the hell up and do it."
Anger rose in Mark. "I understand it was three of your men who raped Patience White."
If he expected anger in return, he didn't get it. "Maybe so. Sluts like that are fair game. Good way to make them know they ain't wanted around here."
"Did you know that the girls at Peace Haven don't come there of their own accord?"
"Oh, sure, we heard all about that. They're jailbirds."
"Then you don't go on the theory that people in trouble are entitled to help?"
"You figure to come here and tell me how to run my life, mister?"
"I came here to see if we couldn't work out some method of living peaceably together."
"Then you admit you've thrown in with that devil Welch and whoever they call The Prophet?" Fred Kelp spat in violent contempt of the last word. "Prophet! It's blasphemy, that's what it is."
"Are you a religious man, Mr. Kelp?"
"You're walking on dangerous ground, mister."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry, mister. Just get on your way. There ain't no ground you and me can get together on."
Mark got to his feet. "I'm sorry to hear that."
Kelp grinned slyly. "By the way, I hear you people are having a big shindig in a week or so."
"Do you mean Purity Day?"
The retort brought snickers and new leers from the observing Kelps.
"That's the name of the thing, I guess. We thought maybe you might like to have some visitors."
Up to that moment Mark had had respect for Kelp in that he thought him to be an astute man. Now he changed his mind. If Kelp planned to attack the haven, this warning was foolish. "Yes," Mark said coldly. "As a matter-of-fact, we are. And you might be interested in watching the new event we're planning to
"What event's that?"
"Target practice. As you know, some of our girls have led pretty rough lives before coming to Peace Haven. They don't take kindly to men abusing them. Some may well be there because they resented such treatment and did something about it. We're going to let them take their frustrations out on targets. We have a feeling that with a little instruction they'll do all right with rifles and maybe some small side arms.
"He's bluffing!" This explosive declaration came from one of the observers. Fred Kelp turned on him savagely and barked. "Keep your damned mouth shut, Marty!"
He turned back to Mark. "Maybe the law'll have something to say about women carrying guns. It can be dangerous."
He was a coward. Mark paid silent tribute to Carol's perception. He also breathed a sigh of relief. Up to this moment he hadn't been sure of getting away without physical violence. Now he knew that his threat alone had been enough. No one would attack him.
He said, "Good day, mister Kelp. Drop around to the haven any time you wish," and moved back down the road along which he'd come.
For a few moments his skin prickled in anticipation of the dog pack thundering after him. But there was silence among the Kelps and their animals, and even their women and children. But he could feel the contempt and the hatred that followed him. The hatred was a little bewildering, but he understood the contempt. He'd thrown in with people these mountaineers looked down on whatever their own morals and methods. That made them see him in the same light they saw Welch. Actually Mark himself felt the same way about Welch. In that respect he was an ally of the Kelps.
As he turned his car around it occurred to him that the Kelps knew nothing of Carol Rice. Obviously they saw Peace Haven as being run by Welch and a man called The Prophet who was only a name to them.
He hadn't asked Carol about Bansford's present status but it wasn't difficult to judge with the information he had. Carol, in her rage for vengeance, had used the man she hated and now, with no further need of him, she was keeping him a virtual prisoner.
There was going to be an explosion of some kind at Peace Haven, he told himself. The place would fall now, even without him because Carol Rice's madness was destroying her. Therefore what she'd built would also be destroyed.
He was tempted to accept this as a certainty and not stop at Peace Haven. Why stay around if what he'd been working for would come about anyhow?
The temptation came and passed as he thought of Linda. Sick and beaten, he could not leave her there alone. With Carol as unpredictable as a weather vane, who could tell what she might do to the girl she hated?
Also, there was Dr. Sanders. What had become of him? Was he lying beaten or dead in some dungeon room of the main building? He was certainly going to use some of his new-found authority to institute a thorough search. And if Linda started any complications whatever, he would take her out of Peace Haven to a hospital....
Mark spent the rest of that day wandering the confines of Peace Haven. He went openly to Linda's cabin and found her sleeping. The girl in charge, a pretty brunette with legs of breathtaking proportions, smiled at him with what seemed more than mere friendliness and assured him Linda would be all right.
