by Troy Conway
“Sixty!”
“Oh, most of them are only variations of the basic ones. It’s always been my ambition to try out Philaenis in the flesh. I have yet to find a woman who can go beyond the first twelve.”
Her red tongue ran around her lipsticked mouth. ‘Try me,” she whispered, putting her palms on my rockhard thighs and sliding them upward.
“All right,” I agreed. “We’ll begin with the preliminaries.”
I caught her head and drew her face toward me.
Ten minutes later, I brought her to her bed, and stretched her out on her back so that her legs dangled over the edge. I knelt down and feasted on her flesh until she was screaming thickly.
It was then that I resorted to Philaenis. . . .
Four and a half hours later, my hostess was unconscious.
I lay on the rumpled bed with her, my head pillowed on its twisted covers. Our bodies were still in a variant of the Venus reversa position. Wanda Weaver Yule lay face down, her torso between my parted feet, her thighs resting on my hips. She was snoring slightly.
I had read her correctly, all right. She was hung up on the new society, on the need to make love, not war, because she herself was desperate for sexual attention. It was Wanda Weaver Yule who wanted to make love, who thought and preached that doctrine when she could.
She would scream, “Ride ‘em, cowboy!” as she flopped helplessly in her orgasmic spasm. From time to time her voice would cry out, “Make love! Make love!”
I was a bit winded after four and a half hours.
She slept peacefully, dead to our world. It was easy to slide out from under the weights of her thighs, to arrange her more comfortably amid the bedcovers, to throw a blanket over her nudity.
Then I turned my attention to her secretary. A simple tug told me it was locked. I went to her dressing table, selected a hairpin and returned to the secretary. Inserting the hairpin, I worked it around until the drawer lock clicked open.
At the end of half an hour, I was positive the secretary was no help to me. I had hoped, despite the fact that I enjoyed being both bodyguard and lover to this woman, that I would find some paper, some document, in these drawers that would pinpoint a possible murderer and his motive for wanting to kill Wanda Weaver Yule. If I learned a name, I could strike at the would-be killer without waiting for him or her to strike first.
As it was, Wanda Weaver Yule had to be the bait for her own killer. I had to stay here and prevent her murder—and it had occurred to me that I might fail.
CHAPTER FOUR
Wanda Weaver Yule was madder than a wet cat.
She stood in her bedroom wearing a pair of green nylon panties and high-heeled shoes, cursing me up and down. Her hand had hold of a crystal atomizer. With an anguished howl and a sweep of her bare right arm, she flung it at me.
It grazed my temple as I ducked.
“Look, honey,” I said, “it’s only for a few hours!”
“I will not! I will not go to that mod ball with anybody but you,” she screeched. Her big white breasts wobbled crazily as she made motions with her hands. “That old fogey you call Walrus-moustache is not, I repeat, is not going to be my dancing partner all night long!”
“But I’m on duty! It’s my job to protect you!”
She muttered something I cannot repeat. Regally, she crossed her arms about her jumping mammaries and looked down her nose at me. She was one angry female, flushed and almost weeping. I had to do something to calm her down, to put sense in her shapely skull.
I walked across the room, slid my arms about her, and kissed her. She was warm and soft and cuddly when I was through.
“You see?” she purred with female logic. “You see how well we get on together? And you want me to go to the ball with somebody else.”
“All he’s going to do is dance with you.”
“No!”
I kissed her soft neck with searching lips and darting tongue. She giggled and rubbed her thighs against me. She was an exciting woman. She excited me and she knew it. My head bent so I could let my mouth pasture on her right breast. Wanda panted a little and rubbed her soft white thighs together.
“Mmmmm. It’s still no,” she whispered.
She was not as positive, however. I touched her stiffened brown nipples with my tonguetip. She began panting and shoving her belly against me.
“I’ll drive you there and guard you,” I told her big white breasts with my kissing lips. “I’ll take Walrus-moustache home and then you and I will be together for the whole time.”
