In his book, the Psychology Of Sex, Dr. Oswald Schwarz writes: "For the woman, her sexuality is part of herself, of her being. Therefore ... the woman is so thoroughly imbedded in her sexuality, and her sexuality is so much an element of her existence, that a particular act loses much of its importance to her...."
After a married man had initiated her, Claire Warne's big thing in life was sex. The scandal that followed press accounts of her tryst with a married man caused her to flee from her Iowa home, but her appetite for love was her undoing again and again, until she reached depths of degradation so low that even incest didn't shame her.
CHAPTER ONE
"Please ... Claire...." His voice was musical and chromatic with soft pleading.
"But, Billy ... if anyone were to discover...."
"Is that the only reason why you won't?"
"But ... why should we?"
"Don't you want to, Claire?"
"But you certainly don't love me."
"Surely you're not going to go Movie Picture Heroine on me, Claire. We've been all over that part of it before. A man doesn't need to love an exquisite woman in order to desire her ... and you'd have nothing to fear ... I'd take ever precaution."
"It isn't that...." she sighed, as they sped along through the Iowa night. It had been hot during the day, but it was delightfully cool now. There was a bright moon; and not a star was cloud-obscured. They had tuned the radio low; but now, suddenly, Petula Clark came on singing "Downtown."
Claire reached down and turned the volume up. Billy drove over to the side of the road and parked. In silence they listened to the pure notes of Petula's voice ... a voice so perfectly suited to the purposes for which she used it ... and the song ... the best of all those she sang. It was enough to melt the heart ... out under the stars, with the bright moon shining overhead.
Wisely, Billy did not speak. Claire, without being conscious of the movement, drew nearer to him on the front seat. His arm went around her. His hand slipped down into the bosom of her dress and cupped her warm, firm, maiden breast. Waves of embarrassment swept over her. She was aware that the nipple of her breast was standing up firmly. It was hard to know what to do or say with Billy. He wasn't like the yokels in town, who were easily enough disposed of in such situations.
It would be ridiculous to flounce away from him like an outraged, virtuous heroine in an old-fashioned story. She sat quite still, not knowing just how to act. Her face, she knew, was red. She felt the blush spreading out over the whole surface of her soft, unblemished skin.
When Petula's song was finished, Billy turned off the radio, and swept her closely into his arms.
"Oh, my dear ... my sweet ... you're so lovely."
His lips crushed down upon hers. His mouth opened. She felt her own lips part to receive his tongue! ... and then she gave him hers. One of his hands slipped to her knee, worked upward, and found its goal. Waves of delicious sensation went over her.
"Oh Billy, please, please ... I...!"
Then he desisted and moved slightly away from her. "I want it to be of your own free will and accord," he asserted, "or not at all...."
She was silent, trying to think coherently, but there was the moon and the clean, fresh smell of stacked barley in the fields just beyond. Far off, a train sound reached them but faintly, rounded a bend. For an instant its searchlight limned far-away trees in ghostly light. And still, though the music had been cut off, there floated the caressing memory of Petula Clark's voice, with overtones of passionate voluptuousness carried in the familiar song just finished.
"Honestly, Billy," she managed in low tones, being careful not to watch him as she spoke, "I wish I could, because I like you, and want to please you ... but ... darn it ... I don't know why, but ... I" She felt the tears ooze out on her cheek. She tried to control herself, but the sobs kept coming from down deep. Again he drew her into his arms, and this time made no advances but cradled her head upon his shoulder, comforted her, and let his lips brush her hair.
"You poor, timid, sweet baby. It would please you, too. What else have we here in this damned hole of a town? And we've got to remain for some time yet. We could have this. It would make life so much more interesting for both of us."
"Yes, I know," she conceded, ""but I couldn't do it. I know it's awfully silly of me to act like this, but...."
"You dear!" he soothed. "After the first time ... your fears would vanish. You'd get over this feeling. Come on out to the fishing cabin with me, anyway. Let's see if you can't lose your timidity there. If you don't, I'll bring you back. I promise. And I won't make it disagreeable for you either. If I can't make it pleasant for you ... well ... we'll return, that's all." ... "And you won't be angry with me if we go out there and I still don't?"
"Of course not, angel; am I ever angry at you for anything?"
She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It indicated twenty minutes past nine o'clock. Seeing where her attention was directed, he urged:
"We could be there in fifteen minutes ... and get back to town about ten-thirty. Your folks won't fuss if you're in by eleven, will they?"
"But, your wife-?"
"She went to the movies. The picture won't be over before eleven-fifteen. After that, she'll go to the drugstore for a soda, and remain to gabble for a while." ... "Well, if you're sure you won't be angry in case I don't, after we go so far ... !"
For an answer, he smiled and started the car. As he leaned forward to turn the ignition key, she saw his handsome face sharply outlined by the dashboard light; and his hand. It was a smooth, graceful hand, not as a woman's hand might be smooth and graceful, but shapely and strong too ... so different from the rough hands of most of the other young men she knew in town.
He was so clean and strong and fine in every way. Her woman's body ached for him; but her mind, which for years had been in the care of those not concerned with truth and beauty, was filled with strange alarms that she did not comprehend.
The car fairly flew along the road now. He was wordless and intent at the wheel ... wanting her much, she was pleasantly aware; although, even as the thought of this stimulated her, she knew inner panic.
Presently they turned off the state highway and slowed down along a stretch of graveled road, which soon ended at the private driveway leading to a farmhouse.
His voice was husky as though his throat was rough as he said:
"We'll have to walk the rest of the way."
Trembling, she followed him out of the car. He took a flashlight with him as they set off through the woods toward the Wicomac Creek bed, where, at certain seasons of the year, when the creek was well filled with water, trout were to be had.
They found the small fishing cabin without difficulty. Bathed in moonlight, it stood picturesquely by the side of the creek, which now contained scant water since there had recently been a drought.
The windows of the cabin were fitted with wooden coverings on hinges. These were locked on the inside. Billy, without using his flashlight, selected from a leather container the key to the padlock on the cabin door.
There was an accumulation of rust on the lock. Claire prayed that it might be sufficient to make impossible the opening of the lock. A jovial, deity denied her supplication.
The door swung in and he stood aside for her to enter. She hesitated, inwardly tumultuous, then advanced against the darkness. He entered after her, closed the door, and flashed his light around. She saw a comfortably furnished one-room cabin, with a huge, brick fireplace. The bed had been covered with a large piece of oilcloth to protect it from dust.
With the windows boarded up, the dark inside the cabin was absolute. She quavered, in a weak, squeaky voice:
"Aren't you going to put on the light?"
"I don't know, Claire ... perhaps you'd rather it were completely dark?"
Grateful for his intuitive comprehension, she replied:
"Yes, you're right. I would rather have it that way. Aren't there people living near here who might...?"
"Don't worry. The only place near is that farmhouse whose private driveway we passed a while back. There's not the slightest chance they'd come here ... and, besides, the house is far back from the private road you saw-and over a hill. They wouldn't have heard the car or seen the headlights."
"Did you bring your flask with you? I think I'd like a drink; ... but remind me to buy something to take the odor of it off my breath before I go home."
"I've got the flask, sweet, and it's full; but I didn't offer it to you before, and I'm not going to now, because I don't want you ever to feel that I took advantage of you while you were under the influence of liquor. I want it to be of your own free will, and because you want it ... or not at all. We can have a drink later, on the way back, if you like."
For a long time she stood irresolute and motionless. Imprinted upon her mind was a mental photograph of the cabin, as it had appeared when he flashed the light around. With this picture as guide, she moved forward to the bed. She sat down, after pulling off the oilcloth covering. She heard him move toward her in the dark. Molten fire cascaded through her veins; but her mind was in sharp revolt. She called out:
"No! Please...!"
She heard him stop, then added:
"Oh please don't ... don't come here ... not for a minute anyway ... I'm ... so afraid!"
"Of what, Claire?"
"I don't know."
"You think it's-wrong?"
"Of course not ... only...." She tried to find words exactly to express what she felt, but she couldn't. "You don't want to?"
"Oh, but I do ... terribly, Billy."
"Then...?"
"Oh, please wait...!" It-was almost a wail.
"I'm waiting," he reminded her after a minute.
Without replying in-words, she took off her dress. He was motionless. It was so quiet within the cabin that the croaking frogs, and a slight trickling in the nearly dry creek, were abnormally loud. She knew that he heard her removing her brassiere. She felt, or perhaps only imagined that she felt, a tremendous stir go through him which was not manifested by any outward sign. It would be inexcusable, she reflected, to disappoint him now; yet there was something within her which convinced her inexorably that she would never go through with it.
This tortuous indecision had dwelt in her ever since she was thirteen. There ever had been the sharp desire with a concomitant mental inhibition, which, at the last moment, invariably held up a forbidding hand.
Nevertheless, she forced herself to remove other things.
There was a near-to-overpowering thrill in being alone with him in the dark ... so close to all his virile manhood....
She had seen him in a bathing suit; had seen his narrow hips, strong, lean thighs, and forearms. His brown, supple body was healthily sun-tanned, and was rendered agile and pliant by athletics so different from the other males in Gratiot, who had merely knots of unwieldy and disfiguring muscle formed by hard work.
"Shall I come to you, Claire?"
"No!"
"But, you're ready aren't you?"
"Yes ... but I can't got through with it!"
He was silent. After a moment she heard one of his joints crack and she realized that he was tensed, every muscle taut, as he fought for restraint and control in order to keep from frightening her.
She was conscious, in a peculiar way, of the ripeness of her own body. She burned and ached in heavenly unease. She touched herself, and knew that she was superb for the purposes nature had intended all the lovely women to serve, regardless of puerile, man-made restrictions. The firm column of her torso was sheathed in satiny warm flesh, with the pearly softness of youth upon it; narrow thighs and straight, shapely legs; buttocks firmly rounded and perfectly proportioned, though small.
"Let's go back, Billy. I'm sorry."
"It's ... all right, dear."
"You won't be angry with me?"
"Not in the least."
"Oh, Billy, you're such a good sport. Why can't I be, too?"
"You will be, dar. Let's be patient. We'll spoil everything otherwise."
She reached for her slip, where she had placed it upon the floor; then put it down again.
"I'm a fool, Billy, and you know it. Maybe I can, if...."
"Do you want me to come over there, honey?" She hesitated a long time, said, finally: "Yes."
He went slowly toward her, and she wondered if she would have the nerve to go through with it this time, or if she-would take fright at his first touch and insist upon returning to town still a virgin.
Then suddenly there-was no more time for decisions. His arms were around her, his mouth pressed firmly on hers.
"Billy...."
"Shhhh...."
He kissed her ... and kissed her. His fingers passed into the soft taffy of her curls ... his hands possessed her waist ... her back ... the firm uptilt of her large breasts ... pressing in her nipples and rolling them around and around....
She sighed and fell backward onto the bed, her legs spreading as she dragged him with her....
She was mortally surprised to find herself speared so suddenly. In scarcely any time at all, something firm and majestic had come down through the golden thatch between her legs and was forcing its way....
"Oh, Billy...." She caught her breath. "That hurts so beautifully ... put it in...."
He pressed forward, teasing. His mouth buried onto her lovely white neck and began sucking. His hands lifted her creamy-smooth buttocks delicately.
He teased. Easing it in a little ways, hurting her, making her beg for more. Then dragging it out ... gradually she was becoming more and more fluid....
And then he broke the barrier. She screamed, and Billy laughed, for now there was nothing to stand in his way. He began pumping with a smooth, easy precision, and it wasn't long before she joined his rhythm....
"Oh, Billy ... that's so good ... ooooohhh ... when you stick it in ... oh God ... oh God ... oh God ... Billy!"
She shrieked on a high note and felt herself catapulted toward an ecstasy that came rushing forward easily and fast....
And then Billy's answering cry and shudder met her own ... and she knew the sweet juice of his manhood flooding her with great beauty and pain and joy Elizabeth Warne glanced up at the clock.
"Nearly eleven," she reported. "Where do you suppose Claire is?"
George Warne shifted irritably in his chair and turned toward his wife, reluctantly tearing his attention from a crossword puzzle he had clipped from the evening paper.
"No telling," he returned darkly, and went back to racking his mind for unusual and useless words with which to fill the puzzle.
At forty-seven, George Warne was a smugly complacent failure. He was tall and a trifle stout. He had light-blond hair, large, blue eyes and fair skin. He was well-proportioned, and, except for a certain flatness and over-sweetness to his face, would have been handsome.
Elizabeth Warne was forty-four. She, too, had light hair and blue eyes; her hair had been touched up to conceal an increasing number of gray hairs. For a woman of her age, her teeth were in exceptionally goad condition.
Her first husband, among his other eccentricities, had been fanatical concerning the care of teeth.
George was her second husband. The first, Pierce Sankey, had been a jack-of-all trades and master of nothing, not even his own behavior patterns. He had dabbled in everything, and was a voracious reader: but he appeared to be wholly without that urge toward females which most of the men in the city had.
They had married suddenly after he seduced her in one of the bedrooms of her mother's rooming house in Detroit, The seduction was so unexpected she was completely unprepared to cope with it.
Then Pierce had become ill, and George, her present husband, had more or less come to her rescue.
George abandoned his crossword puzzle altogether and tartly remarked:
"You'll have to do something about Claire."
"Uh huh," Elizabeth warily agreed.
"You don't seem to realize how serious matters might become with Claire."
"How do you mean, serious?"
"You don't pay any attention to her at all. After all, she's your daughter, you know."
"You never let me forget that," Elizabeth snapped.
"Suppose she got into trouble?" he persisted. N "Oh, we could send her to Chicago to a doctor." This, Elizabeth said in spite, knowing it would anger him; years before, when they had known she was with Pierce's child, after her second marriage, she had pleaded with him to be aborted, but he had unctuously refused, for he had a staunchly serf-like pious side to him.
With a deepened gravity, caused by her reference to the doctor, he continued:
"Suppose she were to cause trouble between William Drew and his wife? It would make things most unpleasant for me here. In my position I can't afford any such nonsense. You know that well enough. You must speak to her as soon as she comes in. I want you, particularly, to find out where she has been this evening, and with whom."
Husband and wife glared truculently at each other. Many years since, they had completely dispensed with any notion between them that they were in love with each other. Down deep, they felt a mutual hatred. But they stuck together, because of the demos-inspired feeling for surface respectability, implicit in conventional marriage.
Again she recalled, in a brief flash, a scene from her first marriage. When Pierce discovered that Warne was about to run off with her, he surprised her the last night she had intended to stay at home with him; bound and gagged her, and raped her, again and again.
Afterward, she had asked the unspeakable Pierce why he had done such a thing. She remembered his reply very clearly; she could even hear his voice and see his expression when he had spoken that night:
"Tell that pious lover of yours that I don't mind his coming in here when I'm down and out and sick, and lugging you off while he's pretending to be a friend of mine. I'm glad to be rid of you. You're a lazy, ignorant, gutless peasant wench anyway, and no real partner for what I intended to do what I do mind is his damned pious reasons for what he's doing; his, and yours, pretending that it's my falllt."
"But, Pierce! George is the best friend you've got! Didn't he offer to lend you money? He's taking me away only because he thinks that will make things easier for you as well as...."
Pierce's demoniacal laughter echoed in her mind after all those years.
"Wouldn't he just say that, the rat! And the hell of it is, he probably believes it himself."
"It's true, Pierce; and now you've gone and done this, and I'm going away with him tomorrow, and he'll have to support a child of yours, perhaps."
"Better not tell him about it until you've got the divorce and actually married him, or he'll find some pious reason for backing out."
"But then it will be too late to do anything."
Again Pierce's raucous mirth.
"Well?...." George rasped, cutting in on her thoughts.
"All right, George, don't keep harping on it. I'll speak to her when she comes in."
"We'll both speak to her, Elizabeth. I shall remain up with you until she gets in. We're going to find out precisely where she's been tonight, and with whom ... and what she's been doing. There's to be no more laxity. We're going to take that child in hand."
"All right." Elizabeth got up with a tired sigh and went out to the kitchen and came back with a glass of lemonade. She was shocked to find that George had unbuttoned his trousers and was massaging his organ with his left hand.
"George!"
He looked up at her, at first defiantly; then a guilty look swiftly swept over his countenance. "I just felt like it," he said, then he started to re-button.
She giggled, staring at him. He had indeed been suddenly aroused more than usual, She wondered if it could have been because of their talk about William Drew and Claire.
But whatever caused it, she didn't care ... she just hoped that she would get the benefit of it ... after weeks of his apparent lack of interest.
Her hand stole over across his trousers. "Let me get that for you...."
"Elizabeth!"
Her hand took in his bulge and felt around gently. Finally she undid him once more.
He had never seen her do anything so bold.
Suddenly he wanted to forget their once-a-month schedule and....
His head rested-back and his eyes shut. "Oh, Elizabeth...."
Her mouth bent and she began sucking him with it. He groaned in torment and pushed his fingers into her hair.
Then he made it, too quickly to be believed. He pumped it right down her throat, and she gulped it with a little sigh of pleasure. Then he shuddered into a state of complete relaxation.
Ten minutes later they made it to the bedroom, arms around each other. Doffing her clothes in a trice, Elizabeth lay back on the bed with her legs spread and waited patiently. In another moment he was inside of her and they were riding together through a valley full of stars.
CHAPTER TWO
It was not until several days later that Claire again thought about the scene in the fishing cabin.
She had not dared immediately afterward to relive the scene. It had been difficult to gain perspective. But this morning there was magic in the airor in her. She knew a pleasant lassitude; felt, she imagined, much as a bud might when it had begun to blossom into a flower.
It was the sort of morning upon which one, lying in bed, would naturally think back into the past, and ahead into the future. What the future might hold for her she could not possibly imagine. In vain did she try to project herself into the future. It seemed utterly null and void-and she was not a little afraid of it-especially in view of the strangely contradictory temperament with which she knew herself to be possessed.
She was, she recognized, the kind of girl to whom almost anything might happen; but it would be something intense, and probably frightening.
She rose from bed. It .was after nine o'clock. The cook was accustomed to providing her with coffee and rolls-which was all she ever required for breakfast-at whatever time she should put in an appearance.
She stepped out of her pajamas after unfastening them and letting them fall to the floor. She approached her mirror, pushed it back a bit at the bottom, and then moved away, so that she was reflected full length. Pertly, she put her head to one side and examined herself in the mirror. Her hair fell down on the warm soft flesh of a perfectly rounded shoulder and tickled her. Lifting firm, young breasts in her hands, she squeezed them cruelly, hurting herself in order to drive away something of which she was ashamed. She dropped her dainty, breast-warmed hands to slender hips; rubbed sleek flanks. The window was wide open. It was brightly sunny outside. Busy insects buzzed in the garden below. The breeze which came in at the window was warmly scented. It touched her exquisite, white body caressingly; toyed intimately with her person. She enjoyed the nudity ... recalled something Billy had once said, when they had first started going together surreptitiously and she had confided her fears to him ... explained to him how it was, that her surface-mind was liberal, while her inner-self still, despite her, held much of the hodge-podge of conventionality which had been inflicted upon her in her youth.
Lazily she went back to the bed, still nude, and again lay down. Her room was comfortable enough, but ugly. She was, she decided, the only pretty thing in it. Turning in bed, she spread out with her feet toward the mirror, which was so adjusted as to make it possible for her to see herself full length. Parts of her, she concluded, were hideous. Maybe, she speculated, that was why she had been afraid when she gave Billy what he wanted.
It hadn't occurred to her before, but now it was increasingly clear that in her reluctance there had been much of this feeling that parts of her body were irretrievably nasty, and that any man would be disgusted by the sight or feel of them. Yet, when she examined the idea carefully, she saw, intellectually, if not emotionally, that it was nonsense. Obviously men did have such reactions toward women-quite the reverse, in fact. Maybe, she decided, it was the revolting and unusual first experience she had had, at the age of eleven, that made it so hard for her to be as natural and at ease as other girls were in such matters.
With disgust, she recalled the experience with a thirteen-year-old brat who had come to Gratiot, on his summer vacation, from Omaha.
Then her mind went back to the fishing cabin. She could again feel Billy's avid hot hands upon her bare flesh in the dark. She felt again the wild ache of desire which had taken her with his contact. He was such a good sport that way ... and he was in such a rotten position; married to a girl he didn't and couldn't love ... forced to oversee the farm work for his father, when he longed to leave Gratiot and go where he could have the association of kindred souls.
She recalled the scene when she had arrived home after the evening with Billy at the fishing cabin....
George and her mother waiting up for her solemnly.
She blushed as she remembered having lied concerning her "whereabouts. But her mother hadn't been interested anyway; and it was easy to delude George. Highly susceptible to the most obvious flattery concerning his supposed erudition, and invariably soothed by being addressed as "Doctor," he was easily disposed of.
There was no love between her parents and herself-certainly there was none in her heart for her "father." He had endlessly explained to her what a magnanimous thing he had done in pretending that she was his own child. But he had done this, she knew, only to save his own face.
And her mother, since she hated Claire's real father, could feel, in consequence, no genuine warmth of love for his daughter.
George had one brother-Olive-a commercial traveler; a joHy enough person of whom he disapproved heartily. Once he had visited Gratiot when Claire was thirteen. He had held her in his lap and said, "My, you're abig girl!" and, when George wasn't watching, put his hands exploringly beneath her dresses; after which he gave her an "entre nous" wink and a quarter.
She hadn't greatly minded this nastiness on the part of Oliver. He made a joke of it; and he was so much nicer than George; had none of George's dolorous religiosity. He had, in fact, endlessly twitted George during his stay with them about his "earnest look," as he called it.
And Oliver's was the only expression of any kind of affection she had ever had from what might have been called a member of the family. It was small wonder, she reflected, as she picked at a tiny blemish on one prettily rounded, smooth knee, that she was utterly unequipped to receive or give love of any kind.
The boy from Omaha had been a most trying ordeal. The occurrence of the relationship with him, coming as it had during her most impressionable years, had taken heavy effect in her subliminal consciousness; might, in fact, she knew-from her study of psychology at school, and a little collateral reading-to some extent color her whole life.