They didn't go into the matter of the beating or the other incidents involved. And this seemed weird to Mark. A girl lying in a serious condition from a beating by a madwoman; and her nurse, a nymph in an odd Grecian gown regarded her as though she'd merely come down with a bad cold.
"My name is Martha," the girl offered.
"I'm Mark Hanes," he replied, annoyed with himself that he hadn't bothered with introductions during the previous visit. One should certainly have time for the amenities.
"If you like, I'll come later and tell you how Linda is," the girl said. "If everything is all right it will save you a trip."
"That's very nice of you. Don't bother, though, if things remain okay. Just call me if she needs help."
"I'll watch carefully. Is-is she a special friend of yours?"
Mark searched for words. "Yes, in a way she is."
He left the cabin and retired early that night without seeing Carol anywhere around. He debated going to the main building in search of Sanders, but decided to try a night trip again. If he was discovered and Carol got angry, he could fall back on an excuse that he thought he had the right to go wherever he pleased.
He set his mind to awaken around two o'clock, a knack he'd practiced and learned to depend on. But he was awakened quicker by a soft hand on his cheek.
"Mr. Hanes."
He recognized the whisper as that of Martha, Linda's nurse. He tried to sit up but she pressed him back. "It's all right. Everything's all right. I just came to tell you."
"Nice of you," he mumbled, "but it wasn't necessary. I said that if she-"
Martha's face was close to his. Her breath touched his skin, its quickness, its fragrance, sweeping the last cobwebs of sleep from his brain.
"I wanted to come," she whispered. "I wanted to see you. I-oh, please understand, We're women here. We're trapped. Can't you see?"
She took his hand and laid it on her smooth young breast. The nipple had already arisen, bold and supple, to plead with him also.
"I want you-I want you. Please be kind to me!"
Mark, prone to analyze under all circumstances, considered the situation ridiculous. First Linda, now a young beauty called Martha, had come to him to plead for sex. Why, even Candy hadn't begged!
Then the percentages dawned on him. There were several hundred trapped females in Peace Haven. Out of the lot, many had not even glanced his way. Others had and many probably longed for male companionship from afar.
But only two in this whole frustrated place had come and openly begged him. So perhaps it wasn't so strange after all.
Her hands were running shamelessly down his body and he would have been inhuman not to respond. Now she moved onto the bed, slipping her body sensuously over his until they lay face to face, their bodies pressing hard together. Her mouth sought his and found open invitation. With a little wordless cry, she allowed her tongue to slip over his teeth in search of hidden ecstasy. His hands went down her firm, curved back and he felt the flesh quiver.
"Oh, my darling." Her tongue touched his. "Love me, love me, my only love!"
The eloquent, meaningful, meaningless words of love. With a kind of love of his own, Mark drew her hard against him. His hands found her thighs and pressed them apart, began exploring the treasures she offered so freely.
His flesh was quivering too, and he turned until they lay side by side, holding each other. But only for a moment. As he pressed her down on her back, she took his head in her hands and put it shamelessly on her tight belly.
"Oh, yes-yes-yes," she breathed.
Mark felt that old headiness return. The feeling Candy so often generated in him. And it was strange, because even at the height of this heady passion, his thoughts were on Candy. Where was she now? What had become of her?
Martha's hot mouth on his body chased away all thoughts except those of the moment. Almost savagely, he turned and pulled her into the position he desired. She whimpered and tried to cling to him with her mouth, but he twisted her body away.
"Oh, yes! Now! Now!" Her voice rose to a pitch above a whisper and as he glued his body to hers there was a cry of ecstatic pain.
"Rip me! Hurt me! Oh, love me!"
As they approached the unbearable climax together, she screamed and he put his hand over her mouth to muffle it. Her teeth sank into his fingers but the pain was good and he hardly felt it, shadowed as it was by the greater ecstatic pain in his loins.
"Oh, thank you, thank you," she moaned.
And he took her tenderly in his arms while she cried like a lonesome child....
Retribution came swiftly. As Mark walked out of his cabin the next morning-he had not gone to the main building to hunt for Dr. Sanders-two acolytes stepped to either side of him.
"The Disciple wants to see you."
"Then tell him to come here," Mark said coldly.
"He wants you in the main building. It's an order. You can come on your own feet or we'll carry you."
"I guess I haven't much choice then, have I?"