Apparently she thought that over, because she asked in a weak voice, “Do you really think I’m in danger?”
“I do. If you get killed, we wouldn’t be able to have a party later, after the ball. I want you alive and healthy, you delicious thing.”
She thawed and pushed away from me. “All right, all right. I’ll go with your old Walrus-moustache.”
“You might even like him, you know. He isn’t at all bad-looking,” I reassured her. “And I understand he’s a real good dancer.”
She shrugged casually, a wicked glint in her green eyes. “Call your silly Walrus-moustache, then. But you’ve got to help me bathe and dress.” When I opened my mouth to protest, she murmured innocently, “If I’m in all that much danger, I don’t want you to leave my side for a single moment.”
I nodded, giving her pouting lips a final kiss before I moved for the telephone. While I was dialing, my hostess began humming and walking about the room, waiting until I was dialing before she paused, bending over to slide her green nylon panties down off her fleshy hips. I found myself staring at a pair of plump buttocks just as Walrus-moustache spoke.
“Hello?”
“Chief, this is Damon. I’m going to need you to escort Mrs. Yule to that mod ball tonight.”
“What, me dance?”
Wanda was undoing my shirt buttons, smiling wickedly.
She was going to make me suffer for not forgetting duty long enough to act as her escort
“Right, I knew you’d go for the idea!”
Angry growls at the other end of the line. Then: “You’ve been playing nurse to that woman for four days. Hasn’t anybody made a try at killing her yet?”
“No, indeed. She—ah—even insists that you take her!”
She bit me just below my belt buckle when I said that, kneeling there and sliding down my uniform pants and jockey shorts.
“This is one of those masquerade things, isn’t it? Ill have to wear some stupid costume. You sure you can’t protect her and go as her partner?”
“I knew you’d jump at the chance, Chief—ohh!”
Wanda Weaver Yule was playing king-at-arms with me, still kneeling and beginning to coo over a certain effect her feathery fingertips were inducing. She had me as naked as herself, by this time, except for my socks and shoes.
“What’s the matter there?”
“Nothing you’d be interested in, Chief. We’ll pick you up at nine. By the way, how are you dressing?”
“As a pirate, curse you! And when I see you I’m going to tattoo the Jolly Rodger all over your ugly face!”
His phone slammed down. Wanda sat back on her heels and gazed at me in utter adoration.
I pretended annoyance. “Now look what you’ve done. We have no time for games. We’re due at Walrus-moustache’s in about an hour and a half. Scarcely time for you to get bathed and dressed.”
She pushed her head against my thigh, giggling fit to bust a gut “I just wanted to be s-sure your gun was cocked.”
I grinned, bending to put hands under her armpits, to lift her. “All right, a quickie then. Come along.”
To my surprise, she pulled away. “Oh, no. We have no time for games. That”—and she pointed an accusing finger— “just serves you right for being such a stinker! We are going to bathe me, without any shenanigans.”
Her buttocks twitched and dimpled as she strode purposefully toward the bathroom door. I went after them, sighing to myself. I wa
s starting to suffer, in a way. While I am afflicted with priapism, I like to assuage my condition when the opportunity offers. Not to do so for any prolonged period of time makes me hurt.
I hurt while I ran her bath and she crowded her nakedness in against mine, sliding her hands where they would make me suffer most. I helped her into the tub, I soaped a washcloth and while she lay back, I ran it over her wet flesh. Everywhere, while my forehead got moist, and not just from the humidity in the steamy bathroom, I slid it all around her curves.
“I’m beginning to enjoy this sybaritic life,” she informed me as my hand with the washcloth cleansed her soapy breasts. “Having a handsome mannish male wait on me is my idea of living it up.”
“Living it up is the right term,” I muttered.
She smiled at me and ran a wet fingertip along my thigh. “It is, at that,” she agreed. “I ought to bathe you too, dear Rod—but we just haven’t the time.”
My hand steadied her as she stepped from the tub. I ran a big towel over her damp nudity until it was dry. Then there was a big fluffy powderpuff that anointed her flesh with scented whiteness, after which I rubbed her down again.