He had appeared to be such a nice boy. She'd been attending the Baptist Sunday school then. His parents, very respectable citizens of Omaha (they had been born and married in Gratiot), had sent him to the Gratiot Baptist Sunday school during their summer vacation in Gratiot.
His name was Joseph, and he had dressed so neatly. His manners, too, had been impressive, as compared with those of the other boys his age in Gratiot.
He had asked politely, when they met in Sunday school, if he might walk home with her. Elizabeth and George, meeting him, had thought him a young gentleman; George had been particularly impressed because Joseph's father wore a Phi Beta Kappa key. Toward all such brassy trinkets George entertained a profound and groveling deference.
Joseph had been prevailed upon to stay for Sunday dinner. His table manners were a revelation. Her friendship with him grew on apace. They saw each other almost every day for several weeks. Everything, it appeared, that Joseph did, was correct; everyone approved of him and remarked upon him. He was slight of stature and pale, with dark, intense eyes, and stiff, black hair parted neatly in the middle. He constantly had a freshly-scrubbed look and his clothing was invariably spotless. At thirteen he had graduated from grammar school with a remarkable record for good scholarship and exemplary deportment.
He had a slightly dictatorial air which he got from his father. He would say, in a low, firm, polite tone: "We will do this, if it pleases you; we will do that, if it pleases you." And one felt constrained to be pleased with whatever it was that he suggested, since he had an aura of utter righteousness about him Which almost made it seem that whatever he was prompted to do bore something of Divine Direction in its inspiration.
It was on a rainy afternoon that he decided, if it pleased her, that they would explore the barn behind the home of the relatives he was visiting. Their exploration extended to the hay loft. He felt that it would be better if she preceded him up the ladder, since she was a young lady and he a gentleman. He watched from directly below the ladder, in order, she supposed, to be handy in case of an accident. Too late she realized, when she got to the top of the ladder, that because the day was so hot she had neglected to don panties.
After a time, as they sat talking in the sweet-smelling alfalfa, with the rain pattering cozily upon the barn roof, he informed her of his awareness that she was without panties.
"But that's all right," he assured her, "I don't mind. It is hot today. I'll take mine off, too." And he did.
With thoroughness he called attention to the various differences between them-much to her confusion. Yet he still maintained the "Divine Right of Middle Class King's Son" attitude, so that it was impossible to remonstrate with him or even gently to hint that this was a thing which one was not pleased to do.
He had, in fact, decided that it would be an excellent thing for her to minutely examine their differences while he, at the same time, improved his first-hand knowledge of nature.
Soon she had nothing on at all, nor did he. lie was a thorough examiner, employing all five senses, and insisting that she do the same.
Shortly after that, to her intense relief, he went back to Omaha with his sainted father and mother.
She rolled over on the bed and hugged a pillow tightly to her, to shut off that memory and turn on a sweeter one.,.
... Billy, and their last moments together thereat the fishing cabin ... If he would only make an opportunity again to see her ... once more implore her to give him what he wanted, and what she, in fact, so badly wished to give him-this time, with no hesitation. She stiffened and lay still as though listening.
A strange thing had happened, she was acutely aware. It was an experience approaching the psychic. Inside her there had been a mental click. She would go to Billy, she would take her pride in her hands, swallow her confusion and herself seek out Billy and ask him for another rendezvous. She would encourage his ardor.
Swiftly she rose and dressed.
That night she went to the edge of town and waited. At the appointed time Billy came along in his car, and she climbed in.
"Everything all right?" she asked.
"Yes. Dora's gone to the movies. We're safe until eleven-thirty or twelve; how about your folks?"
"Oh, they may ask questions and suspect, when I come in; but it won't be hard to deal with them. My mother doesn't care at all, really ... and my father is only afraid I may get caught flagrante delicto and put a dent in his smugness."
"You don't seem to have much love for your parents."
"I'm afraid it's they who haven't much for me. Don't let's talk about it. Do you realize that summer will soon be over?"
"I don't know," he mused, smiling, as he sent the car flying along the macadam road toward the fishing cabin.
"You don't know?" she echoed. "I've an idea summer is justbeginning for you and me."
She moved closer to him, snuggled tightly against his warm masculine body. She glanced at the speedometer. He was doing seventy on a straight stretch. She liked to fly along at high speed. It prevented her thinking too much about what lay ahead; for, as usual, the idea was both compelling and frightening.
"What you goingto do this fall, Claire? You're not, by any chance, going away?"
"No. George wants me to go back to the state university and finish up there; but I'm not going to. I'm nearly twenty ... when I'm twenty-one I'll go away, I think."
"Perhaps," he hoped aloud, "by that time I can escape too, and we'll vanish together."
"Will we want to, then?" she asked wistfully.
It was a heavy car and of good make. It could do seventy or eighty miles per hour with no more noise or jolting than would be evident in a cheap car going twenty-five miles per hour.
"Want to? Why I-What do you mean? Won't you want to?"
"I think I will ... but you...."
"I'll always want to."
"Didn't you once feel that way toward Dora?"
"Yes, when I was eighteen, before I went away to school ... when she was sixteen."
"Well then...?"
"I was too young, at that time, to have any real idea of what I wanted."
"Don't let's talk that way," she urged. "Whatever happens, we'll have had our happiness together. I can't see that it will hurt anyone ... not even Dora. Perhaps, if you and she had children, it might be different, but...."
"We seem to be a bit gloomy tonight," he chided.
It was not a night for gloom. There was bright moonlight which laid an argent carpet over the gently rolling landscape; a landscape unspeakably horrible for that remaining eight months of the year...."Billy, if I tell you something absurd, will you try to understand, and not make fun of me?"
"Have I ever done anything to...."
"Yes, I know, Billy, you've been wonderful ... only ... well, this is sillier than anything I ever said to you before."
"Shoot," he invited with heartening warmth.
"I don't want you to ask me any more. When we get there I wish you'd just take me, and make me."
"What!"
"I really mean it, Billy."
"But...!"
"And I mean for you to be ruthless ... do you see?"
"I'm afraid I don't, quite. Suppose you should change your mind at the last minute?"
"That's just it. Don't even let me ... I want you to make up my mind for me." He considered this for a long time. "But you might loathe me afterward, Claire."
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure, Billy."
He increased the speed of the car. This time the wind roared around the end of the windshield; they had come upon a level stretch of road upgraded and unprotected from the wind by hills, and he was doing eighty. She had in intuitive conviction that what she was suggesting appealed to him mightily-whetted his appetite for her. She felt herself filled alternately with chills and hot flashes which had not physical, but rather mental predication ... If he were to take her and make her with his strong arms, sinewy thighs; his entire hard, brown, graceful body!
"If you really mean it, I'll do it, Claire. But suppose you got frightened and yelled?"
"Would they hear it over at the Willetts'?"
"Not likely, unless you yelled ungodly loud and the wind were that way."
"Couldn't you stop me from yelling?"
"You really mean you'd want me to?"
"I really do."
"But suppose I hurt you, Claire?"
She turned her face away from him to hide her blushes for fear he might see them even in the dark. Her voice weak and husky from a sudden dryness in her throat. "I think I'd love it if you did hurt me, perhaps especially if you did."
She was afraid he would make some exclamation indicating that he felt a slight disgust at this. But, as usual, he did not fail her.
Without a word, he slowed down a bit and placed one of his hands gently and reassuringly upon her knee.
"I think I see at last, Claire. I'll do it: no matter what happens ... we'll see what...." He removed his hand from her knee and jammed the accelerator down to the floor.
Back at home George Warne was tinkering with the radio, trying to tune in out-of-town stations; and with only slight success. At last wearied of this occupation, and slightly vexed at his failures, he snapped off the radio and paced gloomily around the room with his hands in his pockets. He had a slight sinus infection, which caused him constantly to blow out of one nostril in order to clear it for breathing.
"I wish you'd stop your sniffling," Elizabeth begged petulantly. Offended, he took another turn up and down the room and then gazed at her, his head lowered, his eyes rolled up.
With increasing frequency, of late, upon such occasions as the present, her thoughts went back to her first husband. Pierce had possessed a number of good traits, she was only now realizing.
She recalled that often in the evenings he would read aloud to her some passage from a book, then cackle loudly. He had been particularly fond of pcisonously satirical passages in books.
For years after her divorce from Pierce Sankey, and during her marriage to George Warne, she had been able to startle the dusty, stuffy pedagogues whom George worshiped, by rattling off apothegms she had learned from Pierce. But the quotations, though many, were, after all, limited and finite; and after George had heard each of them half a dozen times he was impressed no longer. Though his other reason for marrying her remained valid. As to this, she also thought back to certain pertinent remarks by Pierce. They had come when George was, in his smug, specific manner, trying to explain to Pierce about Elizabeth and himself:
"You see, Pierce, Elizabeth and I love each other differently from what ... well, you probably wouldn't see ... It's a matter of the soul."
"Huh?" Pierce had snorted, exhibiting one of his twisted grimaces. "It seems to me you have managed to drag her over a lot of beds."
George had been infinitely shocked. He hadn't known at the moment that Elizabeth had already told Pierce of her relations with the man who had cuckholded him. George, in fact, had taken her for a ride the day before; they had visited the state university, where he had particularly wished to call upon a professor whom he greatly admired. The professor and his wife had not been in, but they had left the key with neighbors and requested that George go in and await their return. She had gone in with him and he had had her on the professor's parlor floor, in the professor's house, on the state university grounds.
All of this she had told to Pierce, who had chuckled and enjoyed it hugely, even though he was being cuckholded. She had cited it as reason why their marriage should be ended, and she should be permitted to go away with George ... But Pierce couldn't be made to see the light. He argued:
"You peasant bitch, you lazy slut; your real reason for wanting to leave me now is that I'm broke and sick-for the first time since we were married. You're one of the necessities of life; damn you: and you're going to stay until I'm well and on my feet again-then, by God, I'll kick you out. Do you think you're going to run out on me now, after having enjoyed the years when I had money and made it unnecessary for you to lift a hand, you peasant wench?"
She had been constrained to admit that there was some reasonableness in what he said. She'd promised to stick with him until he was well and on his feet again; and then go with the professor. But George wouldn't have it. He was the sort who dared attack only when he found an antagonist incapable of any sort of defense; Pierce, well, and in funds again, would have frightened George away altogether. And he very much wanted Elizabeth.
She had met him through her husband, while Pierce was taking a night extension course in chemistry under George. Once he had possessed her through no great effort on his own part, she acted upon him like a drug ... and he read her character aright. In order to overcome her decision to stick by Pierce at least until he was well, or able, to fend for himself again, George bought a large, new, red automobile and let her drive it ... and that was the clinching argument which caused her to walk out and leave Pierce, sick and penniless, after she had faithfully promised not to do it.
She winced now when she thought of it. It had been, she admitted to herself, a disgraceful thing to do. She was not, at heart, vicious; she was merely lazy....
Out at the fishing cabin, Claire stood, a slim white column of burning, budding womanhood.
All her life long, she was sure, she would recall the croaking of frogs that night; the slight trickling of the scant water in the brook.
Billy moved toward her in the dark. She could not see him. He took her quickly into his arms and held her tight against his hot, firm body.
She nearly fainted with delight at the feel of him, so hard and hairy and masculine, pressing her to him; but her delight lasted only a moment.
Feeling a resistance in her, and not wishing to frighten her, he loosened his hold for a moment; but the will to love was surging through him,' and he grasped her again more tightly than before. Frantically she strove to push him away.
"No, don't! Please! Billy! I've changed my mind."
But he did not free her.
She struggled and beat futilely upon his chest, conscious, even as she did so, of the heavenly fact that he was trembling with desire for her.
"Oh, oh ... please, Billy; I didn't mean what I said in the car. Take me home please...." But he was strong; far stronger than she had imagined.
The struggle was tiring her. She heard herself panting heavily. Putting the heel of her right palm against his chin, she pushed hard. He grunted, and his head went back. For a moment his hold was relaxed. She slipped out of his grasp and ran to the door, opened it and hurried out, a slim, white nymph in the underbrush. A bramble tore at her flesh. "
He was in hot pursuit behind her.
"Claire! You can't run off that way! Come here! Where would you go?"
She stumbled and nearly fell. Catching her just in time, he picked her up, kicking and squirming, his strong fingers making deep indentations in the smooth, soft flesh of her thighs as he carried her.
Placing both her hands in his wiry hair, she clenched her fists and yanked. But he seemed oblivious to the pain this caused.
Once more they were back in the cabin, "And now, Claire, you're going to get what you asked for." Gathering her struggling body fiercely in his arms, he hurled her onto the bed, so forcefully that she bounced and turned in the air as though dropped on a trampoline.
"No ... Billy ... you don't know what you're doing" she gasped, her breath virtually knocked out of her by the jolting force.
"I do know ... and you aren't going to have time to be afraid, this time," he hissed, clenching his teeth and grabbing her bouncing body with renewed force. Like a wrestler, he hurled himself on her squirming body, and pinioned her to the bed. His broad chest crushed against her breasts, and with a scissors hold, he subdued the thrashing of her legs; then, with both hands, he applied a wrench-like grip on her arms, as she struggled to dig her nails into her ribs.
Claire felt a surge of heat, as though a hot oven had been opened, and she was about to be hurled into it.
"You ... you're a beast,,," she screamed. Suddenly she was no longer afraid, but a new, even fiercer emotion had taken her over: sheer anger ... biting, frenzied anger....welled up in her, and she choked, trying vainly to scream.
She struggled, but with each move, the iron grip of his hands held her tighter, and a feeling of being smothered kept her screams suppressed.
Savagely, he moved his mouth to her breasts, and his lips pressed her nipples like pincers.
A new, warm tiredness overtook her; it began in her spine, moved like a searing flame to her breasts, and surged downward toward her belly. Her nipples hardened like rocks, and she felt moistness flowing from her crevice.
Gradually, his heavy, iron-like muscles forced her back, and the struggle she tried in vain to sustain began to give way, and a sudden sense of acquiescence filled her.
"You said you wanted to be raped...." Billy barked fiercely, " ... and you're going to get it."
He raised his mouth to hers, crushing against her lips. His tongue wedged its way into her mouth, and the feeling of liquid, burning warmth surged through every part of her body.
"O ... Billy...." she gasped. Her body went weakly, deliciously, limp, and she spread her legs as a wonderful agony of longing overtook her.
"That's better," Billy said, breathing in gasps.
"Oh ... Billy ... I want you ... I'm not afraid any more...."
Then he brushed the end of his throbbing, moist cock against the lips of her love-oozing pussy, and they both moaned as their fervor grew, and he slipped it in, slowly, feeling excruciating delight.
"Oh ... yesss ... push it hard ... Billy ... I'm ready ... slam it into me!"
Then, in and out, faster and faster, he plunged, and her buttocks rose off the bed to meet every thrust. Like a trip hammer, he pounded, frenzied, squirming from side to side, harder and harder.
The climax was an ecstasy they could hardly endure. Their moans became a scream in unison as their love-juices spurted and mingled, and their thrusting finally gave way to utter relaxed joy.
For a long time, they lay gasping, and finally, Claire spoke:
"I'll never be afraid again, Billy...."
"I'm glad ... and we'll always have it good...."
CHAPTER THREE
Although Dora Drew, Billy's wife, had been born and reared in Gratiot, she was by no means a "country girl." She was indistinguishable from the average young lady of her type to be met on the streets of any city in the United States.
She had derived a great deal of pleasure out of picturing herself as a movie heroine, denying motherhood in order to maintain a figure. This gesture of "freedom" which quite greatly shocked many of the town tabbies, Dora thought of as "sin"; and cherished the awareness of it to her heart; for it was the only sin that she had ever dared to commit, and she did so want to have at least one sin in her life.
She was slim and vapidly pretty, with creamy-white skin, dark-brown eyes and jet-black hair. Her hair, this evening, was in an amazing condition. She had had it set during the afternoon, and it was so tightly and perfectly moulded to her head, and so daintily prinked, that it resembled the oiled-paper casing around the edge of a scalloped pound cake. Looking at it one got the impression that were the hair pulled loose from her head-as oiled paper might be pulled from the edge of a crenelated pound cake-her head-would show the presence of notched indentations corresponding to the sharply cut and exactly defined hair serrature.
At the drugstore, after the movie, she waited to talk to Bertha Sumner. Bertha belonged to the category of naturally moral souls.
She was snaggle-toothed, pimply, and had hair like rusted straw. Never invited to sin herself, she was naturally against all sinning. She was also one of the town's most vicious and notorious gossips.
When most of the others who had tarried at the store after the show were gone, Bertha drew Dora into a booth. As was her usual habit, she began circuitously. That something unusual was coming, Dora was all too well aware.
She listened to Bertha's circumlocutions and waited uneasily. The electric fans in the drugstore kept up a monotonous buzzing. The top of the table in the booth was sticky. Dora was forced to sit back with her arms at her side to avoid spoiling her dress. Bertha, however, thought pretty dresses were slightly immoral and always wore any old rag; she sat comfortably with her arms before her, supporting her weight as she talked, leaning forward excitedly, her eyes agleam.
At last Bertha got around to the thing she had wished to say to Dora:
"You know, Dora dear, I dislike to mention a thing like this; but, being as you and I have always been friends, in school and all that, and went to the same Sunday school-though I don't see you there so much any more-at church I mean; well, anyway, everybody's talking about it."
"About my not going to church?"
"No, not about that-though the thing they are talking about-and it's true-may have been sent on you by the Lord for your neglect of His Temple."
"What things?"
Even as she asked the question, Dora knew what was coming, and her blood ran cold. She had suspected something of the sort for long. Her mind flashed back to that dreadful time when Billy, home from college, had hinted that he no longer felt toward her as he had before going to college ... he had wished to get out of their engagement.
"Haven't you heard anything about it at all?" Bertha probed.
"About what?"
"Claire Warne."
Distilled poison trickled through Dora's veins. Claire Warne-the most beautiful girl in town! She'd murder her I She'd disfigure her for life if there were any truth in it, she'd......"They meet just outside town. She walks out there, Dora. Shamelessly ... and waits for him; then he comes along and picks her up in the car, and they go out into the country ... gone for hours. And...."
"Nonsense, Bertha. I simply don't believe you."
"You don't have to believe me. Why, everybody knows all about it."
Dora walked home in such a seething rage that it was all she could do to keep herself from going directly to the Warne's home and sinking her hands in Claire's hair.
But she'd have to go easy for a while, she counseled inwardly; not let Billy know that she suspected watch for an opportunity. She thought of the revolver he kept in his bureau drawer....
This time they avoided the road to the fishing cabin.
"I've got a hunch we better not go there any more," Billy explained to Claire; but she wasn't listening. It was so heavenly to be in his arms, and to have her fears at last overcome; to be able frequently to enjoy that which she had so long wanted and so long feared to taste.
It might not be love, she thought; yet it was the nearest thing to it she had ever known; perhaps the nearest to it she would ever approach, in view of her early conditioning.
"Where you going?" she asked after a time, not particularly caring, so long as she could be with him. They were on the expressway to Des Moines. Billy was urging the car forward at tremendous speed. The moonlit fields slid past them so fast that they took on the appearance of flowing water.
"To a motel just outside of Des Moines."
"That's a long way," she objected. .
"Yes, but this road's so good and I can make such speed that it won't take us much longer than it would to go to the cabin."
She moved closer to him, and let her head rest on his shoulder. Occasionally other cars, coming from the opposite direction, also going at high speed, passed at high speed, passed, throwing a puff of air at them that rocked the car.
For the first time in her life, Claire felt warm and cozy and thrilly inside. Everlastingly her reason was trying to wreak havoc in this inner new paradise of warmth and love; but she had at last managed to shut off the voice of reason and blindly hold to the warmth, which, after her years of chill, she so greatly needed.
After a time they topped a gradual rise and saw a glow in the sky ahead of them. She'd often made the trip with George, who was forever going over to talk to various night extension-course groups at the university there. Nothing pleased him more than to be on the platform-before a few students to have himself introduced with words that would be flattering if applied to Voltaire; to be called "Doctor Warne", and to be spoken of as a savant.
The corn-fed dons with whom he associated at the university never viewed him with such flattering awe as did the unlettered teachers at the city college in Des Moines.
The car descended the other side of the rise. Soon they approached the lighted parking space before a motel, which was surrounded, like a fat suckling pig with its young, by well-made, comfortable tourists cabins.
Nobody'll see us," Billy assured her. "I reserved one of the cabins, and I've got the key right with me ... I drove over and attended to it all this afternoon. We can go directly to the cabin."
As Billy was inserting his key into the lock of the tourist-cabin door, a car rounding off the road toward the parking lot picked up Billy and Claire with its powerful lights for a moment.
But Billy got the door open without difficulty and they hastily entered.
The cabin. Claire saw, when the lights had bees switched on, was a far neater one than the average of such places. The bed was large and comfortable and immaculate with new sheets and a pink counterpane. Billy stepped to the windows and carefully pulled down the shades.
This done, he crossed to the center of the room where Claire stood, and took her into his arms.
Sheer madness beat through her. She crushed herself against him; lifted up eager lips for his kiss. His mouth clamped over hers and his hands and arms moved down, touching her lovely curves intimately. He asked:
"Would you do something for me, sweet?"
"Anything?"
"I've never seen you in the light ... all of you ... and you're so lovely...." She blushed. "I'd be ashamed."
"Ashamed! ... of your dainty body? Where in the world do you get such ideas? They're not like the essential you."
"They aren't really my ideas," she sighed, reminding herself that she was not really George Warne's daughter.
"I should hope not," he returned fervently, and started taking off his things, hoping thus to help her in overcoming her own timidity.
Without further hesitation she complied with his wish and stood at last, straight and proud, seeing in his gaze nothing of the cheap lasciviousness that would have attended the regard, under such circumstances, of any other man she knew in Gratiot.
Watching his eyes, she realized for the first time how splendid her form really was; realized too, with thankful gratitude, that those portions of her which she had considered wholly unlovely did not seem so to a male.
At his approach, she trembled, but not, this time, in fear. It was, so far as she was aware, more that she could bear, the moment before his body would come into contact with her own.