Mark kept his mind open, refusing to speculate, as they crossed the lawns. The acolytes took him into the main building and down a familiar passageway. It was the one that led, among other places, to Welch's office.
They pushed him through the doorway, closed the door after him and remained outside.
Welch was seated behind his desk. He eyed Mark sourly, but there was something else in his face. He was not quite as hostile now, and he wore an openly calculating look.
"What do you want?" Mark asked coldly.
He waited for a moment before answering. "She wants to see you."
"Then why didn't they take me to her."
"Against policy. They think I run the show. Everything goes through me."
"All right. Where is she?"
"Down the hall. But first I'd like a few words with you."
"You've got the floor."
"I'm pulling out. I'd advise you to do the same." Another trap? Mark kept his mouth shut and waited. "You and Sanders found the stuff, didn't you?' ' "Where is Sanders?"
Welch didn't answer the question. "I could move it of course, but I'm not going to. I'm pulling out as of now. Come on with me. We can settle our differences later."
"You're talking in riddles."
"I'm telling you the game's up. She's gone off her rocker."
Mark was almost inclined to believe in Welch's sincerity after that positive statement. He could see Carol putting him to a test, but using her sanity as the gimmick just didn't fit. Still, what would Welch's purpose be?
"You're throwing this at me quite suddenly," Mark said. "I'll need a little time."
"There isn't any as far as I'm concerned. And looking for motives on my part is a waste of time. It's just that you're a pretty decent guy-or at least I thought so when we first met. I'm trying to be decent too. If you don't want to pull out that's your business. But I'll give you a friendly tip: don't get into this business. The money isn't worth it. Pretty soon you'll look down and see your guts all rotten and you won't be able to pad them with greenbacks."
"You said the deal was collapsing."
"Oh, for cripes sake! Stop analyzing me. Get off my back. Go see her." Then Welch looked up quickly and a kind of impersonal compassion swept his face. "It won't be pretty, so grit your teeth-and good luck."
"Where do I go?"
"The acolytes will take you."
Welch began going through the drawers of his desk, and Mark turned toward the door. As he grasped the knob he turned and said, "Thanks anyway. I appreciate it."
Welch did not reply. His mind was locked, he'd forgotten Mark existed....
The acolytes were waiting and silently escorted him to a room far down the hall. They opened a door. He paused momentarily, then walked on into the darkened room. The door closed behind him, and as the lock clicked there came a thin, high scream, as from far away, that chilled Mark.
He saw now that there was a window in one wall, too small to let in much light but giving evidence that the next room was lighted. He walked to the window.
The girl named Martha hung from a beam as Linda had hung. She was naked. Her face was a mask of terror. And the demented witch Mark knew as Carol Rice, naked also, stood beside Martha with a whip in her hand. She flicked it expertly, then stepped back and slashed its length across the bare shoulders of her victim.
Mark heard a roar of protest and realized it came from his own throat. He slammed his fist against the glass in the small window and was unaware of the pain that shot up his arm. The glass held, impervious to rage. The window was impersonal. The window was contemptuous of Mark and his futility. The window was on the side of might. The hell with right.
Wild thoughts kited through Mark's mind and he hurled himself against the door. It too was on the side of might. It too, sneered at him. Martha shrieked again. Mark returned to the window and heard the voice again
-the voice that was his own.
"You rotten, crazy bitch! Stop it! You're mad! You're a pile of filthy, rotten insanity! Stop it! Stop it. Gor God's sake! Find a little humanity somewhere in that filthy skin of yours and have pity on the poor girl."
He knew of course the reason for Martha's punishment. Somehow, in some diabolical manner, Carol Rice's eyes and ears were everywhere. A girl could not even creep in the dead of night into the arms of a man without the act being seen and recorded.
In the reasoning area behind his own temporary insanity, Mark realized the answer, and cursed his own stupidity. Peace Haven was bugged. Every building, every place human contact was possible, had been wired to some central taping room where Carol could review the events of each day and night as fully as though she'd been present.
"It's not her fault," Mark yelled. "Can't you understand that? It's a man she needed! Not me, any man! He could have been a two-headed circus freak if he was able to give her what she needed. Realize that and have some mercy!"