She had no mercy on me. I must wait on her stark naked, bring her the net stockings, the big white cottontail—she was dressing as a Playboy bunny—the rabbit ears and the blue satin bunny outfit into which she could just about squeeze her mature body.
The effect was sensational. Her shapely legs were on view all the way up to where her plump buttocks oozed more than halfway out of the seat of the tight garment. Her bare shoulders and the way her breasts were pushed upward and outward like squeezed white balloons, would make any man exhibit his badge of manliness.
“You like?” she wondered, turning before a mirror.
“It’s time for me to get dressed,” I snarled.
I got dressed as fast as I could, looking away from that tantalizing body. I cursed the Coxe Foundation that had put me in such a situation. I cursed Walrus-moustache, who was going to hold this bundle of libidinous flesh in his arms all night. I cursed my unruly priapism.
My hands found an ermine wrap half an hour later. I flung it about her shoulders and ran ahead of her to start the car. We were using the Cadillac tonight. I would be up front behind the wheel, she and the chief would be cuddling behind my back.
I drove as if the hammers of hell were pounding on me. My mood was belligerent and I had the proverbial chip on my shoulder. In short, I was spoiling for a fight.
Walrus-moustache, damn his eyes, was in a jolly mood. As he stepped into the car, he caught Wanda by the hand and pressed his lips to its scented back. I growled in my throat.
“My dear Mrs. Yule, you are perfection,” he murmured.
I had all I could do not to boot him one. He looked good in his pirate outfit. He was a regular Edward Teach—Blackbeard—even to the firecrackers tied in the huge mop of black whiskers that half hid his face.
Wanda added to my annoyance by cooing and gurgling like a baby in her delight over his appearance. “You make my heart go all pitter-patter,” she informed him in a disgustingly sugary voice. “Here—feel.”
That was when I slid behind the wheel.
I was still suffering from my proximity to Wanda Weaver Yule somewhat earlier. I snarled at the Chief, I glared at Wanda, I was practically foaming at the mouth. Mrs. Yule knew it. She smiled sweetly and tapped my cheek with her perfumed fingertips.
“Keep a close watch, Rod,” she murmured. “Protect me!”
Walrus-moustache put an arm about her ermine-wrapped pulchritude and strode off into the brightly lighted hotel lobby, leaving me out in the driveway with only the Cadillac to console me. The Cadillac was no consolation.
I ignored the men and women shoving and poking me as they fought to get a closer look. I had to ignore them, or else I would have poked any one of half a dozen clods who stepped on my toes, banged me with their shoulders, pushed me aside, in their desire to look at the rich folk having fun.
I reached my peak of patience when a big hand came down on my shoulder, squeezed tight, and pushed hard. That did it. I turned, saw two big goons marching through the country club lobby the way Sherman had marched through Georgia. I saw red anger, white hate, and blue blazes. I snarled low in my throat. I started after the hoodlums who thought they were so tough.
They were big boys, with wide, muscular shoulders and thick necks. They looked as if they knew how to handle themselves in a fight. I refused to pick on anybody my own size; I wanted somebody even bigger, like those bums going up the staircase. Two of them would be about right, the way I felt. I wanted to relieve my frustrations. A good knock-down-drag-out fight would do the trick. I forgot all about protecting Wanda Weaver Yule.
I walked after them up the big marble staircase with its deeply piled scarlet coverings, and along a corridor until I was standing before the French windows through which my quarry had walked. I opened the French window and stepped out onto the balcony that ran the length of the clubhouse.
I glanced at the driveway. There was nobody down there but the empty cars. Everybody else, including the chauffeurs like me, were standing around the hotel lobby, staring at the party-goers in their costumes. Still, the balcony was a little public to stage the donnybrook I had in mind.
It was quiet here. Out of the corners of my eyes, as I brought out a cigarette, I saw the two big men moving along the balcony. The rhythms of the two orchestras hired for the mod party were faint and seemingly far away. I moved along the narrow balcony which ran completely about the country clubhouse, until I was at the corner of the grand ballroom.