His arms went around her, and his body met hers. For a moment she knew rapture so intense that it was near to unbearable. It was like the pain that came when one first put an exploring foot into a hot bath. Like that pain, after the first shock of it had passed, it blended into a sensation that was still slightly painful, but a translated pain, indescribably exquisite.
She felt her heart throb as if it would burst. She pulled him close in mad, unheeding delight. His lips and his hands were prayers upon her. She drew in short, sharp, audible breaths, as does one about to plunge from a great height.
He slid in and out of her like a greased piston, pulling and pushing her jerking buttocks. Momentarily his mouth fell to one of the great pulsating, dark-red nipples of her breasts, sucking on it like a baby and rubbing the other nipple with his hand. The aureoles of her heaving bosom had expanded tremendously with the heat of her lust, and throbbed, dark with blood and joy....
He plunged....
"Oh...! Billy...!" Her fingernails dug viciously into his shoulders, drawing blood.
"Billy! Billy! Pump me! Oh, darling!"
In a phone booth at the motel. Walter Scunney, long an unsuccessful campaigner in the direction of Claire's sexual favors, was being connected to Gratiot by the long-distance operator. He was short and stout and slightly asthmatic. Excited now, since he was going to get even with Claire for her contempt of him, he breathed with great difficulty. At last the Gratiot operator got his connection through. He was still seeing the vivid picture of Claire and Billy that his automobile headlights had for a moment picked up.
"Hello ... this you, Bertha?"
"Yes ... what is it?"
"Say, lookit; Dora Drew will be over at the movies ... I want you to run over there and tell her something for me."
Five grim-faced people-two men and three women-grouped themselves in front of the counter in the motel office, staring menacingly at the proprietor, whose nervousness was increasing by the second.
"We want the key to cabin number three," said the stern-looking older man.
"I couldn't give it to you, mister; there's somebody in that cabin...."
"We haven't the slightest intention of bothering or molesting you in any way. We know who's in your cabin number three. We just want to take them home. If you don't give us a key, I shall call the sheriff."
"All right, mister, I get you the duplicate key. You should wait here a minute, yes."
"He's going to warn them," Dora hissed.
Dora's father tightly gripped the flashlight he had brought. He wanted to see a rare sight. He had been thinking about it with libidinous anticipation all the way out. He was a tall, cadaverous, godly man, with deep-sunk eyes and a scraggle of black hair, like lanugo, around the edge of his bald head.
"Well, you come with me while I get the key," the baffled proprietor offered.
They followed him through a dark hall to his office. In the adjacent cocktail lounge of the motel, a raucous-voiced blonde from Denver was singing a blues song. There was a metallic twanging of the notes from a piano that accompanied her; or, rather, led her on, keeping a note or so ahead of her.
The-whole place had a spicy flavor of sin, which greatly delighted Mrs. Gordon, Dora's mother. Elizabeth Warne felt frightened and sorry for her daughter Claire; but never in her weak, ineffectual life had she taken a decided stand about anything, save a refusal to work.
From a long board in his office, fitted with small, yellow hooks, the proprietor took the duplicate key to cabin number three. With a look of deep misgiving he handed it to them, asking:
"Shall I go with you?"
"No," George told him curtly, a trifle awed and frightened at his own temerity, but nevertheless beginning to enjoy his role.
Leaving the proprietor behind, the party of moral privateers from Gratiot walked out toward cabin number three. Some of the tourist cabins were lighted; but number three was in total darkness.
Father Gordon was fearful lest he should, after all, be disappointed in this opportunity of a lifetime to actually see people sinning. In all his life, he had never seen a naked woman, except in the pictures he had sometimes taken from his students. These he kept well hidden away in his room and often gloated over them privately. His wife had never permitted him to see her nude. He had never in fact, even beheld her breasts when she was youngand they might well have been worth beholding. Once, while they were, as a favor to God, endeavoring to procure an offspring, he had surreptitiously squeezed one of her breasts with his hand. For a week afterward she wouldn't speak to him, and for months following she would not accommodate him; for years she hinted darkly that breast squeezing causes cancer and that she was likely to die some day as a result of his lechery that night. Father Gordon, like many another of his stamp, had been a lifelong devotee, especially after his marriage, to autoeroticism.
Very softly, the quintet of moral forces advanced upon the cabin. Father Gordon got his flashlight in readiness, and felt, as he did so, a return of his lost virility.
George bent over and poised the key before the lock. Nearby in a parked car, a radio was bringing in a program from a broadcasting station in Sioux City. George waited until a huge A. and P. truck with a heavy trailer went by on the truck road, making a great deal of clatter; under cover of the noise caused by the truck he inserted the key swiftly, and turned it, immediately pushing the door open.
Father Gordon shot the piercing beam of his flashlight into the cabin. It centered directly upon the bed.
Claire gave a frightful scream. Billy cursed. They all stalked into the room, Mother and Father Gordon feasting their eyes; Elizabeth reluctant and ashamed; Dora in a rage.
From her pocketbook, Dora snatched the revolver she had secured from Billy's drawer. She pulled the trigger, but Elizabeth knocked her arm upward just in time. The bullet went through the roof of the cabin.
Mrs. Gordon then turned on the switch light on the wall.
Claire screamed and struggled. Billy cursed in fright. From all sides there were the sounds of running feet and hoarse exclamations.
Father Gordon pushed his daughter and wife out of the room.
"This is no sight," he declared, "for women to see."
He tried to dispose of Elizabeth, but she was endeavoring to aid Claire. George stood in the center of the floor, white and completely unstrung. He hadn't the faintest idea what a second-rate scholar and third-rate gentleman ought to do when confronted by a situation so wholly removed from classroom practices.
A state policeman in the garb of a motorcycle office forced his way in. They could hear another policeman cursing at the gathering crowd of curious people outside, threatening them with broken heads if they didn't "quite shoving."
The motorcycle policeman was like a dread creature from Mars to Claire's hysteria-crazed vision. His goggles were pushed up on his forehead; rows of shiny bullets belted his middle. Handcuffs hung from his belt. She keened again, despairingly.
Father Gordon and George cowered into a corner; both of their lackey souls completely awed before such an array of authority and brass buttons.
The officer was amused at what he saw.
"One of you guys send for the police wagon from Des Moines-make it snappy," he said. Claire had stopped screaming; she was moaning now in delirious hopelessness and frenzy, trying to put on her clothes.
George still cowered in a corner, unhinged before the show of brass buttons. He murmured just audibly:
"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" and mopped at his shiny forehead with a handkerchief. Elizabeth was crying now in fright and bewilderment. Vainly she strove to comfort Claire.
Before the arrival of the police wagon, the officers put Father Gordon and George out of the cabin; but Elizabeth refused to go. A large crowd had magically appeared from out of the dark Iowa landscape. They laughed and chatted, and an enterprising merchant carried hot dogs to them. Word of what was happening had gone around through the crowd; had spread throughout Des Moines and many adjacent counties. Cars were streaming in on the trunk road, so that the police car, with its shrilling siren, had great difficulty in getting through, needing often to leave the road altogether and detour back upon it over the precarious dirt at the side of the road.
When Claire heard the unearthly ululation of the siren, it seemed to her that she took final and complete leave of her senses.
The ride to jail was a numb nightmare.
CHAPTER FOUR
The summer ended early in New York that year. In the first few weeks after Claire arrived, she wasted part of her meager fund making paid applications at employment agencies where a fee for registration was charged. More of it was constantly going for carfare. In Gratiot, or even ing Des Moines, it was usually possible to walk almost anywhere one wanted to go; in New York this was never possible. Even though a given street number might seem to indicate that another number sought on the same street ought to be but a few blocks away, she discovered that the numbering system in New York was different from that in any other American city, and that street numbers separated only by a few hundreds might be actually several miles apart.
She at last discovered, unfortunately, the cheap restaurants, where rotten meat and unsubstantial food might be had for remarkably low prices. She had found a place to get breakfast for forty cents, and another place where supper might be had for sixty cents. She began to lose vitality from this shocking malnutrition.
It was when she was down to her last two dollars that a girl from an employment agency gave her a tip.
"Say," she informed Claire, "with your face and figure you don't have to worry. I know where you could knock down a hundred fifty bucks a week, easy, and you wouldn't have to do any work or anything you wouldn't want to do, either. They want young, innocent ones like you a hell of a lot more than they want regulars who look hard-boiled. Yeh, all you got to do is take your clothes off and wriggle a bit. If you want extra dough you can make that besides, after your advertising; but if you don't, you don't have to; you can just take your dough for the performance and beat it. The guys that run the shows protect you if you don't want to do more than strip."
"Before men?"
"Sure, before men-and sometimes women."
"I couldn't do it." The girl shrugged.
"I used to be like that, too-but when you get hungry you can do lots of things you didn't think you could. Here's the address, in case you want to take a whirl at it."
It was three days more, however, before Claire screwed up courage to go around to the place. It' wasn't that she held back through modesty, except secondarily; she still could not get over the conviction which most women have-and which is the only true one for supposed feminine modesty that certain parts of her were unspeakably hideous. She examined these parts in her mirror, and had her conviction confirmed; still, she recalled, when Billy Drew had beheld them....
As she thought of it, a deep nostalgia slipped over her for a moment. She could hear the frogs croaking just outside the fishing cabin beyond the Willetts' farm. With all its faults, Gratiot, Iowa, was infinitely preferable to New York. At least there were fresh air, wide, uncrowded walks, and easy access to open country; and a large, comfortable room with a good bed, and endless, wholesome food....
At last she went to the address scribbled in red lipstick upon the envelope back.
It was in the Forties, in a five-story building which appeared to be devoted not to theatrical booking offices, but to "Special Sales Agencies," whatever they might be.
She was taken up to the third floor in a rickety elevator by a ruttish-eyed elevator boy, who leered at her suggestively when she asked for the "Tamber Agency."
Walking down a dingy hall, whose floorboards had warped and made walking in high heels a precarious business, she stopped outside a door with ground glass in it, upon which was the name, "Tamher Agency." Irresolute, she stood outside the door afraid to enter, her heart pounding. She'd have to do it, she decided; at least until she had made enough to give her sufficient stake to go on hunting for a job.
She supposed that some lecherous ogre inside would immediately demand to "see whatcha got, girlie," and make her instantly strip. It she hesitated another moment, she at last decided, she wouldn't go in at all; it was this, or absolute destitution ... starvation ... eviction. She turned the door handle, and the moment she was inside the office, she wished to flee-but it was too late.
There was a bare office with no rug on the floor, fitted with a hat rack, a filing cabinet, and a young lady, loathsomely pimpled, sitting before an old-fashioned typewriter desk of the type into which the machine disappeared when the top was lifted.
"Whom do you wish to see?" asked the girl.
Unable to utter a word, Claire tremblingly laid down the envelope with its lipstick inscription.
It would have been hard to talk, even had she wished to, because the street below was hideous with the clatter of pneumatic drills, tearing up the asphalt for one of the never-ending repairs the city sanitary department wished to make upon the sewage system.
When the girl at the desk said nothing, Claire managed at last to get out: "I ... A girl I met told me ... told me that...." she trailed off, terrified at the sharp scrutiny the young lady at the desk gave her.
Evidently persuaded that no New York policewoman could accomplish such an artistic rendition of Scared Young Girl as this applicant was giving and probably not terribly afraid of policewoman anyway-the girl took Claire's trembling arm and ushered her into another, smaller room.
A peculiar young man was seated before the desk in the room, telephoning. He nodded a command to sit down and then went on with a cryptic conversation wholly unintelligible to Claire. She lost her fears in his presence. He was so small and prissy, much more like a woman than like a man. Though his office was dirty and poorly furnished, he was immaculate. His fingernails were long and well manicured; and there was a slight ruddiness to them which bespoke a faint dyeing. His hair was obviously marcelled. His face, too, was slightly powdered, and she was sure that he had slightly touched up his lips.
Finished with his phone conversation, which had been a long series of caressing sibilants uttered precisely as though by a Vassar undergraduate, he faced her across the desk with a kindly, and amazingly feminine:
"Well, my dear...?"
Claire found no difficulty now in explaining the reason for her visit; her circumstances, and other pertinent facts.
For a long time he questioned her adroitly. She was sure, that were she an investigator of any sort, come to uncover his racket, he would have discovered the fact before he had finished his interrogations. At last, however, his captious manner changed and he became more friendly.
"You're not the sort, my dear, who would care for this er ... racket, for any length of time; nevertheless, it's entirely possible that we can use you for a while and make it possible for you to earn enough to better your condition economically. Of course, if you don't mind, before we go further, I should like to see you undraped.
Experiencing not the slightest compunction, she began to disrobe; she had absolutely the feeling of undressing before another woman, since his eyes held nothing of the amorous male look; in fact his attention wandered from her altogether while she was taking off her clothes.
When she stood nude before him, he requested that she turn around. She turned around and he said softly:
"My dear, you're lovely. Please put part of your things back on. I must ask another gentleman, who has the final decision in these matters, to view you. If you meet with his approval-and I'm rather sure you-will-we can probably offer you at least temporary employment."
She started to resume her dressing, without putting her panties and brassiere back on. He reached for the phone and put through a call. She heard him say:
"Let me speak to Mr. Templeton, please...." And a moment later: ... "Hello, Wally? Can you run over for a moment?"
He hung up the receiver and looked up at Claire.
"He'll be here at once. Please make yourself as comfortable as may be in this abominable office. Smoke?" He passed her a black cigarette and lit it for her. "Drink?" She shook her head.
"Excellent," he approved; "if I were you, I wouldn't drink a drop as long as you're in the racket. We protect our girls if we can; but if they get to drinking, it becomes most difficult to do so. If you don't want to entertain further than by revealing your figure, that's all you'll need to do, and Mr. Templeton will see to it that you're not annoyed....
"You appear to be hungry, my dear. One gets to know the outward signs of it in this racket. I'd offer to send out and get you something to eat, but Mr. Templeton has a penthouse very near here and he'll be right over, and if he approves of you, as I'm sure he will, we'll be glad to give you an advance if you're broke-then you can get whatever you wish. And, anyway, the fact that you are pale and hungry really adds to your loveliness ... I don't mean to be cruel."
"This Templeton...." she began in trepidation.
"Walter Templeton will not bother you, Miss Warne, and, by the way, never use your right name, or give it to anyone while you're in this racket. Mr. Templeton is an artist. This is just a sideline for him. You'll like him. Nobody has failed to."
And Claire, though she wouldn't have believed it likely, found that she did like him. When he arrived she was impressed instantly with the thought that she stood in the presence of one of the most unusual human beings she had ever seen.
He was dark, and slimly perfect; with a satyr-like cast of features. His voice was liquidly melodious; he viewed her nudity as a spectacle before which he was moved only aesthetically.
"Do...?" the young man she had first interviewed asked of Templeton.
"Rather!" Templeton said, and placed his thin, perfect, woman-like hand on her shoulder with a warm smile. "Advance her whatever she needs, pending our next show."
He added, turning to her: ... "And don't worry, my dear. I know how you must feel, since plainly this sort of thing is not in your line. We'll take care of you so that you won't mind it or be frightened so unduly or embarrassed-until you've become a bit used to it."
"Well, I...."
All at once the three of them were startled as a tall blonde came charging through the door from the outer office. The agency's secretary came trailing after her.
"I told her you were busy, but.."
The blonde, a tall girl of fantastic proportions, announced majestically: "I'm a singer! I have come to be auditioned!"
Wally Templeton looked at her and smirked:
"You're a singer, huh? All right-show me your legs."
The blonde assumed a shocked expression. "My legs? I don't sing with my legs. I sing with my chest."
The two men looked at each other slyly. "Okay...."
Her first appearance, contrary to Claire's expectations, was not unsupportably humiliating.
There were no ugly bawds among her fellow exhibitionists in this strange drama of lust enacted before silly old men and inverted ladies who, because of early pious restrictions, had never quite grown up.
It was greatly encouraging to Claire to discover that most of the other girls in the "show" were, like herself, new to the racket. She was also pleasantly surprised to find that the arrangement of lights, including not only footlights from above, and from the wings, made it nearly impossible to see the audience.
When she first stepped out upon the stage, her pink, shapely young loveliness wholly undraped, she imagined that she could feel searching, lecherous male eyes upon her; but she went through the gestures she had been taught, with her mind firmly dedicated to the thought that beauty was an absolute quality which could not be besmirched by the thoughts of onlookers. Consciously she was able to hold the thought with sufficient directness to obviate acute distress; but subconsciously there was still the unbidden and uncontrollable notion that what she was doing, no matter what her attitude or the necessity for doing it, was sinful and disgraceful.
But it was a lucrative occupation, and one that gave her plenty of time for hunting other employment. Despite her original intention to give up the work at the first opportunity, she found weeks slipping by. She appeared in from one to three shows a week.
It was one night after a show that a young man she had first seen at the Tamber Agency Offices, whose name was Carl, approached her in the dressing room.
"I know," he began apologetically, "that you don't want to meet any of the men who come to these things; but I thought I'd better ask you about this one before refusing ... A man named Hunter Dorsey wants to meet you. He's not the usual type. Of course he's after what they're all after, but he's got a tremendous lot of influence, and it's entirely likely that he might be able to do something for you. And you might manage to avoid doing anything for him in return, if you didn't want to."
Though prompted at once to refuse, she was also seized with an uncontrollable fancy to at least see what the man was like.
"Would it please Mr. Templeton, or help him in any way, if I were to see this person?"
"Well, yes it would," Carl confessed; "he's one of the sort who really matter, and Wally would like to be agreeable to him to the extent possible-but please don't feel that you have to, if you'd rather not; you're perfectly free to refuse."
"No ... I'll see him."
"Fine." Carl appeared to be much relieved. It was at Wally's penthouse, an hour later, that she was introduced to Hunter Dorsey.
She was both attracted and repelled by the man. He was much older than she, and the sort hard to classify as to temperament. His face, which was round and smooth, gave him an appearance of youth which was belied by his eyes. His hair was thick and black, but filled with individual gray hairs which made him seem gray ata distance, though the illusion vanished when one stood close to him. He seemed thoroughly a gentleman, and a well-educated and nicely cultured one; but the first time she directly met his eyes, as he held her hand, she received an indefinable shock."
He grasped her hand tightly, as though he found pleasure in the realization that his grip hurt her. His eyes opened widely and they penetrated and intimidated her for a moment; but the feeling was briefly transitory.
Though short, he was well built; solid and strong. He moved with the poised lightness of one long devoted to athletics. His apparel was distinctive and tasteful. He appeared to be a man long accustomed to wealth and easy living, and to getting what he wanted. Over and above everything else, there was something about him which alarmed and excited her.
"Hunter," Wally explained, with an airy gesture of the hand that held a jade cigarette holder, "though he's seen a lot of my shows, and dozens of my girls, thinks you are by far the most attractive one I've ever employed."
"I thought and said nothing of the kind," Hunter corrected irritably. They were seated in a corner of Templeton's Byzantine living room. "I said that she was one of the most singular girls that I ever saw anywhere."
Wally, with the faintly mocking expression which was so characteristic of him at all times, bowed to indicate that he stood corrected.
"I suggested to Mr. Templeton," Dorsey went on, "that perhaps you had gifts in addition to your beauty; not that you'd need any beyond that-only, I wondered if you could sing or dance; or if you have dramatic ability. I might be able to find you employment more, er ... to your liking than ... well, not that I mean...."
"Oh, it's quite all right," Templeton laughed; "we know precisely what you mean."
"It's kind of you to take an interest in me," she acknowledged, "but I certainly have no singing voice, and absolutely no dramatic experience or instruction in dancing; I'm afraid it's quite hopeless."
Dorsey was thoughtful.
"If you have the gifts, my dear, instruction wouldn't be hard to come by-and you're young."
The inference behind this was so unmistakable that she made no reply. Templeton held his jade cigarette holder directly before his face and in mocking, satanic contemplation, watched the thin spiral of blue smoke that wound up from it.
Dorsey appeared to be a trifle nonplused. He glanced uneasily at Wally, who gave him no help.
The conversation switched to impersonal matters, Claire nervously leading it off. She was aware that she was talking quite well and intelligently; also, that she was imbuing Dorsey with the thought that she was no ordinary type of girl. She speculated as to why she should be thus deliberately endeavoring to work upon his susceptibilities.
Wally rang for drinks, and they had excellent champagne. The occasion, under Templeton's skillful manipulation, once he took hold of it, passed off gracefully. At last Dorsey, looking strangely baffled, said that he must be going and asked:
"Can I, drop you at your place, Miss Claire?" In the racket, most of the girls were called by their first names only.
"No thank you," she returned uneasily; for some reason she had a desperate fear of being alone with him, despite the fact that he appeared to be tractable enough. She glanced at Wally, to see if he were displeased; but evidently he was not. There was a merry glint of amusement in his eyes as they met hers.
"Well, I'll be running along then," Dorsey added, apparently a trifle at sea.
When he had gone, she asked anxiously of Tempeton:
"I hope you're not angry with me for treating him so ... so...."
"Not a bit," Wally assured her. "I was infinitely amused. For some reason or other he usually has the most astonishing effect upon young ladies. He seemed not to have any effect upon you whatsoever. It will do him a world of good to have his vanity a trifle diminished; and I'm quite sure you diminished it substantially. I'm equally sure that you made a deep impression upon him. He'll probably be waiting for you downstairs. I'll have you taken down in the service elevator, and have a cab called to pick you up at the rear of the building."
"Who is he?" she inquired.
"Oh, he's just Hunter Dorsey, my dear; that's about all that can be said. He was left a lot of money by his father; been married and divorced several times ... wedding-shy now. He left his divorced wives well fixed with cash settlements. It wouldn't be unusual for him to give a girl ten grand, if she baffled him a bit."
"You mean...?"
"I don't mean a damn thing, my dear; I'm just giving you the facts. Use your own judgements."
"But do you want me to take him on, and split with you?"
Wally turned away from her and flicked the ashes from his black Russian cigarette.
"You are entirely free to do as you like, and should you wish to take him, there'd be no question of a split ... if you wanted to give me, say, ten percent ... but that, too, would be quite optional with you. I believe in treating my girls more than right ... it's the easiest way in the long-run ... I don't get into nasty fusses that way."