The whip had been singing its terrible song. The horror streaming back to Mark through the window heightened into a scene out of hell. As he tried to pull his eyes away, something inside him fought to hold them glued there, some masochistic devil deep inside that said Look and suffer, look and suffer!
The punishment ended on an even more terrible note. As Mark stared and bellowed hate and obsecenity at Carol, her arm went limp and the whip dropped to the floor. A strange look of evil pleasure glowing in her eyes, she sank to the floor, her body twitching, her legs jerking. She began to writhe, snake-like, and run frenzied hands over her inner thighs and belly. Her eyes opened, her mouth was a red maw, her hips heaved upward as though seeking relief from something or someone on the ceiling.
Then, in one obscene upward fling of her body, the climax came. She screamed and it was as though the scream released her, emptied her, left her limp and finished....
Later Mark always recalled with shame his own final reaction to the scene. He fainted. He was not aware of this of course until consciousness returned. He came back slowly, as out of a nightmare. Pain, distress and discomfort became clearer and clearer until he suddenly realized that the pain was real, not fantasy.
He was hanging from a beam as Linda and Martha had hung, as he himself had hung before the reprieve. But now, he knew, there would be no reprieve. He had passed the point of no return so far as Carol Rice was concerned.
He knew beyond all doubt that she had heard him revile her during the beating of Martha. He knew that he would be her next victim. It was only a matter of time. How soon would she need another dose of violence to feed the madness inside her? An hour? A day? A week?
The thongs cut into his wrists, but that pain seemed secondary. It was only a background for the agony in his mind, the true agony.
He thought of Candy, and poured out his love for her because in the Strang tortured alchemy of mental and the emotional stress true values were emerging.
He thought: She was sweet and wonderful and good, and I turned away from her. I left because I wasn't big enough to stand by and help her. I failed her and ran away. I came here and failed, but I can't run away. Now I'll pay for my own weakness.
Candy-I'm sorry-I love you....
Again he fainted. But differently this time: more slowly, grotesquely, because it surprised him to realize that the pain of hanging as he had been hung was too great for his physical being to bear in his weakened state....
Mark came to on a bed. His ankles and wrists were chained. He lay for a long time in a half-awake condition. There was a ceiling above him, a bed below him, and that was his world.
Except for his thought:
I am not a man. I have failed from not being a man. All the things I have done since I fled New York have proved me not to be a man, though I think myself one and behave as if I were one.
I try to deny this to myself, but the payoff is the proof. Here I am, chained to a bed by a woman because I am not a man. I fear physical violence. I could have saved Patience White but I rationalized and told myself I couldn't have gotten there in time. Because I would not admit that I was afraid to face three men.
The door opend and Carol Rice entered. Mark turned his head and looked at her.
She was in a passive state, that's about the only way it could be described. Listless, apathetic, but still moving and acting and talking like a human being.
This strange new world of unreal reality. Mark considered it with a listlessness of his own. Like after a great crime, the two criminals in their cell, washed out, finished, face to face with the sure swift justice that would come.
Yes. But not quite like that. Here were two people who no longer hated each other but who knew the drama had to be played to the end. Referring to what would come, the violence and madness and hate that would well up again as an inevitable thing-like sunrise and sunset. Waiting and talking like friends, speaking of their own emptiness.
"Hello, Mark."
"Hello, Carol."
She looked at the chains and seemed pained by them. But that thought of taking them off did not enter either of their minds.
"I hope you aren't too uncomfortable."
"It isn't so bad."
"Welch left. He ran away."
"He told me he was going to."
"He took his things with him."
"You mean what you had on him? Blackmail?"
"Yes."
"He left the rest?"
"All of it."
The drama playing out its foreordained end. Nothing they said or did mattered now because they would do what they had to do. So it didn't matter when Mark told her, "Sanders got his and tried to slip away that night you beat Linda. Did he make it?"
"He made it. I didn't know his was gone, though. Why didn't he take the rest?"
"We decided that so long as we knew where it was it could be gotten later."
She nodded at the logic of this.
"Are you going to move the stuff?"
"No. I'll leave it there." She looked at him with a spark of interest. "Have they fed you well?"
"Yes."
"I'm glad."
He wanted to ask her: When will the time come? When will you have to whip me to death? But he did not. It seemed unimportant. He would be killed in due course. When the continuity of the drama demanded it.