The two men were standing there, peering in through the high windows between the balcony and the ballroom.
One of the men held a naked revolver fitted with a silencer. My blood pulsed like bubbling lava. All the frustrations of the night had me up tight. I should have reached for the revolver in the shoulder holster under my uniform jacket. Instead I ran forward, shouting.
The man with the revolver whirled toward me. His eyes got big as his hand steadied the gun. His companion was peering over his shoulder, shouting hoarsely. “Don’t shoot, Lennie! Just zap him one with the barrel.”
He was out to earn his murder money. A gunshot might alarm the guests. Zap me and Lennie would have time to take dead aim at Wanda Weaver Yule and fire.
I dived in a flying tackle.
My shoulder hit Lennie across his right thigh, drove him backwards into his companion. The gun whistled as it slashed through the air an inch from my skull. All three of us hit the balcony floor at the same time. I closed my fingers around the Colt .38 and yanked, twisting the gun at the same time.
Lennie screamed. His finger was caught in the trigger guard and the snap I heard was the finger breaking. I sympathized with him only until I had the gun free of his smarting hand. Then I drove the metallic weight of the blue steel revolver full into the side of his jaw.
The man with Lennie was bringing his fist up from the floor. Hard knuckles rammed into my left cheekbone. The stars came down from the sky and danced around my eyes for a few moments.
I leaped through the circling stars at the man with the sideburns. He was off balance after that uppercut he’d popped me with, so I had the right side of his face all to my left fist. My left fist slammed home and he fell sideways into the building wall.
Lennie was erupting into action below me as I was going over him. His fist came up into my middle, knocking some of the wind out of me. I half turned as I bounced off his companion and drove the gun I still held in my hand at his face.
I never connected. The sideburned slugger wrapped me with his flailing arm as he came away from the building wall. That big bar of living flesh drove me into the ornate marble railing. I hung there a moment, trying to get my breath back, cursing the red rage with which I had attacked these two. If I’d drawn my own gun from its shoulder holster and fired when I saw that these two were doing, I wouldn’t be in this bag.
Four hands
grabbed me, heaving me up, and the railing went away below me. I realized they were going to heave me over the balcony rail to the hard driveway below.
One of my waving hands tangled in thick hair. I tightened my fingers. Somebody began yowling. My other hand flailed around, found more hair. With both hands yanking so hard their scalps were lifted clear of their skulls, I swore that if I went over, these two manhandlers would go with me, or I would pull their scalps off. Both men were screeching in pain below me.
I kicked my legs, I hit Sideburns with a knee right on his nose. Lennie caught a heel in his mouth.
They staggered; their arms got a little weak and my struggling body started coming down to their head-level. I guess they were realizing that we were bringing curious onlookers out of the hotel lobby. I think they wanted out fast, because they took away their hands so my body started to fall. The only trouble with their plan was me. I would not let go of their longish hair.
As my two hundred pounds dropped, my fists moved forward. Since my fists held all that hair between their fingers, their heads went forward—into the hard marble railing. There were a couple of scrunchy sounds.
My weight landed on my toes, behind these hoods who were bending forward with their foreheads slammed into the cold marble, like pilgrims bowing to Mecca. I grated between my teeth, “Now, damn your silly eyes, here’s where I get rid of my emotions!”
Bonka bonka bonka.
When I let them go, they sagged.
I stood above their unconscious bodies and drew a few deep breaths. I felt like Tarzan after a battle with a bull gorilla. I wanted to lift my face to the stars and howl.
Half a dozen people had congregated below the balcony, staring up with popping eyes, their jaws open. I waved a hand down at them.
“Can somebody go call a policeman?” I asked.
“No need to do that,” a big husky bruiser behind me said. “I’m a state trooper. I’ll take over. What’s this all about?”
I said, “I found these creeps looking in a window at the ballroom. One of them had a revolver in a hand. It’s fitted with a silencer.”