"I'll do just as you say," she said uncertainly, not sure that she meant what she said. To her relief, he replied:
"And I shall say precisely nothing, my dear; it's all up to you."
Suddenly he straightened up and walked over to her.
"I'll go a bit farther, my dear ... you're a good sort, and I like you ... If I were you I'd have nothing at all to do with him. I merely felt that I had better not toss away this opportunity of yours without giving you first a chance to pass on it yourself. But my own private conviction is that you'd do far better to stay away from him. You're not the type to play around with Dorsey and feel all right about it."
"I'm afraid not," she conceded. "You're sure you won't mind?"
"You mean about you and my relations in the racket? Not a bit. Your job with me is secure even if you tell all the rich bastards in New York to go to hell. I'm no glorifier of American Womanhood. I'm just ... Wally Templeton." He grinned friendily.
Added, after a moment's scrutiny of her: "I'd like to play with you myself ... but I know too damn well that the perverse dainties I'd wish would turn you inside out ... so-if you'll be seated for a moment, I'll send for a taxi and have one of the servants take you down the back way...."
CHAPTER FIVE
The byline, "Martin Manning," on a story she saw in the morning paper transfixed Claire. She saw a lean, tall, kindly-faced young man, with straight, straw-colored hair, and a wide, friendly, slightly mocking grin, a bit like Wally Templeton's grin, except that the young man was nothing at all like Wally Templeton; it was odd that they both smiled in somewhat the same manner.
"Martin Manning!" The name brought back a flood of memories, some of them sweet, but most of them bitter. It was remarkable, she reflected, that in New York nearly everyone managed to achieve a nostalgia for their home town, no matter how dreadful a place the home town may have been. It couldn't be possible, she decided, that there was another Martin Manning in New York who was also a newspaper man, as the Martin Manning she had known back home had been; it must be the same one. She was seized with an overpowering desire to see him; and she became increasingly certain that it must be the same one, since she recalled that the last time she'd seen him he had been trying to get a position on a New York paper.
He had been attached to one of the Des Moines papers; had been their top reporter. One of his assignments was that of covering the university news, in Gratiot. He drove down from Des Moines several times a week for this purpose; and always came to call on George. George and he had been great friends. From Martin, she'd heard all about what had happened subsequent to her leaving ... and perhaps ... what had become of Billy ... everything.
Dressed, she took a taxi downtown to the newspaper office. She inquired from a brusque, one-armed man at the information desk in the hall, just outside the editorial rooms, for Martin.
"Know him, baby?" the single-armed cynic wished to know as he gazed up at her with eyes that were bleak as slow death.
"He's from my home town."
"You mean you're from his home town," he corrected churlishly; "well, come on, baby, I'll take you in."
She followed him through a maze of littered desks, fitted with men all trying to look as hard boiled as the characters in "The Front Page," to a room set apart with ground-glass partitions and marked, "Editorial."
In this room were several desks; but only one was occupied; and at it sat Martin Manning.
He glanced her way, then jumped up, coming toward her, his hand extended. The one-armed man left them with a leer which indicated his conviction that she would in all probability be laid, by Martin upon the floor of the sanctum dedicated to the writing of that dreadful moron trash-to which all those addicted refrained, in shame, from signing their names-called "Editorials."
"Well, I'll be damned!" Martin exclaimed in delight.
"I'm afraid I'm the damned one," Claire smiled uncertainly.
"Oh, that!" he laughed, pulling out a chair for her. "Why, the entire press of Iowa is grateful to you; you provided the only first-class news that's come out of that state since the Covered Wagon days. It was that news event that got me my job."
"It was!" she echoed, uncertain whether he was in earnest.
"Yes, on the level. The news editor here saw the exchanges on it, and liked the way I handled the story; it clinched the proposition for me here. I'd been after a job on this paper ever since I left college. I don't get much more money here, but I got just the kind of job I wanted. I mostly do book reviews, and editorials, and that sort of garbage right now; but I get a byline on human interest stories, and they send me out occasionally on big feature material."
"You don't mean to tell me, Martin, that the New York papers printed anything about me?"
"Oh, hell no-what happened to you occurs frequently in New York."
"You busy?" she cut in, blushing.
"Hell no-just finishing up something fer the editorial columns tomorrow ... same oldhogwash ... but they evidently think I'm good at it, and it's no trouble to write. Stick around, and I'll take you out to luncheon after I finish this; only takes a few minutes."
When they were seated in the lunchroom, on the main floor of the building, she asked him first about her mother.
"Elizabeth? ... Oh, she's just the same as ever. Slightly baffled by life; slightly aware that she ought to be doing something about you ... but afraid to do anything because it might hurt your stepfather's precious career." She noticed that he spoke in a peculiarly slighting manner of George; something he had never done before in her presence.
"And George...." she asked, "Did my mess get him into any trouble?"
"Oh, hell no. You know him, and his earnest look...! Through playing Judas to you, and to Elizabeth, he managed to work up a lot of sympathy for himself. He's all right, the cheap horse's ass."
"But I supposed you liked him," she objected.
"Like him? God, I loathe him!"
"But you treated him...."
"Oh ... that was for business purposes. I used to make him think I liked him, because if I flattered him a bit he'd blab for print on dull days ... when there wasn't any real news available." Martin paused and grinned in malicious reminiscence. "The bastard loves to get his pan in the paper, and to see the words, 'Doctor Warne says,' at the lead of an article; and then, afterward, he has nervous relapses for fear he's said too much, and may get somebody at the university sore. He was positively the biggest louse in Le Mars County, Iowa, if not in the entire state; I can say that, now that I know he's not your father, really, and after the way he treated you." He paused reflectively and continued:
"You know Billy Drew's in town, don't you?"
"No!" Claire exploded, and suddenly a mental picture of a girl with creamy white skin, dark brown eyes and jet-black hair, the hair tight around her head, notched. The girl's eyes gleaming with a lust for murder. A revolver in Dora's hand ... "What's Billy doing? Where is he?"
"He isn't doing a thing. He saw my name in the paper, just as you did, and dropped in to chat with me the other afternoon. I guess he's in a pretty bad way. I've got his address, if you want it." Without waiting to see whether or not she did, he tore a leaf from his memorandum book, consulted another page in the book, and wrote down Drew's address, handing it to her. She was surprised to find that Billy was living not far from her. She was on Eighty-sixth, near Broadway. He was on Seventy-ninth; and, judging by the number, not much farther west of Broadway then she was east of it.
"You think it's because...." she began, anticipating trouble. Understanding her question, he said kindly:
"No, no! He never gave a damn for Dora. He's glad to be away from Gratiot. It's only that his old man shut down on him, naturally, and I suppose he's broke, though he didn't say so."
"I will go out and see him," she promised, half convinced as she spoke that she wouldn't. The thought, of him sent-cold shivers through her.
"What you doing now, Claire?" asked Martin, a bit hesitantly.
"Oh, I've had a couple of temporary jobs," she said evasively. "I manage to get by; maybe a permanent opening will turn up."
He became thoughtful.
"I might be able to turn up a job for you. I'll keep my ears open. Give me your address so I can drop you a line if I run onto anything. You've certainly had a tough break. I'm going to help you if I possibly can. I could let you have a few dollars."
She was touched. Impulsively, she put out her hand and covered one of his with it. It was the first time, so far as she could recall, that anyone had offered to do anything for her for nothing-and she was sure Martin wanted nothing. He was curiously unaffected by pretty women, though he was certainly one hundred per cent male.
"I appreciate your offering it, Martin; it was swell of you. But right now, I've got all I need. And you probably have a tough time getting by in New York."
"Tough is right; I don't make any more here than I did in Des Moines; but it's a hell of a lot more fun and will probably lead to a real break later on."
She was sure that he would succeed conspicuously. Martin was the sort who inevitably manged to wangle what he wanted.
After luncheon, after he had gone back upstairs to work and she was leaving the building, she ran into Hunter Dorsey.
"Well, well," he said quietly. "New York is a small place after all. Fancy meeting you like this." She was certain that the meeting hadn't been accidental; yet she could think of no way in which it could have been otherwise.
"May I give you a lift anywhere?" he asked.
"Well, to tell you the truth, I wasn't going any place in particular."
"How about a show ... if you've no other plans? I've got nothing to do either, and my friend Welter might be interested in you. He's got a Revue, you know, around at the Forty-Seventh Street Theater.
We could catch the show and I'll introduce you to him. With your face and figure he'd never ask whether you can dance or sing. He might use you, in one of his spectacles. It would be a lot better than what you're doing."
He was peculiarly magnetic; it was hard to refuse to do what he asked. While she would very much have enjoyed seeing the show, she didn't want to see it with him; and while she much wanted to meet Welter, she'd rather have been introduced by somebody else ... Yet her repugnance toward the man, she realized, was, paradoxically, based not on a real feeling of revulsion but upon a strangely devious feeling not at all of that sort. Finally she said:
"Well, if you're sure you've nothing better to do, I...."
He waited for no more words, and grasped her arm and led her around the corner to his car.
The car was a glistening, long black Rolls Royce. At the wheel sat a chauffeur in full uniform.
He helped her in, and she sank back upon soft leather cushions, adjusted at an inspired angle. She sighed inwardly ... Things like this and liveried chauffeurs were what made life worth living. If only....
After the performance Dorsey took her backstage to meet Welter. The producer, catching a significant glance from Hunter, agreed to put her on in his chorus; but he offered no more salary than she was already earning; and it was, insofar as she could see, practically the same sort of work, since his choruses executed with a loincloth and a scrap of gauze over their breasts-much the same capers as Wally's cuties.
There was no real difference, even though Welter borrowed the famous Ziegfield sophistry and called it "Glorifying the Beautiful Feminine Form." And besides, Welter was willing to use her only because Dorsey wished it; no doubt when Hunter found out definitely that he couldn't get what he wanted, Welter would let her out.
She thanked Welter graciously, and said ambiguously that she would let him know.
When she and Dorsey were again comfortably seated in the rich upholstery of the Rolls, Dorsey muttered some instructions to the chauffeur. His eyes danced diabolically as he said to her;
"You will come up to my apartment-for a little stimulation?"
Trembling with inexplicable fear and an even stranger curiosity, for a moment she almost weakened, then immediately regained control of herself and replied slowly:
"No, I think I'd better not."
"Not today, you mean." He smiled, but spoke with definite assurance. Considerably disturbed at the implied threat, she said nothing. Dorsey, noting her hesitation, continued frankly:
"Come through, my dear," he promised blandly, "and you won't have to go on any more of these peep shows. I'll put you up in a pretty place where you will be comfortable and have everything nice."
Hunter Dorsey's strange persistence puzzled her. She asked him about it:
"Goodness, Mr. Dorsey, you could get so many girls' so easily; why do you bother with me, when you know that I don't want to play like that?"
The characteristic gleam came at once to his eyes and he replied softly and ambiguously:
"That's just it."
To the chauffeur he said:
"Drop me at the club and take Miss Claire wherever she's going."
CHAPTER SIX
It was some time before Claire worked up sufficient courage to visit Billy. She was only able to do so at all because she was worried about him; feared that he might be in desperate need of some sort.
He was surprised into inarticulateness; and she was dismayed at his appearance. He was thin, and quite plainly not well.
There were flecks of gray in his hair which hadn't been there when last she had seen him at the jail.
Still speechless, he indicated the one chair in the room.
Billy sat down heavily on the bed. She was sure that he was hungry. She said, without preliminaries:
"Billy, have you had supper yet?"
"Claire! I thought you'd be ... well, Martin Manning said he'd seen you and given you my address; when you failed to show up I supposed you were ... well ... didn't want to have anything to do with me." ... "I wanted to see you, only I ... well ... you haven't answered my question."
"What question?"
"I asked you if you had supper?"
"Let's talk about you."
"Not until you've answered me."
"No, I haven't had supper. I...."
"Come on; we'll talk at a restaurant."
He was reluctant, but she made him go with her.
There was a lunch room around the corner. They found seats and Claire ordered for him ... steak ... coffee for herself.
"You've certainly changed," he declared. She pondered what difference in her he might see comparable to what she had seen in him.
"And you look ... bad ... Billy. What's wrong?" ... "broke ... no job ... room rent overdue."
"And it's all my fault," she declared bitterly, uttering for the first time a belief and conviction she now realized that she had long subconsciously held; along with a corollary that since she was to blame for such disasters to others she should be in some way punished.
"Don't be absurd," he returned lightly, brightening a bit. "I am the one to worry about what I did to you. So far as I'm concerned, I'd rather starve in New York than thrive in Gratiot ... the whole of New York's full of people who would rather be here destitute than in Iowa prosperously situated."
She nodded slowly in agreement.
"Yes, you're right. I didn't think of it that way at first; but now I realize I'd rather be here than in Gratiot no matter what my circumstances were."
For a long time after the steak had been brought, he did not talk, and she realized the full extent of his hunger; he had undoubtedly missed not only his supper, but his luncheon and breakfast as well.
A change gradually came over him as the steak juice penetrated to his blood stream.
"Got a letter from Dick Halley," he reported. "He says that the motel proprietor has covered the walls of that tourist cabin number three with the press stories of the main event that took place in it ... including a number of pictures of you and me that he probably got from old films Forest still had.
"Dick says he keeps the cabin in the condition it was in that night when they raided us, and charges admission to it. Pious Iowans come from all over the state to look at it. They even have a cicerone there who tells the whole story of the happening, with innuendoes ad lib."
Claire was nauseated. A mental picture of Walter Scunney, the man who had informed upon them, and who had previously yearned for her sexual favors, came to her.
She explained, "You and I are alone in New York. We may both need assistance now and then. Take this and get your clothes pressed, and your shoes shined; pay up your room rent ... pack in a lot of good meals ... take a short rest, and then start job hunting again. I'll bet you'll find one. I've had some temporary jobs, and I'll probably get more work-but if I fail, perhaps by that time you'll be on your feet, then you can return the favor."
"I feel like a louse taking this from you," he mourned, as he pocketed the money.
"That's all right," she said. "I'll think of something you can do for it...."
They looked at each other, understanding implicit between them. Suddenly they got up and went back to his place.
The door opened with a creak. Claire was as nervous as a young bride. She hadn't had anyone since Billy, and he was the man who had helped to develop a taste in her for it. Now she wanted him in her; longed for his plunging, thrilling pole. She felt moistness on her thighs.
He took, off his sweater and dropped it over a chair. Then he came quickly to her. Her knees went helplessly weak as he swept her up into his arms. For an instant she remembered that he was ... legally, at least, still another woman's husband. For some reason this excited her, and the old fears that had clutched her when she had first given in to Billy were gone, despite the horror they'd experienced at the motel.
He helped her undress, then pushed her, almost roughly, back down onto the bed. Her full breasts rose as the nipples swelled to his touch. He looked at her longingly, as he began, fumblingly, to remove his own clothes.
Naked at last, he fell upon her, locking his arms around her. Her eager legs wrapped around his waist, as she propelled herself upward to meet his imposing, throbbing rod.
Their lips pressed together, and their tongues played a thrilling game of tag. He reached down with one hand and cupped one breast, then the other. Their ecstasy rose as he fondled, squeezed and mashed.
Then, slowly, he pushed his now moist rod into her, sliding rapturously to the hilt, then slowly pulling away.
"Oh ... Billy ... I've missed you so ... oh ... again ... ooh...."
Their long-denied love brought them quickly to a peak of lustful pounding, as he pushed through her curly taffy thatch to the full length of his capability ... then back ... and in again ... then ... faster.
The climax was an explosion of blissful agony-pleasure, and they moaned and gasped together as their fluids were whipped out in a wonderful release....
Claire was now, more than ever before, certain that she would never again be afraid of sex.
It was the following Friday that Wally staged a club show and Hunter, as usual, put in an appearance knowing that Claire would be on display.
After the show, Dorsey sent back his card. No story-book, innocent maiden, Claire decided that, since she was going into the thing at all, she had better go into it right. She consulted with Carl, and explained to him that she had decided to cultivate Dorsey.
"You're wise," he approved, "only ... well ... you want to make it clear, to him first that nothing irregular goes." He explained to her in detail what he meant by this. Dorsey, it appeared, was addicted to perverse idiosyncrasies, some of them painful, some of them disgusting, and some of then sickening.
She should, she gathered from Carl's shockingly frank explanations, insist that between them there was to be only the sort of love which most naive people suppose passes between such men as Hunter Dorsey and a mistress. Further, Carl agreed to tell Hunter that he had sought permission from Claire to bring him back stage, and that she had refused it; he would make Hunter think that his being permitted to go back to see Claire was against her wishes and only as a result of Carl's partiality to Dorsey.
The result of this subterfuge was reflected in Hunter Dorsey's face as he came back to Claire's dressing room. She was fully dressed and apparently ready to go home.
"I hope you'll pardon this intrusion," Dorsey cautiously began.
"Who let you back here?" she inquired.
"Nobody," he lied. "I slipped by Carl when he wasn't watching. Please don't tell him what I did." ... "We've been all over things before, Hunter, why do you persist in...."
"Because I hope some day to make you change your mind."
She shook her head firmly:
"There's not a chance of that."
"But why, Claire? Surely you must be tired of these ridiculous fanny-wiggling exhibitions. You're not a particularly conventional girl; is it that I seem exceptionally loathsome to you?"
"No, it isn't that."
"Well, what is it then? If you were a virgin I could see why you ... but...."
The dressing room was on a long hall. Anyone passing up and down the hall could be heard outside the dressing room door. They seemed to be the last ones left in the club quarters. Dorsey, without being invited, slumped into a chair. Claire sat in the chair before the dressing table. He was anything but repulsive to her in evening clothes, He was, in fact, an extremely handsome man; and the very demoniacal qualities in him-the extraordinary glint behind his eyes-which frightened her, with the aid of his memory, penetrating her clothing in x-ray fashion, visualizing the ripe, pink-white young breasts beneath her bodice; the smooth, lithe, narrow, young hips; flat stomach, small rounded buttocks. After a long pause he began again, gently wheedling...."Tell me why, Claire."
She took out a cigarette and tapped the end free of loose tobacco on the glass top of the dressing table which was littered with loose powder.
"It wouldn't do any good to tell you," she retorted.
"Let me be the judge of that."
"All right, I'll tell you; but let's not talk of it again, Hunter; there's utterly no use in you trying to ... to ... well, anyway, though my own personal experience doesn't include such things, I know, from what I've been told by other girls in this racket, that your type of man has had so many affairs with so many girls, that you're blase toward the usual love gestures and expect all sorts of ... perverse things ... that I certainly wouldn't...."
"Oh!...." It was an expression of relief on his part. His eyes lit up, and he shifted his position in the chair exuding triumphant acquisitive conviction; he was sure he was going to get her now, she saw.
Downstairs Hunter pleaded:
"Come on up to my place, I want to talk to you."
"No," she denied, with specious firmness; "I explained why it's no use for you to keep trying to...."
"But there's so much I want to say to you."
"Yes, I know there is, but it's no use; we've been over it all before. I know you're willing to provide me with an apartment and lots of other things if I'll provide you with...."
"Well, anyway, let me drive you home; I still want to talk to you and about things different from anything I've ever mentioned before, and ... well, come on, please ... you'd have to take a taxi anyway; you might as well go in my car."
With a great show of reluctance she climbed into his luxurious car.
"Now," he began, wishing, she saw, to make the most of the short time he had to talk to her before they should reach her address:
"To begin with, I want to tell you that I'm leaving New York next week, to be gone for several months-all the warm months. I don't know whether I ever mentioned it to you before, but I have a small, but safe and comfortable yacht, that I usually spend most of the summer cruising in. You'd love it. It's just what you need after these months in New York; it would do you a world of good. I'm going up to Provincetown, where there's the most invigorating air imaginable; I go up there for my health's sake every summer-we can stay as long as you like, and then go wherever else you wish along the Atlantic Seaboard."
"It sounds as though it would be a lot of fun, Hunter; and I'm crazy to see Provincetown, but...."
"Wait, you didn't let me finish. I promise not to impose any ... perverse desires on you ... only the ... er ... regular thing."
She paused before replying:
"You really mean that?"
"Most positively."
"But you certainly aren't in love with me. All you want is my body ... And as blase a man as you, who's had everything, couldn't, surely, get much fun out of mere...."
"The regular thing would be more fun with you, than perverse ... dainties ... with other girls."
"Why?"
She felt rather than saw him smile. The car was held up by a traffic light.
"Because," he replied, "you're so damned hard to get. In fact, if you'll come on up to my place now, I'll make a bargain with you. Let me try to take you; you endeavor to keep me from doing it. If you succeed in preventing me from having you, I'll give you twice what you got for that show tonight. If you fail, I'll give you just what you got for the show."
"Well, of all...!" she began, in astonishment, "but I'd be sure to fail-you're four or five times as strong as I am."
"Well, suppose you did fail? Would that be such a terrible thing, my dear? And, besides, we'd still have the yacht trip ahead of us. Of course, I'd expect to buy you all the clothes you think you could wear for the trip; give you whatever money you might need while we're away, and a handsome gift of money when you return."
"But I'm afraid you'd break your word about...."
"You can leave me at once-in that event-can't you?"
"Not if we're at sea ... very well."
"Nonsense; this isn't a large yacht. We wouldn't be at sea more than a day or so; besides there's a crew of three-and things like that don't happen except in movies. We'd never be out of sight of land and we'd be back ashore a day or so after we sail. I'll have my car driven up to Provincetown, so it'll be there when we arrive."
The car stopped before Claire's address. They sat silent for a moment; Claire inwardly debating....
There was something about the curious game of love that Hunter had suggested playing which mightily stirred her. To be taken, at least symbolically, against one's will, and only after a sharp struggle ...!
She began to understand Hunter better; even to feel a certain kinship with him. Girls who did things of that sort with men like Hunter came to no good end; the dreadful scrapes they got into were constantly reported in the tabloid newspapers. But she could not very well get into any scrape, she assured herself; and even if she did, she had the means of escape from the consequences within her grasp. Life without the satisfaction of the urge she felt within her grasp. Life without the satisfaction of the urge she felt within her toward sexual expression was, she concluded, near to unendurable anyway ... At least for her, since now she knew she was one of those creatures who are congenitally a bit oversexed.