Such, he thought vaguely, is the stuff of madness.
He was naked, with a sheet over him; she removed the sheet as though she were removing a cloth from a table and looked down at him. He lay motionless, looking up at her, and saw the thing behind her eyes and knew what would now be done. If he had the power to struggle out of his mental inertia, he would have smiled.
He did have a thought: Now this will be it. This will be the final indignity. If I am not a man, then I am a woman. And now I am going to be raped as a woman is raped. I am now going to lie helpless while a true woman takes sexual pleasure from my body.
This too, is part of the drama....
Still staring down at him, Carol unbuttoned the single garment she was wearing. It dropped to the floor, and she was naked. She ran her hands over his body. Then, her breath coming a little faster, she expertly manipulated his body until it responded and was ready for the thing she wanted it to do for her.
She mounted him. Legs spread, braced on her knees, she forced him into herself while she looked down into his face. Then she turned her eyes toward the ceiling as though he did not exist, as though he were nothing but a mechanical phallus. Her eyes closed, her teeth tightened, the muscles of her neck taut her hips began moving ryhthmically. A kind of empty pleasure arose in him, but he refused to help in any way. This was a thing of puckish humor to him and he almost smiled.
When I get raped, the woman has to do all the work. That I insist.
Her hips increased the tempo of their movement. Her eyes rolled back in her head. Her breath came in short gasps, she moaned. Then a sound-a cacaphony of sounds-penetrated the main building and entered the room.
Carol's movement stopped. She looked down at Mark in mild wonder. He returned the look of understanding because they both knew. It was a part of the preordained drama.
"They didn't wait for Purity Day," Carol said.
"No. I guess that's my fault."
"Why?"
"I told them we would defend ourselves. I said we'd give the girls guns. They're just beating us to the punch."
Carol considered this while the discordant sounds increased in volume. Now the screams of women were added.
Then, because drama cannot be played out without action; because life must be injected into the players when the curtain goes up, Carol reverted to her other violent self. She sprang off the bed, the love symbol having been completed, and her face became a mask of hatred.
"You son-of-a-bitch! You were with them all the time. You never came with me."
"I guess maybe I didn't."
As Carol slapped him viciously across the mouth, Mark felt a touch of satisfaction, almost elation. Maybe he hadn't violated the last ethics of decency. Perhaps he had remained sincerely interested in destroying Peace Haven. He struggled with his bonds as Carol ran toward the door.
"Damn it!" he raged. "God damn it to hell! Let me out of here!"
He was raving like a madman when the door opened again and an acolyte appeared. The man was the perfect picture of a craven. He approached the bed and whined, "Look, I didn't have anything to do with all this. They made me come. I'm not one of them-not like the others. I need a break. If I let you loose will you see to it I get a break?"
"Sure!" Mark bellowed. "You're a fine guy. Get me out of these chains, you bastard...!"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mark lunged out of the front entrance of the main building and stood for a few moments, appalled at what he was. The sickness of Peace Haven; the madness of its founder and moving spirit, Carol Rice, had erupted into a savage orgy that looked like something out a nightmare.
Girls ran screaming everywhere. Some were naked, some still managed to keep their skimpy clothing. Here and there a girl had been caught, and was reacting according to her nature. One girl being held down by two bewhiskered mountain men, cursed them spiritedly and with unabated hostility as they raped her. Another cried helplessly under the same treatment.
Near the bath house, three Kelp men were beating an acolyte. The man's robe had been torn away, he was on his hands and knees trying to crawl away from further punishment. He was brutally kicked in a place that doubled him up, screaming, and the men went on to more interesting game.
It was not all unbridled brutality and savagery. Four Kelp men, more bent on fun than violence, it seemed, were tossing one of the naked girls in a blanket. Others gathered to watch the grotesque undignified positions the girl assumed as she went up and down.
Near the dining hall, Mark saw four men battling with Carol. This was in the nature of a deadly serious attempt at annihilation. She fought like a tigress-with teeth, fists and elbows. She doubled one of the men with an elbow punch to the belly and he backed away. She almost got free but they moved in again, grabbed her by the arms and legs and carried her into one of the cabins.
Against the sure knowledge of what was in store for her, Mark put the thought: Now you'll know how Patience White felt.
But there was no hatred in his reaction. Only a running out of the drama. Each sin has to be paid for down to the last jot and little.
Mark's thoughts came home again as two bearded men saw him and came at him with triumphant whoops. He stared at them, flat-footed. Then as one of them braced himself and pointed a murderous right-handed smash at his face, Mark stepped inside it and purely as a reflex action, crashed his fist against the man's throat. The man fell backward, gagging. His eyes bulged as he clawed at his throat. His partner looked at him, writhing there on the ground and lost his courage. When Mark took a step in his direction, he broke and ran.
Mark smiled. He straightened his shoulders. Come what would, the moment of elation he had experienced was his own.
For one moment, I was a man, he told himself.
But for just one moment? Maybe not. A bearded ruffian was dragging a girl toward a nearby cabin. Mark ran to intercept them. The fear was still there, but it was different now.
The man let go of the girl, turned on Mark and felled him with one blow. Mark's head rang. The man contemptuously aimed a kick at his head. Mark grabbed the foot and twisted and the fellow went down. There was a stone lying within arm's reach. Mark picked it up and fractured the man's skull.
He turned to the girl. She was naked and cowering. Her eyes said she didn't understand. Mark said, "Go and hide somewhere. Go into the main building. There are rooms in the basement. Lock yourself in"
Not far away another Kelp man was prone on the ground, trying to make love to the girl he held beneath him. In three steps Mark was close enough to aim a kick at the man's side. His shoe went deep, the man's face twisted as he rolled off his prey. Callously, Mark kicked him in the head until he lay still.
The girl he'd rescued first had not obeyed him. Now he pushed the second girl toward her and said, "Both of you, get going!"
Mark threw himself into the obscene nightmare around him, battled and maneuvered in the give and take of the fight. He avoided contests where impossible odds prevailed, and won each contest while still not becoming so prominent in the general melee as to be noticed by the leaders on the other side.
Until, after a time he could not escape notice because he was the nucleus of the Peace Haven forces, sorry as they were. Most of the acolytes had fled but three or four, more decent and courageous than the rest, rallied to his side.
Then a wild-eyed, crazed acolyte burst from the main building carrying a shotgun. This threw a new aspect on the situation. It was the first and only gun to be introduced. He ran blindly in Mark's direction, stopped, picked a target and raised the shotgun to his shoulder.
Mark lunged, caught the barrel of the gun and jerked it down. "Give me that thing!" The acolyte snarled. "I said-give it to me."
The result wasn't actually miraculous but it appeared so. The acolyte was not brave, only hysterical, and he yearned for leadership. He handed the gun meekly over.
At that moment Mark saw Fred Kelp striding toward him with violence in his face. He had not seen the shotgun. When he did, his mouth curled in contempt and he stopped dead.
"Might have expected that of you," he said. "We didn't bring no weapons."
"You didn't think you'd need them."
"Against this trash? Okay, you're playing it dirty, so we leave. But-"
"But nothing! You stand where you are."
Kelp obeyed. Mark motioned with the gun. "All the rest of you-all you Kelps-over behind him."
There was no movement. Mark waited for the count of ten. Then he pointed the double barrelled piece over the heads of the nearest group and fired one shot. The result was breath-taking. The Kelps fell all over each other obeying Mark's order.
Fred Kelp grinned. "You're real brave. There's only one shot left in that thing-maybe."
"Maybe. Do you want to take the chance that it's empty?"
Kelp shrugged. "Go ahead, you're running the show." Mark looked around and chose the acolyte who seemed most dependable. "Take this gun," he said.
"Hold it on that group. Keep it cocked. If any of them move, let go. It will kill a couple and maim the rest."
The acolyte took the gun and Mark pointed to Fred Kelp. "You-step out here."
Kelp's eyes flickered as he obeyed, glancing at his men to make sure his leadership still prevailed.
"Okay," Mark said. "You're a little older than I am but you're tough and hard and you outweigh me by twenty pounds. You ought to be able to beat me to death with your fists. Let's see if you can."
Kelp licked his lips. "And if I beat you what about that gun?"
"You can all walk away. You can save yourselves as best you can from the law. Maybe they won't come after you. But if you lose, you're under arrest. I'll lock you up like animals or kill a few of you. And if I lock you up I promise you, you'll go to jail for this if I have to take it to the Supreme Court."