Should she accept Hunter's proposition, it would mean a glorious trip-luxury, easy money....
She recalled the words of Voltaire:
"I would rather live two minutes and do what I like than live a hundred years and not do what I like."
She could have wished that it were someone other than Hunter ... A younger man, perhaps, who would have some regard for her above and beyond a purely physical one ... But love without sex she had never known; probably would never know. This was the next best thing.
She said softly in the dark:
"All fight."
She felt or rather sensed a psychic stir go through him.
"You mean you'll go on the trip?"
"Yes, but only providing you keep your promise."
"I shall, you can depend on it-and will you come home with me now?"
Waiting a long time before answering him, she said softly, "Yes."
She noticed that his voice was husky as he quickly gave the chauffeur orders to take them home.
He did not speak as the car retraced its way back downtown and on to Park Avenue. When they went up in the elevator he was still wordless. She noticed that he was pale, and that when he touched her arm, his hand trembled. He guided her through the apartment to a room at the rear; it was sumptuously furnished. Adjacent, there was the most magnificent bathroom she had ever seen. The door stood open and she moved toward it as he whispered:
"I'll be back in a few minutes. There's a door that shuts off the servants' quarters from the rest of the apartment. I'll see that it's closed and locked. Get ready. When I come back I'll knock. Turn off the light switch before you open the door, and be prepared. You know what I mean?"
"Yes," she replied, her voice a trifle gaspy.
It was some time before she heard a knock on the door. Snipping off the light switch, she stood trembling in the pitch dark, waiting, both eagerly and fearfully. She moved soundlessly back in her bare feet as he opened the door and entered.
For a time he remained motionless, breathing in short, quick gasps, like an animal aware of prey. Then she heard him move. Automatically she retreated. Continuing to move backward, she fell at last among the huge scented pillows.
Then she was in his grasp. Fighting like a young tigress, filled with the spirit of the game far beyond what she had supposed she would be.
He was strong, and he was mad with desire. She felt herself weakening, but she fought on until every ounce of strength had been exhausted ... and then a heavenly languour of surrender began to fill her like a drug.
She fell-weakly back on the bed. As though activated by an automatic push-button, her legs spread apart.
He fell upon her quickly; his huge rod ready for action. He pumped into her furiously, his slender body going like a piston. She cried out with ecstasy....
His nostrils buried in her golden hair, huffing and puffing, snorting like a bull. His hands twisted at the huge melons of her breasts, hurting them, burning them with a pain that was also a sweet syrup of joy. His fingers pinched her nipples savagely, and she moaned with lust.
Clutching his jerking buttocks over her as he smoothly pushed in and out, she felt deep wellsprings of pleasure and pain open up within her ... more fierce than anything she had known in her life....
"Oh! Hunter! Oh my God!"
And then he pumped, in a kind of savage fury, speeding his strokes and gasping for breath, until he spilled his flood of love juice in a spasming, mighty thrust.
They lay together, for long moments, as the tide subsided, and a triumphant grin spread across his face.
Claire had not been afraid ... and she didn't really care that she had lost her bonus.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was after she had been in Province Town over a week that Claire met Mort Larrimore.
The main event in Provincetown each day was the arrival of a steamship from Boston; it was named the Dorothy Bradford.
Never, to her disappointment, had Claire found on the boat anyone she had ever seen before. She longed for such a happening ... to see a face light up with the pleasure of recognition upon seeing her. And then one day it happened, with a strangeness that savored of fate showing its hand. A handsome young man came down the gang plank. Claire was surprised to note that none of the girls on the make for new men at the pier paid the slightest attention to him. Watching him with an unexplainable but nevertheless intense fascination, she saw that he carried no luggage, and was poorly dressed.
The young man was the spirit of healthful youthfulness. Even while he was still some distance off, she could see that his eyes were large and frank and blue; and that his skin was light and fair.
Hatless, his soft, taffy colored hair was disordered by a sea wind which ran bold fingers through it. He swung along with a lithe, athletic stride, and was as strongly and symmetrically built as a young Greek discus thrower, with narrow hips, wide, firm shoulders, and long, straight legs.
As he came nearer to where she stood, his eyes boldly met hers, and he smiled a naive, boyish smile of frank camaraderie. She was aware of an emotion wholly new to her-one that did not seem to be connected with sex impulse. Without having planned to do it, she smiled friendily. He stopped and said:
"Hello."
She felt for a moment as though her breath had been snatched from her. His voice was melodiously youthful. She experienced unease similar to enuresis and managed only to reply:
"Hello." She supposed that he must be mistaking her for someone else.
Coming to a stop before her, he said:
"If I'd known you were here, I'd have come two weeks earlier."
She hesitated, undecided whether to disillusion him concerning her identity; and that he had made a real error she was quite certain. There was that about him which precluded the supposition that he was merely being flirtatious in a cheap and stereotyped way.
She decided upon frankness:
"I'm afraid you've made a mistake. I'm sure we've never met."
"Of course not," he agreed; "nobody ever stops to be introduced in Provincetown."
He made no move to go; she was glad of that, but confused. He added:
"Don't get me wrong." He grinned and shifted his weight lightly from one foot to the other. "I know well enough you're not one of the sisters of the pier on the make. They're never like you. That, kind of girl would never pay any attention to me. They know I haven't got a dime and never do have. I've been here before....
"This is your first season, isn't it? Were you expecting somebody on the boat?"
"No, I wasn't."
"Going to stay on the pier?"...." Well, no, I...."
"Come on and walk in with me."
She fell into step beside him, glad that things had gone along so easily; and convinced, too, out of that part of her consciousness which held a tincture of her mother's superstitions, that fate had not only provided their meeting, but was making the prolonging of their association so easy to both.
"Artist?" she inquired.
"Goodness no!"
He was plainly amused at her vehement denial. He said:
"Evidently you've seen quite a bit of what's spoken of so confidently as 'art' up here."
"Well," she temporized, fearful of offending him, "I'm not qualified to pass any judgments on...."
"Nor I," he cut in fervently.
"Aren't you an artist?"
"No, fair lady; I'm nothing. Honestly, I mean that. I work at anything I can find all winter in New York, save my money, and come up here for a couple of months during the summer."
They had reached the point where the pier joined Commercial Street, which was called "Times Square." He stopped and surveyed her merrily. Held out his hand:
"Well, good-bye; see you around town, I hope."
He said it with an air of finality that brought devastation to her. She was unable to keep from voicing her feelings. Echoed, bleakly:
"Good-bye...!"
"Sure."
Noting the unmistakable overtone of disappointment in her voice and manner, he was puzzled. He said sympathetically: "A gorgeous girl like you, with a thousand dollars worth of clothes on, could hardly want to see any more of me; I'll be wearing overalls and stinking of fish for the rest of the summer. I don't even intend to shave. Razor blades cost money. I'll be no sight for you to be seen with in twenty-four hours."
"Then you did think I was one of those, those...."
"Nope ... don't get me wrong, lady. It isn't that."
She started to turn away, nonplused and woeful. He took a step after her and laid his hand gently on her arm.
"Look here, you mustn't believe I'm ... it isn't that I ... well, hell ... it's hard to say to you, you are so ... well, anyway, you're so sweet, and so gentle ... I...."
He was hopelessly inarticulate. She decided to help him out quite boldly. An impulsion within made her want to fight, even at the risk of being hopelessly unlady-like, not to lose sight of him until something had been done about their knowing each other's names at least.
"I'm not so innocent."
"You seem so virginal you frighten me."
"I'm not a virgin!"
"You're not?" He was frankly puzzled now. "No, I'm not."
"Well, I'll be damned. First time I ever made such a mistake. I must be losing my grip ... You see, there are a bunch of bums, like myself, who come up here every year ... hoping only to be able to obtain the bare necessities of life ... shelter ... food ... sex."
He paused, evidently suffering some consternation at his own temerity. She was deeply agitated. His last words set a mental gong violently to ringing deep in her mind ... she was reminded of similar words elsewhere spoken at some time in her life.
Reluctantly he continued:...." I thought at first that you ... well, most of those who come up here are entirely unconventional. Although some of the pretty girls up here every summer are on the make for money, others of them just want free sexual companionship. I thought at first glance you were one of the latter sort. But now that I've talked to you, I see I was wrong. I won't apologize because I see nothing disgraceful about...."
"Did it ever occur to you," she asked on impulse, "that friendship is one of the necessities of life?"
"Don't be ridiculously platonic," he chided good naturedly. And then seeing that she was hurt he added:
"You don't mean to tell me that a lovely creature such as you could be lonely in Provincetown.,.!"
She hedged:
"Well, I haven't much to do ... and...."
He studied her anew, and said:
"Well, if it wouldn't bore you to come along while I hunt for a place-but I've got to find one before night!"
"Where are you going to look for it?"
"Oh, there's an ex-navy captain here, a prince of a fellow, who always finds a shack for me; I thought I'd go see him first and see what's open, then I'll go look at it."
"Come on, we'll take the car," she offered merrily.
"Car! What car?"
"That one over there." She pointed to the car, beside which the chauffeur idled, smoking a cigarette.
"Bountiful God!" he gasped. "Use that to hunt for a five-dollar-a-month shack...!"
"Why not?"
He continued to gaze with awe upon the glistening car; not that it was by any means an unusual sight in Provincetown, where Rolls-Royces were no novelty; but something about her attachment to the car appeared to perplex him deeply.
"Say, are you one of those daughters of the idle rich?" he wanted to know.
"Not on your life." she laughed.
"Well, then what...!"
Everybody's private affairs were common property in Provincetown; he'd be sure to find it out anyway, she decided, and blurted:
"So you won't be worried about my naivete any more, young man, I might as well tell you myself, before these beastly gossips do; I'm what the New York tabloids would call...."
"No!"
Hunter made no demands upon her. Several times he took the luxurious little yacht away from the harbor and sailed to some destination he did not name. Upon these occasions he first asked her if she wished to accompany him, in a tone of voice which plainly indicated that he did not wish to take her along. When she replied in the negative, he gave her money, left the car and the chauffeur behind, and instructed her to register at the best hotel in town.
That the chauffeur told Hunter everything she did, Claire was quite certain; but it didn't seem to cause Dorsey any pain. Nothing now, was of importance to her except Mort Larrimore.
He had found a small shack far across the dunes, away from town. Before the little shack were the trackless miles of ocean across which they gazed, speculating as to which foreign country they were looking toward.
Behind the shack were what appeared to be endless dunes, billowing toward the road, a mile and a hah! away, completely hidden. On either side of the shack were more dunes, shutting off all view of human habitation.
Mort was a lover par excellence, who brought to his sexual exercises proficiencies far beyond mere sensuality, something that did for the soul what other men had done only for the body. The soul and the body in collaboration could produce essences of delicious ecstasy that were transfiguring; and Claire felt herself transfigured. He was so clean and strong; and his muscles would harden, under passion, like whipcord.
Far away from town, on a stretch of beach seldom frequented by others, they would lie naked, after a plunge in the cold water, and examine with child-like exuberance the secrets of their own bodies; distill from them sensual thrills and dalliances beyond anything of which Clair had previously imagined.
Their bodies now were turning from a creamy white to a golden light brown which made them seem even more delicate and fit repositories for questing hot mouths.
Crossing the first large dune, Claire felt herself lost to civilization. She paused a moment and glanced all around her. Hurrying on, she was a human compass quivering with the nearness of its lode pole. She was sure that were she to close her eyes and blindly walk on, the magnetism of Mort's presence would draw her to his arms without one lost step in a wrong direction.
At last she cleared the last dune and saw his lamp, near the window of the shack. Calling, she saw him jump up from his bunk, cross the light reflected from the window, and approach the door.
He called loudly back to her and the sound of his voice went through her like a galvanic charge, making the tops of her feet tingle sharply.
The night was an exceptionally warm one, with scant breeze. When he came out of the door she saw that he was nude. The sight of his nakedness made her skin feel tight and dry and hot. He had, she surmised, been lying in his bunk reading. He could not see as clearly as she because his pupils were still dilated with the artificial light in the shack. She saw him peer anxiously through the moonlit dark for her. Seeing her, he called out.
"How long can you stay?"
"All night," she yelled back triumphantly.
He ran out to her.
"It's a gorgeous night," he gasped after his run through the sand. "It's lucky you could get away. Wouldn't this moonlight break your heart? I couldn't stand seeing it without you. That's why I stayed inside to read."
Everything he said was in deep sincerity; this simple explanation as to why he had remained indoors on such a glorious night pleased her.
Reaching the cabin, she went in, quickly threw off her clothes, and joined him outside. They walked hand in hand down to the water's edge, along a wide stretch of beach-for the tide was out-and into the cold water. They plunged and splashed in the icy water, feeling as though they were being stabbed at by a thousand needles over every square inch of skin. The water was too chill to let them stay long. They ran back up on the beach and threw themselves into the sand. Hugged together tightly, each to give the other warmth, to take away the stony-cold chill of the water on their bodies.
The sand was of a large-grained consistency seldom seen elsewhere. From dry skin it fell instantly away; and still warm from the afternoon sun, it quickly dried them.
"Where'd he go this time?" Mort wanted to know, when they had gotten their breaths.
"He never tells me."
"I wish he'd go swimming and drown," Mort said.
"But, if it hadn't been for him, I'd never have known you."...." Or I you ... Yes, I'm grateful to him after all. And I'm not a bit jealous of him. I know I've got something of you that no other man has ever had, and I'm content with that."
"Then you know...." She was so happy she could force out words only with great difficulty.
"Know what, honey?"
"That no man has ever had of me what I give to you."
"Of course, I've known that from the first." Delightedly, she pushed him over and held him closely, kissing his mouth and eyes and shoulders. "You're so ... sweet," she panted. "I'm going to get a job, a good one," he declared. "This winter, you mean?"
"No, I'm going back to New York right away and get a job. I shall use the money I saved for this summer to get a small furnished apartment. You're coming back with me, and we're going to live together."
"Nonsense, Mort."
"It's not nonsense. I can do it."
"I don't doubt that you can do it, but why should you?"
"I must be always near you."
"I want you near me here, out on the dunes."
"But you can't very well stay here, in this lousy shack, Claire." '
"I'm not going to."
"You mean you're going to keep on with him!"
"Why not? I've saved most of the money he's given me, and he'll give me more. I want you to have the summer here; then this fall we can go back to New York together."
"Yes," he said, nodding slowly and thoughtfully, "I see now."
"See what?"...." Money. It is the most important thing in the world; I wouldn't have believed it." She was hurt:
"You don't think I meant that I...."
"No, no." He said it impatiently. "I understand perfectly. But I couldn't take you into the dreadful places I exist in in New York during the winter. It would take lots of money for us to live there decently."
"Well, why can't we just keep on like this, Mort, until...."
"But that keeper of yours is liable to get nasty."
"Well, if he does, then we might go; only ... well ... it seems just perfect now, except that I wish you'd let me give you some money, so you could have an easier life out here and be more comfortable."
"No. Not his money."
He spoke with quiet determination. For nearly ten. minutes, as if by mutual consent, they were silent, lolling listlessly on the sand, gazing far out to sea. Suddenly Mort, touching her lightly on the shoulder, pointed to himself.
"Look," he said.
She laughed.
"You're hopelessly greedy;, and besides we've been rolling in sand; we'd have to go into the water again; let's torture each other awhile longer by saving it."
"Sadist!"
"Glutton."
Neither spoke for some moments. A slight breeze was coming in off the ocean. Far away they could see Highland lighthouse blinking every five seconds. Night insects hemmed them in, in a ring of pleasantly narcotic sound. He lay out flat on the still warm sand, and she put her head on his shoulder and toyed with him in a way which sometimes sent him into blissful sleep, and other times into blissful, cyclonic action.
Suddenly she lifted herself up. She swung her breasts around in a long, slow arc, then lowered her darkening aureoles in between his legs.
He groaned as her pillow-firm love globes mashed down on his trembling manhood. Ever so cleverly then, Claire began lifting them in and out, in and out....
"Ooooh ... Claire ... how did you think ... of that ... God ... that's ... oooooh...." He pushed his hands up and felt her breasts as they continued to slide up and off of his immense erection. He massaged her nipples, pinching....
At one point she shook out her long golden hair and pushed it around in his crotch. Mort nearly fainted from ecstasy. Then she lowered her breasts to do their work again, and he could control himself no longer. He turned, trembling, thrust his rod in her yearning pussy, and shot his juice with jerking spasms.
"Ooooh, Mort! You're my whole world. I love you so much!"
When she climbed aboard the yacht at half-past ten, Hunter met her. Immediately, he asked:
"Where the devil have you been?" Some change had come over him since she'd seen him last.
He scrutinized her, for the first time in several weeks, as though he were actually seeing her. Before she could reply he put in.
"Don't bother to lie to me. I know what you've been doing."
She waited, but he merely stood at the rail in darkness, his head in the shadow of a deck light which illuminated her face.
"Do you know," he said, and she could not make out from the tone of his voice what his mood might be, "you've changed enormously."...." This sea air, and...." she began. He put her words aside with a gesture.
"Nonsense!" he snorted. "You're in love. You're more attractive than you've ever been before."
She did not deny it, but waited nervously. Off at the point of land which enclosed the harbor, a lighthouse flashed alternately white and red light. An implication of evil seemed to have settled down upon land and sea. A wellspring of nervous fears left long untapped opened in her and she wished that she might get back in the gig and flee to Mort, out on the dunes, under the clean, silver moonlight. She thought, irrelevantly, how one morning they had seen a young doe daintily picking its way among the dunes. She speculated childishly upon the possibility of changing herself into a young doe, and hiding always near Mort in the dunes.
Hunter's voice sawed jarringly across her reflections.
"Well, now that you're in love, I suppose you'd consider it plain sacrilege to have anything to do with me again, eh?"
What he said did not greatly frighten or distress her. What difference did it make? No matter how hard he' tried, nothing he did could come near to touching what Mort could touch by merely meeting her eyes. She shrugged. He appeared to be angry.
"Come below," he commanded. "I want to talk to you.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The little blonde was not hard to meet. She wandered shyly around town, speaking to anyone who addressed her. Claire had merely said, "Hello," at one of the drugstores and developed an acquaintance easily enough with no more than that as a basis.
She had made inquiries about the girl. Her first name was Mildred. She was the illegitimate child of a native town woman and an artist, now moderately successful, who had ceased to visit Provincetown years before. She was tall, slim, and virginal looking, though town rumor had it that she was anything but a maiden. She was reputed "hard to get," except by the usually quite worthless young artists and unpublished writers, kept by New York school teachers, who made love to her in a manner sufficiently romantic to attract school children.
Hunter Dorsey, irregular in all of his manifestations, had seen her; but for some reason he had decided that were he to approach her himself, he might frighten her off and make no progress. To Claire, on the evening when he had informed her of his knowledge concerning her movements with Mort, he assigned the job of taking the youngster a message. He had been quite unpleasant about it; pointed out that he demanded nothing of Claire, supported her excellently, and hence had a right to ask that she do such a thing for him:
"And besides," he summed up, clinching his argument and finally winning her to his plan, "the girl may welcome the proposition; if she doesn't, she can say so, can't she? You can feel your way beforehand and tell whether or not she might be inclined to consider it."
Today Claire was feeling her way cautiously, caring nothing about the young blonde, Hunter, herself, or anything save that the magic of the days with Mort-which Hunter appeared inclined to permit to continue unhampered-might be prolonged indefinitely.
She had jockeyed long for a lead that would make the girl herself bring up the subject, and at last it came as they lay together on the large public beach after a swim, sunning.
"It must be pretty soft," Mildred mused aloud, "to be the mistress of a fellow with as much money as he's got." Claire had frankly reported her social status.
"Would you like to change places with me?" Claire asked softly.
Mildred turned in surprise.
"Well, not quite, perhaps."
"I wouldn't want to be mistress to a man like that; but I could sure use some of his dough."
"What for, Mildred?"
"There's another winter coming on, and I haven't had any new clothes for two seasons."
"You intend to stay in Provincetown, right along?"
"Oh, no; just 'till I'm twenty-then I'm going to go to New York and try to find work. I know where I can get some jobs modeling there, where they'll pay real money-not like this modeling up here, where you get a job only because some old coot wants to see you naked ... and then doesn't pay enough for it to make it worth while to take your clothes off and put them on again."
Claire scrutinized the younger girl in the never-ending surprise that touched her at each development of the fact that this so amazingly soft and innocent-appearing creature was so sophisticated.
She had the appearance of being half child and half woman. Her breasts were full and daintily rounded, and her throat was slim and perfect. Her face was delicately pretty and her big, deeply blue eyes gave evidence of everything that should appertain to innocent youth. She was all curved whiteness; the sort of girl, Claire supposed, that men wished at sight to cuddle. She looked so soft, and so easy to hurt that Claire hesitated to go on; but she recalled Hunter's vehement instructions and said, while toying with the extraordinarily large-grained sand upon which they sat:
"I think Hunter Dorsey would give you enough for an entire winter's wardrobe, for one afternoon's cruise."
Mildred sat up and drew her legs up under her. She had smoothly rounded knees; and her thighs and calves, though soft, and only slightly tined with sunburn, were fitted with muscles that stood out clearly, lending a virile roundness to her limbs which were exceptionally lovely.
"How much do you think he'd give me?"
Claire was shocked at the question coming in the other's childish voice, accompanied by an interested look of her child-like, big, blue eyes. She did not at once reply. Mildred prompted:
"Do you think he'd give me as much as twenty dollars?"
"Twenty dollars! Don't be silly; he'd give you far more than that!"
"He would!"
"Of course."
"Most of those who come up here are awful cheap skates," Mildred informed.
"Well, he's no cheap skate, you can be sure of that, anyway." She was reminded of what Hunter had said about his willingness to pay for his fun and said:
"He'd give you a hundred dollars, at least."
"A hundred dollars!" Mildred echoed incredulously.
"Yes, but ... he's ... peculiar ... He might want you to...."
"Oh, I know all about that-that's why I usually stay away from his kind-but for a hundred dollars-there isn't anything I wouldn't do for a hundred dollars!"
"Are you sure you know what you're talking about, Mildred? Some of those things might be pretty painful."
"Yes, I know all about that."
"Are you sure you do?" Claire persisted.
Mildred became carelessly loquacious. The mainstream of endless knowledge of matters devious that came from her lips now convinced Claire that the young lady did, indeed, know what she was talking about, and that she had a most unusual grasp of such matters for all that she looked like a child ... she knew more about the subject than Claire did ... And to hear her talking thus was like hearing a canary swear like a sailor's parrot.
"Well," Claire wound up, "if you're sure you can stand it, and you really want to, I think I can fix it."
"And you won't care?" Mildred asked, with near disbelief.
"Not at all," Claire assured her.
"Would you want part of the hundred?"
"No."
"You sure he'd give me as much as a hundred?"
"Positive-and perhaps I could get him to give you more; maybe a hundred and fifty."
The following afternoon, at four-thirty, after the Boston boat had gone, Claire met Mildred at the pier.
"Sorry to be late," she apologized to Claire, as though presenting an excuse to a school teacher. Claire was tempted to spank her on her pretty, round, small bottom, which would be pink and soft as a baby's, and send her back home.
"Sure you want to go through with it, Mildred?"
"For a hundred bucks? I should hope to say so."
"I talked him into giving you a hundred and fifty; the extra fifty's if you're a very good girl though, he said."
"Oh, I'll be very good."
Her blouse was open at the front, and Claire caught a glimpse of young breasts, softly rounded and pink tipped.
They climbed down into the gig, with the assistance of one of Hunter's sailors, and set off across the harbor toward the yacht, which lay anchored, glistening white in the sun, its brass throwing off sharp streaks of lambency.
Mildred held her hand like a child. Feeling her tremble, Claire-whispered:
"I'll make him take you back to the pier if you-wish."
"Oh, no!" Mildred protested, her baby eyes large and earnest. "What's a couple of hours of hell compared to going in rags all-winter and half freezing?"
"Gee," Claire sighed, "you poor kid. I-wish I had a hundred to give you, so you wouldn't need to go,"
"It's all right," the other responded, still in the tone of a child endeavoring to be agreeable in the presence of an elder.
Hunter was waiting on deck. Claire introduced them. He turned pale and his eyes dilated at sight of his prize. They sat down for a while on the deck and chatted stiffly, while the yacht got under way and left the harbor mouth, its powerful engines driving it at great speed and with a smoothness that made it feel as though one were floating on air instead of water.
When they were offshore sufficiently far to be out of sight of the coast guardsmen's telescopes, Hunter said abruptly, to Mildred:
"Shall we go below?"
She nodded obediently. All during the trip she had been holding on to Claire's hand; now she let go reluctantly.
Hunter and Mildred went below. Claire remained on the deck, watching Provincetown fade from view. The one sailor visible on deck was oblivious to proceedings. The crew, she knew, were accustomed to Hunter's whimsies and paid no attention to them; they had probably, she supposed, previous to signing on with Hunter Dorsey, worked for other gentlemen no less whimsical.
As they came downstairs into Hunter's suite, he abruptly pushed her through the door ahead of him, and she fell forward sharply against his desk. "What...!"
With his free hand he delivered a resounding smack upon her behind and she went sailing to the floor on her chest.
Hunter laughed satanically and rolled up his sleeves, "Now," he said malevolently, "you innocent young bitch, you-I'm going to beat some sense into you!"
Scarcely wasting a moment, he suddenly jerked open a nearby closet and pulled out something so hideous it made Mildred's flesh crawl: a leather whip, composed of separately bound thongs that wove around each other until they made a kind of forked end not unlike that of a snake's tongue.
"Now!" Hunter screamed, and he brought the lash down upon the terrified girl.
Mildred tried to crawl away, but he was too fast for her, and there was really no place to hide. She whimpered with fear and cried out in pain, her blonde hair flying all over her struggling young body. Hunter's lash was tearing her clothes to shreds.
"Please ... please don't hurt me...." she begged in a tearful, simpering voice.
"Only if you promise to be good!" And he brought the whip down, cutting into her sensitive tender young flesh again and again.
"I promise! I promise! Stop! Please!"
Hunter cast the whip aside with a snarl and reached for her, ripping off her remaining rags in one savage movement. "Bitch!" he cursed as he revealed her full, young breasts dangling down, scraping their cherry nipples along the plush carpet. He kicked her and she went sprawling. Then he attended to getting his own clothes off.
Only short seconds later he was propping her up on her hands and knees. Then he dropped onto her so swiftly that Mildred scarcely knew....
She screamed as he attempted to enter a portion of her anatomy that never had been entered. Again and again he thrust forward, casting his body over her and burying his face in her lovely golden hair. His hands came around underneath and gripped her breasts savagely, squeezing them mercilessly and twisting them and pinching them so that great bursts of pain shot up through Mildred's already screaming nervous system.
And then he finally made it all the way ... thrust deep inside her ... working back and forth....
. Tears fell from the girl's eyes like a river, and then Hunter ejaculated swiftly and silently into a realm of such surcease and beauty that he thought he would never recover from it....
Half and hour later Hunter appeared at one of the hatchways.
"Come down here," he directed. Claire hurried below and found Mildred in the bathroom crying. Putting an arm around her, Claire tried to comfort her. Soon Mildred subsided. She lay relaxed in Claire's arms, gazing up into her eyes wordlessly. What she saw implied in the other's eyes shocked Claire more than any words could. Mildred was nude and there were cruel red marks on her tender skin.
"I'll make him take you back instantly," Claire soothed.
The other girl shook her head. "No-then I won't get the extra fifty."
"You don't mean to say you're going back to, to...."
"Yes, I got to. Don't worry about it. This is nothing compared to going all winter without anything. Just let me...." she sighed heavily, like a very young girl, and cradled her head in the crook of Claire's arm; closing her eyes and resting for several moments.
Suddenly Claire felt a strange thrill move through her. She felt so tender towards this poor helpless creature....
Affectionately she stroked Mildred's golden hair, running her fingers into its soft fleeciness. One hand came around and cupped the girl's full breast....
"Oh!"
Claire began thumbing Mildred's nipple. She put her mouth into the girls' ear and whispered: "Don't be alarmed. I just feel sorry for you. It seems only fair that after giving Hunter his thrill, and doing all that, that you should get something out of it, too...."
And with that Claire forced the only feebly protesting Mildred onto her back. Her fingers grazed the fleecy golden softness down between her love-slave's trembling legs. And then Claire felt herself being drawn into an act she would never have believed herself capable of.
She lifted Mildred's creamy smooth buttocks up in her hands and began to lick away at a spot so sensitive and so juicy....
Oh! Ooh! ... Claire ... God ... oh my ... oh ... I"
Claire continued to kiss and stroke and feel and prod with her fingers until finally Mildred reached a churning, agonized burst of glory that caused her young body to jerk frantically through series of tremulous moaning peaks, and then lie still as if forever....
Later, after she had returned their prize to Hunter to do with as he wished for yet a second disgusting time, Claire sat down in the small central cabin and tried to imagine all the freakish things that Hunter might do to the poor child.
Presently she heard Mildred groaning, obviously in great pain. She hurried to Hunter's cabin and tried the door, calling: "Let me in at once!"
But it was Mildred's voice which said with an effort:
"It's all right ... go away...."
Claire went back and sat down. The moans started anew. It was the sort of sound a person might make when in great pain, though endeavoring with every ounce of will power to stifle any outcry. After a moment, when the sound increased in intensity, Claire, unable any longer to stand it, went up on deck.
It was dark when Hunter came back upstairs and spoke to Claire.
"Go on down with her," he ordered, "and when we land, take her home. I'm going away for a few days. You'd better stay at the hotel."
Claire had firmly made up her mind to tell him that she wanted to go back to New York; but his crisply commanding manner, and the fact that he was going away again, took the unspoken words from her. Without replying she went to his cabin.
Mildred was sprawled out on the bed, weakly sobbing. Claire was ashamed of having brought her into such a situation. She went to the side of the bed and touched her gently. Mildred jumped as though she had been touched with a hand of fire; then, seeing it was Claire, she pulled her down to the bed. Claire patted her head gently.
"Can I get you something to drink, dear?" she asked.
"Yes," Mildred acquiesced. "Is there any whiskey aboard?"
"Plenty," Claire assured her, and went out to return presently with a bottle of whiskey and a glass. Nobody on Cape Cod ever spoiled good whiskey by mixing it with anything.
She poured out a small glass and handed it to Mildred, going to the ice-water tap on the washstand in the room for a chaser, but Mildred gulped down the whiskey and shook her head at the proffered chaser.
Claire sat down again beside her and stroked her gently; but Mildred was trembling, and every touch made her jump.
"Come on in and I'll help you get dressed," Claire coaxed. Mildred stood up. There were shadows of torment in her eyes when she looked up at Claire trustfully.
"Why did you do it?" Claire asked.
"I wouldn't go through it all again for five hundred," Mildred managed, with a grimace, "But it's over now and I'm all set for the winter."
"He's not a man," Claire said disgustedly, "he's an animal, and I'm going to leave him."
"How do you stand it, Claire?"
"Oh, he doesn't pull those stunts on me."
Later, when the yacht reached the harbor, Claire needed to support her young charge as they went on deck and climbed into the gig to be taken ashore. Hunter was nowhere in evidence.
All of the way back to the landing point Mildred insisted upon standing up, though it was hard for her to balance herself, even by holding on to the sides of the small gig cabin. The harbor water had slightly roughened, due to a slight northeasterly wind.
Claire had instructed the chauffeur to wait near "Times Square." The car was there, as she had directed; but the chauffeur was nowhere in sight. Claire offered to drive Mildred home, but she demurred:
"No, thanks, Claire. I'll walk. This air is bracing me up. That's what I need before I go home. I don't want to go in looking like I'd been run over by a truck."
"Get your hundred and fifty all right?"...." Hope to tell you. I certainly wouldn't have left there alive without it." She patted the pocket of her sailor blouse which was fastened shut with a button.
Claire was very depressed as she watched the girl disappear around the corner. Hunter Dorsey had again had his way with a woman-had paid her well in money, but was utterly unconcerned about the permanent physical, spiritual and psychological harm he may have caused. Claire felt personally vindictive toward him-for what he had done to Mildred and many others before, and for what he might do to her if she ever gave him a chance.
It was then that she decided definitely to leave Hunter Dorsey, no matter what she had to do, and to take Mort with her.
For a few moments she compared Mort and Dorsey. The one required so little of material things to elevate the human spirit to heights of sublimity, but had nothing; while the other could spend lavishly for the perverted privilege of dragging a human soul to the depths of depravity....
The next day was so lovely that Claire decided to leave the chauffeur to his own devices and walk out to Mort's place. As she passed the Christopher Wren tower on a hundred-year-old church, a young writer who had been in Provincetown all summer fell in step beside her with a cheery, "Morning, Miss Warne."
"Where are you going so early?" she asked pleasantly. She liked him, even though he did ruin his appearance by refusing to shave, with the result that he had a set of whiskers like D. H. Lawrence's, combined with eyes like those of a Botticelli Cupid.
"No place," he announced. "I'm holding an indignation meeting."
"On a morning like this...!" she objected.
"Yes, especially on a morning like this. That's just why I'm indignant and refuse to work."
"Oh...." she smiled indulgently. "You're lazy, that's all that's wrong with you."
"Nope," he declared; "I've got a real grievance."
"You've got less real grievance than most," she chided friendily. "At least you can make a living with your art and get along ... that's more than the rest of the poseurs around here can do."
"That's just it," he mourned.
"You mean you don't like to write?"
"Oh, sure ... I'd like to write. But what I do isn't writing. I get an order for a given type of novel. I sit down with it all charted out write and write and write until it's done. Then I hurl it with execrations at my publisher and hope that it sells. Then, after the novel's hurled at the publisher, I collapse into a state of morbid depression for several weeks, thinking constantly of all the quaint and painlessly effective ways one might well commit suicide, for one's own good; and for the great good of American letters....
"Then the galley proofs come in, and I read the monstrosity with growing alarm, trying to realize that I actually-wrote it. After the galley proofs are done I swoon into more suicidal frenzies ... then the page proofs come along., .and I finally finish the book....
"Then, after a period of a few weeks of resignation to my fate, after I've listened to and observed a few aesthetic writers commenting upon the pin money listed on their royalty statements, I begin to feel illogically ebullient over the fact that I can write the sort of thing that makes money, and that I have the kind of publisher who is clever enough to remain solvent. What a life!"
"Oh!" Claire mourned. "And I always envied you."
"And I always envied you," he countered. "Mistress to an eminently presentable and lousily rich man who pampers you far more efficiently than any king of old could have pampered his mistress. That's the life. How I wish I were a pretty woman so I could be a real whore, instead of a prostitute ex libris."
Claire was startled. Here she had been envying him, and he had been envying her, and they were both discontented.
She laughed and. then sobered. They were on the other side of town now, endeavoring to keep close enough together to talk as they walked along the one, narrow sidewalk that Provincetown boasted.
"Were you ever in love?" she asked, thinking, woman-like, only of her own dilemma.
"Nope," he replied cheerfully, "but I was married once."
"Once?"
"Yep. Divorced. She was a nice girl. Nice to everyone, including all my male relatives. I had no particular objection, but when she took on my own brother-who didn't happen to be as liberal minded as I am-and he, ashamed of what he'd done, ran away so that I never heard of him again, I got wearied with the wench ... So the next time she got snarled up with a man I encouraged it and sure enough it worked. She divorced me and married him."
"That's not love-she was impossible," Claire contradicted.
"Not at all," he denied. She wasn't vicious; she was just kind-hearted. I checked up with her once and discovered that since the time she had been thirteen years old she had never once refused to go to bed with any male who asked her. She wasn't bad at all. She was just agreeable."
"But suppose you were really, desperately in love, what would you do?"
"I'd ask the lady if she'd much mind taking off her panties."
"You're impossible," Claire declared.
"Absolutely," he agreed with a grin; "but don't worry, I'm not so impractical as to attempt to seduce a young lady whose sugar daddy makes love with yachts." His gay manner of saying it made it somehow inoffensive. He tipped his hat and cut across the street after this last wisecrack, toward a favored saloon.
She continued on toward Mort's shack. It was nearly an hour before she reached it, tired out, and threw herself in the sand. Mort came running out.
"Baby!" he shouted with glee. "I'll have to look at the calendar; this must be my birthday!"
When she'd caught her breath, after her long walk, and his long kisses, she said soberly:
"It's not your birthday, Mort it's...." she hesitated, and, seeing how serious she was, he threw himself down in the sand by her side.
"What's-eating you on such a swell day, Cherie?"
"Just this, Mort! I'm not going to stay with Hunter any longer. I'm going back to New York, and you're coming with me. We're going to get a small place together, and get along the-best way we can."
"Don't be foolish, Cherie."
She told him about Mildred. He frowned and shook his head solemnly.
"Yes, you're right," he agreed; "he'd be trying something like that on you next. And, anyway, it's nearly the end of the season here. I've still got enough money to get us both to New York on the bus. We'll go."
"You don't sound as if you want to."
"I don't ... much ... Claire; I've a feeling that I'll lose you in that hideous place where everything is so ... so ... do you realize how different it will be from the luxurious life you led up here?"
"Didn't I live there before-under trying conditions?"
"I know, but you've had a taste of real luxury since."
"The only luxury I've had this summer has been out here, Mort."
"Gee, you're sweet to say that."
"And listen, Mort. When we get back to New York I want you to take your time and find a really good job. I want to outfit you with new clothes. I want everything splendid and first class in the world for you ... and because I do, I want you to let me go back to doing shows for Wally Templeton for awhile."
"Not on your life!" He all but shouted.
"Mort, you must see that that's the best Way."
"Nothing doing."
"Do you mean you won't go back and let me do that to get you started?"
"I certainly do mean just that."
"Then it's good-bye, Mort."
He pouted like a little boy. She watched him in delightful amusement out of the corner of her eye. He moved a short way off from her and stood gazing out to sea.
She crawled over beside him and pushed him gently back upon the sand. He lay rigid and still incensed. She leaned over and glued her mouth to his. He wriggled. With one of her hands she played with him provocatively. He squirmed. Soon he was frantic. His arms were about her and he dragged her close.
"Not unless you say you'll let me manage your first few months in New York," she stipulated, holding him off.
"No," he declared.
Expertly she teased him until he was in a frenzy. He clawed at her frantically and whispered sweet nonsense that seemed to trickle through her blood. But still she held him off.
"Will you do as I say?" she asked again.
He shook his head stubbornly. Suddenly she moved back a bit, as he lay prone upon the sand. Her mouth lowered to his tormented flesh and began sucking....
In a moment he uttered an agonized:
"Ohhh!" of ecstasy. She paused long enough to ask again:
"Will you do anything I ask, Mort?"
"Yes," he all but shouted, and then she did not talk any more.
CHAPTER NINE
During her former stay in New York, Claire had instinctively avoided Greenwich Village and everything that it represented. She had met a number of people from out of its confines and noted that the Village appeared to have a peculiar effect upon them. The females always looked dirty, and seemed to lose their sex appeal. The males were wan and consumptive, and apparently didn't care anything about sex appeal. And both sexes, spiritually, gave the impression of being drugged.
But it was in the Village, nevertheless, that they found haven after the Hegira from Provincetown.
This was partly because Mort was acquainted with the Village, and knew where to hunt for lodgings in it. They found a comfortable, small, furnished apartment, at a price that Mort considered low enough to salvage what he had left of his honor. She had wanted a more expensive place, but he balked so violently at this that she was forced to give in. He said:
"There's some small chance that I may be able to make enough to pay the rent on this one soon."
She hadn't told Mort about the money she'd stolen from Hunter. She hadn't thought much about it herself. She was, she realized, when she thought about it all, quite mad. In her head was only one recognizable idea: to live with Mort, in the happiness his presence engendered, as long as possible snatch that much from life-and then ... but she refused to think of the end.
Sometimes, in her more confident moods, she decided that Mort and she would live on and on together for years.
There had been ten thousand dollars in currency in the package she had stolen from Hunter. She had most of it in a safety deposit vault under an assumed name. Mort thought that she had just retained enough of what Hunter had given her to get them back to New York, and allow them to get started in an apartment. He had vain hopes of finding a job that would support both of them.
Sometimes, despite herself, her mind would trace back to Provincetown, and that night she had stolen into Hunter's room, after he'd gone to bed, and taken the money, without thought of the consequences to follow. In the morning, at breakfast on the yacht, he had been his old self; smiled and joked with her:
"Well, honey, I've got everything all set again. I took a terrific fall in the market last spring, and things were black for a while; but I'm on my feet again. I've got to make one more trip on the yacht, alone; then I'll come back, pick you up, and we'll return to New York ... And, baby, we'll play games again."
She'd trembled for fear he'd look for his money before sailing; but he didn't. She-was put ashore in the gig; then she went out to Mort's place; took the bus to Hyannis, then the train to Providence and New York.
That had been two weeks ago; and nothing had happened yet-though she had the feeling of sitting upon a volcano about to erupt. If it had only been the police, she would not have worried. But Hunter, she knew, had been engaged in some narcotics enterprise, and associated with gangsters. They would be more efficient and untiring than the police ... if they ever found her!
But then, she shrugged and set herself to cleaning up the apartment, for it was nearly time for Mort to come home. Suddenly the doorbell rang.
She hurried to the speaking tube, sure that it was the police come to report the finding of Mort's body. Perhaps, she illogically imagined, if he had been killed in a violent and unexplained way, she would be accused of murder. Her heart hammered and her throat felt constricted as she managed to call down the speaking tube. A voice Came up to her:
"This Mrs. Larrimore?" She thought of the name on the bell plate in the vestibule below, and managed, waveringly: "Yes...."
Pushing the button which operated the electric catch on the inner hall door below, she opened the apartment door and peered, waiting, out into the hall.
It was dark in the hall. Two young men appeared out of the gloom by the stairway and were illumined by the light coming from the open door in which she stood. The men removed their hats. One of them said gently:
"Mrs. Larrimore, you'd better get your hat and coat and come along."
"Is it Mort?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Hurrying to the closet in her bedroom, she secured a hat and coat. When she returned, they were waiting in the hall. She rushed down the stairs ahead of them. On the floor below, they caught up with her. One of them held her arm and led her to a large automobile parked at the curb, in front of the door. They entered the car. She sat between the two men. When the car started, she asked:
"Is he ... is he...?"
When she could not finish the question one of the men said kindly:
"He was hurt a bit; but he's not dead. Don't worry ma'am. We'll be there in a minute."
She wanted to ask how he had been hurt, but she could not. Leaning back upon the leather seat and closing her eyes, she tried to. fight off the black clouds which threatened to engulf her in unconsciousness. One of the men-produced a bottle:
"Here ... take a nip of this, lady."
She drank from the bottle. The fiery stuff trickling down her throat in a thin, burning stream warmed her. She had never fainted. She had a strong heart and healthy lungs ... as a result of her rearing in the Middle West, where people partook of the beneficial as well as of the unpleasant aspects of cattle. It was nearly impossible for her to faint.
"Better not talk," one of the men advised; "we'll be there in a couple of minutes."
Because she knew that she would be incoherent if she tried to talk she remained still. With her head resting on the back of the leather seat, her eyes closed, her hands tightly clasped in her lap.
The car stopped. Quickly she followed one of the men out; the other man followed behind them.
Only secondarily was she aware of her physical movements as they went into the rear entrance of a garage, descended to the basement and then again descended to a small room beneath the basement.
There was a blinding glare of light. Several men stood waiting. A .hunchback's eyes lit up as he saw her. His hands began to tremble.
"Where is he?" she asked dazedly, glancing around the small room.
One of her abductors said quietly:
"We'll tell you as soon as you tell us where you've got that ten grand you snitched from Hunter!"
It was several moments before she could order her mind sufficiently to think out the situation. Gradually it became clear that they had kidnaped Mort, hoping he would know where the money was. Since they had been unable to find out anything, they had taken her.