Kelp, it was obvious, wanted to back out, but his men urged him on. Finally he moved forward., He was thin but tough as leather and seemed confident. Mark moved in, clumsily but with determination. He was afraid, but he looked at the fear in his heart and laughed at it.
Kelp's fist shot out. Mark did not get out of the way and blood spurted from his smashed nose. A Kelp guffawed, their troubles were over. Mark swung out blindly. He connected with luck against Kelp's ear and staggered the man. He moved on in but Kelp was more at home in infighting and kneed him cruelly in the groin.
Mark gasped and doubled up. Kelp laughed also, now, as he straightened Mark with a knee to the face.
Mark backed away, sick and hurt. Kelp came forward leisurely and confidently. He hadn't expected it to be this easy.
Mark reeled, trying to clear his head and as Kelp approached, defended himself instinctively. He had to get behind his opponent, this he knew. Away from the man's feet and fists. Reacting to this need blindly, he lunged past Kelp's fist, turned and wrapped his arms around the man from behind. Kelp struggled, but Mark was holding him with the strength of desperation and they went to the ground. Mark tightened his grip. Kelp threshed around, more in annoyance than fear. Then he reached around behind and tried to get a grip.
This was his mistake. Mark seized his wrist, and from his position applied leverage. He had no hope of doing other than gaining a momentary advantage. But he discovered that, through chance or instinct, he had put Kelp in a helpless position. Fred discovered it at the same instant and tried to break away with sheer strength. Mark held on.
Again the end was preordained.
Mark pulled Kelp's arm around and across his back. The man gasped from the pain. Mark heightened the pressure and marveled at how easy it was with the proper leverage. He pulled the arms slowly, sadistically. Kelp's face took on a look of panic.
"All right," he gasped. "You got me. You win. I'm a reasonable man. We can talk this out."
Mark silently applied more pressure Kelp's body shook with the pain. "Wait! Wait now! You wouldn't break a man's arm-not that way."
Mark jerked. Kelp screamed.
'Wouldn't I?"
"At the socket for God's sake," Kelp babbled. It'll never heal. No! Oh, Jesus!"
"Patience White won't heal, either, you son-of-a-bitch!"
"Please! Oh, God! I'll do anything!"
Mark jerked. There was a sickening snap he alone heard because it was drowned by Kelp's even more sickening scream of agony as His arm broke at the shoulder socket.
There were a series of shots. Everyone turned and looked toward the gate. Mark saw Dr. Sanders coming forward leading a battalion of State Troopers. One of them fired another warning shot, and peace was restored.
The officer in charge, walking beside Sanders, said, "Well, now. What in the name of heaven have we got here?"...." It wasn't the easiest thing, stirring up the officials," Sanders ,said. "They wouldn't admit the blackmail things hanging over their heads and maintained nothing was wrong out here. It was a little like trying to convince somebody of something that didn't exist. At times I doubted even myself."
"But it worked out all right," Mark said.
They were sitting in Sander's living room drinking scotch. To Mark it all seemed far-away-unreal again.
"You saved the day, old man. With your leadership. We came too late, really. You had things under control.
Your leadership. Mark's "thank you" came nowhere near revealing to Sanders what those words meant to him.
"How is Carol Rice?"
"In a straight jacket. Even sedatives weren't completely effective. A remarkable woman, that one. What a waste!"
"Some tragedies are so monstrous we can't quite grasp them, I guess."
"Right you are. This mess, it will be cleaned up. But even then-a year, two years and nobody will actually believe it happened It's too monstrous, too incredibly evil."
"Are you going to stay here and continue your practice?"
"Oh, yes. They need me more than ever now."
"In a way, they're like children."
"There'll be bitterness After the prison sentences are handed out we'll all try to make them forget." Sanders raised his eye brows. Another?"
Mark shook his head.
"What are you planning, old man. Back to the easel?"
"Perhaps-later. As soon as I'm cleared, in a day or two, I'm heading back to New York. Some business I ran away from...."
And that was how it ended. Two days later, his heart singing, Mark gunned the Thunderbird out of Devil's Bend country. And even the motor sang:
Here I come, baby. I'm on my way. And I love you....