She'd have to be careful. If she told them where the money was, or offered to lead them to its hiding place in the morning, she might not be able to get Mort out of their hands. She. must withhold the information until they had released Mort to her.
"You gonna talk, sister?" one of the men asked, threateningly.
"No," she declared. "Not until I'm sure Mr. Larrimore is safe; not until you let him and me go ... and I see that he's unharmed."
"So you want to bargain, eh?" the man who had first spoken asked. "Okay, sister. We'll bargain with you. We got a bargain counter right here. We'll give you about ten pounds of air for telling us where that dough is stashed."
He nodded, and the men seized her. She screamed, but they ignored her cries. At last,-when she was securely fastened, face down to the table, one of the men drawled:
"Yell your head off, sister, if it relieves you any. This place is sound-proof. You going to tell us where that ten grand is now ... or will we go ahead?"
"Let me see Mort, and maybe I'll tell you."
"Maybe you will! ... So you're going to holdout on us, huh? Well, we wouldn't be that mean to you, sister; just to show you that we'll keep our part of the bargain we'll slip you ten pounds of air first, then you can tell us-or maybe you'll hold out for fifteen pounds."
He nodded. With alacrity the hunch-back stepped forward. The other men watched with grinning interest.
Mortified beyond endurance, Claire closed her eyes in order not to see their devil faces. When the hunchback tarried, one of the men snarled:
"All right! Jake! Don't you think you've having too much fun? Get going...!" Jake nodded and lifted up her skirt to reveal her un-pantied behind. He pried her cheeks apart and inserted one end of the air hose....
Claire emitted a piercing cry of anguish and then relaxed a minute, determined not to give them any idea where the money was until she was sure that Mort was safe. Her only chance to secure his safety, she felt, was to make a bargain with her captors before they found out what they wanted to know.
Jake motioned to one of the men to turn on the air. It hissed through the narrow rubber tube. Claire screamed and writhed in torment; but her bonds were secure.
The pain became so intense that at last it possessed of all her consciousness, and she was without volition.
She heard herself screaming and yet was without direct awareness of willing her outcries. It was as though a spirit inside her, to which she was but an outer shell, were causing the ululations; as though this indwelling spirit which was, perhaps, only her nervous system, had shuffled her and her intellection aside and was crying out for mercy to her tormentors independently.
Her body and her mind, it appeared, were separate. Her flesh wanted no pain for any reason whatsoever; but her mind was capable of putting reasons for enduring agony above the mere wishes of her ganglia.
At last one of the men reached up and turned off the air. He also opened an escape valve in the rubber tube connection. She was left abruptly relaxed and exhausted.
At once she forgot everything; forgot where she was; why she was there; what was happening; in a super Miss that was new and compelling-the bliss known by those who have been tortured and are at last left without pain.
Every muscle in her body relaxed. Thought processes drained away as though under the influence of a drug and her mind was blank. She breathed slowly and evenly, with closed eyes. After a time she heard:
"Well, sister, what do you say?"
Awkwardly, she collected her thoughts. Now the keen edge was wearing from the no-pain bliss and reason was creeping back again. Mort! ... She must not tell. Mort's safety depended upon her.
First they must free Mort; then she would tell about the money-and only then. Evidently her body had no ratiocinative faculties in its nerves and cells, for it did not protest her incipient betrayal of it; it was satisfied to be without discomfort.
"Better speak up, sister; it'll be fifteen pounds next time."
Her mind was now working acutely. They were lying in order to scare her, she was sure; making up fanciful tales of impossible poundages. She had stood it once, she could stand it again.
As she opened her eyes she saw one of the men begin to adjust the gauge which permitted regulation of the air pressure. With abrupt comprehension she became aware that he was actually fixing the gauge so as to admit more pressure, just as they had threatened. She found herself pleading piteously:
"Please ... please ... Oh, my God, don't do that. I'll do anything...!"
Jake's eyes lightened up and he started toward her with an excited:
"Yeh...?"
But the man they called Phil pushed him away arid ordered roughly:
"Go on back where you belong and tend to your business or I'll bust you one."
Jake went back to his station at the rear of the table.
"Well, what do you say, girlie?" the pimply leader prompted again.
She was wordless, thinking of Mort. One of the men moved toward the handle which permitted the air to enter the tube. She screamed and pleaded:
"Oh, please...! Not again! I can't stand it."
The man paused for a moment, but Phil gestured impatiently. Air hissed through the small rubber tubing which jerked tautly stiff under the air pressure.
She heard herself screaming again. She twisted, writhed, jerked in agony ... filled with tiny bombs of pain that exploded and burned like superheated sparks within her ... And then she relaxed and lay weak and spent as the air was turned off again.
Once more the pimply one questioned; but she did not answer. Again air whistled along the tube; and then another pause ... this, over and over again until she floated, half conscious, in a sea of boiling pain.
She found herself, without conscious volition or direction to her words, begging them for mercy as though they were gods ... Promising all manner of things that would delight low males; and at last she found herself, during one of the pauses between the agonies of compressed air, whimpering to them the name of the bank in which she had rented a safety deposit box and put the more than nine thousand dollars which remained from the original ten thousand.
The men conferred among themselves. Untying her they turned her over. She could not move. Her muscles and ligaments were as limp from the exertion of straining at her bonds, as though they had been severed. One of them handed Jake a bottle.
Take care of her," the donor of the libation directed; "we're going to phone. We'll be back."
They filed up the wooden stairs, which creaked heavily under their weight.
The trap door at the head of the stairs opened, and then banged heavily shut after them. There was a soundlessness in the room, now broken only by heavy breathing. She listened carefully to see if it were her own; but it was not. It was Jake. He was watching her. She met his eyes. They terrified her, but not as much as they would have tinder ordinary circumstances. She was, for the time being, immunized from the ordinary depths of terror.
Abstract fear was such a minor thing as compared to the concrete agony that she had suffered. She tried to move-to get tip-but every tendon was sore.
Impersonally she examined Jake as he scrutinized her. He was old! About fifty, she judged, short, repulsive. He was wearing an old brown suit hich had an untidy bagginess at the knees and elbows. The coat was much too long for him and reached far below his waist, nearly to his knees; but the sleeves were too short for his long arms. His rough dark-brown hands were gnarled; they resembled roots. Upon his face was a stubble of beard and his scraggly, gray-brown hair hung in thin wisps over a low, wrinkled forehead.
He moved slowly toward her with the bottle. She eyed it hopefully, remembered how warm the liquid from the bottle had felt as it trickled comfortingly down into her stomach when she had been given a drink in the car.
Leaning over her with an exaggerated solicitude, he put the bottle to her mouth. She drank eagerly. Some of the evil smelling liquid poured out around the edge of her mouth and down her cheeks to her neck and throat.
The liquid was cold, not as though it had been iced, but cold in a refreshing, revivifying way. Inside, it warmed her; and that which spilled on her skin cooled her. She shut her eyes and soaked up both the inner warmth and the outer coolness. Shaking some of the stuff out of the bottle into his palm he rubbed it on her temples and wrists, and then asked, in a thin, tremulous voice:
"How's that?"
She nodded, with closed eyes.
"It's damn near pure alky. It'll make you feel swell, lady."
She kept her eyes closed until he touched her again. She tried to sit up. Protested:
"Stop that!"
"It's all right, lady; don't get excited. This'll fix you up. I'll rub you all over with it and you'll feel swell."
"No! No!"
"Now, you be quiet, lady." He proceeded with the preparations for his rubbing. She managed to sit up in an attempt to fight him off;, but he pushed her roughly back down.
"Take it easy, lady. They may be gone, but I still got that." He pointed threateningly toward the air tube. She did not protest further as he made ready for his massaging. Seeing her acquiescent he became gnomishly affable.
"I used to do this in a Turkish bath, before I got into The Racket."
And, indeed, he appeared to be an expert manipulator. She felt much better as his rubbing brought life back to her muscles, though she was still weak and could scarcely raise her arms.
His gnarled hands massaged her massive pendant breasts roughly, pushing them up and over her chest and making them loll from side to side. He pinched her nipples, and she winced. A long, deep moan plied from her mouth. Her belly went slack as he gently caressed its marvelous curvature, and slowly his fingers began moving inside of her thighs....
"Suppose you think I oughtn't to be massaging a lady, huh? Hell, you don't know nothing. In them Turkish baths lots of the frails wants a man masseur ... one that knows his business. Lots of the skirts used to want a 'local' ... Know what that is, uh?" He proceeded to demonstrate by jamming his fingers up her crotch. She twisted away from him in shame. He cackled and reached for her. To escape him she turned over. This angered him. Putting one arm heavily across her back, pinioning her tightly to the table, he reached with his other long arm for the air tube.
She felt the sharp pain that had preceded the prolonged pain of the compressed air. Reaching for the air valve he managed to get his hand on it and hold her at the same time.
"Going to do like I told you?" he questioned savagely, trembling now in his bestial eagerness.
Claire tried to call out, but she could not do so. Jake noticed her intention and cursed; then he whipped out a soiled handkerchief and bound it tightly around her mouth.
His arms were not only extraordinarily long, but they were also unusually strong. Holding her with one long arm he manipulated the air hose with the other.
Again she was plunged into the boiling sea of pain, and this time there were no pauses, no rest periods for interrogation. Though he questioned her, he did not turn off the air to wait for her replies.
"When you get ready to do like I tell you," he snarled, "nod yer fool head and I'll quit." She tried to nod, but could not. The muscles in her neck were stiff and exhausted.
Then he reached over and increased the air pressure. When it got to the point where she could no longer stand it, a change began to come over her.
The pain mounted to new heights, far beyond any she had previously supposed pain might reach. She became conscious that she was enjoying it; that pain had turned into a continuing and ineffably potent new sensation.
She still struggled faintly and was aware of making attempts to cry out despite her gag. Yet she discovered that, though on the surface of her bodily movements there was the evidence of suffering, deep down within her she was enjoying this new, unsuspected potentiality of latent sensation.
Involuntarily, under the impulsion of the new feeling, her upper lip twitched and raised. She was aware that the muscles of her face had contracted, forming an expression which she had never exhibited before since its patterns were new to her facial muscles; it was an expression, she was sure, having the outward semblance of an indication of suffering, yet it interpreted the facial registry of such an emotion in a new way.
She stopped struggling, though pain like molten fire still racked her, and then stiffened. For now, though she continued to float in the sea of pain, she had, in some manner, become tempered to the boiling and floated in it, peculiarly sensitized by it.
Her mind worked acutely, though as if it were the mind of another far off from her. Thought cascaded through her brain cells involuntarily. Pain and no-pain then were like heat and cold. Heat, raised to its highest degree would perform some of the functions of extreme cold; while cold, raised to a high point, would burn and act like fire.
New comprehension was hers of the tortures which early Christian martyrs had enjoyed. She now understood why religious fanatics tortured themselves objectively in India and subjectively in the United States; knew why Hindu religious fanatics walked upon hot stones, and why Methodist dervishes denied themselves all the bright sensualities of life.
Suddenly the trap door above opened, and the men came climbing back down the stairs. When the pimply one called Phil appeared and saw what was going on he yelled at Jake:
"What the hell are you doing, you son-of-a-bitch! Turn off that air. I'll crack your Goddamned skull."
The hunchback turned off the air and cowered in a corner.
She was strangely sorry that they had come to her rescue. She had, with their appearance, lost the pain ecstasy and was sinking down through lower levels of pain which were only hurtful; down through the middle zones of pain which were unrelieved torture. She groaned. Phil snatched the gag from her mouth and gazed down at her angrily. Then he shot a venomous glance at Jake who ran for the stairs, scampered up them with surprising agility and was gone. She found unbidden in her mind a regret at the going of Jake;-saw clearly now why women in all ages and the world over, so frequently sought out ugly, revolting men. Such men, because of the aching weight of inferiority upon them, held a rage against life itself which made them cruel.
Never again, she was sure, would she experience the super-ecstasy of the high reaches of pain; since never again would she have the courage to go through the lower mutations and the middle levels of pain to reach the higher ones.
Even now, 'as the moments passed, she was forgetting the super-ecstasy, and remaining aware only of the lower levels of agony; and from these her soul and body cringed and cowered in a new baseness cowered back and whined:
"Don't hurt me ... don't hurt me! I'll do anything! Anything!"
"That's all right, girlie," the pimply one soothed. "We ain't going to hurt you no more. Take it easy." She lay staring up at him helplessly, still trembling. When he was sure of her attentiveness he went on:
"Now lookit: We got your boy friend, and we're going to keep him until tomorrow. After you go to the safety vault and pull those nine G's for us, we'll let you and your boy friend go. If we don't get the dough without getting into any jams, you don't get your boy friend. Get?"
Her thoughts wandered on their own impetus, trying to' escape from her pain-racked body. She thought back to the time when she had taken off her clothes before Billy in the number three tourist cabin by the side of the road house out near Des Moines. She recalled how in Billy's scrutiny when there had been only appreciation of her loveliness without anything of lasciviousness; yet later, when she had met him in New York, and he had again held her closely, he had gazed upon her lasciviously. Would Mort, she wondered, also change that way? She mustn't let that happen to Mort, in addition to the other character changes his association with her had made in him....
"Get me?" Phil asked again. She nodded and inquired:
"Where's Hunter Dorsey? Take me to him."
"What for?" Phil asked, evidently a trifle surprised and disconcerted.
"I don't believe you told Hunter what you were going to do to Mort and me. I don't think he'd stand for anything like that. I believe he'd take my word for it that I'll give the money back tomorrow, and make you let Mort go right now."
This new development appeared to have an odd effect upon them. They shuffled and glanced from one to another questioningly. Phil said:
"If I take you to Dorsey, will you stay there until you're able to be around? Will you go to him without kicking up a fuss?"
"Yes, I-will."
Phil was relieved.
"That'd be better than...." he began to the others, and then broke off, to add: "You lugs wait here till I phone Dorsey."
CHAPTER TEN
Late next day, Claire awoke to stare around in confusion. After a moment she became orientated, and her first reaction to her orientation-was not one of displeasure.
The dainty bedroom which Hunter Dorsey kept for the entertainment of his lady guests was a masterpiece; it called to her mind the luxury of the small bedroom she'd had on the yacht. But a chill went through her as she remembered the other room, back in the apartment; the room with the huge scented pillows.
The door was shut and the apartment quiet. She had no idea what time it might be, but she knew that it must be past noon. The street noises that floated faintly up-to her were in their afternoon stages, indefinitely recognizable to the ear of one at all accustomed to the peculiarities of New York; a city whose moods were far more distinctive than any other.
Though she was hungry, she did not ring the bell available at the end of a cord at the head of the bed. She didn't 'want-just yet-to see anyone. She wanted to lie mute and relaxed upon the heavenly softness of the cloud-like bed;-wanted, more than anything else, to escape thought.
But the thought of Mort at once intruded. She was not concerned now for his safety. There was a vastly convincing capability about Hunter Dorsey. Unlike people in the more approved social classifications, he could be depended upon to keep his word. He would surely have rescued Mort.
She should have wanted now above everything else to see Mort; but she did not want to see him. She didn't want him anywhere near her-not because she loved him less, but rather because she loved him more.
Never again, in this life, she was certain, would she experience love such as his; never again could she feel toward any living man as she felt toward him.
Bitterly she reflected that she had broken down all of his ideals and conceptions; practically made a pimp of him-keeping him like a common gigolo. She was a curse to everyone she met. For his own good she must get away from him-and that at once.
She moved with comfort, despite her pains and aches, upon the soft bed. If only Hunter Dorsey were not such an exacting man in his passionate tastes. But she saw again the stricken look in the eyes of Mildred, the girl whom Hunter had toyed with at Provincetown. She'd met Mildred a week after that hectic afternoon on the yacht. The poor child, in response to her query, had said:
"Oh, I feel pretty good again ... I can sit down anyway. And I've been spending all my time picking out my winter clothes in a Montgomery Ward catalogue. I'm not kicking."
But she could not, Claire knew, stand anything like that and bear up under it as philosophically as Mildred had. Her taste of pain, in its intermediate mutations-though climaxed by an unbelievable sensual ecstasy-was too acute to make her willing ever again to deal with pain on its lower levels.
She shuddered at her memories of the day before and tried to force all thoughts of the gruesome experience from her mind.
There was a light tap upon the door. She called out permission to enter. Hunter Dorsey came in. He was becomingly dressed in a gray afternoon suit; and his eyes were full of deep solicitude.
"How do you feel, my dear?"
"As though I couldn't move for a week."
"It's a damnable shame. I hope you realize that I knew nothing about what was going on. I informed them originally only that I supposed that Mort chap had put you up to taking the money and that he had it. They said they'd watch some of his old haunts. Sure enough, he dropped in at a restaurant one day and they followed him home. They didn't keep me informed, however; I think one of the reasons why they made such a point of the whole matter was that they suspected me of double-crossing them about the ten thousand and wanted to find out for certain about that. Gangsters are most petulant about that."
"Where's Mort now?"
"Right here in the apartment."
"Hurt badly?"
"They used him as they did you; but he's not, of course, as badly off as you are. I asked him to wait and not wake you up. Do you wish to see him now?"
"No!"
"You don't..!"
"No."
Hunter, surprised and perplexed, sat down upon the edge of the bed, talking to her in a low tone.
"They've told him you'll be safe so long as he doesn't go to the police, or make a fuss about the way he was treated. He's agreed not to do anything until he sees you. He has believed me, that you are being taken care of comfortably here. May I ask why you do not wish to see him?"
She frowned in confusion, realizing that her plan was wholly unformulated as to detail, and she asked:
"Would you do something peculiar for me, without asking too many questions about my motives?"
"Indeed I would, my dear. I'm vastly distressed over the way you've been treated. I have my streaks of naughtiness, as you know, but this is the sort of thing I want no part of."
"I want you to help me convince Mort Larrimore that I'm through with him and never want to see him again."
"But, my dear, he's a likable fellow. He's quite mad about you, and...."
"Yes, I know-but do you mind taking what I tell you for granted, and not requiring an explantion."
He nodded puzzled consent but added:
"What will become of you? Who'll take care of you? What will you do? Go back to Templeton's shows?"
"I don't know-but I want Mort away from me permanently, and I want him taken care of."
"Taken care of...?
"Protected, I mean, from any further molestation by those dreadful thugs, and perhaps sent back home, or given sufficient money to take a rest, or have proper medical attention if...."
"He's not in need of medical attention. The thing they did to him isn't afterward detectable unless overdone; and there's nothing a doctor could do about it. He just needs a rest and...."
"Will you help me to do what I wish-send him away from me?"
"Certainly, Claire." He took out a cigarette case and offered it to her. She reached, but her arm fell limply back upon the covers. Putting a cigarette into her mouth, he lighted it for her, then took one for himself, and folded his arms and watched her intently:
"Suppose," he began, "I were to make you a sporting proposition...." He paused wnd exhaled a cloud of fragrant, blue-gray smoke. It was heavenly tobacco. Claire hadn't known until she joined him aboard the yacht, what a marked difference there could be between the cheap, highly advertised brands of cigarettes, and the really good, expensive ones...."suppose, Claire, I were to help you act out this drama between you and Mort ... see that Mort is taken care of ... arrange everything and pay you much more than I did before, would you...." he broke off when he saw her involuntarily cringe away from him.
"What would I have to do?" He was explicit.
She blanched and compressed her lips. "Would you wait, Hunter, until I...?"
"Of course ... no matter how long a wait was necessary."
"All right," she agreed, her voice just barely audible. Reaching out, he touched her, and she felt his hand vibrate. His eyes were bright.
It was nearly dark outside when Hunter brought Mort into her. She had requested that the lights be left low.
Over the town there was a temporary hush while most of the city's denizens were at supper. Never, she thought, had Mort appeared more like a young Greek god than now.
He was pale and apparently had lost weight. She could see that he was still shaken from his dreadful experience. He advanced toward the bed, and Hunter, placing a chair for him, went out and closed the door.
"In a couple of days, when I'm strong enough again, I'm going to buy a gun, and find them and kill them," Mort said earnestly, "for hurting you."
She reached out to take his hand, desperately fighting for courage to say to him what she must.
"Are you badly hurt, Claire?"
"No, just weak. I'll be all right in a day or so."
"You sure?"
"Of course ... but you...."
"Oh, I'm all right. Do you really believe that this Dorsey didn't put them up to it?"
"I'm sure he didn't, Mort."
"He is a different sort from what I supposed. I don't think he'd have stood for it, if he'd known; but it's darned funny that he doesn't intend to do anything about it, now that he does know."
"He couldn't." ... "well, I can."
"You mustn't, Mort!"
"Why mustn't I?"
"It would only cause more trouble, and I'm so tired of trouble."
"Oh, my tender little baby, what did they do to you-but don't tell me. I couldn't stand to hear it. He slid forward out of his chair and knelt on the dais which supported the bed. His mouth settled in the crook of her arm.
She felt dampness. He was crying. He said, after a minute:
"The only way I can stand it is to pretend to myself that nothing happened to you. If I should think about what must have occurred I'd go mad."
"You mustn't feel that way, Mort. I'm not worth it."
"Not worth itl You're the most precious thing 'on earth to me, and to think that...!"
"Mort, you must listen to me."
"I'm listening, dear."
"I'm not going away with you. I'm going to stay here."
"Of course. Until you're well enough to ... "
"Even after I'm well, I'm going to stay here."
"What for?"
Despite the dim light, they could see each other now quite distinctly.
"You've never quite known me, Mort...." She felt herself raw and bleeding inside because of what she must do. Never had she hoped that a love such as he brought might come to her; and now she must alienate that love.
"Mort, I did steal that ten thousand dollars from Mr. Dorsey."
"What difference does it make, Claire? Do you suppose I would care what you did? Nothing you could do would make me love you less; it might make me change my conceptions of right and wrong, but that's all."
"I know, Mort That's just it!"
"What's just it? ... But I know you're hot and feverish. I'd better go now, though I'd love to lie here on the floor beside the bed all night...."
"I stole the ten thousand dollars, Mort, because I couldn't have gone with you if I hadn't."
"Why not?"
"I might as well be frank, Mort; because love wouldn't have been enough for me. I'd want comfort, luxury ... I couldn't face...."
"You're delirious, honey."
"I'm not. I was never more rational in my life ... You see, Mort, it's hard to say, to you-you're so idealistic-but I had quite enough of middle class living in my early years. I want ease ... expensive things ... I thought that your love would make up for losing Hunter, or rather, what Hunter represented-the yacht, plenty of money, pretty clothes, a car at my disposal-but I was wrong. Now that I'm back in this milk-and-honey background, I realize that I must stay in it. I couldn't go back to ... to...."
"You're not yourself, Claire."
"Please don't say that. Perhaps you'll believe me when I tell you that even before this happened I was planning to leave you, as soon as the .ten thousand was used up, and perhaps before.
"I'm sorry, Mort, but-well, you know what my. early environment was-let's just say that it's warped and twisted me beyond repair. At any rate, I was keeping you, just as a plaything of flesh, and now...."
Sensing that at last she had struck home, she broke off and spoke no more. For some time he remained still, unusually still. Finally he rose and stood over her.
"Claire, are you telling me the truth when you say that you thought these things before we ... "
"Yes, Mort. I swear it."
For long he stood quiet, not wavering; straight and strong. As though she were psychic, she could feel conviction coming to him. She could feel herself dying a little. Some part of her, she knew, would altogether die when he went out of the room....
But she would live on.
She thought back to the first time she had stepped out upon the stage in one of Templeton's shows ... to discover that the arrangements of lights was such as to make it nearly impossible for her to see the audience; and the blinding quality of the footlights and floodlights had also blinded her so greatly that she was not too conscious of her nudity. This, she distinctly recalled, had made it easier for her to expose herself.
Life with Hunter would be something like that. Surrounded by the floodlights of luxury that he would play over her, at least for a time-and perhaps for a long time if she were, when he grew tired of her, to act as a female pimp for him-she would be concealed and blinded; concealed from the audience outside her, and blinded to her own sharper perceptions.
Mort swung around slowly and moved toward the door. Then, turning, he came back.
"I think I see, Claire...." He was not angry or reproachful. She felt that he was able to go through with it because he thought of what he was about to do as a sacrifice he was making for her happiness, " ... but I shall always love you. You're right. I could never make you happy. You do need luxury, pretty things, ease ... money ... you poor baby-Oh! I love you so-and I know I'm weak, and not able to do for you what other men...!" It took all of her will to keep from crying out to him when he choked up and was unable to finish.
And then, unable to go on speaking, he reached out and touched her arm; tenderly, lightly, as his lips once had touched her arm; tenderly, lightly, as his lips once had touched her fingertips. Then he was gone, closing the door gently, softly, after him.
Soon Hunter came in. He walked over beside the bed, without turning on the light.
"He wouldn't take any money, Claire.. And he insisted upon leaving at once. He appeared to be sufficiently recovered to go ... I let him. I couldn't very well stop him."
When she didn't reply he leaned over her anxiously and snapped on his cigarette lighter, closely scrutinizing her. Her bereft expression was greatly disconcerting.
"Claire! Are you all right?"
Her monosyllabic reply was like a bit of dry dust floating upon thin air. He could barely hear it...." Yes, Hunter."
Relieved, he snapped off the lighter and stood uncertainly beside her in the dark.
"Can I do anything, Claire?"
"Could I have a dog, a small cuddly one?"
"A dog! My dear child, if you really want one, when you're feeling better you may have the finest that can be found in New York."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was as she was leaving the library that there came a violent hammering upon the front door.
Hunter came out to the hall. The Japanese house boy came from the back part of the apartment and glanced questioningly at his master. Hunter nodded to the boy "who opened the door.
Three men, obviously detectives, shouldered their way in. Claire knew at once that they were detectives because of their limp fedoras, kept on in the presence of a lady, their ill-pressed dark suits, large pedal extremeties and a general air of sleuthiness and malignity.
There was no colloquy. The leader of the three said merely:
"Come on, let's go."
Hunter appeared to be debating resistance; but at last he threw out his hands and sent the house boy for his hat and coat.
"You come along, too," one of the officers said to Claire.
"She's not mixed up in this," Hunter expostulated; but one of the officers remarked:
"You got nice teeth, mister; better keep your trap shut before you get 'em knocked down your throat."
"A yap out of you, slut," another officer said to Claire, "and you get your insides kicked out."
Downtown, Claire was taken into a room in which were several detectives. One of them immediately recognized her as one of Wally's girls. There were also two newspaper men in the room, trying to appear as cynical as reporters should look, according to the movies. The officer who recognized her spoke to the others:
"This is one of Wally Templeton's fanny flashers!"
They all appeared to be impressed. A detective sergeant who was in charge addressed her with a new respect in his tone.
"Are you splitting in Dorsey's racket?"
"I don't know anything about his racket," she declared. Noticing the profound change in their attitudes after the mention of Templeton's name she requested:
"May I phone Mr. Templeton?"
One of the officers pushed a telephone to her. She dialed Wally's private, unlisted number. His sibilant voice on the phone sounded good to her. There was that about Wally which instantly bred confidence and trust.
When he had listened he said:
"I can't do a thing for Mr. Dorsey. I suppose he's in wrong and they're shaking him down. But I think I can spring you. Let me speak to whoever's in charge where you are."
She handed the phone to the gruff detective sergeant. After listening for a few moments, he said:
"Okay, Wally."
Hanging up the receiver, he turned to one of the other officers and ordered:
"Haul this frail over to Wally Templeton's place and dump her."
"Come on, bitch," the other officer instructed. Without waiting for her to collect herself, he grabbed her arm and yanked her out as though he was dealing with an inanimate object. One of the reporters went with them. He slapped questions at her so fast that she could not understand half of what he said. Dazed, she replied to some of his queries.
There was a wild ride through the streets, with the car's siren shrilling, and the officer and newspaper man alternately trying to molest her.
Wally met them in the entryway, in one of his more exotic dressing gowns. Shoving a bill into the officer's hand he directed:
"Don't forget to take the pest with you when you go."
The detective grabbed the newspaper man and dragged him protesting away.
Claire threw herself upon a divan and burst into hysterical tears. Templeton left the room and returned quickly, carrying a large glassful of dark liquid.
"Here," he commanded kindly, "Put this down, child-all of it."
Obediently she drank. It was hot and spicy. Its ingredients immediately relaxed her nervous tension.
"Did they slug you?" Templeton inquired, standing over her solicitously.
"No, but...."
"Yes, I can imagine," he cut in. "You stay here for a few days until things quiet down. That stuff I gave you will put you to sleep in a short time.
I'm going to keep an eye on you from now on. You've got a rare genius for getting all snarled up."
The room was dark when she awoke next morning, clad in a splendid silk nightie and lying in a bed as comfortable as Hunter's.
When recollection of the night before came to her, she hunted in agitation around the head of the bed. She found a button, and pressed it. After a minute Templeton came in, slim, debonair, and exotically handsome in a light tan suit so tailored as to show the outlines of his trim figure.
"Have a nice nap, little one?" He went to the windows and pulled cords which changed the semidarkness of the room to warm brightness, "What time is it, Wally?"
"Two-thirty."
"In the afternoon?"
He smiled down at her.
"You've been asleep for about twelve hours. I'll go out for a few minutes and then come back."
He left the room. In ten minutes, after she had gotten back into bed, he returned.
"I've ordered the sort of breakfast you ought to have. It will be here presently. Feel well enough to take a slant at these cheerful little tumble bugs?" He handed her the morning papers. The first one was a tabloid. There was a front page story, including a statement by long distance from "Doctor" Warne, an "eminent mid-Western professor." George had, of course, unctuously averred that they had Done Right by The Gal, but that she was just naturally no good.
At last, she found time to reflect George had achieved the ambition of a lifetime and gotten his name into a New York paper ... and they had called him "Doctor," and said he was "eminent."
The most complete story of all had been written by Martin Manning. Reading over her shoulder and seeing which story she was examining, Wally informed her:
"That Martin Manning whose byline is on that story, has been here. I told him you were sleeping. He said he'd be back this afternoon. I suppose those lugs down at the bureau told him where you were. Other reporters have been here, too, but I got rid of them. I knew you wouldn't want to see them; but this Manning claimed he's a personal friend of yours."
"He is," she confirmed. "When he comes back I'd like to see him, if you don't mind."
"Not at all, my dear; make yourself at home." Just then a servant entered with her breakfast. Wally propped up the pillows behind her.
"Good heavens!" she objected. "I can't eat all that."
"Better," he advised. "I'm going to poke it into you at one end or the other. Food's what you need."
"Such service ... Wally, you'll spoil me!"
"I'd like to."
He sat chatting while she ate. It was not possible to be worried or downhearted in his presence. His magnetism was irresistible. There was a steely strength to his mind that belonged to the spirit of a slim, well-tempered blade that could be wielded with dexterity. He was, she diagnosed, a man who had, and would, and could, get anything he wanted, and hence held no bitterness toward life or people, such as were always entertained by those baffled and frustrated souls who found life difficult.
When she had finished eating, having been tempted into packing every bit of the food served her down through Wally's cunning trick of keeping her mind so busy that she ate automatically-a servant entered to announce Manning.
"Show him in here," Wally ordered, and in a moment Martin Manning entered, slimly perfect, absolutely degage and possessed of the aplomb which was an invariable character attribute with him.
He was as immaculately attired as Templeton. Wally eyed him with entire approbation and even somewhat languishingly.
Claire had expected a degree of humility in Manning, after what he had done; but there was no trace of it observable in his manner. Reproachfully she said:
"Martin, I didn't think you'd do that to me. Writing like that."
He did appear genuinely surprised-his eyes followed hers to the newspaper that lay on the bed. Wally pulled up a chair for him and offered his cigarette case.
"How could I help it, Claire? If I hadn't written it, another reporter on the staff would have. Naturally, knowing I'd handled the story in Des Moines, they put me on it. And, anyway, I got a chance to say you were lovely and nice, and the victim of circumstances....and above all I managed to mention George as an obscure chemistry instructor in the Middle West."
"He's quite right," Wally seconded. "If he hadn't done the story somebody else would have, and probably made a botch of it." At this juncture a servant came in and spoke to Templeton, and he excused himself.
"What do you think will happen to Dorsey?" she asked. "I suppose you think I'm crazy to be concerned about him, but on the whole he was pretty decent to me and...."
"Oh, he'll pull through," Manning predicted. "He once had a lot of money. He dropped plenty on the market ... took a side excursion into narcotics-running on a big scale; made contacts, I heard, off the coast, for big shipments. He'd been a respectable yachtsman for years, and the revenue people didn't suspect him, so he could make ocean contacts with foreign ships for the big shots without getting shaken down by the revenue people.
"So far as I can ascertain he made what he needed to recoup some of his market losses, took a big gain on this rising market with the money he made assisting the Syndicate, and then tried to get out of the racket. Evidently the boys hated to lose him, so they acted typically; but his connections are valid: Wall Street, Social Register, political circles, all that ... He'll be able to buy his way out all right and still be holding plenty. They're just shaking him down now I suppose, because they've found out he didn't split with the revenue gang."
Claire nodded philosophically. That was the way things were done in the Unied States.
Martin slapped her on the knee. "Cheer up, honey. Dorsey Hunter will get out and you'll be back in minks and ermine again."
She gave him a look. "Thanks for your confidence in my, uh ... abilities, Martin."
"That's okay." He gazed at her thoughtfully. "You know, come to think of it, I wouldn't mind throwing one into you myself...."
Talk like that made Claire shiver reflexively. Suddenly she found her hand stealing across the bedspread toward him....
Wally reappeared almost automatically, startling both of them.
"Another visitor, Claire," he announced. "Man says he saw the stuff about you in the papers and found out from the police where you were. Says he's got to see you ... looks like a first-rate chap to me. Shall I let him in? He says his name's Pierce Sankey."
At her request, the others left the room before her father came in.
Opening the door he stood for a moment framed in it. The light from the windows was directly against him and she, sitting up in bed, was between him and the windows.
Breathlessly studying him, she was struck first that he appeared to be ever so much younger than she had imagined he would be. And he was altogether a different type of person from her suppositions concerning him-sleek, polished, puissant sort of person. So resplendent and sophisticated-seeming that she was automatically shy and timid.
So clearly were his features illumined that she could see, directly above his right eyebrow, the small scar from a chemical burn received when materials he had been experimenting with at a photographer's office in Kansas City years ago had exploded.
"A small scar like a crescent," her mother had said in describing it. The scar gave his right eyebrow a slight lift, as though he were perpetually expressing cynicism. His features were sharply cut and impressive. His eyes bright and intense; his hair black, and there was a great deal of it sleekly smoothed back.
She tried to speak, to welcome him; to give some sign. But she could not. She had expected a fatherly sort of person ... this man was anything but that. He reminded her of Adolph Menjou playing the role of a deucedly clever and deucedly sinful correspondent.
Her father was not the sort who held heads on his chest, gazed towards Heaven and patted hair. He was the sort, one saw at sight, accustomed to ordering people around and raising the very hell with them if they didn't jump in the right direction at his command; a man of the world, fairly glittering from sleek head to highly polished shoes.
She was a trifle reassured to discover that he, too, was experiencing intense surprise, having found a type of girl he had not expected to find as his daughter.
After a long pause, without speaking, he moved toward the bed, and stood for a moment staring down at her incredulously.
"Are you Claire?"
She tried vainly to speak, but she could only nod. Her throat muscles seemed to be in a state of suspended animation. Her heart pounded. Gladness warmed her so that she wanted only to gaze and think to herself: "This is my father! My father! My father! I am no longer alone in the world. He has cared enough to come when he heard I was in trouble!"
CHAPTER TWELVE
She saw him examining her features.
"Yes," he nodded huskily, "there's certainly no doubt about it. I could never deny you." He said this somewhat humorously; but his eyes were bright and she knew that emotion welled up in him ... that he wanted to weep, but that he was the sort of man who usually snarled instead of weeping and hence had no idea how to go about it.
She was rendered delirious with joy in the knowledge that she was looking at a man who was finding in her for the first time in his life an interpretation of an emotion which had ever be en dormant in him. He had never, surely, loved that unstable creature, her mother ... but now.
She exulted in the fact that this case-hardened creature was rendered helpless and incoherent by her. Here was a love that transcended....
Becoming aware that he was acting oddly, he put both his hands out in a gesture of complete and glad surrender. Grasping his hands, she found them strong and warm and dry.
She saw him struggle with himself for composure. His well-shaped mouth up-curved to form a whimsical expression.
I'll be damned! To think that a living creature could look partly like Elizabeth and partly like me and yet be wholly beautiful!"
His words broke the tension, but she was still too overcome to speak. She could only remain still and look at him, and hold tightly to his hands as though she were afraid he would vanish into thin air, and think to herself: "My father. My real father." She wanted to hug him close to her; but she was still shy; and she was afraid it might embarrass him. He got out:
"If I'd had any idea ... but I supposed you'd be a dreadful, peasant creature, like George and Elizabeth, and you're not at all, you're...." he broke off. He had not said, she knew, what he felt and wanted to say, any more than she could. The human language might serve well enough for glib passages between lovers, but as between father and daughter, there was nothing to express the fullness of an emotion so sublimated above the ordinary.
Yielding to an irresistible impulse, she leaned forward and put her head upon his shoulder.
"I can't talk, father ... I'm ... all choked up."
The word "father" caused him to jerk a trifle ... Then he held her close.
"You poor baby-what you've been through! All because those God damned clods didn't understand that you didn't have the same sluggish blood in your veins that they have. If I'd known what sort you are ... how you needed ... but I always supposed ... and then I saw your picture in the paper ... read what ... please believe me, baby, if I'd had any idea how you needed me, I....
"Try to forgive me, Claire, for making such a poor job of this. I've never had anything like this happen to me before ... it's a new relationship for me. I'd never much though of myself as a father, as-but give me time, baby, and I'll...."
"I know how you feel, dear. I can't say what I want to either; only tell me what you think about ... about-you don't think I'm a dreadful creature because of what you read in the papers?"
"Hell, baby, I'd a thousand times rather you were a bit inclined toward ... emotional extravagance ... than inclined toward peasant stolidity, as I'd always feared you would be. You're entirely different from what I supposed. You're superb! You're-baby, it's going to be marvelous-I was so bored with ... everything ... and now you, 'really needing me! If you can only forgive me for having completely ignored your existence all these years when...."
"There's nothing to forgive. I'm only thinking how glad I am you've come at last, I...." And then the emotional dam would hold no longer. Huge tears rolled out. He held her close and patted her shoulder.
When she'd had her cry out, he got complete control of himself and began to talk, holding her closely:
"Listen, honey; there are a million things to be said between us-but let's get this disposed of first:
"You've got nothing further to worry about. I'm on top of the heap. I'm one of the best sound technicians in captivity. I've got a couple of patents of my own pulling down plenty for me, besides my connections in Hollywood. I spend most of my time there; just happened to be in New York supervising sound installations at a studio on Long Island where MGM is going to shoot some of its interiors from now on."
"But are you. well, dear?" she put in. "You look sort of thin."
"I'm a whole lot sounder than the American dollar, baby; never been sick in my life, but once, and that was years ago, when your mother did the cooking for a while. Can you come out to California with me right away? Lie around in the sun for a couple of years and not do a damned thing?"
"I'd go to hell with you even if you didn't have a nickel," she assured him fervently. "Andyou needn't think I've got enough of my mother's blood in me to walk out on you if you ever do go broke again. Try and get rid of me. I'll stick to you until the day we die."
"This is going to be tremendous!" he grinned delightedly. "Having a daughter. I'm going to get a terrific kick out of it ... and such a charming one! You've got it all over any movie actress I ever saw."
"But when I tell you all about myself, Daddy, you may not be so proud of me."
"Oh, to hell with that. If I were to tell you all about myself, you wouldn't even speak to me. I don't care a whoop what you have done' I'm just pleased inordinately about one thing you haven't done-you didn't turn out to be a goddamn peasant ... or hypocritical ... or pious ... or Right Thinking ... or any of those stuffy things you might have been expected to learn from your stuffy step-father. And as for your 'sins'!" He broke off to laugh heartily. "Hell, you don't know what sin is. Wait until you see some of the parties in Hollywood...."
She laughed uproariously as he began to describe some of the parties he had attended in Hollywood, where creatures of all sexes would mingle in such incredible abandon that it staggered the imagination. He described daisy chains of naked men and woman undulating at parties like some giant caterpillar. And he gave her the lowdown on all of the move stars he had laid....
"Well, she was a little tight ... so I had to force it a little ... oh yea, and could that one use her mouth ... no, those two are Lesbians ... she likes to get it from behind ... she likes to be raped ... and beaten up with whips ... you wouldn't think it from the little-girl, sweet teen-ager roles she plays."
Though at first she was able to preserve a sort of clinical detachment about it all, gradually Claire began to. feel a strange sort of passion ... seeping between her legs. Something very liquid and oozing was spilling across her thighs onto the bed sheets....
"She's crazy to get eaten...! never saw a starlet come so fast ... just like dynamite ... just put my tongue into it and off she goes...."
Suddenly he broke off and gaped at her. Her dressing gown had opened partly, revealing the mammoth slopes of her squeezed-together breasts. One massive aureole was at least half in sight.
Claire watched dazedly as she saw her father's breath catch in his throat. Suddenly he went on: "My God, Claire you have beautiful big boobs ... They're much bigger than your mother's ever were...."
As if to break off his embarrassment, he went into a detailed description of the bodies of various Hollywood stars he had known, describing in particular their breasts.
"Oh, she's just an old hag ... used to be beautiful in 1942, when she played Mrs. Minivoc, but you ought to be her globbies, the way they sag ... disgusting ... oh her, she's okay ... built ... high tits ... gigantic ... stand right up and dare you to touch them ... everybody does ... she's got the most magnificent nipples you've ever seen ... big ... stand up a mile high ... good for sucking ... that one sure can pour out the juice ... I collected a bottleful of it one night while she was in the throes and fed it to her as a cold drink later ... she liked it...."
Suddenly he stopped to gaze at her again. This time his eyes practically devoured her. As if moved by an impulse greater than himself, his hand suddenly reached out and grabbed one of her enormous breasts....
"Father...!"
"God, do you have the boobs ... no, just let me look at them...."
She stopped struggling. His hand moved caressingly. She could feel her massaged breast start to quiver. Both her nipples were beginning to harden into little soldiers. Then his fingers pinched them. She squirmed and uttered a little cry of joy. Shivers of ecstasy ran through her flesh like hot and cold thrills.
"Oh God ... daddy...." She pushed her fingers into his hair and his mouth came forward and began gulping fish-like at one of her straining, throbbing, nipples....
She reached for the bulge in his trousers. He was bigger and harder than any of her other lovers had been ... suddenly she wanted him more than anything she had ever wanted in her life....
She zipped him open and grabbed ... he was big....
"God," she moaned, "Daddy ... please take me ... give me your big hard thing between my curly blonde legs, and jam it in until it makes my teeth rattle...."
He tussled with her on the bed, pushing off the covers and opening the gown over her magnificent writhing body. He pushed down his trousers and climbed on top of her, ramming it in, with everything he had.
"You wonderful whore...." he whispered over her moans, washing her ear with his tongue. Her slender, creamy legs came up around his hips and she jerked spasmodically as he pumped, moaning ecstatically, each little cry of surrender coming like a long, low whistle....
He buried his nose and fingers into her yellow-golden hair, whispering to himself, "My God, this is the greatest thing I've ever had-honey, you're the hottest!"
She moaned in delirium, straining desperately. Each new thrust brought a corresponding shiver of ecstasy, and little cries broke from her throat.
"Oh, Daddy ... I'm going to make it ... my god ... pump me ... pump me...."
He pushed his hands under her buttocks and gave her one last pump that started her shooting off into an endless universe ... and then he shot into her and jerked convulsively, uttering his own little moans and loving every minute of it and begging God not to be too harsh with him for committing this most obscene ... and beautiful ... exciting ... act.,.
And so they were one together, and two lonely, wandering heart swappers had at last found a home ... father and daughter ... together ... and ready to defend themselves against the universe....